Isaiah 65 Hundreds of millions of people profess to worship God – but there is a huge spectrum of beliefs about what he is like and how to worship him. They can’t all be right. What is true worship? And why does it matter that we get it right?
Isaiah
Isaiah 65 What should I wear today? What should I eat for dinner? Should I look for a new job? Where should we move to? Life is full of choices. But the biggest, most momentous choice we each face is whether to be rebels against God or servants of God. It’s a choice with eternal consequences. God wants us to choose life.
Isaiah 63-64 Do you want your life to count? Do you want people to say on the last day that you made a difference in their lives? Then you must become a person of prayer. The intercessors are God’s key players. Not everyone can preach, but anyone can pray. Isaiah shows us how.
Isaiah 59-63“A dangerous monster threatens a community. One man takes it on himself to kill the beast and restore happiness to the kingdom”. This basic plotline of so many stories and films expresses one of the deepest longings of the human heart. It finds its fulfilment in the coming conqueror of the final section of Isaiah’s prophecy.
Isaiah 56:1-57:5According to one survey, over a lifetime we spend 27 days waiting for trains and 6 whole months waiting in queues. But waiting is actually integral to the Christian life. We are waiting for salvation. But Christian waiting is an active thing, characterised by the three hallmarks in this passage.
Isaiah 55:1-13Throughout life we may receive many different invitations – to parties, to weddings, to marry someone, to take a new job, to subscribe to Horse & Hounds…But the greatest invitation of all is God’s offer of abundant life in his kingdom. What is he offering, and how do we need to respond?
Isaiah 54:1-10From Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ to ‘Chunky to hunky’ accounts of beer bellies becoming six-packs, we love stories of personal transformation. This passage is about the mother of all transformations – the spiritual one that comes about through the work of the suffering Servant.
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 To have our eyes opened more to the wonder of the cross, and our hearts captured more by the beauty of the cross, is one of our biggest needs. That we might live cross-centered lives which are made up of cross-centred days. This passage in Isaiah can help us do that.
Isaiah 51:17-52:12 Sometimes when we’re unhappy with how things are in our lives or in the world, we may wish God would wake up and act. But more often than not, we’re the ones who need to wake up – to wake up to the new realities the gospel has brought about.
Isaiah 50:4-11 The question “Are you a Christian?” is not a terribly helpful one nowadays. According to the 2011 UK census, 59% of the population would say they are, but what they mean by that varies hugely. A more helpful, and more biblical, question is “Are you a disciple of Jesus Christ?”