Christ Church Bentonville

Through Hezekiah, we learn it is a privilege to pray because through prayer God invovles us in what He is doing.

The enemy of the Lord's covenant people has a consistent pattern of attack - undermining the people's position, highlighting their weakness, holding out false promises, then denying the faithfulness of the Lord. Judah's dilemma is our dilemma: will we trust the word of worldly powers, or the word of the Lord of heaven and earth?

The Lord is the Lord of all nations, and there is coming day where His boundless wrath will be poured out on His enemies and the enemies of His people. But an even better renewal is promised to all who turn from sin to trust in the redemption offered in Christ - a new creation free from sin, sickness, and sorrow and filled with glory and joy.

Isaiah's foresees a brighter day for the people of God in which their faith will be sight and they will see the beauty of the promised King!

The Lord rebukes Judah for their failure to wait for and on Him.  But what is truly remarkable is the fact that He waits on them despite their disobedience. 

Isaiah address both hard-hearted sinners who deny judgment is coming and proud hypocrites who deny they are worthy of judgment and declares that the only hope for all sinners is the Lord Jesus Christ. 

We don't sing in worship to connect with God.  We sing in response to the fact that God has connected Himself to us in and through Christ.

We are all on walking on one of two paths.  We are either walking in our own self-sufficiency which leads to desolation or in Christ's all-sufficiency which leads to consolation.  

As we’ve seen throughout this series of oracles, though there has been a great deal of judgment, there has also been a glimmer of hope in each one; and this one concerning Tyre is no exception. 

The Lord, through Isaiah, continues to drive home the point that reliance upon anything or anyone other than Christ, particularly ourselves, is futile.

Chapter 21 not only describes God working in the midst of the geo-political conflict of Isaiah's day, it also speaks to how we are to live in our day between the already and the not yet of God's Kingdom and our salvation.

Isaiah wasn’t the only prophet to be asked to do something that resulted in his own personal humiliation.  The Lord Christ "endured the cross and despised the shame" to take our guilt and shame upon Himself.