Welcome back again to another episode of Struggling Well. And this is coming to you just a couple days after the last Super Bowl. And if you were a Patriots fan, it was not a good night. If you were a Seahawks fan, and a Sam Darnold fan, then congratulations to you. I
I've just come into watching football this last year because all of my family, all the daughters, everybody loves football and I was the hold out. And so I started watching football this fall, asking good questions about why those people are running around the way they run around and why They hurt each other out there. So, I watched the Super Bowl and I was hoping for a good game and it wasn't. So, it's a little disappointing.
No, it wasn't. And this is probably indicative of the way we get to arrive at what we're going to talk about is that it's just we have conversations all the time and those conversations spill over into once a week trying to put some cohesiveness to them and putting them out as a podcast. So, it's all over. But, you know, one of the things I think that is a reality in all seriousness recently is we just see how fallen and broken our world is.
And I think it just explains
the fact that we live with a disappointment that just kind of pervades our earthly experience here in this world. We just don't ever seem to be able to get satisfied,
right? And we look, you know, I don't know where most of you live, but there's probably a pocket of well I'm not sure what the pocket is but there's always people that are that seem to have more or have less and whether people have more or less no one seems to be satisfied out there.
No. And what happens I think so often is that it's difficult to find where we really can find hope because human hope seen in health, seen in wealth, seen in whatever you want to say that we place our hope in will disappoint. And that's not just unique to this generation. That's been around for a long time that people will put their hope in something that's going to let them down.
Well, even if I could jump back to the Super Bowl, okay, just for a minute. I mean, there were people that were hopeful and some put money where their hope was that a certain team would win. So, we had a friend decades ago who rooted for his college team like off the chart. He would have if they lost, he would have weeks of not depression, but s you know, he was just such a football fan, but his hope was placed in that his team would win. And that sounds trivial, but we do the same thing in our lives in varying degrees.
Yeah. And so God through the ages has used prophets to be his spokespersons for what he wanted to offer to this world that was broken. and Isaiah is one of those prophets that he used. And in Isaiah 40, there's a break in the book of Isaiah between chapters 39 and 40. And from chapter 40 to the end, it really is Isaiah using his prophetic voice looking down the road, probably about 100 years from when he was alive to what was going on. And but Isaiah 40 delivers good news for bad people from a surprising God.
And that's to me that's the essence of what the gospel is.
The gospel is good news of God's saving grace which I don't deserve, you don't deserve, but it's because of God's great love for us that he's made it possible for us to have.
Can you talk a little bit about the state of it of the nation at that point?
Yeah. So, in the first 39 chapters which are hard chapters it's the setting would be just before the Assyrian nation rose up and conquered the northern kingdom, the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom. And then there's a gap because in Isaiah 40, he's now speaking basically to the southern kingdom of Judah long after he's passed away. as the Babylonians are getting ready to come in and finish the conquering of the nation of Israel.
And this is all about this is all about God. God had chosen Israel as a nation, right? And this It's part of the process of what they had gone through and some of the choices they had made that landed them where they were,
right? They had they had turned their back on God. They hadn't given themselves over to worshiping him uniquely. And the result was his judgment, his discipline that came on them. but as chapter 40 begins, Isaiah begins by saying, "Comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her." So there's good news coming in the midst of a impending defeat.
So what let me ask you a question. What was God after? Because Israel had been disobedient,
right?
They were they in captivity at this point with Assyria?
Well, the northern kingdom was.
Okay. So what was God after from his people?
I think he was after him returning and repenting and coming back to him because what he offered is what he offers you and me in That is salvation. He offers us hope. We put it in the context that we know of hope that's in Christ.
but the stubborn rebellious hearts of people weren't ready to return back to him.
Yeah.
So you have some thoughts from the book of Jeremiah who is another prophet who spoke to the nation of Judah as the Babylonians came in and took them captive.
yeah, let me give you context for why this is even on my radar is I've read the Bible cover to cover in not the way you typically do. And I'm this time I'm trying to read it in more of a not chronological but a better order than I've done before. And Jeremiah is Jeremiah, Isaiah, Joshua, all those books are really, really hard to read because you read so much about God disciplining his children. And it's hard to it's hard to read the lengths that God went to bring his children back into alignment with him. But one of the things that Jeremiah says is my people have done two evil things. They have abandoned me the fountain of living water and they have dug for themselves cracked sistns that can hold no water. and when I look at us today and I look at believers today, so many of us have oh that's not fair to say. I know there are times when I abandon God for my own agenda and then I wonder where he is and I'm in a miserable place and I choose something else to live by. I choose different water than living water.
Yeah. It's that idea again of you ask me what is God after? Well, he's after my heart. He's after me going to him a as the source of living water and let letting him fill the deepest need, the deepest longing of my heart, which he does fill in the person of his son. He does fill in the salvation that he provides. Not salvation I don't deserve but I but he does it because of his grace, his mercy and his love for you and me. but I can fill my broken water pots
or I try to fill my broken water pots with things in this world that will satisfy that longing and they won't touch it.
So how does Isaiah how does the prophet depict God as the one who disciplines his people and yet loves them? What like that's a interesting contrast.
Yeah, it's in those latter chapters, the second half of the book of Isaiah where you come across for example in Isaiah 53, the promise of a coming Messiah. the promise of a coming one who's going to save. So it's it is that long range view that God doesn't take them out. In fact, they are in they're in captivity for a long time in Babylon and so it's not that he promises immediate relief, but he's promising the ultimate relief, which is the forgiveness of our sins as his son comes to this earth. So, it's woven into his prophetic voice looking into the future for the people about
So, I'm trying to make this fit in my head. So, God chose the nation of Israel to be the people that would show who he was,
right?
Okay. So, he loves them. He gives brings them to the promised land. Well, that's not yet. But he bring he brings them he promises them the promised land and but along the way even with that promise ahead they are they leave him. They worship other gods and yet God all the way through you see this in the Old Testament all the way through he's in pursuit and all the way through while he disciplines his children but he's always loving them and wooing them back to himself.
Yeah. And it's no different for you and me. I mean, he is patient with us even when we fail. Even when we walk away, even when we turn our back, even when we make it Jesus plus something else, he is always there to come back to pursue us, to bring us back. And so that's the hope of the gospel. That's the central reality of the gospel is that God provides for the deepest longing of our souls.
If you're listening and you're wondering how this applies to you, you can't go too far away. There's no far away from God. There's no place where he can't reach you or doesn't want to reach you. There's no place where you can get that he will not love you as a father, which means he will discipline you and me. And he will always be there loving us, bringing us one us to come back.
Yeah. And so we will pick this theme back up again next week as we look at another one of God's prophets and this whole idea of a pursuing God who never stops coming after us. Hope you have a great week.