So maybe you’ve heard it said, ‘read your bible’ so you tried and failed. Our hope as leaders is that all of us will pick up God’s word and come to understand the true nature of God. After all, the bible is God’s Word curated over centuries detailing His nature, His will, the meaning of life and humanity’s historical interactions with Him. The Bible details the hidden keys to the Kingdom. Hence, the reason we are reviewing a new book each week.
This week we move into The Book of Isaiah. A book of 66 chapters that make you wonder where we are in God’s time continuum. Because It sure seems like history is repeating itself. Stories of wars and rumors of wars. People being carted off to be re-educated and children being put up for adoption by the state. The book was written 2700 years ago: 700 years before Jesus and 2000 since our Savior walked the earth, died and rose for the forgiveness of sins. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like much has changed since then.
It reminds me of a story from Professor John Powell from Loyola University, Chicago.
I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our first session in the Theology of Faith. That was the day he first saw Tommy. He was combing his long flaxen hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders.
It was the first time he'd ever seen a boy with hair that long. He guessed it was just coming into fashion then. He knew in his mind that it isn’t what’s on your head but what’s in it that counts; but on that day. He was unprepared and my emotions flipped. He immediately filed Tommy under “S” for strange… Very strange.
Tommy turned out to be the “atheist in residence” in the Theology of Faith course. He constantly objected to, smirked at, or whined about the possibility of an unconditionally loving Father/God. They lived with each other in relative peace for one semester, although John had to admit Tommy was a serious pain in the back pew.
When Tommy came up at the end of the course to turn in his final exam, he asked in a cynical tone, “Do you think I’ll ever find God?” John decided instantly on a little shock therapy. “No!” he said very emphatically.
“Why not,” Tommy responded, “I thought that was the product you were pushing.”
John let him get five steps from the classroom door and then called out, “Tommy! I don’t think you’ll ever find Him, but I am absolutely certain that He will find you!” He shrugged a little and left my class and John’s life.
John felt slightly disappointed at the thought that he had missed my clever line – “He will find you!” At least John thought it was clever. Later he heard that Tommy had graduated, and he was duly grateful. Then a sad report came. John heard that Tommy had terminal cancer.
Before John could search him out, Tommy came to see him. When he walked into John’s office, his body was very badly wasted and the long hair had all fallen out as a result of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice was firm, for the first time.
“Tommy, I’ve thought about you so often; I hear you are sick,”
He blurted out: “Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer in both lungs. It’s a matter of weeks.”
“Can you talk about it, Tom?” John asked.
“Sure, what would you like to know?” Tommy replied.
“What’s it like to be only twenty-four and dying?
“Well, it could be worse. “Like what?”
“Well, like being fifty and having no values or ideals, like being fifty and thinking that booze, seducing women, and making money are the real biggies in life.”
John began to look through my mental file cabinet under “S” where I had filed Tommy as strange. (It seems as though everybody John tried to reject by classification, God sent back into his life to educate him,.)
“But what I really came to see you about,” Tom said, “is something you said to me on the last day of class.” (He remembered!) He continued, “I asked you if you thought I would ever find God and you said, ‘No!’ which surprised me. Then you said, ‘But He will find you.’ I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was not intense at that time. (John’s clever line. He thought about that a lot!)
“But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, that’s when I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging bloody fists against the bronze doors of heaven.
“But God did not come out. In fact, nothing happened. Did you ever try anything for a long time with great effort and with no success?
“You get psychologically glutted, fed up with trying. And then you quit. Well, one day I woke up, and instead of throwing a few more futile appeals over that high brick wall to a God who may be or may not be there, I just quit. I decided that I didn’t really care about God, about an afterlife, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more profitable. I thought about you and your class, and I remembered something else you had said:
‘The essential sadness is to go through life without loving.’
“But it would be almost equally sad to go through life and leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you had loved them. So, I began with the hardest one, my Dad. He was reading the newspaper when I approached him. ‘Dad.’ ‘Yes, what?’ he asked without lowering the newspaper. “Dad, I would like to talk with you”. ‘Well, talk’. ‘I mean. It’s really important.’ “The newspaper came down three slow inches. ‘What is it?’ ‘Dad, I love you, I just wanted you to know that.’ Tom smiled at John and said it with obvious satisfaction, as though he felt a warm and secret joy flowing inside of him.”The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things Tommy could never remember him ever doing before. He cried, and he hugged him. “They talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning.
“It felt so good to be close to my father, to see his tears, to feel his hug, to hear him say that he loved me.” said Tommy
“It was easier with my mother and little brother. They cried with me, too, and we hugged each other and started saying real nice things to each other. We shared the things we had been keeping secret for so many years. “I was only sorry about one thing – that I had waited so long. Here I was, just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to.”
“Then, one day I turned around and God was there. “He didn’t come to me when I pleaded with Him. I guess I was like an animal trainer holding out a hoop, ‘C’mon, jump through. C’mon, I’ll give you three days, three weeks.’ “Apparently God does things in His own way and at His own hour. “But the important thing is that He was there. He found me! You were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him.”
“Tommy,” John practically gasped, “I think you are saying something very important and much more universal than you realize. To me, at least, you are saying that the surest way to find God is not to make Him a private possession, a problem solver, or an instant consolation in time of need, but rather by opening to love.”
“You know, the Apostle John said that. He said: ‘God is love, and anyone who lives in love is living with God and God is living in him.
That is why I’m so encouraged by the end of Isaiah as the writer gives us something to look forward to when Christ comes again in chapter 65 beginning in verse 17 will come to fruition.
17 See, I will create new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.
19 I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.
20 “Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.
21 They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They will not labor in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord.
How much longer do you think it will be until He returns to cast a final judgment and brings this re-creation of everything?
The answer to the question reveals your heart. If you want judgment to come you might be assured with your salvation but you lack empathy for others. If you want to delay the time, you may be worried about your own salvation or those closest to you. Whichever viewpoint you have, scripture is clear - judgment is coming. It’s not harsh as some believe but necessary if we believe in a loving and fair (or righteous) Lord.
God can not accept injustice because it would taint who he is and therefore keep Him from being perfect. Isaiah 61:8 reminds us:
“For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing. In my faithfulness I will reward my people and make an everlasting covenant with them.
In the same way He rewards, someone must pay. If no one ever pays full price, then sin has no consequence, grace is a lie and God would be unjust or tainted. Jesus coming and dying was meaningless.
It’s in our repentance, we acknowledge Jesus paid full fare for all of us for our unwillingness to live fully committed to God in word and deed SO that we can receive total forgiveness.
Everyone has a choice. There is not a sliding scale assessment. It's a straight forward pass or fail test. Either accept God’s scale of justice for your life, which is laid out in the law or repent of your inability to ever fully live without sin (selfishness and self centeredness) and accept the forgiveness being offered through Jesus. There is no halfway. It’s all right or it's all wrong. Pass or fail.
Isaiah was committed to the Lord and his people. He is the most referenced and referred to of all the prophets and is found in 90% of the New Testament’s 260 chapters. Isaiah was connected to God’s heart more than any other prophet. It’s probably why his hope to reconcile everyone in his generation and future generations to God was his burden. He is a great example for us today of loving concern.
Penn, from Penn and Teller, who is not a Christian, tells the story of a man trying to share the gospel with him after a performance. Even giving him a New Testament with the book of psalms in it. He goes on to say how much he respected this man for trying to share his faith. After all, if we believe in a judgment day, heaven and hell are consequences and Jesus is saving grace for all, then any Christian who does not share their hope, must really hate those around them. It was jarring the first time I heard it because it pointed out my hypocrisy. I claimed to love God, placing my faith in Jesus but rarely shared my faith. I had never thought of not sharing my hope as a hatred for humanity. If we are to love what God loves and hate what he hates (sin), then we must look to share our hope.
How many people in this room know someone who does not know or rejects the idea of God’s love for humanity and the saving grace of Jesus? Do you think about how you can introduce or reintroduce them to Him? What’s keeping you if you truly believe they are condemning themselves to an eternity without God?
Isaiah shared the love of God he had with everyone, because of the love he felt for God’s chosen nation. He was willing to be thought of as crazy and be rejected if he could get everyone to repent and return to God. In the same way, we are to share the love God manifested in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus through our words but especially our deeds. (1 John 3:18).
We are to expect rejection. (1 John 3:13) BUT we know that in the rejection will come blessings (1 John 3:21)
So let’s challenge one another this week, let’s reach out and do something loving for an unbelieving friend this week. If asked, tell them this is the week you celebrate God finding you and you thought you’d share.
It’s kind of like the celebration of when Jesus found his disciples at the table…. (communion)
Creative: https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/Isaiah 40-66 We also read Isaiah 61 at the beginning of service in its entirety.
References: Quest Bible Overviews p.988, Warren Wiersbe Commentary; WWW.THECSF.ORG
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