Grace Community Church Ramona Podcast

Two weeks ago, we discovered the name “Israel” means “he struggles with God”. The Jews have a long history of struggling with Yahweh. But a day is coming when the name “Israel” will no longer fit. A day is coming when Yahweh will give His people a new nature and a new name.

In Isaiah 44 & 45, Yahweh, speaking through Isaiah in 700 B.C., revealed in detail how He will accomplish His people’s return to Israel and how He will accomplish the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple.

The majority of Jewish exiles were idolators. They considered Yahweh as one god among many. They interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 B.C. as the defeat of Yahweh at the hands of the Babylonian gods. They doubted Yahweh’s commitment to the covenants He had made with them. They doubted Yahweh’s ability to fulfill His promises regarding the return. Only a small remnant were faithful to Yahweh.

The truth that there is only one God has been part of Israel’s history since its very beginning. The Hebrew prayer known as the “Shema” was taken from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and recited daily by devout Jews, and its first line clearly expresses that monotheistic truth, “Hear Oh Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” There is and has ever been only one God, yet there were times when Israel would doubt their God’s strength, sovereignty, and singularity.

God gave an explicit promise to Israel. He would bring down the mighty nation of Babylon and turn them into refugees and fugitives. The ships that they once took pride in will be used to help them flee from the destruction God would bring on them at the hands of the Persians. God desired for His people to be free and to worship Him, so He promised to bring low the mighty nation of Babylon for their sake.

Israel was experiencing God's hand of discipline, but instead of rightly interpreting it, they felt abandoned and rejected, which could not have been further from the truth! In our study today, we will see that Our lives should be a testimony to the marvelous love of The Lord our God, the Holy One of Israel, our Savior.

The Book of Comfort contains prophecies of comfort to the returning Jews. The Book of Comfort also challenged Isaiah’s generation to repent, live by the covenant and trust God.

The year 701 B.C. was a tough year for King Hezekiah. Not only did he fall deathly ill, but his capital, Jerusalem, was attacked by the mighty Assyrian army.

This oracle is about a city and a king. The king’s name is Sennacherib and he reigned over the Assyrian Empire from 705-681 B.C. Sennacherib was a contemporary of Isaiah the Prophet (740-680 B.C.). At this time, Assyria was the dominant world power. Assyria ruled over several kingdoms including the kingdom of Babylon. In fact, “King of Babylon” was one of Sennacherib’s titles.

In Isaiah 9, it was revealed to these downtrodden and defeated people how incredible their future was, and if they had Faith in God and His promises, even this time of darkness would be filled with hope. For... Faith In Our Heavenly Father Results In A Life of Hope.

Following last week’s study, God had a message for Isaiah regarding the unavoidable Assyrian invasion. This time, it wasn’t a message to be given to King Ahaz but was for Isaiah, his disciples, and the remaining people of Judah. This message was and is abundantly clear: Fearing God and believing His Word is the only way to salvation.

Ahaz, the king of Judah, was in serious trouble. The kingdom of Judah had been invaded by Rezin (king of Syria) and Pekah (king of Israel). The remaining citizens of Judah were huddled in Jerusalem, looking out over the devastation of their entire land, awaiting the final blow, shaking “as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.” This was the setting for our study today.

In order to accurately understand the message of Isaiah chapter one, we need to understand the essence of idolatry or spiritism. The essence of idolatry is manipulation. Those who "worship" these spirits seek to manipulate the spirits to give them what they want. One means of manipulation is appeasement. Another means of manipulation is trickery. The idol worshipper is able to manipulate the spirits because the spirits are themselves driven by their desires.

The book of Isaiah is a unique type of literature. We say its genre is prophetic; genre refers, in this case, to various types of literature that have certain characteristics. For instance, American poetry is a literary genre characterized by rhythm and rhyme. Historical narrative is a literary genre that gives factual retellings of real events.

We hold to the correspondence theory of truth that says: truth is when an idea, belief, or statement matches (or corresponds with) the way the world actually is (reality). The pronouns he/him and she/her have been used for millennia to articulate the way the world really is—specifically, that sex and gender are binary by their very nature. There are men and there are women, there are males (XY chromosomal pair) and there are females (XX chromosomal pair). And this is by design, God’s design for humanity.

Pronouns, him, her, he, and she, seem like little things. But they have become big things. Some of us may be facing this issue in our workplace, amongst our neighbors and within our families. All we’re being asked to do is change one word. What’s the big deal? Some Christians encourage the church to practice “pronoun hospitality” and use the preferred pronouns of a person who identifies as transgender. They believe it’s an act of kindness that engenders relationship and avoids unnecessary distress in a transgender person’s mental health. But it’s not that simple.

The Armor of God

We are engaged in a cultural and spiritual conflict about truth; not simply what is true, but more fundamentally what is the nature of truth itself. For the sake of completeness, you need to be aware that there have been three dominant theories of truth put forth by philosophers.  First, there is the pragmatic theory of truth: truth is what works. Second, there is the coherence theory of truth: truth is logical consistency (coherence) among a set of beliefs an individual holds. Finally, there is the correspondence theory of truth: truth is when an idea, belief, or statement matches (or corresponds with) the way the world actually is (reality).

In our passage this morning we discover that if it hadn’t been for Jesus, the Apostle Paul would have given up. Here is the main idea of these verses - Weakened by desertion, loneliness, and imprisonment, Paul was tempted to give up, but Jesus stood by him and strengthened him to proclaim the Gospel at his first defense.

The Bible teaches us to live our lives now in light of our final accountability before Jesus. In 2 Timothy 4:1-5, Paul alerted Timothy to the fact that a growing percentage of people in the Ephesian Church would reject Timothy’s teaching. Be that as it may, Paul charged Timothy to persist in preaching the Word because every human being is going to be judged by Jesus.