Reading
Isaiah 7:9-16 – Treat God as God
Notes
God is offering Ahaz the opportunity of a lifetime to experience what it means to be saved by God. But that means Ahaz must treat God as God.
That matters. It matters to God. It matters to Ahaz, more than he realizes. So God explains to him what’s at stake. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. (v. 9b)
The commentators try to capture the wordplay in English: “Hold God in doubt, and you’ll not hold out.” Or, “Unsure? Insecure!” God literally says, “If you do not firm up, you will not be confirmed.” In other words, “You’ll live by faith, or you won’t live at all. But if you do want my support, all you have to do is lean on me.” God is attracted to weakness and need and honesty. He is repelled by our self-assured pride.
Isaiah 7:9b makes faith in God the central, unavoidable question of our lives. What is faith? It has three components: knowledge of God, persuading us to agree with God, motivating us to embrace God. John Murray, the Scottish theologian, defines faith as “a whole-souled movement of intelligent, consenting and confiding self-commitment.… Intellect, feeling and will converge upon Christ.… There is a consensus of all the functions of man’s heart and mind.” In other words, faith is the God-awakened capacity to respond fully to Christ. And if that is faith, then unfaith is the fragmentation and breakdown of our inner beings—intellect, feeling, and will. We know that God is more real than the earthly things immediately before us. We know he is more desirable than worldly attractions. We know he is faithful. … Everything in life, not just religion, flows out of our whole-souled movement toward Christ.
Questions
- What is faith?
- What happens when we don’t live by faith in God?
- Is God faithful? Always?
Praise
Psalm 36b, 1a
Prayer
- Ask God to firm up your faith in him.
- Give thanks for something from last Lord’s Day’s sermons.
- Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.