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Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to week one, day one of our
look at the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is all about God's vision. It's all about
God's vision for your life.

The first word in the Hebrew in the book of Isaiah is the word vision. If I read
Isaiah 1, 1 it says, "The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son
of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of
Judah. This vision was given then, but God put Isaiah in the scripture for a
reason.

The vision is for you. God has a vision for your life. And when you look at
God's vision, God's vision is always bigger than our vision.

It's always fuller than our vision. It's always deeper than our vision. God's
vision is always full of hope.

God's vision is always eternal. God has a vision for your life. Isaiah is a long
book, but when you take a look at it, there's two simple parts to it.

And one part talks about the need that we have to face up to the problems we
have in our lives and the fact that God's going to judge those problems. And the
other part talks about the salvation that God brings. And in one sense, when you
look at the vision of Isaiah, there are two parts to the vision that God has for
your life.

First half of Isaiah is about God's vision for change in your life. If you're
going to be, do all that God wants you to be and do, there has to be change in
your life. The second half is about God's vision for comfort.

It's a different kind of comfort than we think of sometimes, which is a very
simple, comfortable kind of thing. It's that kind of comfort that gives you
genuine hope in this world. As we look at Isaiah, a lot of people have called
Isaiah the Romans of the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, the Book of Romans sort of sums up the entire doctrine of
the New Testament. Well, Romans, in many ways, is reflected in Isaiah in the Old
Testament in that it reflects it lays out the story of salvation as expressed
throughout the Old Testament. Isaiah is quoted 66 times in the New Testament,
more than any other book except Psalms.

It's the book that Jesus chose to read from at the beginning of his public
ministry. The promise of a new heaven and earth at the end of Isaiah are
amplified at the end of the Book of Revelation. As we open up, start to look at
this book, be aware of the fact that the vision of Isaiah is a vision about
Jesus.

How do I know that? Well, the Bible tells us. John 12, 41, Isaiah said this
because he saw Jesus' glory and he spoke about him.

He saw and advanced Jesus' glory and he spoke about him. So you see this vision
of what Jesus Christ can do in your life. Isaiah, as you may know, is one of the
great Old Testament prophets.

When you look at prophecy, it's not meant simply to tell the future. It's meant
to transform the future. It's meant to change you based on the words of judgment
and hope that come from the Lord through the prophet.

So we're going to take a look at this first half. Open up. Begin to take a look
at this first half of the Book of Isaiah that talks about God's vision for
change in your life.

And we begin, Isaiah 1, with God's vision for changing your direction. There's a
single word. Isaiah starts sort of with the bad news and what can seem to some
of us to be a bad word.

There's this single word that describes our life when it's out of the hands of
God, whether you seem to be sinful to others or you seem to be respectable on
the outside. There's this word that describes any person's life that's being
lived outside of the hands of God. The word is rebellion.

Rebellion is the willful decision to live outside of the control of the rightful
master of our lives, of Jesus Christ. And Isaiah begins by saying here's the bad
news, here's the bad word. We're a rebellious people, Israel.

Well as you take a look at what Isaiah has to say about rebellion, we learn some
things about the signs of rebellion, not just in their lives, but also in our
own lives. How do you know when you might be struggling with rebellion against
God? Because many times we get so far into it before we see it that we've hurt
ourselves, we've hurt a lot of other people.

Well the first thing that happens is you lose personal connection with God.
That's where rebellion starts. You lose personal connection with God.

Isaiah 1, 2, and 3, "Hear me, you heavens, listen, earth, for the Lord has
spoken. I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against
me. The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner's manager, but Israel does not
know, my people do not understand.

" As you read these words, you remember that God is a perfect parent and his
children turned against him. His children struggled with following him. God's
actions towards us, they are always perfect.

They're never selfish. They're filled with constant love. And yet look at how
many of his children have rebelled, have turned away from that love.

Losing personal connection is where that starts. And losing personal connection
with God, it's as easy as simply not spending time with him. As human beings, we
are personally connected to whomever we spend the most time with.

So it always begins with losing this sense of being connected to God. If that's
where you are, if that's where you're struggling, that's the beginning of
rebellion. And then the second thing that happens is you live with a sense of
guilt.

Verse 4, "Woe to the sinful nation, a people whose guilt is great, a brood of
evildoers, children given to corruption. " We're made to be connected to God.
And when we're not, we feel guilty.

You can look back to the Garden of Eden to see that. The moment they ate of that
fruit, they felt guilty. They wanted to hide from God.

And not only do we feel guilty, but the longer we go, the more and more we feel
loaded down with guilt. Look at these words, that guilt is great, evildoers,
given to corruption. So you feel the weight of guilt more and more and more in
your life.

And unless you turn away from that, if you continue in rebellion, the third
thing happens. You turn your back on God. When you're feeling the weight of
guilt, you either turn to God or you turn away from God because you can't handle
the weight.

So you either turn to God to lift the weight or you turn away from God to deny,
to pretend that the weight isn't there. So in the last half of verse 4, "They
have forsaken the Lord. They've spurned the Holy One of Israel and they've
turned their backs on him.

" So you see what happens with rebellion. You began just not feeling connected.
Now you're intentionally turning the other way.

That's the inevitable progress of rebellion unless we turn back to him. And then
the fourth thing happens, the thing that you would say as you look at this
happening in your life, somebody else's life, is the most obvious sign of
rebellion. And that is you persist in doing wrong even though it's clearly
hurting you.

You persist in going the wrong direction even though it's clearly the wrong
direction for you. You've seen yourself to do that. You've seen people that you
love do that.

Why do we do that? Because we're in rebellion. We're running away from something
so we can't run towards the right thing.

So Isaiah 1, 2 to 5, why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in
rebellion? Your whole head is injured.

Your whole heart is afflicted. They couldn't see the harm that was in their
lives. They couldn't see the danger of the rebellion because they were running
so far, so fast.

When you and I look at the honesty of our own hearts, we have rebellion
sometimes. We don't want to do what God's asking us to do. We want to live the
way that we want to live.

A vision for change in your life begins with an honest look at yourself. And
this word rebellion, it applies to me more often than I want to admit. It
applies to you more often than you want to admit.

And the encouragement I hear in this outline of how rebellion works in our lives
is the encouragement not to wait to return to God because it's only going to get
worse. The moment you recognize that you have learned, you have somehow in your
life you have seen that you've lost personal connection with God, take that
extremely seriously. There could be a number of reasons that you don't feel
personally connected to God right now.

It could be physical. When we're sick physically, we feel down physically, we
have a hard time feeling like we're connecting with God. Let God carry you
through that.

It could be emotional. It could be you've been through a lot of emotional highs
or lows recently. And in that, it's hard sometimes to maintain our sense of
personal connection.

But it also may be spiritual. It may be that you're turning away, running away
from something that God wants to do in your life. So I encourage you, ask God a
courageous question.

Say, God, is there some place where I am rebellious? Is there some place where I
know I should be saying yes, but I'm saying no? Now I'm not talking about a
struggle with sin where you're struggling to say yes.

Sometimes you do the wrong thing. You don't want to do the wrong thing. You're
struggling to say yes to do the right thing.

I'm talking instead about a place in your life where you know you've clearly
said no, no I'm not doing that. I'm not changing at that point in my life. I'm
not giving in that kind of a way.

I am not committing to that kind of a person. I'm not staying in this painful
situation, walking through it. No, I am not going to do that, God.

I am not willing. Change is going to happen in your life, dramatic, incredible
change. When you change that, know that I'm not willing to your will be done.

And that begins by connecting again with God personally. So let's do that right
now. Just say, Father, I want to be connected to you.

I don't want to live running away from your will in my life. However much it
might scare me, however much I might want to do something else, because I know
you want what's best for me. So right now I'm changing that no to a your will be
done.

And if I'm not aware of a place where there's a no in my life, a rebellion in my
life, I ask you to make me aware of it if I need to be. Use some person, use
some Bible verse to make me aware of it. And as I made aware, instead of
resisting you, God, help me to have a heart that turns to you.

I don't want to have a rebellious heart. I want to have a heart of commitment
and love towards you. And that's what I ask for in Jesus' name, amen.

Join us tomorrow. We're going to take a look at God's prescription for healing a
rebellious heart.