The thing that really strikes me about these 6 chapters of Isaiah is the abrupt shifts between God’s judgment and God’s encouragement. The sharp distinction between the identification of all that’s wrong and all the evil in the world, and God’s retribution towards that evil on the one hand, and God’s mercy and renewal bestowed upon the faithful remnant of his people under the blessings of the coming Messiah on the other hand seem to swing so far to each extreme as to give me whiplash.

In last week’s reflections on our daily bible readings from Isaiah, Pastor Brian discussed the need to carefully consider the prophetic nature of Isaiah’s writings, and how these passages that appear to be talking about things we don’t understanding or can’t relate to are speaking of events coming in the future — events happening long after Isaiah’s lifetime.

Greetings, fellow Bible readers!

We have now experienced our third week of our special Bible study that eventually will get us through the whole Bible. This will take 3 years. The journey will be life-changing.

There will be many weeks when we reach sections of the Bible, like Isaiah chapters 13-18, that are hard to understand and difficult to read. I encourage you to work VERY hard to slow your brain down and read every word of the chapters, whether you understand or not. We need this kind of discipline as disciples of Jesus.