Isaiah 40
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
See Your King is Coming audio (3MB)
“Comfort, Comfort, my People, says your God.” Do you sometimes feel the need for comfort. Cadbury’s and Lindt make a lot of money out of that feeling don’t they? But when you hear a passage like this does it speak to an inner longing? That sense that you need someone else to support and care for you? It’s a word that’s addressed to the people of Israel who were in great need of comfort. The prophet Isaiah speaks to them and says: “Here is what God says to you: ‘Be comforted.’” The repetition of the verb is meant to add emotional intensity to the call. It’s as though God is pleading with his people to take comfort in his words. He says “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” Literally, “speak to her heart.” The way lovers woo each other, speaking sweet nothings to one another, wooing, persuading, inviting a response of love. But then “cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.”
Sometimes we have trouble hearing when God speaks to us, but here the prophet is told to speak with quiet words of love and a loud shout of proclamation. Whatever it takes they’re to hear this message: ‘Comfort, Comfort!’ and believe that it’s true.
Recognising the Voice of Evil
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- Written by: Heather Cetrangolo
audio (4MB)
How big is too big?
A hundred? Two hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand?
What’s your general feeling about mega-churches?
We don’t really trust them, do we? We don’t really like it when people visit our church and later decide to join, GWAC, or Crossways, or City Life, or Planet Shakers.
It all seems a bit unfair when larger churches refuse to share their wealth or their people. So we are inclined to accuse them:
We might accuse them of being empires built around the ego of the Senior Pastor ..
Or Of being soul-less, money-grabbing, miracle-selling, prosperity doctrine businesses
And we ask ourselves, are these churches really advancing the kingdom of God, or are they building up a kingdom that is of this world?
But you know, size is relative. There are some, who go to much smaller churches than this, who would say that the property development we are planning here is empire building, and not kingdom building.
How do we know, if we have fallen into the trap of building our own empire? Well, we know when we see the fruit of it – the fruit of distrusting God (and the fruit has nothing to do with the size of a church).
Isaiah 24-27
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Devastation & Restoration audio (3MB)
The great temptation for Christians as well as for the Jews is the temptation to take God’s grace for granted; even worse, to feel a sense of superiority, of smugness, because we’re part of God’s chosen people. The way to overcome that temptation is to remember that with the privilege of being God’s people comes the responsibility to remain faithful; to allow God to be God in every part of our lives.
That was the thing that the people of Judah had forgotten. As we’ll see in a moment they’d ignored God’s laws and God was about to punish them by removing his protection from them.
As we come to ch 24-27 we find a global vision on a massive scale. It’s as though the camera pans out from Jerusalem to the whole earth. As we look on we see God’s judgment engulfing the earth.
You may have noticed that there are great similarities between Isaiah and the book of Revelation and here’s another. Here we find a tale of two cities similar to the message of Revelation. God is about to judge all those who rebel against him yet at the same time a remnant of the Lord’s people will be saved from destruction and brought to security in a future Zion, the city of God. But first let’s look at the beginning of Ch 24.
I Talk Back to the Devil 4: Jesus Himself
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- Written by: Garrett Edwards
audio (4MB)
In reflecting on what kind of topic could be one that could not only stand by itself, but also sum up all we’ve been talking about in the past year, I was driven to think about what is central to our faith. What is it that we need more than anything to be able to talk back to the devil? And the answer came quite easily actually, who other than Jesus Himself? He is all we need, he is the only one we need in order to talk back to the Devil.
The passage we read this morning testifies to that, please open your Bibles with me to Hebrews 10:19 again. Therefore brothers & sisters, since we have confidence to enter the most Holy place ... how? By the blood of Jesus. And then in verse 21, ‘And since we have a great High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God, with a full assurance of faith. Nothing else is needed, nothing else is required. There is no other way we can come before God, the author, creator, sustainer of all things, but through Jesus. And if we come before God through Jesus we can trust he will hear and listen to our requests. He is our Great High Priest, says Hebrews. No one else can appeal to God on our behalf no other power is good enough. The only way to be made right before him and the only person to go to, to get to God. Nothing else is needed, it’s that simple and it's beautiful don’t you think?
Judgement on the Oppressor
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- Written by: Adam Cetrangolo
audio (5MB)
Well let me begin by saying this is a difficult reading.It’s a difficult reading not only because we need to understand something of the complex history between Assyria and Judah and the covenant relationship between God and the people of Israel … but even more fundamentally it’s difficult because it deals with human pride, death and destruction and where God is in all of that.
And both individually and corporately these are issues that all of us have to deal with at some stage in our lives.
If we think about our own community here … we have seen the building at St Theodore’s DESTROYED … there’s just a plot of land there now … and … hopefully … in the next few months we are going to see part of this site redeveloped as well. As a community we’ve also experienced the passing of loved ones in the past couple of years … and at some point or another, we’ve probably all been prideful in some way … we’ve thought … well … ‘we’re OK … we’ve done pretty well for ourselves.’
When building permits get granted and sites get sold and local residents have no complaints about our plans … we can say ‘God’s in this!’ … ‘God is blessing our work!’ … ‘We’ve been faithful!’And don’t get me wrong … I’m not suggesting that this is not the case, what I am suggesting, following today’s reading, is that things are not always what they seem and that we have to keep coming before the Lord in prayer lest we neglect God in our planning.
The Prince of Peace
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- Written by: Heathere Cetrangolo
audio (6MB)
Israel was a divided nation during Isaiah’s life … and the two kingdoms were under threat of foreign invasion. That threat became a reality in Isaiah’s lifetime.
By 722 BCE the Assyrians had conquered the northern kingdom and ten tribes (of the 12) had been relocated and scattered throughout what is today Syria, Iraq and Turkey (predicted in chapter 7 of Isaiah)
In 586 BCE (as predicted by Isaiah) the southern kingdom was also conquered and the people exiled by the Babylonians.
The result of war and exile: mass cultural genocide. It meant that even after return from exile, only a remnant remained of what was once the Jewish nation … a people set apart by God to be a holy people. In a sense, it’s not unlike the remnants of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that remain in our nation today. The damage that was done was so significant that culture, language and story were lost forever:
- The people were murdered
- Raped
- Pillaged
- Used for slave labour
- Forced to scatter, in the hope that their culture would soon be bred out of them
Well, that’s the history behind today’s passage (in brief) … and it’s shocking for two reasons:
1. On a human level violence and war is always shocking and distressing;
2. But from a faith perspective there’s another level …. It’s shocking because God had promised peace to this people.
Seeing the King
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- Written by: Heather Cetrangelo
audio (7MB)
There are moments in life that make us quake. There are moments that make us tremble on the inside … and sometimes we tremble on the outside.
We tremble when we’re nervous, when we’re afraid, when we’re overwhelmed by emotion, and sometimes when we’re very sick, or in a lot of pain.
When I was 18 I went through an experience that made me think that there was something really wrong with my health. You see within the network of friends that I hung out with at that time, was a young man whose name was Adam. I’d known him for a number of years and he was a mutual friend. It was around June 2001, when I began to notice, that every time I was around Adam, my heart would beat a little faster than normal. On the inside I would tremble, in his presence. At first I thought maybe I just had an iron deficiency, but over time I noticed, that it was getting worse. It got to the point that every single time this young man came near me, my heart began to pound so hard, that I thought it was going to burst through my chest.
I remember crying out to the Lord one day, ‘What is wrong with me? I can’t calm down. My heart won’t slow down. I can’t breathe properly. I’m completely unsettled. What is wrong with me?’
A little sentence came into my mind … ‘Maybe you’re in love with Adam.’ I thought, ‘shut up shut up shut up! I don’t want to know that. If it’s an iron deficiency, I can fix that … but if I’ve fallen in love, well, then what am I gonna do?’
