On the Lord’s day, following the resurrection of Jesus, two of the Lord’s Disciples were walking from Jerusalem to their hometown of Emmaus. The name of one of them was Cleopas (Luke 24:18). Cleopas and his companion were despondent and disillusioned because of the death of Jesus. They had heard reports…

This evening, I want to pull one verse from the 29th Chapter of Isaiah to preach on. It’s verse 13: “The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.” (Isaiah 29:13,…

In making the decision to preach through the prophetic book of Isaiah on Sunday evenings, it may well represent the proverbial “Biting off more than I can chew” kind of decisions. Isaiah contains several challenges for us. First of all, in length this is a sprawling text. After the Book of Psalms, Isaiah…

The year is 689 BC and the world is in turmoil. The Babylonian Empire is under attack by the Assyrian Empire. All of the nations in that area hoped against hope that Babylon would be able to defeat the Assyrian aggressors to their north. However, it was not to be! Babylon fell to the Assyrians and everyone…

In verse seven of Isaiah chapter 63, the Prophet begins to remind the Jews of the mercies of the Lord. They are undeserved mercies that a faithful God has performed on behalf of His own people. "I will tell of the kindnesses of the LORD, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the LORD…

From surveying the distant peaks of messianic prophecy, Isaiah returns to his own day momentarily. He takes the leadership of Judah head-on and squarely puts much of the blame for the nation’s moral and ethical ills on their shoulder. /"Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character…

Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception. Biblical instances…

You’ve seen the commercial, "Can you hear me now? Good!" In 2001 Verizon Wireless hired 50 people to travel the country and test the company’s cellular network. They each average 100,000 miles a year, going to places, and testing the Verizon network. In 2002 Verizon hired thirty-four-year-old Paul Marcarelli…

Almost 500 years ago, a pugnacious Augustinian Monk named Martin Luther tacked a document to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, Germany as a protest against the sale of indulgences by the papacy. It turned out to be the spark that ignited what history has called the Protestant Reformation.…

I want to preach this evening on The Roadmap for Revival. Personally, I like the term spiritual awakening better, but both terms speak of an out-pouring of the Holy Spirit upon the lives of God’s people. Revival—or more precisely, the Revival Meeting—is a modern phenomenon in the annals of Church history.…

Verse 1 mentions the death of King Uzziah. He was the tenth king of Judah and he was a very godly man. He was highly influenced by a prophet named Zechariah (though this is a different Zechariah) and, unlike many of the other kings, he never totally departed from the worship of the true God. Under his…

The opening words of Psalm 2 pose a question that has baffled mankind through the centuries. The Psalmist asks, "Why do the nations rage?" That is, why is it so difficult to bring about international peace? Why, after thousands of peace conferences, security accords, and negotiations held through the…

Over the last several decades dozens of movies and hundreds of books have been produced and written about the end of the world. Many doomsday scenarios exist as to how the world may cease to be: errant meteors, nuclear annihilation, pandemic mutant viruses, global warming, another ice age, a series of…

Chapter 35 is the climactic chapter of the first “book” of his prophecy. Its background makes it all the more pertinent, meaningful, and poignant. When Isaiah utters this prophecy the northern kingdom has already been destroyed and led into captivity by the Assyrians. Isaiah has also predicted that Judah…

Chapters 56-66 are the third section of Isaiah’s book. You might remember way back when we began our study of Isaiah, I gave you the background of the Prophet and his book. I told you at that time that most critical scholars believe that the Book of Isaiah has multiple authors. Most accept a two-author…

The last half of Isaiah 9 is in the form of a prophetic poem consisting of four stanzas, each one ending with the sentence: “For all of this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.” The words are directed to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, not Judah. They had been warned about…

Who is the king of Babylon? From a purely historical perspective, Isaiah 14:12-15 is a reference to the King of Babylon at the time of Judah’s captivity. His name is Sennacherib—or that is, it will be since Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 14 is years away from being fulfilled. In his military might this…

Isaiah calls upon the people of Judah to remember the former things. They are to remember two things: 1) the events of long ago. They are to remember the course of their own history— from their exodus from Egypt, to the conquest of Canaan, to their backsliddenness under the Judges, to the kingdom under…

Satisfaction guaranteed! You hear the promise all the time. It’s become a staple of selling in T.V. commercials and radio ads. The phrase satisfaction guaranteed is often used as an advertising slogan more than a legally binding contract. The implication is that the product or service is so reliable…

This passage of Scripture present Yahweh as the transcendent God who controls the destiny of all nations—not merely Israel. He creates history just as He created the cosmos. The victory of the Assyrians over the Hebrew tribes did not prove the superiority of her god’s over Yahweh. Nor did Judah’s defeat…

Some years ago at an annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jerry Rankin told the following story about one of our missionaries. A Hindu trader in India once asked a missionary, "What do you put on your face to make it shine?" With surprise the missionary answered, "I don't put anything on…

A few years ago, I head a Pastor at an Missouri Baptist Convention annual meeting say, “God created us so that He could love us and that we might return love to Him. Reverently speaking, God was lonely. He wanted someone to love and someone who would love Him.” He received applause and a goodly number…

In Isaiah chapter ten, the prophet paints a picture of God humbling proud Assyria. God is going to use Assyria as a rod to punish Judah for its rebellion and idolatry. “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath! I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him…

There is a very familiar verse in Isaiah 7 that we very clearly and quite properly associate with Christmas. It is a prophecy that assures us that Jesus was to be born of a young woman. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will…

Some of you are familiar with the name Josh McDowell. He is one of the pre-eminent Christian apologists of our era. A number of years ago, he was invited to speak at Ohio State University convocation center to present the gospel of Jesus Christ. But when he got there, he was treated to a rude reception.…