Today’s passage: Isaiah 19:16-25
Helpful thoughts:
- None of the events of Isaiah 19:16-25 have yet taken place. This is still to come.
- When you are in opposition to the LORD of hosts, it is a good thing to be brought to humility and submission through fear. It is right to know you cannot defeat or escape Him. It is good to repent of your rebellion.
- Healthy appropriate fear turns into worship…and joy.
- God will one day be worshiped by the nations in peace.
Questions to consider:
- Why is it dangerous to try to “soften” God in the hopes that He will be more desirable to unbelievers? If we try to redesign God in order to make unbelievers (Or believers) like Him better, what god are we giving them? — (As if one would say, “Why repent if we can change what God is like? Why should we change if we can just change God?”)
- One way we can perhaps inadvertently misrepresent God is to say, “He loves you just the way you are” or “He’s crazy about you!” While Romans 5:8 does say that God loved us “while we were yet sinners” (Praise God!), how do these potentially romantically oriented phrases diminish God, the problem of sin, the immense sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the true definition of love?
- Did Jesus die so that God could get to know me better and hang out with me, or did Jesus die to pay the penalty for my rebellion against the holy, all-powerful, all-loving God? Which one of those options makes God look like a normal person and which one makes God look like…God? How would my pride blind me into preferring the “Crazy about you” god? How would an accurate view of God make me love Him more?