Our lives are driven by light. We want light; we need light. Many creatures can see in the dark. We cannot. Finding ourselves in the dark, we search for a source of light. Our eyes can adjust to the dark, but even that depends on any small sources of light. We are reliant on the sun by day and the moon and stars by night. We want light; we need light.

The first thing you noticed was her size. She towered over me, and reaching around her was difficult. The last time I saw her, her feet were hanging over the end of her hospital bed, and her wheelchair had a high back added on to help her stay upright. 

We are often concerned about our sinfulness, and how that affects our status or relationship with God. We are very concerned about our guilt, and whether or not God has forgiven us. Our primary concern is often whether or not our sins are forgiven. Our primary gratitude is toward God/Jesus for forgiving us our sins.

The prophet has never been a popular figure, at least during their life. It’s not hard to imagine why—they proclaim “the word of the LORD,” which is—

Sometimes I come across an idea that’s so new to me I don’t know what to do with it. Take this quote from theologian Richard B. Hays:

There are three different ways to allow Scripture to interact with our experience of life. The first is to come to Scripture with our experiences firmly in mind, and interpret Scripture in that light. At its most extreme, this results in saying things like, “Scripture says Jesus was raised from the dead, but every fool understands that the dead stay dead, so what Scripture really means is that the disciples had formative spiritual experiences of Jesus after he was dead.” 

I was too young to really understand September 11. It’s a real gift to be too young and innocent to understand tragedy and loss. But innocence has its perils as well. My understanding of 9/11 was mediated to me by culture. All I understood about it was taught to me by country singers Toby Keith and Alan Jackson. I wish I had learned more from Jackson, and less from Keith.

In studying through Isaiah 40-55, we’ve come across several passages that ruthlessly mock the practice of idolatry (40.18-20; 41.6-7; 44.9-20; 46.1-7 in particular). Idols are simply matter. They do not have life. They are blind and deaf, unable to hear, unable to respond, unable to save. Pressingly, though this is drawing from places like Ps. 135.15-18, the people that worship the deaf and blind idols become like them—deaf and blind, unable to hear God, unable to see God, unable to respond to God. Thus God’s instructions in Isa. 6.9-10.

This series of articles was prompted by my long-standing need to think through and explain what I mean by “Gospel” and “the kingdom of God.” But the original intent was actually to give some examples of what this looks like in the wild. If the Gospel is that God reigns through Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit, then why is the reign of God not more evident?

Last week I wrote about the Gospel being that God reigns, and how that’s still the Gospel, even though it’s difficult to see God reigning. In doing so, however, I neglected a key part of the kingdom of God—the Holy Spirit. 

Isaiah 52 places peace, good news, salvation, and “Your God reigns,” in parallel, suggesting that all four are related to one another. Peace is good news! Peace results from salvation, which is itself the result of the reign of God. The good news (the gospel) is that God reigns!

As a principle, the central part of the Gospel can only, ever, and always be the work of God. The most important part of the Gospel, the key part, the part we cannot ignore without losing the very nature of the “good” referenced by the “good news” (which is what Gospel means), is God’s work. This is more or less the way the idea of Gospel is used throughout the book of Isaiah. But what does that have to do with us?

I think we have a tendency to read Jesus into Isaiah, especially chapters 50-53. It is really difficult not to read the suffering servant as Jesus, and I don’t think that impulse is worth fighting too strongly against. 

I like the God-Jesus. God-Jesus is comforting. “Ah, God took on flesh! God played dress-up so that the goodness of our material nature could be confirmed! Isn’t that sweet?” Of course I know that you can’t separate the humanity and divinity of Jesus, as if he were half-and-half or something. He’s all God and all human, but we tend to emphasize one over the other in a given situation. “This is Jesus’s humanity shining through,” as if his divinity is taking a coffee break. So yeah, I like the God-Jesus—a clear expression of God’s love.

Reading Isaiah 47 about the destruction of Babylon is strange. Why does the prophet write it? It’s not written to Babylon, who is largely the subject of the chapter (I guess it’s the direct object, if you want to get technical). It’s written to the people of Judah, about the destruction of Babylon. Why? Perhaps more concerning is the tone. The chapter isn’t too concerned about how Babylon feels about it’s destruction. It’s a violent chapter, and the writer seems to revel in the violence God promises to work against Babylon. 

I think this is true more often than not—by the time an idea gets mainstream, it has been diluted enough to be less than entirely true. In the popularizing of the idea, important context and nuance gets lost, and the idea consequently becomes less helpful and is potentially misleading. The simplified idea has implications that the robust idea restrained.

Freedom is a wonderful gift. It’s one of the blessings of this country—having freedom. But freedom isn’t God, which is to say it’s not always good. Freedom is like all the other blessings from God—when used outside of the bounds God set for it, it becomes an idol and wields an inappropriate power over our lives.

Usually we just ridicule the question. “He was in the wrong from the beginning; his heart wasn’t in the right place. He just wanted to know how little he could get away with doing.” 

My Dad’s research revolves around farm animals and nutrition. Apparently a big part of that research is optimizing how well animals take in nutrients. If you’re going to feed an animal, you want the animal to get the most out of the feed. Feed is expensive, so you don’t want the nutrients you paid for to just pass right through the animal. The better the animal takes in the nutrients, the better the animal grows, the less time you have to feed the animal, the less feed you have to buy, the more profit you make on the animal. It’s a pretty simple equation, and makes intuitive sense.

Moses grew up in Egypt at the intersection between the Egyptians and the Israelites. Born an Israelite, adopted by an Egyptian, nursed by a slave, raised in a palace. You can imagine the pull between his two identities—respectable Egyptian education, with all its history, prestige, and culture, and Israelite blood, with only a few generations of history, lowly and enslaved, backwards. The Egyptians have a host of powerful gods; the Hebrews only have “the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”