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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hey, you're listening to A Year in the Bible With Daily Grace. We are in Isaiah 4, 6 today. We hope that you're reading along with us and using the studies. If you're not, you can find those in the show notes. But Paul, Isaiah 4, 6. What's happening in these chapters that we read today?
- [00:21]
B
Yeah, today we have some continued judgments against Judah in chapters four and five. And then in chapter six, we have the call of Isaiah. And the call of Isaiah is kind of where I want to spend our time today. So Isaiah witnesses the Lord's presence and he is humbled before God. And he basically acknowledges his place before God as a sinful man. And as you're reading, I, you know, kind of notice that acknowledging his sinfulness before God is all that Isaiah does before God purifies him. He doesn't have to, like, clean up his act or, you know, become more holy before God touches him with the coal and purifies him. It's simply saying, God, I'm sinful. And so accordingly, Isaiah is prepared to say, here I am. Send me. When God asks for someone to be sent. And what God is asking Isaiah to do is really big. I think the best analogy is kind of a blank check. Isaiah is basically saying, yes, here I am. Send me. Before God even says what he's going to do. And so God puts a pretty big dollar amount in that check. I would say he's basically going to have to prophesy to a people that will not listen. And so in some ways, if we measure his ministry in terms of how many people turn to God, he seems kind of, in our eyes, unsuccessful. But in his faithfulness to God, he's very successful.
- [01:37]
A
Yeah, I think that's really important for us to know, even as we read throughout the book of Isaiah, that Isaiah's prophecy is even going to cause people to, like, harden their hearts and to have a stiff neck even more and more. That's challenging. That's so challenging. Okay, I'm curious about how this applies to us today. What do we take away as readers of these chapters?
- [02:04]
B
Yeah, the easy thing to say, I think, would be to just say, be like Isaiah and be ready to be sent. And that's, I think, definitely valid. I think we should definitely be ready to go where God wants to send us. But I think there's actually a deeper layer here, and it's really kind of what happens after we say yes. Right after we say yes to God's calling. You know, growing up, I often read this passage as essentially saying, if I say yes to God and I do what he says, then everything in my life will work out and everything will be wonderful. But this passage actually shows us it could be the opposite. Sometimes saying yes to God means we're going to have more challenges and things are going to be more difficult in our life. And so it's not necessarily about what we do, it's really about God. The fact that saying yes to what God does isn't satisfying because we are successful. It automatically means we'll be successful, but rather it means that God will be with us because God is enough for us ultimately, no matter what circumstance we find ourselves. And so we may live our whole life in service to God without any wins, as we might say. But God doesn't measure us according to our wins. He measures us by our faithfulness and our willingness to do his will. And sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is actually just tell God directly, I'm not able to do what you called me to do. And it's in that humility that he empowers us. Reminds me of what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3. 6. He says, I planted Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. And so anything that we do for the kingdom ultimately comes from God. And I think there's many times when we feel like our work for the Lord is in vain and that we don't see any fruit. But God is the one that ultimately provides the fruit. And Isaiah probably felt like his ministry wasn't successful, but now we have his ministry, and we know that it points to Christ and that he was very successful in faithfulness to, and even in prophesying to a people that did not repent.
- [03:58]
A
Yeah. And so my takeaway is very similar as we're getting into the prophetic books of Scripture and we've been talking about them as a team and getting ready to record them. You know, something that we're going to see throughout these books is often people don't repent when they're called upon. But something I hadn't thought about until we were discussing it as a team is how many people, though, throughout the thousands of years that we've been reading these scriptures, have repented as a result of reading this.
- [04:24]
B
That's right.
- [04:25]
A
And so I think that we can see that God is working throughout time. And so I don't know. Yeah, there may be plenty of moments in life where it feels like this isn't going anywhere, but God is working according to his sovereign plan, period. And we're gonna see that throughout Isaiah. Okay, thanks for walking us through these chapters, Paul. Don't forget to follow and subscribe if you haven't yet so you don't miss an episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more on Isaiah.