How does a people God has blessed so richly turn their backs on him? Isaiah 1 opens with God’s lament over Jerusalem—once full of justice, now a harlot filled with murderers—and brings the question home for Lent: when he looks at you, does he lament?
We've all tried to manage our relationship with God on our own terms—keeping up appearances, going through the motions, assuming good effort is good enough. Isaiah 1:18 cuts through that with a direct invitation: “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord”—and the question it presses is whether we'll actually stop and think about what he's offering.
How can those who have known God's rescue still chase worldly compromise that looks so much like success? That is the exasperated cry of Isaiah 1:21 as the faithful city becomes a harlot—once full of justice, now only murderers, its silver turned to dross.
When we want vengeance, we want to get back—but Isaiah 1:24–25 shows a God who wants to get back to *good*, and that difference is harder to hold onto than it sounds when the anger is righteous and the wrong is real.
We've all prayed about something so long that we start to wonder if God has put us on hold—and whether anyone is ever going to pick up. In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable about a powerless widow who keeps pleading before a judge who neither fears God nor respects people, and asks whether his people will keep crying out to him day and night or simply lose heart.
Pastor Tim talks about extravagant gifts and what the Bible says about the truly extravagant gift we receive at Christmas because of the very first Christmas.
Pastor Tim spent time in Busiek State Forest to better think about the time between the Newborn servant coming into the world and when we, His followers, will get to experience His triumph.
Two truths come out of Jesus being a human being: one that reminds us of His understanding of our situation and one that reminds us our present state is not the destination.
