Bible Commentary

Over the years, whether I was doing research for a sermon, preparing to teach a class or trying to understand a person's expectations for our church, various ideas about the purpose or reasons for involvement in church surfaced. People voiced a need to be wanted, a church that provided sound doctrine in its teaching and preaching, a place to escape the noise and pressures of the world, a safe place for children, excitement in the music and sermons and a place where we will be with people like us. The list is longer, but you get the idea.

Suffering and submission are not popular ideas. Control, winning, success, power: these are the ideas driving our culture. Unlike the Roman Empire in Peter's day, we have the privilege of expressing ourselves through voting and freedom of speech. Even so, our challenge is to face rhetoric that contradicts the word of God, coming from people who claim to believe in God!

A common dictionary description of “power” is the capacity to act or ability to accomplish a purpose. This morning I listened to news commentators discussing political power in Washington D.C. and the various elected officials trying to control a national agenda without success. You might say it was a tale of power without accomplishment.

I remember baptisms from my earliest days in ministry, one at a lake in a beautiful park, others in a stock pond with red mud up to my knees, as we sang “Shall we gather at the river where bright angel feet have trod?” The waters of baptism offer a memorable image of a new beginning to life.

King David wrote about the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23) and he knew his subject. David knew great victories as well as the calamities resulting from his own ego and selfishness, but he also knew the restoration God's grace can bring to us in the darkness. Israel has come to the darkest night of the soul, when every day is more disastrous than the previous and it seems they are no more than a valley of dry bones.

How bad must a situation become before a person will face the truth and change their attitudes and actions?

What happens to a people, who have received God's promises and blessings, and then walked away from God as though he is just one of many choices for meaning and happiness?

Somebody had to tell the truth – even though nobody wanted to hear it! Everybody wants good news: healing, a restored marriage, a perfect grandchild, financial freedom, no more war, relief from everything! Wouldn't it be wonderful to be the good news messenger?

In the history of the world the enticement of power has created wars, fostered injustice and resulted in pain for generations. Our text is timely, as we focus on Isaiah's words of hope that portray the ultimate sovereign who embodies the deepest longings of the human heart.

Our today is too much like Judah's yesterday when “God's Spirit came upon Azariah, Obed's son, (and) he confronted Asa (king of Judah)” and said “listen to me” (vv. 1-2). Like ancient Israel we often have trouble recognizing what is from God and what is religious-political doublespeak. We long to hear God's voice.