The title of this series and the artwork are designed with “wayfinding” in mind. The goal of this sermon today is to give you some landmarks and highpoints of the book of Isaiah so that you can know both where we are headed and where we are in the study. And it speaks into timely spiritual issues connected to what God’s people place their hopes in, how they treat one another, and where deliverance is coming from. The sixty-six books of Isaiah address an immediate crisis of trust with a looming external political threat while also making prophecies about the future. Isaiah records some of the most familiar prophecies about the Messiah, but it also includes some of the strongest calls for repentance. It’s the most quoted Old Testament book in the New Testament. Isaiah records God’s message to his people in the eighth century, seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus. This prophetic book is historic, important, complicated, and timely. Today we begin a yearlong journey through the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Major landmarks allow us to quickly orient ourselves so that we can determine our location and know how to chart our route. When you aren’t sure where you are or when you are navigating complicated terrain, it’s important to have some reference points. I think she took a very long route home, but she made it. “Are you on the highway? What buildings do you see? Are they on your left or your right? Is the sun behind you or in front of you?”Įventually, I was able to get her to I-465. Without a smartphone or a GPS, how do you think I helped my wife get home? I asked her a series of questions. But moving to a major metropolitan area created a major new challenge.
Our previous hometown had a few main roads, and the routes were not that complicated.
Frankly, when we lived in Michigan, there was no need for either of them. This was before she owned an iPhone with a navigation app and prior to purchasing a GPS navigator. “Mark, I’m downtown and I can’t figure out how to get home. The tone of her greeting told me that she’d been crying. Shortly after our family moved to Indianapolis, I received a panicked phone call from my wife. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged (Isa. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth for the Lord has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
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