A Sunday School teacher decided to have her young class memorize one of the most quoted passages in the Bible -- Psalm 23. She gave the youngsters a month to learn the verse. Little Bobby was excited about the task, but he just couldn't remember the Psalm. After much practice, he could barely get past the first line. On the day that the kids were scheduled to recite Psalm 23 in front of the congregation, Bobby was so nervous. When it was his turn, he stepped up to the microphone and said proudly, "The Lord is my shepherd . . . and that's all I need to know!"
Did any of you or your children do the old Scripture exam? There was a memory verse to learn as part of it. How much of the Bible do we know by heart and its promises? One of the first churches I worked in had a sisterhood and the promise box was brought out for any birthday and the person with the birthday got to pull out a promise on a small rolled up piece of paper with a little pair of tweezers.
After a month of study what are the promises of Isaiah for you? Read one out loud and then keep the page safe as we will return to it.
Here’s one from Chapter 12:
“You will say in that day: “I will give thanks to You, O LORD, for though You were angry with me, Your anger turned away, that You might comfort me. “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.” With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: “Give thanks to the LORD, call upon His name, make known His deeds among the peoples, proclaim that His name is exalted. “Sing praises to the LORD, for He has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”
It’s tempting to look around the world and simply give up. It’s all too overwhelming. I don’t know where to start to put it all right. I had a long discussion about the Tory leadership election at the hatch of the kitchen at Boroughbridge this morning. Well, the same was true for the people of Isaiah’s day.
Isaiah 65: 17 – 25
Words here spoken at a time when it was easy for the people of Israel to look around their world and give up.
After centuries of internal upheaval, the Babylonians were the latest to invade Israel, killing their loved ones, carrying off the brightest and best to live in a foreign country, taking over their land, and destroying their Temple. Eventually, the exiles were allowed to return and we join them a couple of generations from having come home when their expectations for a renewed Jewish existence simply haven’t come to pass. The previous few chapters of Isaiah speak of bloodshed and miscarriages of justice, of a divided people whose leaders are greedy, unjust and drunk on power.
There is hardship in the land, cynicism about their future, suspicion about their neighbours. And into this situation, Isaiah brings a word from God;
I wonder how those words were first greeted. I wonder whether Isaiah was heralded as a visionary or a daydreamer; a prophet from God or a fanciful fool who chose to ignore the harsh realities of life around him. And I wonder how you hear those words. Have you ever received or dismissed a message as crazy? Have you ever delivered one?
Do you find comfort in those promises of the future or frustration that they are yet to come to pass? Perhaps, of course, we are supposed to feel both.
Make a list of what God will do and how the earth will be changed.
What do these words of Isaiah mean for us in Ripon in August 2022?
Isaiah’s words remind us that God isn’t finished with creation just yet. If you’ve ever looked at the headlines, listened to stories of suffering or rumours of war and thought ‘is this it?’, God’s answer in Isaiah is ‘You’ve not seen the half of it yet for I am creating new heavens and a new earth.
Think about how the Bible ends – in Revelation. Listen to these words of Barbara Brown Taylor:
“ In Revelation, people do not go up to heaven; heaven comes down to them. The earth is not struck by a rogue meteor, laid waste by aliens, destroyed by nuclear holocaust, or otherwise demolished so that humans have nowhere to go but up, like steam escaping a cosmic forest fire. In Revelation, the same God who created heaven and earth the first time is pleased to create them both anew. The sea is no more. The new Jerusalem comes down to rest on the same footprint where the old, troubled city once stood, and God comes too—joining humans right where they are. “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them…”
In this vision of final destination, the arc of the divine bends down, not up.”
What if we were to be symbols of God’s good news in a world which has had its fill of bad? If we pledged to try to be a visible symbol of hope in our homes and on our streets, in our actions and words and prayers so that people could point to us and see hope incarnated in a way that might become subversive and contagious and transformational?!
In the little leaflet I produced to help us navigate through Isaiah this month I asked this question:
Sharing a month immersed in his prophecy as a Circuit, what is our good news? Share what you think in your next church meeting. Write a new mission statement for your church.
Someone wrote to me:
We have no good news at present. We do not live up to our present Mission Statement, never mind me typing another!
What are we here for? Surely to bring transformation… but some times we cling to the past as it slowly sinks into a rough sea. It’s clear God has a different agenda but we stubborn stick to our own comfortable ways.
Allhallowgate Methodist Church exists to spread the love of God in Jesus Christ to everyone, to worship, pray and learn together, in order to share our faith in the community, and to bring hope and joy to all.
How does Isaiah end? Read chapter 66
We have a choice. That’s what all 66 chapters of Isaiah have been about. Threatened because of injustice, overtaken by an enemy, languishing in exile, returning to desolation it’s all been about turning back to God. Hear how the prophecy ends:
As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the Lord, “so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord. “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”
The book of Isaiah concludes with the fate of the wicked. Their worm (soul) shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they will be abhorred by all flesh. God is describing the lake of fire Christians call hell. Why would God leave the reader with the last though of eternal damnation? The answer is simple: God is warning us of the consequences of neglecting Him. Fellow preachers, have you ever preached on hell?
Go back to the promises we began with. God is faithful and sometimes we are not. So we wonder why we struggle. We might not face threat or exile or the desolation of desolations but maybe we’ve made God less and the church more? That might get me sacked saying that! What if we believed and acted upon what we read?
So slowly read your promise again… how will it make a difference to you and to the work of this church?
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