Isaiah 55:1-13 Outline for Sunday 26 November

Here's an outline for this week's scripture. You can always click TM for the passage in The Message .

• 1 If you're thirsty, come here. If you have no money for food, come here. You can get what you need here for free.
• 2 Why spend money on things that don't feed you? All the things you need are found here. They're very good.
• 3 Listen to me, and come here. Life is here. I promise my love to you like I promised to David.
• 4 Not only was David great at leading the people, he was also a great example.
• 5 You will have unbelievable things to do, and people will come to you in unbelievable ways, all because of the Lord's annointing you, or painting you, with a bit of himself.
• 6 Seek the Lord now, while the notion is still with you. You have no guarantee that you will be able to find him later. The problem will be with you, not him. Strike while the iron is hot.
• 7 If you're on the outs with God, turn to him, and he will receive you as he forgives you.
• 8 "This might not seem likely or make much sense," says the Lord, "but then, you're not me."
• 9 "My ways are way higher than your ways."
• 10 "Just like the rain and snow come down, and don't evaporate back up to heaven without first watering the earth,"
• 11 "that's how it is with what I say. My words don't return to me empty, but get done what I wanted to get done."
• 12 "So you'll be seriously happy, heavy joy, and with perfect peace. Even nature will be transformed, a lasting monument to me, living evidence."

On the relative merit of your idol

Isaiah 44:9 (NIV): "All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame." (TM)

Super heavy, a real condemnation, which is to say: in this verse, God has taken the gloves off. He's laying down the law with little regard for what kind of impact it makes, or maybe that's exactly what he's doing. It's a very straight-up kind of statement.

"All who make idols are nothing" ties your very existence to him, which is only appropriate, given that he created us. And so our very existence is tied to our relationship to him in proper context. What is idol making if not the act of put something else ahead of God in our lives? And when you do that, presto, you fade out shockingly fast, just like the weekly victim on Without a Trace.

Now, for blissy types or those simply in desperate need of a good night's sleep, that might sound okay, but don't kid yourself. Bliss requires a presence, sleep is something you sink into, and what God describes here provides a platform for neither of those occupations, or anything else at all, for that matter. No matter how spacey you might be, you do want to be present for all of life's little joys. Replacing big G God with some little g god just takes yourself off the table, out of play, nowhere.

Then he says, "and the things they treasure are worthless." Which means that making an idol of something is of no point whatsoever. It means that if you catch yourself making an idol, you shouldn't only stop it, but now you need to reevaluate everything. How have my values changed such that I would be making an idol?

Because repentance is an actual turning away from prior activity, identifying root causes might be a useful tactic. This is a Spirit-lead activity. We shouldn't rely only on our own perspective to unpack our sin. Our perspective lead us into the sin in the first place. So lean on the Lord, not your understanding. (Proverbs 3:5) (TM)

Let's Dig Ourselves into This Hole Just a Little Bit Deeper

Isaiah 41:5-7 (NIV): "The islands have seen it and fear; the ends of the earth tremble. They approach and come forward; each helps the other and says to his brother, 'Be strong!' The craftsman encourages the goldsmith, and he who smooths with the hammer spurs on him who strikes the anvil. He says of the welding, 'It is good.' He nails down the idol so it will not topple." (TM)

In verses 1 – 4, Isaiah is writing about how God is challenging everyone to come to a little contest, a contest to see which is the strongest of the gods: God, or all the idols made by man.

It's as though they can't resist, because here they come. They're scared to death – the end of verse 5 says that the ends of the earth tremble. You'd think they'd be caving in, trying to imagine what to say to God, or how to apologize to him for their failures in the past to acknowledge him as God.

However, that's not what's going on. They're encouraging each other, telling each other to be strong. "Hang in there!" they're saying. "It's going to be okay," they're telling each other, but that's hardly the case, and how could anyone think that it would be?

It's disturbing, this tendency we possess, to clench our eyes all the more tightly shut against what, in 20/20 hindsight, is so clearly the word of the Lord. At the same time, we clutch our foolishness closer and closer, as if it had life, as if it had some ability to help us.

In verse 7, we see the different crafts getting their heads together, working on the idol together, and encouraging each other in their work. "One more thing, boys," they say. "Let's nail it down real good, so that it won't fall over!"

How do you prop your idols up? What do you do to make sure they don't fall over 1) from their own weight, or 2) (the more obvious reason), because they can't stand on their own?

The Lord is calling us forward to a place where we'll compare the relative merits of all gods, great and small. The only greatness a "small 'g'" god can have is the greatness you give him by allowing him to dominate your life. Idols are already having a bad effect on you. Don't dig the hole deeper by propping them up, or by trying to "improve" them.

Isaiah 40:18-22, 41:5-7, 44:9, 18-20, 45:20-22 Outline for 19 November

Here's an outline for this week's scripture. You can always click TM for the passage in The Message .

• 40:18 To what can you compare God?
• 40:19 An idol: different craftsmen make it and adorn it.
• 40:20 For someone too poor for a fancy one, they look for wood that won't rot and for a good craftsman so the thing won't fall over.
• 40:21 Do you still not understand?
• 40:22 God is so huge. He sits on his throne above us, and we're like grasshoppers beneath him. He spreads the heavens to suit himself as his personal canopy or tent.
• 41:5 Everyone has heard the Lord's challenge, to come to the God vs. idols contest, so they come.
• 41:6 They encourage each other to be strong.
• 41:7 The different craftsmen encourage each other as they make last minute adjustments to their idol. They nail it down so that it will not topple.
• 44:9 Everyone who makes an idol is nothing; the things they love are worthless; anyone that takes up for them is blind and shamed by their own ignorance.
• 44:18 These people know nothing. Their eyes don't work, being sealed shut, and their minds are the same way: closed, so that no truth can get in.
• 44:19 None of these people has the power of mind to realize that they themselves constructed these idols out of the everyday things of their lives: half of this wood I burned for heat, I cooked over it. Am I now going to go against the living God and make another god out of the wood that is left, and then bow down to it and worship?
• 44:20 Even though this person is feeding on ashes, his heart is so tricked and deluded that it prevents him from realizing. He can't save himself by saying, "Isn't this just a creation of mine? Isn't this just a lie?"
• 45:20 All you people come and listen. People with idols are ignorant. People that pray to gods that cannot save are ignorant.
• 45:21 Discuss this among yourselves. Who predicted this a long, long time ago? It was I, the LORD. There's no one like me, no God but me, your savior.
• 45:22 Turn to me, and be saved. I'm your only chance.

Instead of grasping at straws

Praying through Lauds this morning, there was this short reading: 2 Cor 12:9-10: (Jerusalem) "I shall be very happy to make my weaknesses my special boast so that the power of Christ may stay over me, and that is why I am quite content with my weaknesses, and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and the agonies I go through for Christ’s sake. For it is when I am weak that I am strong." (NIV) (TM)

". . . very happy to make my weaknesses my special boast. . ." is blowing me away. I guess, even though I didn't know it, that I'm so performance oriented, that I'm no different from anyone else. I'm just carrying this pride, and these expectations of myself in a different arena. I'm thinking about my issues with the soccer team (that I coach) here.

I can say (and I do mean) that I don't care if we win or lose. But if we perform badly, or give subpar effort, I experience really bad feelings – things I don't want to have anything to do with: disgust, self-loathing, worry over what the parents will think of me as a coach, aggravation at the players. So I'm as bad, really, as someone just obsessed with winning. All I've done is shift it over a bit.

And this is saying that I should be "very happy" to brag about my deficiencies in this area. Because this will cause the "power of Christ" to "stay over me." I guess this is to prevent me from applying a Band-Aid and opting for that brand of self-sufficiency instead of choosing to keep Jesus "on the job" for this area, a known deficiency. Some people don't like this type of self-deprecation, feeling that the person doing it is fishing for a compliment, or calling undue attention to themselves, but this passage seems to offer the behavior prescriptively. Talk about how you're a screwup.

I bet there's a right and wrong way to do it, though. I'm sure we can be more aggravating about this than we have to be, and that's probably where the distaste I was talking about comes from.

We evangelicals don't like to acknowledge weaknesses, much less brag about them. Maybe this reflects on the Ted Haggard thing that Scot McKnight blogged about on Nov 6 under "Ted Haggard and the Evangelical Environment": "Christians and pastors, because of the environment of condemnation of sin and the absence of a mechanism of confession, bottle up their sins, hide their sins, and create around themselves an apparent purity and a reality of unconfessed/unadmitted sin."

So my response to this scripture will be to not pretend I can handle my shortcomings, that I will brag on the Lord's willingness and ability to drag me through these weaknesses I have, that I will trust him, and not me, to successfully deal with these things.

Love and peace. Love and peace. Love and peace.

Grasping at straws

Isaiah 8:21-22, NIV(TM): "Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness."

Sometimes we avoid doing what would obviously be the right thing to do. And following that, sometimes we keep trying everything but what we should do. We'll try anything.

That's the case here. Instead of taking their problems to the Lord, they've at least toyed with the taboo (see Deut 18:10-12 (TM)) idea of trucking with mediums, while avoiding the Lord with their problems.

That refusal is the springboard to a whole world of misery. From that point, they go on to try one thing after another. They have a hunger to see things happen, but find themselves unwilling to seek the Lord. When nothing works, they will become so frustrated that the scripture says they "will curse their king and their God." The irony is a little strong. Grasping at straws, they find themselves completely in the dark.

Paul talks about this in Romans 1:21 (TM) where he says about people who refuse to acknowledge God as God: "their thinking became futile, and their foolish hearts were darkened."

A grim, cautionary tale for us.

Isaiah 8:18 - 9:7 Outline for 12 November

Here's an outline for this week's scripture. You can always click TM for the passage in The Message .

• 8:18 We are signs and symbols in our place
• 8:19 Why ask dead people, or try some tricky device for getting at the truth? Ask God.
• 8:20 No other source of information is any good.
• 8:21 Resultless yet hungry for results, they will try one thing after another. When they are really starving for results, they will blame all authority over them.
• 8:22 They will look around again, and find no hope, and they will just be stuck.
• 9:1 No more gloom for those who've been hurting.
• 9:2 Those walking in the dark have seen a great light. For those living in the valley of the shadow of death, it's like a light has dawned.
• 9:3 God, you have created joy.
• 9:4 This joy comes from your removal of the yoke that enslaves them, the bar across their shoulders, and the rod that punishes them unfairly, an impossible victory, just like Gideon's defeat of the Midianites.
• 9:5 All implements of war will be collected and burned, no longer needed.
• 9:6 Why? Because we've been given God's son, his child has been born to us, and this child will take care of us, judging us fairly. He will be called Wonderful Counselor, being the very word of life, Mighty God, being the express image of God, Everlasting Father, having the heart of a father, and Prince of Peace, as just his presence brings storms into submission.
• 9:7 It will just get better and better. It's the Lord's enthusiasm for taking care of us, his enthusiasm for justice, that will get this done.