Isaiah

What God Wants From Us - Isaiah 58:1-12

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Date:  05/05/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  What God Wants From Us
Scripture:  Isaiah 58:1-12

Description:  Genuine trust in God and his promises produces a different way of life. But God isn’t interested in any good works we might offer as a kind of bargaining chip to get what we want from him. God is pleased by good works done for others as an overflow of our joyful security in him.

Trust In God - Isaiah 36:1-37:38

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Date:  04/28/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  Trust In God
Scripture:  Isaiah 36:1-37:38

Description:  Isaiah’s beautiful descriptions of God’s plan to redeem sinners are only good news for us if we know that they’re promises to us, and if we know how we’re supposed to respond to his word. This story of King Hezekiah in crisis, one of Isaiah’s only stories, is meant to show us what it looks like to claim God’s promises. It looks like a trust that’s rooted in despair, centered on God and his character, and motivated by God’s glory.

The Royal Servant Suffers - Isaiah 52:13-53:12

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Date:  03/24/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  The Royal Servant Suffers
Scripture:  Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Description:  God’s promised redeemer, both king and servant, triumphs through suffering. That’s the unexpected message of this famous passage, which explains for us both why he had to suffer and why his suffering is such good news for us. His suffering is substitutionary, voluntary, and obedient.

A Culture Of Misplaced Trust - Isaiah 59:1-16

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Date:  03/03/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  A Culture Of Misplaced Trust
Scripture:  Isaiah 59:1-16

Description:  This passage is a clear and merciless indictment of what happens to the cultures we create when we refuse to trust God to make us secure. Like Israel in Isaiah’s day, we turn each other into threats to be attacked, competitors to be deceived, and resources to be exploited. But this passage also points the way to healing. Honest confession of our own brokenness helps us empathize with the weakness of others, and confidence in God’s saving power frees us to give ourselves to others.

Who's Carrying Whom? - Isaiah 46:1-13

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Date:  02/24/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  Who's Carrying Whom?
Scripture:  Isaiah 46:1-13

Description:  Using an image of unmistakeable power, Isaiah shows that idols may draw you in with the promise of control, but in the end you’re left to carry their crushing weight. By contrast, the Holy One of Israel demands submissive trust in a God you can’t control, but he is powerful, wise, and loving enough to carry you.

The Uselessness of Idolatry - Isaiah 44:9-23

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Date:  02/17/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  The Uselessness of Idolatry
Scripture:  Isaiah 44:9-23

Description:  Isaiah presents idolatry, worshipping and trusting what isn’t God, as one of Israel’s most consistent and most significant problems. And though the symptoms have changed from culture to culture, idolatry is a heart disease we all carry. This chapter helps us understand what idolatry is, why it’s useless, how we’re guilty of it, and how we can be saved from it.

True Love - Isaiah 40:1-8

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Date:  02/03/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  True Love
Scripture:  Isaiah 40:1-8

Description:  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.

"Holy in Righteousness" - Isaiah 5:8-25

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Date:  01/27/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  "Holy in Righteousness"
Scripture:  Isaiah 5:8-25

Description:  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.

No Comparison - Isaiah 40:12-31

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Date:  01/20/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  No Comparison
Scripture:  Isaiah 40:12-31

Description:  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.

Introducing The Book Of Isaiah: The Gospel According To Isaiah - Isaiah 1:1-2:5

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Date:  01/06/13
Speaker:  Matt McCullough
Title:  Introducing The Book Of Isaiah: The Gospel According To Isaiah
Scripture:  Isaiah 1:1-2:5

Description:  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?