July 13

Three Relevant Truths for Today

1. God is not the god of popular culture. Yesterday someone said to me at coffee hour, “All the gods of religion are the same. All religions point to the same basic god, he just changes forms for different groups.”
Isaiah points out this popular belief about God is false.

Isaiah 43:10-11 Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.
I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior.

Just common sense tells us that all views of God cannot be correct. There are huge differences between religions. They disagree over the most fundamental points. The Bhagavad-Gita, Upanishads and other holy books of Eastern mysticism teach that God is one. Everything is God. You are god, I am god, and the black walnut tree in the church parking lot is god. Good is god, Evil is god. They also teach that God is impersonal. How radically different from the God of the Bible that teaches God is personal and he has my picture on his refridgerator.

2. The servant is now revealed in Isaiah. Sometimes this section is called the Servant Song and these verses describe both the nation of Israel as well as one individual person – the Messiah. In 42:1-17 we see the person of the Messiah foretold.

I will put my Spirit on him.
He will bring justice to the nations.
He will not falter or be discouraged
He establishes justice on the earth

3. The Prophecies of the Bible are amazing. If you ever doubt the truthfulness and accuracy of the Bible always go back to the prophecies. There is no book like the Bible when it comes to prophecy. Many other religious and secular writings don’t even have one prophecy in them. The writings of Buddha are totally lacking in any sort of specific predictive prophecy about the things of the future. The writings of Confucius there are absolutely no prophecies. In the case of the Koran, the scriptures of the Muslims, we find only the prophecy of Mohammed that he would return to Mecca, a "self-fulfilling prophecy," which he himself, of course, fulfilled." The vague and usually erroneous prophecies of people like Nostradamus, Jeanne Dixon, Edgar Cayce and others like them are not in the same category at all. All of these are very different from the prophecies of the Bible. There are over 2,000 specific prophecies in the Bible which have already been fulfilled. There are two great prophecies in our reading today.
Isaiah prophesied from about 740-681 BC and he predicts a ruler named Cyrus would rule. This came true 150 years later. Isaiah also predicted that Jerusalem would fall more than 100 years before it happened and that the temple would be rebuilt about 200 years before it happened. Don’t doubt the Bible or the knowledge of God. We can trust our heavenly Father because he holds the future in his hands.

Today is accountability day. Send me an email telling me where you are at in your Bible reading.