The story of Ahaz illustrates Isaiah?s perspective on what?s wrong with Israel and with us. Then and now, everything rides on a single question: whom will you trust?

The Bible claims that God is love, but in trying to understand what that means we?ve got to be careful to avoid imposing our confused views of what love is onto God. The fact is that God?s love isn?t like any love in our experience, which is to say it?s holy love. In light of Isaiah 40, God?s holy love is preemptive, pardoning, and permanent.

One of the ways in which God is holy, in which he is not like us, is his perfect moral righteousness. We redefine what?s right and justify doing wrong; God is perfectly committed to what?s right and unfailingly judges what?s wrong. This makes God?s holy perfection a severe threat. But his holy perfection also comes to us as a promise: God offers us Jesus?s record of perfect righteousness, and by his Spirit we come to love what?s right and hate what?s wrong as God does.

At the heart of Isaiah?s portrait of God is God?s holy transcendence?the fact that God is beyond us and anything we experience in this world, that he?s not limited by the powers of this world or our ability to understand him. This aspect of what God is like is unavoidably abstract and difficult to connect with, much less enjoy. And that?s why Isaiah 40 is in the Bible?to help us see and enjoy God?s holy transcendence more fully.

?Holy? is Isaiah?s favorite description of God, the one that stands behind everything else he says about him. But what does that mean, and how can we understand and love that God is holy?

Using Isaiah 1 as an introduction to our new series, this sermon aims to clarify the four questions Isaiah helps us answer: Who is God? Who are we? What has God promised us? And how should we respond to his Word?

The gospel, God?s good news that defines who we are, helps us understand why prayer is so important to our lives and to our church. The gospel clarifies why we must pray and what we must pray.

We can?t help but long for justice against evil, but we?re guilty of the things we despise. How can we be saved? That?s the question raised by Isaiah 64. We need more than deliverance from what threatens us; we need deliverance from the evil that?s in us.

In this prophetic vision Isaiah describes what the new world will be like when God comes to make all things new. Engaging this vision in light of the brokenness of the world we life in helps us sharpen our hope. It helps us long for the promise that God will deliver us from the things we fear and cannot control.

The letter to the Hebrews ends with a benediction, a reminder of what God has done and a prayer for what God will do for his children. By sacrificing the blood of his Son, God has made a covenant that promises peace and life that will last forever. By his covenant God gives to us what he requires of us, promising to transform us so we can live the lives of worship we were made to live.