West Park Baptist Church

Isaiah

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Advent 2020 – Isaiah 35:1-10 (Dec. 15)

Everlasting joy is on the way; Just hang on to the Lord!

That, in a nutshell, is the message of Isaiah 35. And that’s the message we need more than anything.

This week starts with the report of a dear church member who has gone on to be with the Lord. I’m grieving with the family, but I’m looking forward to a day when all the suffering and death I see is reversed, when, in the words of Isaiah 35:10 we “shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” 

I’m so thankful the Lord is aware of our suffering, our losses, our lost state, and that He didn’t remain distant but came to us. Isaiah the prophet looked forward to the time when God would come. “Behold, your God will come with vengeance” he said, “then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy” (4-5). 

We have a sure and certain promise that joy is on the way. The Lord guarantees it. We just need to hold on and trust Him, no matter what. 

Do you see in those descriptions of verse 5 the work of Jesus Christ? In His first advent He healed the blind, deaf, lame and mute. He prioritized that work out of compassion for those in any form of bondage, and He did it so we would know that God had come to dwell among us. 

But Jesus has not yet done everything in Isaiah 35, and in that we learn that His second advent will deliver even greater work as He brings to us everlasting joy. 

I can’t predict what will happen between today until the second coming of our Lord. It’s a guarantee from Jesus and Paul that perilous times will come that will shake our faith. But when Jesus comes again, we will live in His country, safe, full of wonder, filled with love, and bursting with everlasting joy. 

Meditate on what you will experience when the Lord Jesus comes again in His second advent. You can catch a whiff of the joy of eternity wafting back to refresh you even now. 

Everlasting joy is on the way; Just hang on to the Lord!

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Advent 2020 – Isaiah 53 (Dec. 12)

There’s a Christmas album that my family and I love to listen to every Advent season. It’s called Behold the Lamb of God, and it’s produced and performed by Andrew Peterson and many of his friends. It’s a musical journey through the themes of the Old Testament leading up to and culminating in the birth of Jesus Christ.

In one song Andrew Peterson sings a song called “So Long, Moses.” It’s a song that covers the time of the book of Joshua up to the Old Testament prophets. It spans the trials and sins of Israel as they eagerly look for a mighty King to come, to rescue and to establish them in the land. 

As the song builds you get the sense that Israel almost gives up waiting for the king. Saul, David, Solomon and then a series of failures leading up to the Babylonian captivity leave the people disillusioned and broken. Yet, they ask Isaiah the prophet, who saw in a vision from God what would happen after the time of their captivity,

So speak, Isaiah / Prophet of Judah / Can you tell of the One / This king who’s going to come? / Will he be a king on a throne / Full of power with a sword in his fist? ‘ Prophet, tell us will there be another king like this? / Full of wisdom, full of strength / The hearts of the people are his / Prophet, tell us will there be another king like this?

You feel the desperation of the people in those words. Isaiah responds in the song,

He’ll bear no beauty or glory / Rejected, despised / A man of such sorrow / We’ll cover our eyes. / He’ll take up our sickness / Carry our tears / For his people / He will be pierced / He’ll be crushed for our evils / Our punishment feel / By his wounds / We will be healed.

Our journey this week through Scripture has revealed the way of God – the way of salvation and the way to paradise. For us to get there, for us to have the perfect King ruling over all this earth, for us to be saved, the King had to suffer and be crushed for our sins. 

Think of the pain and suffering He endured for you.

Isaiah 53:4–6

[4] Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
[5] But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
[6] All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (ESV)

This year has been hard, revealing at times our worst, and revealing the utter helplessness of man to save himself. By default we want the crown but not the suffering. Jesus put aside His crown and endured the suffering in the place of lost and hopeless sinners. 

When this winter seems dark, and when our plans seem to be dashed, remember Isaiah 53. The King put aside His rightful place on the throne, entered our dark world, and took on the sins of us sinners. Jesus knows what it is like to experience pain, loss, suffering, and separation from God. He did these things so that our experience of them in this life could be redeemed, so our pain, loss and suffering would never be connected to separation from God. He is with us in our suffering right now, and by His wounds all our sins and griefs and brokenness will be ministered to and eventually… completely healed. 

 

Here’s a link to the song “So Long, Moses” by Andrew Peterson. 

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Advent 2020 – Isaiah 40:3-5 (Dec. 6)

Isaiah 40:3-5

3 A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

4 Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

We are now in week 2 of Advent, and our focus redirects this week to the importance of faith.

Isaiah the prophet had so many good things to share. Chapter 40 is a treasure of comfort for God’s people, and God begins His message through Isaiah with “Comfort, comfort my people… speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins” (1-2). Judah was a war-torn, beaten-up nation when they received that message. As a whole, the people of the nation thought that God had given up on them. But God had not abandoned them. He speaks tenderly these words of comfort.

But what would God do to bring about the security and comfort of His people? What way would He work to bring those things to pass?

God sent a messenger ahead of Him, a voice, to clear the way. “Prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Whatever God was about to do would take faith to believe, and that was God’s intent, to call on His people to believe on Him.

It would take a miracle, a mountain-shifting miracle to show Judah that God was still in control. It would have to be a miracle on par with making the rough terrain of treacherous mountains with thieves and hidden dangers on the eastern path to Jerusalem as smooth as a plain. Can God eliminate threats by making even the mountains flat – leveling the field of battle?

Hundreds of years after Isaiah spoke these words, a voice did cry in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” John the Baptist preached his message of repentance and belief in the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. The way forward that Isaiah said God was making was the way of the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. Jesus is the glory of the LORD revealed.

This week we will learn more of Jesus as the “Way” of God. We will be challenged to exercise our faith in Him, to believe on Him. And we will be comforted by our powerful and majestic God.

As we close, consider your faith. Do you recognize that God intends comfort for you? Do you believe that He speaks tenderly to you, wanting you not to see your sin as insurmountable but the certainty of salvation through His Son Jesus? God is so eager to display His own matchless glory through the giving of His Son, and He has made a way for you to bring your sin to Him and find forgiveness and complete acceptance in Christ.

That is the way forward. By faith, walk in that way today.

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Advent 2020 – Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:22-23 (Dec. 5)

What does Immanuel mean? The name literally means “God with us.”

This name was first mentioned in Isaiah 7:14 when God gave a promise to a very wicked King of Judah, Ahaz. Foreign powers were aligned against Judah, and God promised Ahaz the sign of Immanuel, a child born of a virgin, as the sure victory that Judah would need. In every situation of life, we need Immanuel. In Isaiah’s day we read how no foreign powers were able to conquer Judah because of the truth of “Immanuel.” Isaiah 8:9–10 says

Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered;

                        give ear, all you far countries;

            strap on your armor and be shattered;

                        strap on your armor and be shattered.

            Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing;

                        speak a word, but it will not stand,

                        for God is with us. (ESV)

That last line is the meaning of Immanuel: no power shall be able to withstand God’s people, for God is with us.

Yet the future fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14 is even more rich and full. In Matthew 1 a messenger approaches another man from the tribe of Judah. This time the angel Gabriel comes to Joseph in a time of his trouble and testing. His betrothed wife has been found pregnant, and Joseph, an honorable man, knows he is not the father. He has determined to end his engagement to Mary in private. Yet the messenger brings Joseph the good counsel of God and the sign to confirm it. “Joseph, you may have heard that the prophet Isaiah said the virgin would give birth!”

Joseph was likewise encouraged not to be afraid and not to go through with his plan to end his engagement. God was at work in a miraculous way. And the baby in Mary’s womb was the One baby long-promised to Adam and Eve, to Abraham, to David, and even to wicked Ahaz: Immanuel was coming.

And the best news of all that Joseph received was that this child would come to “save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Political and Military threats come and go. When they come we tend to think that wars and threats of wars are the height of danger and distress. But the reality is our sins are even more deadly. We cannot hope to defeat our sin and approach God. That is why Jesus came into the world as the full expression of Immanuel. God with us in our frail humanity, but not in our sin.

Yet even on the cross Jesus came to bear our sin in His own body, and that’s what He did. He became sin for all those who will call on His name in utter helplessness, forsaking their sin and believing in Jesus Christ as God with them. Friend, have you turned from your sin, repenting before Jesus and trusting in Him alone to save you?

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Advent 2020 – Isaiah 2:2-5 (Dec. 1)

Isaiah 2:2–5

            [2] It shall come to pass in the latter days

                        that the mountain of the house of the LORD

            shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

                        and shall be lifted up above the hills;

            and all the nations shall flow to it,

            [3]        and many peoples shall come, and say:

            “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,

                        to the house of the God of Jacob,

            that he may teach us his ways

                        and that we may walk in his paths.”

            For out of Zion shall go forth the law,

                        and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

            [4] He shall judge between the nations,

                        and shall decide disputes for many peoples;

            and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

                        and their spears into pruning hooks;

            nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

                        neither shall they learn war anymore.

            [5] O house of Jacob,

                        come, let us walk

                        in the light of the LORD. (ESV)

Advent literally means “arrival,” and for us who know the Lord it refers to the arrival of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and King of all kings. The prophet Isaiah wrote about the arrival of King Jesus in today’s passage. In Isaiah’s day his country Judah was under constant threat of war, vulnerable and right in the middle of powerful powerful nations seeking to control it. Think of how amazing Isaiah’s prediction of a future reign of the Christ would have sounded to such discouraged people!

Read the verses again and think about the news of the King.

What kind of King would He be?

What kind of things would He do as King?

There’s only good news about Jesus the Messiah. We need the good news all the more today. Our world may seem quite dark with people turning away from God instead of turning to Him. But believe the good news that the King will still come to rule with perfect justice, settling all wars and disputes, and He Himself will teach us all we long to know about Him.

Even now, as Isaiah commanded Judah in his day, walk in the light of the LORD! Don’t look into the darkness of our culture and time, but purpose today to walk in the light of Jesus Christ, our King.