Ashland City Church of Christ

06/14/2026

🚨 SPOILER ALERT: We've read the end of the story... and WE WIN! 🙌 No matter what scary circumstances come our way, Jesus will prevail and use even the hard times to accomplish His will. When we walk in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, we literally cannot lose!

06/14/2026

Reading: Isaiah 9-12; Psalm 12

https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/the-prophets/

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**Though You Were Angry With Me**
*A Devotional from Isaiah 9–12*

The light arrived in a specific place, in a specific kind of darkness.

Chapter 9 names the location before it names the light: the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, the way of the sea, Galilee of the nations, the borderlands that would absorb the first weight of Assyrian invasion. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. The darkness was not abstract. It was the shadow of an empire falling across these specific regions, and the light given to them carried names addressed to exactly what that darkness required: Wonderful Counselor, for a people whose own counsel had failed. Mighty God, for a people facing an empire. Everlasting Father, for a people about to lose everything that felt permanent. Prince of Peace, for a people staring at war.

**The application is specific before it is general:** God's promises are not delivered into a vacuum. They arrive addressed to the darkness a person is actually standing in. Bring the real darkness. Expect an answer shaped like it.

But chapter 9 does not stay in promise. It pivots into a refrain that recurs four times across chapters 9 and 10, each time marking an escalation: his anger is not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still. Disaster fell. The people did not turn to him who struck them. So the hand remained stretched out, and the next disaster fell, and they still did not turn, and the hand stayed stretched out again.

**The application is sobering:** discipline that does not produce turning does not simply stop. It escalates, not because God delights in escalation but because the purpose of the discipline has not been accomplished and the condition that required it is still present. After a hard season, the question is not only is it over but did it produce the turning it was sent to produce.

Chapter 10 names the instrument of that stretched-out hand directly: Assyria, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hand for my fury. But Assyria did not experience itself as an instrument. By the strength of my hand I have done it, the king boasted, treating the kingdoms he had toppled as evidence of his own greatness.

God's response is one of the sharpest images in the book: shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? Assyria's role as judgment was real. Assyria's pride in that role was its own offense, and would itself be judged.

**The application cuts against the grain:** being used by God for a real purpose does not exempt you from accountability for what your own heart does with the using. The axe accomplishes real work. It does not get credit for the hand that swings it.

Then chapter 11, and the image this whole arc has been moving toward: a shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

A stump. Not a tree, not even a sapling. The line of David, by every visible measure, reduced to exactly this: cut down, finished, the kind of thing you walk past without expecting anything from again. And from that stump, a shoot. The Spirit of the Lord resting on him, wisdom and counsel, might and the fear of the Lord. He would not judge by what his eyes see, but with righteousness. And the world under his reign would be reordered at the level of its oldest enmities. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.

**The application is the pattern this entire arc has traced from the beginning, in its purest form:** hope does not arrive at the healthy tree. It arrives at the stump. Whatever in your life looks the most finished, the most cut down, is exactly the place this pattern says to watch.

Chapter 12 closes with a song, and the song does something worth noticing: it does not edit out the hard part to reach the praise.

You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me.

Though you were angry with me stays in the sentence. The comfort does not erase the anger. It sits beside it, in the same breath. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust, and will not be afraid.

**The application is the resolution of everything chapters 9 through 11 have built:** a song that can hold though you were angry with me alongside your anger turned away is more truthful than one that pretends the anger never happened. I will trust and will not be afraid is not the absence of a hard history. It is what faith sounds like when it has been through one and is still singing.

**Three things to carry:**

Expect God's promises to be shaped like your darkness, not like a general category. The names of chapter 9 addressed a specific fear in a specific place.

Ask whether the discipline has produced the turning it was meant to produce. The hand stretched out still describes what happens when it has not.

And watch the stump, not the healthy tree. The shoot came from the place that looked most finished.

Though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me.

Sing the whole sentence. Trust. Do not be afraid.

Reading the biblical prophets can be confusing. But there's so much to discover when we learn to read these books with attention and context.

06/14/2026

mike peter's class 6/14/26

06/14/2026

church service 6/14/26

06/13/2026

Struggling with the same sin over and over? 🔄 The resurrection changes everything about how we fight sin. When we truly grasp that Jesus is alive and has given us His Spirit, we can't keep living like we're powerless. Your battle with sin looks different when you're aligned with resurrection reality. 💪✨

06/13/2026

Reading: Isaiah 5-8; Psalm 11

https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/isaiah-1-39/

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**Here Am I, Send Me**
*A Devotional from Isaiah 5–8*

The vineyard had been given everything it needed to produce good grapes.

God described it in chapter 5 with the specificity of someone who had done the work personally: a fertile hill, cleared of stones, planted with choice vines, a watchtower built inside it, a wine vat hewn out in expectation of the harvest. Everything a vineyard required to produce had been provided. And it produced wild grapes.

The indictment that followed was delivered as a question: what more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? God was not asking because he did not know the answer. He was asking because the people needed to hear the question from his side of it, to feel the weight of a faithfulness that had been met with nothing.

Then the woes. Six of them, each one targeting a specific form of the wild grape the vineyard had produced. Those who joined house to house and field to field until no more room remained, accumulating at the expense of the community around them. Those who rose early to pursue strong drink and lingered late while wine inflamed them. Those who called evil good and good evil. Those who were wise in their own eyes. Those who acquitted the guilty for a bribe and deprived the innocent of his right.

**The application is structural before it is personal:** The vineyard was not judged for abandoning the forms of religion. It was judged for producing the specific fruit that a community organized around self rather than God will always produce. The woes are not abstract categories. They are the downstream consequences of a people who had received everything and oriented it toward themselves. Accumulation. Intoxication. Moral inversion. Self-sufficiency. Injustice. Each one a wild grape from the vine God had tended.

What is your vineyard producing? Not what it was planted to produce. What it is actually producing.

Then chapter 6, and the year that King Uzziah died.

The king who had been struck with leprosy for entering the temple uninvited was gone, and Isaiah went to the temple and saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphim called to one another: holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The foundations of the thresholds shook and the house was filled with smoke.

Isaiah's response was not theological analysis. It was collapse. Woe is me, for I am lost. I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. He had just been watching God describe the wild grapes of Israel's lips in chapter 5, and now his own lips were the first thing he named as he stood before the holiness of God.

A seraph flew to him with a burning coal taken from the altar and touched his mouth and said your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.

Then the voice of the Lord: whom shall I send and who will go for us?

And Isaiah: here am I. Send me.

**The application is the most important in these chapters:** The sending came after the seeing, after the collapse, after the coal. Isaiah did not volunteer from a position of confidence in his own adequacy. He volunteered from a position of having just had his lips touched by something from the altar. The commission was not offered to the man who had walked in qualified. It was offered to the man who had walked in and fallen apart and been reconstituted by the coal from the altar and was still standing there when the question was asked.

Here am I. Send me. Said by a man with newly touched lips in a room still full of smoke.

Chapter 7 sent Isaiah to Ahaz, the king who was terrified of the alliance between Aram and Israel threatening Judah. God told him through Isaiah: be careful, be quiet, do not fear and do not let your heart be faint. It is not going to happen. Then God offered Ahaz a sign, anything from the depths of Sheol to the height of heaven. Ahaz refused piously, saying he would not put the Lord to the test.

Isaiah named the refusal for what it was: it is not enough for you to weary men, must you weary my God also? The piety was performance. Ahaz had already decided to pursue his own alliance with Assyria rather than trust the word God was offering him. The refusal of the sign was the refusal of the dependence that the sign would have required.

God gave a sign anyway. A young woman shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Immanuel. God with us. The sign was not contingent on Ahaz's willingness to receive it. The promise moved forward without the king's cooperation.

Chapter 8 then gave Isaiah the instruction that ran counter to everything the political anxiety of Ahaz's court was producing. Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear and do not be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear and let him be your dread. He will become a sanctuary.

The fear of man and the fear of God are not compatible orientations. Ahaz feared Aram and Israel and reached for Assyria. Isaiah was told to fear God and let God be the sanctuary. The person who fears God correctly does not have room left for the consuming dread of the political and military arrangements around them.

**Three things to carry:**

Name what your vineyard is actually producing rather than what it was intended to produce. The indictment of chapter 5 was specific. The wild grapes had names. The question God asked was not rhetorical. What more could I have done? The honest answer to that question for most of us is nothing. The vineyard has been given everything. The question is what it is producing.

Let the coal from the altar touch your lips before you volunteer for the sending. Isaiah did not walk into the throne room ready to go. He walked in and fell apart and was reconstituted by the fire from the altar. The commission followed the reconstitution, not the confidence. Here am I does not require adequacy. It requires presence after the coal has done its work.

And let your fear be properly ordered before the crisis arrives. Ahaz feared the wrong things because his fear had never been properly anchored in the holiness of God. The person who fears God correctly is not fearless. They are differently afraid, dread oriented toward the one who is actually worthy of it rather than distributed across every threatening political arrangement in the room.

The coal is from the altar. The sanctuary is the Lord himself.

Here am I.

Send me.

What is the book of Isaiah about in the Bible? Watch as we explain its major themes and gain a deeper understanding of its place in the biblical story.

06/12/2026

Reality doesn't change based on our beliefs! 💯 Just like Saul's opposition to Jesus didn't change the truth of the resurrection, our doubts or resistance can't alter God's reality. The truth stands firm regardless of our acceptance.

06/12/2026

Reading: Isaiah 1-4; Psalm 10

https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/old-testament-tanak/

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**Come Now, Let Us Reason Together**
*A Devotional from Isaiah 1–4*

God was tired of their offerings.

The people of Judah had been bringing sacrifices to the temple, observing the new moons and the appointed feasts, spreading their hands in prayer, and God told them through Isaiah that he wanted none of it. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen.

The indictment was not against worship itself. It was against worship that had been emptied of the life that made it worship. The hands spread in prayer were the same hands covered in blood, not literal blood necessarily, but the blood of the poor who had been ignored and the widow who had been turned away and the fatherless who had received no justice. The incense was rising and the courts of the oppressed were going unattended and God said the combination was not worship. It was noise.

**The application lands before the famous invitation that follows it can be fully received:** You cannot separate the condition of your worship from the condition of your obedience. The Israelites had not abandoned the forms. They had kept the calendar, shown up to the feasts, made the offerings, spread their hands at the appointed times. What they had abandoned was the life that the forms were supposed to express. The ceremony without the corresponding life is not a lesser form of worship. God called it a burden he was weary of bearing.

What are you bringing to God with your hands that your hands are contradicting?

Then the invitation: come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

The invitation arrived directly after the indictment, without a transitional paragraph, without a waiting period, without a requirement that the people demonstrate sufficient remorse before the offer was extended. The same God who said he was hiding his eyes from their prayers and was weary of their offerings turned immediately and said come and reason with me, because the stain you are carrying does not have to stay.

**The application is the one that the entire Old Testament devotional arc has been building toward:** The scarlet sin and the white snow belong in the same sentence because God put them there. The indictment and the invitation are not in tension. They are the full picture. God named exactly what the problem was and then immediately opened the door through which the problem could be addressed. The gap between the scarlet and the white is not filled by sufficient religious performance. It is crossed by coming, which is to say by the decision to accept the invitation rather than to manage the distance from the outside.

Chapters 2 through 4 then build the eschatological vision that Isaiah would develop across the entire book. The mountain of the Lord established as the highest of mountains, the nations streaming to it, the word going out from Jerusalem, the beating of swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war anymore.

But before the mountain vision could be inhabited, everything that exalted itself had to be brought low. The day of the Lord was against all that was proud and lofty and lifted up. The cedars of Lebanon and the oaks of Bashan, the high mountains and the lofty hills, the tall towers and the fortified walls, all of it humbled. The haughtiness of man shall be humbled and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.

Chapter 4 then describes what remains after the humbling: the Branch of the Lord, beautiful and glorious, a remnant in Zion who had been recorded for life, sheltered by a cloud of smoke by day and a flaming fire by night. The presence that had traveled with Israel in the wilderness had not been cancelled. It had been promised again to the remnant who would survive the day when everything proud was brought to the ground.

The cloud and the fire were still coming. The invitation was still open. The mountain was still being prepared.

**Three things to carry:**

Examine whether your worship is being contradicted by your conduct in the rooms where the poor and the widow and the fatherless are standing. God was weary of the offerings not because he does not want worship but because the worship had been separated from the life that gives it substance. The form without the life is a burden, not an offering.

Accept the invitation before you feel adequately prepared to accept it. The come now, let us reason together was extended to people who had just been told their hands were covered in blood and their prayers were not being heard. The invitation does not wait for sufficient cleanup. It is extended into the mess.

And let what is proud in you be brought low before the day arrives that brings it low uninvited. The cedars and the oaks and the high towers were brought down in Isaiah's vision. The remnant that remained was the remnant that had already been recorded for life, already oriented toward the coming Branch. What in your life is still lifted up that needs to come down?

The sins are scarlet. The snow is already prepared.

Come now. Let us reason together.

What is the Old Testament about in the Bible? Watch as we explain its major themes and gain a deeper understanding of its place in the biblical story.

06/12/2026

🎉What an incredible week at VBS!🎉

Tonight marked our final night of Vacation Bible School at the Ashland City Church of Christ, and we couldn’t be more thankful for what God has done this week!🌟

Our building has been filled each night with joyful laughter, eager hearts, and a shared excitement to learn more about Jesus. From exploring the Names of Jesus to singing, crafts, snacks and time together, it has truly been a special and meaningful experience for everyone involved.⛪️

👏This week would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication of so many. A heartfelt thank you to our amazing teachers, helpers, and volunteers who gave their time and energy so faithfully. Thank you as well to the families who brought their children and made this week such a success—we are so grateful for you!🙌

We celebrate all that the children have learned, the seeds that have been planted, and the memories that have been made. God has truly blessed this effort, and we are so thankful for a wonderful VBS week together.

✨We warmly invite everyone to join us for worship at 9:30 a.m. this Sunday, with Bible class following, as we continue to grow together at the Ashland City Church of Christ.⛪️