|
Twitter Feed
You can change the "look" of this site on your computer at this page.
|
|
Who Needs Isaiah?Isaiah contains several challenges for conventional church Bible classes. First of all, in length this is a sprawling text, one that is not necessarily chronological in its composition. It covers a wide range of themes and subjects, although some certainly rise to the top as recurring elements. The text presupposes familiarity with the historical contexts in which it was composed, and it’s a world situation that is unfamiliar with most western readers, unless they have a strong background in the history of the ancient near east.
Nonetheless, the text has much that commends it for study and meditation. It speaks straight from the heart of God with some of the most passionate poetry to be found in the Bible, and speaks candidly about how God feels towards and reacts to his people. The person who knows the heart of Isaiah is not far from knowing the heart of God. Isaiah can be sobering and inspiring, eloquently teaching us about the consequences of being unfaithful to God and the hope that we may have based on God’s pursuit of a faithful people. As a way of introducing Isaiah, any number of approaches are possible based on what themes the teacher intends to emphasize. One way of starting would be to begin by asking, “Who needs Isaiah?”
Who Needs Repentance?Isaiah’s God pursues the repentance of his people. They have turned away from him, placing their trust in their allies, their worship, their own strength, their history...basically all kinds of things except their God. Much of isaiah tells the story of what happens when God’s people choose to trust and follow other things besides God. It shows how God feels about it, how it brings disastrous consequences as God works to discipline his people and bring them back to faithfulness.
So, this book has a great deal to say the the individual, family, or community that has failed to maintain faithfulness in their hearts towards God and begun to place their trust in anything else. Truly listening to Isaiah allows them to hear the danger of unfaithfulness, the significant way that God responds and works to discipline his people, bringing them back to faithfulness and punishing the unrepentant.
Who Needs Hope?Isaiah’s God also provides abundant hope. Should we not be amazed that a message of hope from this prophet survived innumerable disasters, that the message of hope within Isaiah was strong enough to endure the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, the Maccabean wars and innumerable difficulties, and was still an immediate source of dependable hope during the time of Jesus? It was a message of hope that endured and retained power in the community of faith for over seven hundred years! It was still powerful enough in the first century that when the disciples reflected back on what they had experienced in Jesus, they could not help but think about him in terms of Isaiah’s words! That is a remarkable testimony to the power of the words within this sacred book. When the first disciples thought about Jesus, they thought about him in terms of Isaiah. Wow! That says so much about how powerful and important they thought the message of this book was.
This book has much to say to anyone who looks around herself, or within his own heart, and wonders if there is anything worth hoping in anymore. It has much to say against the despair we see around us or feel ourselves. It’s testimony is one that has the potential, already proven by many generations, to offer hope against even the darkest of times. Who couldn’t use a shot of good, honest, reliable, hope?
Who Needs a Vision for the Future?I started to label this “Who needs eschatology?”, but I realize that sometimes our theological, high-brow words scare people away from concepts that are really essential to everyday life. Eschatology is what we call our understanding of the future. Isaiah is a thoroughly eschatological text, describing what God is going to do, creatively and judgmentally, in the future. It is critical that we understand that Isaiah was speaking to his present generation, helping them to understand the consequences of both their present actions and God’s eternal character on both the immediate future and on the future of generations to come. Looking back at the text some 2700 years later, it means that some of that vision has already reached fulfillment, and other elements help inform our own understanding of God’s plans for the ultimate future of humanity and the world.
This is one of the parts of Isaiah that seems to cry out for our attention. Isaiah sees to be screaming at us, “Don’t you understand where everything is headed?” How we envision the future has an incredible impact on even the smallest things we do in life. Isaiah presents the opportunity to listen to what God’s plans for the world are, the vision that he has for how all this will ultimately end up. Can’t we benefit from that?
Questions for Reflection and DiscussionThe goal of any introduction is probably to whet the appetite, to set the table for the feast to come. It’s all about ringing the dinner bell and getting some salivation going! With that in mind, what is true for any teaching moment is particularly important for this first lesson:
The level of enthusiasm you communicate is infinitely more important than any profound discussion question you will find here.
Therefore, the first questions are not for the class, but for you the teacher:
What do you need to do to get excited, genuinely excited, about teaching Isaiah? How will you communicate that enthusiasm?
From there, here are some questions, branching from the areas above, that may help you provoke your class to anticipate the study of Isaiah. They may be interjected within a presentation of the above themes (repentance, hope, and a vision for the future), or you may choose to present the above material and have the discussion at the end in one lengthy segment.
IsaiahIn the most unflattering terms, Isaiah can be perceived as a book full of prophecies that are enigmatic at best and probably already fulfilled. Its therefore useless in determining what I’m going to do when I wake up tomorrow. (It’s kind of like listening to a recording of a really complicated commentary on who’s going to win a football game, after you’ve already watched the game.) It’s perceived as long, complicated, irrelevant...a dusty old book that probably had it’s day but doesn’t have much to do with us. Let’s be honest, how many of us kind of start out with that idea? What kind of a barrier does that present, both to this study in particular and our ability to listen to and be shaped by scripture in general? What would our approach be to this book if we really considered it the active, living word of God that is able to shape and challenge our lives? What would that look like? What will it take for us to get to that place? Do we need to first get a taste of how this can challenge us?
RepentanceWhat is it about our own lives that begs repentance? That might be a stunning, overwhelming, conversation stopping sort of question, but it is one Isaiah is going to help us with. So the more introductory discussion may need to be, “Why is that such a stunning, overwhelming, conversation stopping sort of question?” How aware are we to our need for repentance? How do we react when we’re challenged to repent? What are the thoughts, feelings, and actions of repentance? Given our reluctance to talk about our own sins, how can we develop the capacity for repentance, both as individuals and as a community? What is the relationship between receiving the word, and repentance? How do we cultivate that relationship?
HopeWhere do we receive hope? What does it come from? Do we gain and develop hope from promises people make to us, our own experiences, the confidences of people around us? Isaiah has a whole lot to say about false hopes. Where do those come from? How do we challenge those in our community and in our own hearts? Additionally, we can notice that hop does something to us, it affects how we act, how we feel, what we’re thinking on an everyday level. How important is hope? How does it affect us?
Vision for the FutureWhat kinds of long-term and short-term visions do we have for our lives? For our church? How can we be careful to match up our vision of the future with God’s? What do we do when we begin to see differences in God’s vision for us and our own? What has to happen for us to change our vision of the future?
What do we think God’s vision for the world in the future is? What role do we play in that? Is it up to us at all, or do we totally leave it up to God to accomplish?
The Challenge to ListenGiven all these things, the challenge I would pursue with a class on this material is to really become listeners. Can we commit to becoming people who listen careful, eagerly to God’s word, anticipating that it has something extremely important to say to us, perhaps that we have never heard before? This study in Isaiah gives us the opportunity to practice such a commitment. May we eagerly anticipate it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
facebook
twitter (@pvcclr)
google plus
rss
