
The Prophet with a Sixty Year Career!
Royal
Isaiah might have been about twenty years old when he began to ask these questions about greed in the face of starving children, the destruction of the environment, the emptiness of religion, and the absence of good and godly leaders.
Born to a father named Amoz (not the famous prophet) his parents named him “God is salvation,” very similar to the name of Joshua, or Jesus.
Tradition says his father Amoz was brother to king Amaziah of Judah. That would have made Isaiah King Uzziah’s cousin, which would explain Isaiah’s easy access to the royal court, and his insider’s knowledge of the politics of his day, and the international situation. He may have even grown up in the palace and overheard conversations about world affairs.
Think of all the eavesdropping he may have done! God had perfectly placed him.
Priest
His ministry began in 740 BC, while he was worshiping in the temple, grieving the death of his cousin, King Amaziah, and worrying about what was going on in his own country, as well as the world. As he was praying, God called Isaiah to cleansing and to preaching.
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From the blog

Isaiah 9: The Ban
It is the lonely office of every anointed-by-God’s-Holy-Spirit prophet to speak the words God has given that prophet to say. As so often happened in the scriptures, the message from God’s lips was not received with much joy or enthusiasm by the ears of God’s people.
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Isaiah 9: The Wrath of God
Isaiah must have been gazing with such joy into the glory of that far away day of promise, and then lowered his eyes to the reality of what was going down around him
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Isaiah 8: Utter Darkness
Trying to control the future leads to anxiety, and trying to get around God leads to darkness.
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Isaiah 8: Sanctuary Versus Snare
Jerusalem. The city that should be the safest sanctuary will instead become the snare.
How?
All a matter of perspective.
#GentleWaterorGreatRiver
#SanctuaryorSnare #LightorDarkness

Isaiah 8: The Truth Will Out
If you and I will trust God, the Lord will be with us through it all, upholding, sustaining, comforting, equipping, and finally, in the end, bring us home to God.
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Isaiah 7: The Lord Will Whistle
Because King Ahaz and his people had refused to trust God, a day of reckoning was scheduled on their calendar, and its date was In that day.
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Isaiah 7: Sign of the Virgin
. God would direct the Assyrian armies to bring judgment, one-by-one, to all three kings, and all three lands, for the same ill pervaded them all, the fatal illness of idolatry.
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Isaiah 7: Second Chances
Ahaz did not have faith in God, and so he was not going to be able to stand firm at all. He refused God’s promise, protection, and perspective. He turned in fear to what he really had faith in―an alliance with Assyria.
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Isaiah 7: Perspective
In the moment, circumstances seemed dire indeed, his people captured, his towns looted, his capital city nearly under siege. But the prophet Isaiah reassured King Ahaz that God was faithful.
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Isaiah 7: Fear
All of us deal with some kind of deep-seated fear. It helps to keep that in mind when reading Isaiah 7, for it concerns a king with deep-seated, and legitimate fear.
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Isaiah 6: Cross of the Believer
Just as the cost of Isaiah’s call would be high, so the Lord Jesus did not make His call to discipleship any easier. On the contrary, Jesus stressed the cost of following Him. Following Jesus means full obedience and the giving up of all other plans that a person might prefer to make for themself.
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Isaiah 6: Here Am I, Send Me!
Once Isaiah answered God’s call, the Lord revealed to him how hard it would be–it was a prophetic utterance that would be repeated many times by other Hebrew prophets as well as all four Gospel writers, and the Apostle Paul.
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Isaiah 6: A Burning Coal
The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Isaiah 6:7 (NRSV)
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Isaiah 6: Seraphim and Cherubim
Isaiah was left with the lasting impression of God as sacred and set apart, glorious beyond measure, pure beyond imagining, calling God the Holy One of Israel more than any other writer in the Bible.
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Isaiah 6: The Year of King Uzziah’s Death
God met Isaiah in his sorrow, and in that moment of personal bereavement and spiritual concern, gave the young prophet a Christophany—a vision of Christ.
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Isaiah 5: Prophetic Warning
It would be another one hundred years and more before God’s judgment would come, years of noticeable decline for Judah as they continued to ignore their prophets and disregard God’s word.
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Isaiah 5: God’s Lament
Devoting all our time to looking good and feeling good, to pursuing our own ambitions, and working situations out for our own good at the expense of others, will end up in compromising God’s righteousness.
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Isaiah 5: Ah, the Sorrow
Isaiah spoke of God’s anger, but he began with God’s deep sorrow, with a Hebrew word, הוֺי | hôy, that is translated as ah!, alas!, ha!, ho!, O!, woe! It is meant as a cry of pain, and of lament.
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Isaiah 5: God’s Vineyard
It was right for God to look for fruit from this vineyard, and it is right for the Lord to look for the same evidence of God’s grace in your life and mine today.
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Isaiah 4: The Beautiful Branch
The Branch has come in fulfillment of many prophecies, and He has given us His promise to return.
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Isaiah 3: A Judgment That Purifies
It was a judgment that purified. When the people would return from exile seventy years later, idolatry would never again be the problem it had been.
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Isaiah 2: Clefts and Crags
to be filled anew with God’s glorious grace, to count on God’s lavish love, to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit, and to trust God’s guidance is to live in real reality, not the artificial reality idols occupy.
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Isaiah 2: Me, Myself, and I
Knowing the Self is probably, collectively, one of the deepest needs in the Body of Christ.
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Isaiah 2: Walk in the Light
Though this future is yet to be realized, believers can enjoy something of that glorious vision today. It is why Christians will speak of that time as “now . . . and not yet.”
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Isaiah 2: A Vision of God’s Word
Anticipation of the future, whether you and I are looking forward to something wonderful, or something dreadful, really does have a significant impact on our lives, and that is what we are going to see in this passage.
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Isaiah 1: The Prophet’s Prognosis
You and I are not the sum total of our words and deeds. There is so much more to us than that. We do not have to claim as our identity the wrong things we have done, or that have been done to us. Our identity is instead as the beloved child of God.
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Isaiah 1: Let Us Reason Together
though our sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
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Isaiah 1: Social Justice
Throughout both the Hebrew and Christian Testaments, scripture teaches that social justice should be a natural product of our relationship with God
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Isaiah 1: Morsel of Mercy
what we do (or do not do) about righteously tending and caring for the physical earth itself matters to God; what we do (or do not do) about hungry people and homeless people, marginalized people and people in need matters to God.
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Isaiah 1: What Is Sin, Anyway?
How can we tell what is universally right and wrong? Is morality relative? Is it a matter of cultures? If so, then would the morality proscribed for a culture of thousands of years ago carry any relevance for us today?
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Isaiah 1: Court is in Session
This first chapter provides the foundation for the rest of the book: God’s love for God’s people, holding them to account for their sin, warning them about judgment and promising them forgiveness, redemption and restoration.
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Isaiah: Overview of Chapters 1-39
First Isaiah (also called Proto-Isaiah)1-39, dated to the late eighth to early seventh century B.C., concerns Isaiah’s tenure in Jerusalem.
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Isaiah: The Book
How are we to read such a long and complex book?
Is it really one book, written by one writer?
Is it a compilation of lectures, sermons, oracles, and chronicles?

Isaiah: The Era
You and I are not responsible for the decisions of our leaders apart from whatever our civic duty requires of us (to vote, to speak up through letters and protests). But, we must live by whatever those decisions bring about. We will be swept along in the destiny of our nation, whatever that will be.
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Isaiah: The Prophet
People are trying to figure out how to live in this messy world of increasing famine and water shortages, of diminishing resources, of rapidly changing political and diplomatic landscapes, and families, careers, politics, social injustice, the environment, the economy, it is all on the line.
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Isaiah: Word of God
But a true prophet speaks a message of truth, truth that does not bow to the pressure of politics or what people want to hear.
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About Me
My passion for the Bible began when I was eight or nine years old, somewhere in there, when on occasion my dad would take me to synagogue, where he sang. I remember watching the men in synagogue pray the words of scripture, murmuring and weeping, lovingly touching and kissing the Torah, and I wished I could read what they were reading.
Imagine, then, my wonder when I was given a Bible of my own! Read more
Let’s hang out
[Image above: Isaiah, Scroll of the Book, in Jerusalem | By Dennis Jarvis – https://www.flickr.com/photos/archer10/34495817550/in/photolist-Uyh5K1-Uyh4Cm-dBtDNx-2e8wjwF-jBgdcY-jBdf7V-CTRdP4-jBeiWe-25ytcH7-jBdiN2-jBecPK-m9hV2p-m9iQF9-m9hUPa-m9hWxv-m9hVei-m9hWg8-CedVSC-2a4BwYk-dTzDmV-YPPzW4-jBeeKZ-nNJRxr-WHZagC-2FSY57-6wk8LM-6wk9je-2ccHtu3-6wk9Ti-dhmDhG-2ccHrN7-eiz5hM-6wk7XB-624ysP-628MMs-6TyrcW-bMJsPv-95dJdi-bMJtzk-bMJuhX-bMJvJZ-bMJwyt-dhmD95-dhmDfU-dhmDbS-dhmCJn-dhmCzc-dhmD7G-byPT43-BYk4yf, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90588359%5D