Tag: Hope

Digging in Deeper: Isaiah 30:18

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“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.  For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

The people of Israel were in a pretty hard spot.  They had turned on the Lord.  In fact, they had been turned away from the Lord for a long time.  They had been turned away from the Lord for a long time and it was beginning to show.  Their world was teetering on the edge.  Some of them had started to realize just how dire their situation really was.  They could read the international tea leaves.  They saw the Assyrian army moving steadily in their direction, gobbling up nations in their path and spitting out nothing but ruin and destruction.  But, instead of heeding Isaiah’s call to return to the Lord for their hope and salvation, they were running everywhere but to Him. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Lamentations 3:21-24

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“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.  ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Lamentations is a series of complaints to God.  Jeremiah wrote these toward the end of his ministry when Babylon had conquered and destroyed Jerusalem.  It is mostly a bitter book.  It’s tone is both corporate and personal.  Chapter three here in particular is very personal.  The prophet describes feeling totally abandoned and even actively attacked by the Lord.  They are words that ring with familiarity to those who have experienced loss and grief and seasons of great distress today. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Hebrews 11:1

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“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

As the writer of Hebrews defines it here, faith is, by definition, a conviction about the positive existence of something we have not seen.  For instance and as the writer observes in v. 3, it is by faith that we conclude the world and everything in it was created by God.  We weren’t there and so we could not possibly have seen it.  And yet we believe it all the same.  The question here we must address in light of modern misunderstandings about the nature of faith, though, is this: Is it reasonable? Read the rest…

The Good News

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The great thing about God’s story, is that it doesn’t end after the second act.  In this third part of our series, The Big Story, we finally get to relish the joy of the third act: Redemption.  God’s efforts since the fall have been focused on this one goal.  Read on to see how this played out…

 

The Good News

Let’s start this morning with some trivia.  What do Return of the Jedi, Rocky Balboa, Antwone Fisher, Les Misérables, and Iron Man 3 all have in common?  They are all stories of redemption.  In Return of the Jedi the exciting climax of the movie comes when Anakin Skywalker—Darth Vader—returns from the “dark side,” saves the life of his son, Luke, and puts an end to the evil of The Emperor.  In Rocky Balboa, the washed-up, old fighter proves to himself and the world that he still has what it takes when he comes out of retirement and goes toe-to-toe with the reigning heavyweight champ, Mason “the Line” Dixon.  In Antwone Fisher a young, emotionally broken soldier finds healing and wholeness through the help of a committed counselor, his girlfriend, and the family he never knew he had.  In Les Misérables, the thief, Jean Valjean, is given a second chance at life by a gracious Catholic priest and commits the rest of his life to serving and saving those who were in the same dire straits in which he once found himself.  Finally, in Iron Man 3, Tony Stark at last discovers what’s most important in life and commits himself to using his genius and resources to make the world better. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Isaiah 14:3-4

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“When the Lord has given you rest from your pain and turmoil and the hard service with which you were made to serve, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: ‘How the oppressor has ceased, the insolent fury ceased!'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

At first blush here, it feels a little odd that God would call Israel to taunt Babylon when they are brought low in judgment from the Lord.  Isn’t that just cruel?  Why kick someone when they are down?  This Old Testament god here must be the vengeful, gleeful-in-wrath god we’ve always heard about from our critics. Read the rest…