God Is Infatuated With You!

- There’s a movie that stars Patrick Dempsey called “Can’t Buy Me Love” that came out in 1987

- It picks up the title from the old Beatles’ song of the same name

- In the movie, Patrick Dempsey’s character, Ronald Miller, plays a kind of nerdy guy in high school who spends his summers mowing peoples’ lawns and earns a lot of money

- He was saving up his money to buy a telescope

- It’s just at the end of summer and school is about to start, Ronald Miller is in the mall picking out his telescope when he spots the most popular girl in school, Cindy Mancini, who doesn’t know he exists but he has a total crush on her

- She had thrown a party the night before at her parent’s house while they were away. She was eyeing one of her mom’s outfits before she left. It was a suede ensemble that someone spills wine on, obviously staining the outfit. She goes to the mall to try to replace it but she doesn’t have the money to purchase it.

- Ronald offers her the money but on one condition, that she pose as his girlfriend for a month.

- She is in a bind so she agrees. On the first day of school, he follows her around. When the so called cool kids begin to pick on him, she tells them that he is her new boyfriend.

- During that month, he actually makes the most of the situation. He makes lots of contacts with the coolest kids in school so when their month long deal ends, he becomes the new eligible young bachelor who all the girls want to date.

- His perfect plan comes to a screeching halt at a New Year’s Eve party when Cindy’s real boyfriend, the big football star who was away at college returns to find out that his girlfriend had “cheated” on him with Ronald. As they have it out before numerous onlookers, Cindy admits that Ronald paid her to be his girlfriend.

- That obviously made him lower on the social ladder than he was before. And since he burned his bridges with his geeky friends when he became the rising star, even they ignored him when his star crashed and burned.

- The movie has a happy ending though. What Ronald didn’t know was that Cindy was actually falling in love with him near the end of their month long deal. She sees a side of him that she never really took the time to explore. She ends up having a crush on him and was hoping that he would ask her to continue the relationship but the thought of being popular was too much for him. So, in the end, she actually feels bad for hurting him so much, realizes how much she does care for him and they ride off into the sunset on his riding lawnmower. {PAUSE}

- The movie has a lot of the themes that our text for today does..

- There is love and romance. There is betrayal and finally redemption.

- We’ve been taking quite a few looks this fall at the great Eight century prophets, especially Isaiah and Hosea.

- Isaiah’s prophetic ministry occurred during some particularly rough periods in Judah’s history.

- Isaiah was probably a member of the upper echelons of society. He appears to have fairly easy access to the Kings of Judah, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, who reigned during his ministry.

- His ministry covers a rather substantial period from about 742 – 687 B. C.

- There were many awful kings of Judah but Ahaz was one of the worst. He brought about and continued many of the idolatrous practices of the people. He even sacrificed one of his own sons to a false god.

- However, his worst mistake was that he presided over one of the worst decisions in Judah’s history that would lead to the final nail in Judah’s coffin about a hundred years later

- When Rezin, king of Aram and Pekah, prince of Israel, the ten northern tribes, threatened to take Jerusalem, Isaiah told him to trust in God and that He would deliver his kingdom.

- Instead, Ahaz turned to Tiglath- Pilezer III, king of Assyria, for help.

- He as all to willing to help but would be the undoing of Israel in 722 B. C. when Samaria fell and the majority of the ten northern tribes were carted off to Assyria never to be heard from again.

- This made Judah even more susceptible to foreign invasion since Israel had been their northern bugger for centuries.

- The kings of Judah turned to Egypt and later Babylon to balance the power in the region and when the later kings got tired of paying off Babylon for their ongoing protection the Babylonians defeated Judah and carted many of the nobles off to Babylon in 597 B. C. and then finally destroyed Jerusalem in 587 B. C. {PAUSE}