Job was the most righteous man of his time. Yet he suffered a terrorist attack and a natural disaster on the same day. The Sabeans came and murdered his servants and animals, and then a hurricane came and flattened the house where all of his child...

The great promise of the Bible is not just that God will restore His people, but that He will restore creation. There will be a new heaven and a new earth.

Old hostilities will be reconciled: “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together” (65...

The important point here is that people will settle down in heaven. In this world, many people find a home, but oftentimes they don’t get to enjoy it.

As you get older, you find that you cannot maintain the family home you have loved for so...

Taking the last part of this verse first. Isaiah is telling us that death will be no more. He is using the analogy of what we can understand to point us toward what, right now, is beyond our grasp. It’s hard to get your mind around living for eter...

When God says that “the former things shall not be remembered” in the new heaven and the new earth, it does not mean that we will have no memory of this life. We will know one another in heaven. We will know and remember Christ’s love for us and H...

When Jesus spoke about hell, He used these words from Isaiah 66:24 to describe its awful reality: “Their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:48). The fire speaks of God’s presence. People sometimes say that hell is being separa...

God Himself is speaking here, and He describes two groups of people: Some who are eating, drinking, rejoicing, and singing. Others who are hungry, thirsty, ashamed, and crying out from anguish of heart.

The Bible speaks repeatedly about two...

What a marvellous picture: People from all the nations are gathering before the Lord. In Jesus Christ, they have become brothers and sisters. And the missionaries who proclaimed God’s glory in distant lands will have the joy of bringing these rede...

There is an old (but profoundly unhelpful) phrase that is often quoted: “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.”

How in all the world can you communicate the gospel without words? You can convey love without words, but...

Notice that there are two descriptions of the people to whom God sends His missionaries. First, God sends His missionaries to those who “have not heard my fame.” We would call them “unreached” peoples. People who have never heard. God sends missio...

Some years ago, John Piper coined a memorable phrase: Missions exist because worship doesn’t. That’s true. The reason we send missionaries is that across the world there are millions of people who do not see Christ’s glory. The great purpose of mi...

Every weekend in church, there are people who come to worship. They sing hymns, appreciate the music, stand for the Bible reading, and listen to the sermon. But they don’t see Christ’s glory.

That is our natural fallen condition. So how is ...

In heaven, everything you discover, everything you accomplish, and everything you enjoy will give you fresh glimpses of the glory of God. After a million ages in heaven, you will only have grasped the beginning of Christ’s glory. That’s why life i...

Worship and mission are bound up so tightly together that you cannot separate one from the other. When worship declines, mission follows. One sure sign of a church losing its way in worship is that it loses its interest in mission.

If you w...

Jesus is the Son of Man who came to seek and save the lost. But how does He seek and save us?

How God seeks people who ignore Him: This is why Jesus came into the world. God became man. The invisible God revealed Himself and made Himself kn...

You pick up a cluster of grapes. Some of the grapes have gone bad. But you don’t throw them all away because some grapes in the bunch are good. You sort out the good from the bad.

God says, “That is what I will do with religious people who ...

Religion is a mixed bag and much of it offends God, especially religion that is: Hypocritical (talking the talk but not walking the walk). Personalised (a projection of your own preferences and prejudices). Ritualistic (rites and disciplines that ...

Here are several more forms of religion that Isaiah identifies as offensive to God.

Dark religion: People “who sit in tombs, and spend the night in secret places” (65:4). This brand of religion takes a great interest in the dead, seeking co...

Clearly there is a kind of religion that God does not like. It is not pleasing to Him; it actually provokes Him! Isaiah identifies several forms of religion that are offensive to God.

Hypocritical religion: “A rebellious people, who walk in...

The rebellious people described here in verse 2 are different from the people who did not ask for or seek God in verse 1.

We know that because in the New Testament Paul quotes these verses and tells us that they refer to different people: “...

What do you think God would have to say to people who don’t ask for Him and don’t seek after Him? You might expect Him to say: “There are many people in this world who completely ignore Me. They don’t call on My name. These people don’t have faith...

Notice who Isaiah is describing here—people who do not ask for or seek God. We might call these secular people today.

In Isaiah’s time, this group of people were known as the Gentiles. In the Old Testament, God had made Himself known to Mos...

Here is prayer that you could pray:

O, that You would rend the heavens and come down. Come down and make Your name known.

Even among your own people many have such a vague grasp of Your glory. To many You seem distant. Let us see wi...

Why would God listen to an unclean, unrighteous, dried out, and unstable person? Isaiah gives us two reasons here in Isaiah 64:

First, plead the relationship you have with God (your Father): Notice Isaiah appeals to the covenant relationshi...

When you pray, you will feel your unworthiness. We all do. Coming into a holy place makes you feel how unholy you are. Isaiah knew about this too, and he describes it using four pictures:

A leper: “We have all become like one who is unclean...

How do you prepare to pray? One way is to fill your mind with the goodness of God. When you read the context of Isaiah 64, you will see this clearly. It’s like watching an athlete taking a run-up to the long jump: she gathers speed, and then she l...

When Isaiah asks God to "come down and make your name known", he is asking for God to come down and make His power known.

God’s name is a way of speaking about His character. So, when Isaiah prays that God would “come down… to make your name known,” what he is asking is that God would “come down and let us know who you really are.”

Isaiah wants even God’s enem...

Isaiah’s prayer was formed by the Bible and by his own experience. Isaiah knew from the Bible that God’s presence had come down to Mount Sinai, and when that happened, the whole mountain shook (Ex. 19:17-19). But this wasn’t just history to Isaiah...

Would you consider making it your goal this year to grow in the areas of faith and prayer? That may sound like two goals, but it is really one. For where faith grows, prayer follows. The greater our confidence in God, the more we will ask of Him.<...