What is the main point of this passage? As a comfort to the people of Israel, Isaiah speaks about the greatness of God. This comes right after an awkward passage in chapter 39 where King Hezekiah takes Babylonians representatives into his treasury to show them how wealthy his kingdom is...he allows his ego to drive him into making a huge mistake. Why would you show potential enemies everything about your kingdom? The wealth. The defenses. The Armory. His bragging made the Babylonians hungry for the wealth of Israel. Isaiah confronts the King about his idiotic move and tells him that the Babylonians will one day capture the city and plunder its wealth. When Hezekiah hears that the people who will pay the price for his sins are his descendants, he does not weep for what he has done...he is relieved that it is not going to affect his life. What a twisted and corrupt way to view consequences! (There are still a lot of people around who could care less about actions that are only going to cause future generations problems - and it's sad) So Isaiah answers his future prophecy of future tragedy with a reminder about the greatness of God. The point is, that even when it seems like everything around us in falling apart...God is in control...God is great...and we can take comfort in the fact that God is at the controls of the entire universe!
What part of the passage spoke most deeply to you? These truths about God are so hard for me to understand, because I am so much less than God (Which is a good thing...you don't want me running the universe, I promise!). Isaiah tells us that God is everlasting...I know this to be true, but it is so hard for me to fathom...I have only been around for 33 years. We are told that God never gets weary, that God never needs to rest...and as a human I know how painfully tired we can get...how run down...how stressed out. These things do not affect God...He does not change the way He is running the world because He is tired or because He has a headache. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He is never less that God. He is always God...which means He just happens to be the most complete, most perfect, most incredible being in existence. The only reason that things like perfect, complete, and incredible are in our vocabulary is because of God. He is these things...that is where they came from. We get just small glimpses of God's greatness here on this earth and they blow our minds...the small collisions we have with the truly good things on earth change our lives and those good things only exist because of God. While I will never be God...and will never even be close to God...I think it would be good for me to be less chaotic in the way I live my life. I should do everything I to try to be the same yesterday, today and tomorrow...I should be able to live my life in more stability because I am anchored to the unchanging rock of God's greatness. Somebody cut me off in traffic - who cares...God is good. My kids are driving me crazy - drink it in, they will only be this old once - they are gifts from my heavenly Father...God is good. I am utterly exhausted and empty - run to the Lord for rest and refreshment...God is good. The greatness of God is impossible for me to fully understand...but it is SOOOOO good for me to place my trust and hope in. And when I allow myself to bathe in the greatness of God...it starts to rub off on me and I am able to live as the greatest Brandon possible. That's who I want to be...that's who my wife and my kids and my church need me to be...and that goes for all of us.
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