Mt. Pleasant United Methodist Church

06/18/2026

A CHAPTER A DAY Thurs. June 18 – Read Isaiah 8. The story of Isaiah from the last chapter continues into this one. The child predicted who would be called Immanuel here is born to Isiah and an unknown prophetess and named Mahershalalhashbaz. (Aren’t you glad you didn’t get that name!) As you may know, all names have meanings. What does your name mean? The meaning here, unlike Immanuel’s in the last chapter, is not spelled out. But the Hebrew translation roughly is, “The spoil speeds, the prey hastens.” I would offer the nickname, “Time’s up.”
God says to Isaiah to carve it in legible letters so people could read it and even have it notarized. The reasoning is unclear but maybe it was to be set up in the front lawn to let the neighbors know a little more than just, “It’s a boy.” What words or signs do you have on display in or outside your dwelling? What are you saying to the world? Notice what others say as you walk about your neighborhood. What about your church signs? Do they say to all people “Welcome” or “Keep Out?”
Once again God notes that by the time this child can name his parents the dynasties of Damascus and Samaria will be carried off to Assyria. The illustration given is of their enemies being washed away in a flood from Assyria perhaps reaching back to the memory of the flood of Noah’s day. Back then through the flood a remnant of Noah and his family survived, and here the remnant of Judah and Jerusalem survive when Israel is washed away.
Isaiah is warned by God not to walk the path of people who walked in fear. Evidently conspiracy theories are not new, they were rampant even back then! Isaiah offers a double parable that Jesus will later repeat about a sanctuary or cornerstone being a stumbling block. God’s truth and those who stand on it will abide. Conspiracy theories and theorists will stumble and be broken. Isaiah calls on the faithful to wait for the Lord.
Then Isaiah ends this chapter by warning people not to consult ghosts or spirits for instructions on how to live in these in-between times while they are waiting on God. For me this speaks of needing a new way of thinking and living in a new situation rather than falling back on, “we’ve always done it this way before.” Today, to prepare for your new life ahead what new ways of thinking and living will be required for you to take your next leap of faith?

06/18/2026

06/17/2026

A CHAPTER A DAY Wed. June 17 – Read Isaiah 7. The chapter begins by skipping a king. We left off with Isaiah’s call the year Uzziah died and Jothan became king but here we are in the reign of his son King Ahaz. I know it can be confusing to think of who reigned when and who followed whom let alone how to pronounce some of the names. It gets more confusing here as not only is the king of Judah named but also the kings of Israel and Aram (the Arameans). At this time the issue is the king and people of Judah are worried that their two neighbors are going to gang up on them and defeat them in a territorial war. So, the Lord sends Isaiah to speak to the king.
Isaiah and his son go to meet the king and give God’s assurance that there is nothing to worry about for as it says in verse 7, “it shall not come to pass.” The futuristic prophecy is that Ephraim will be gone in sixty-five years. Some scholars think this may be a later addition after the fact. I just see it as odd. How would you feel if I told you not to worry because everything will be better in sixty-five years? Sixty-five minutes okay, five years okay, but sixty-five years?
The Lord asks Isaiah to ask Ahaz for a sign to affirm for him that God will do this. We do this when we put our signature on a contract or maybe simply shake hands on it. But Ahaz does not want to do this, and we hear his words quoted by Jesus when tempted in the desert. So, the Lord gives the sign, and we hear this one in the telling of the birth of Jesus each Christmas. But I do not read it here that way. I believe the sign was for the king in the king’s day not sixty-five years later or in the birth of Jesus six hundred and fifty years later. A pregnant woman gives birth and names the child and reminds the people Immanuel – ‘God is with us.” And by the time the child can eat solid food and knows right from wrong maybe in two or three years this current problem will be solved as the Lord brings on the king of Assyria to overrun those other countries and bring devastation in 722 BCE. (King Ahaz ruled from 735-715 BCE.)
What are your Immanuels’ – those signs of God being with us? Today, tell someone about what you are seeing and believing. What word of God might you share with others? Be a prophet sharing what you see and believe.

06/16/2026

A CHAPTER A DAY Tues. June 16 – Read Isaiah 6. Finally, after five chapters of prophecies, we hear the story of Isaiah’s call to be a prophet. It came the year King Uzziah died (740 BCE). The story takes place in the Temple in Jerusalem when one day while Isaiah was there, he had a vision of God sitting there with his robe filling the room. Angelic figures called seraphs (or seraphim, the Hebrew plural of seraph) were flying about and praising God while smoke filled the house of the Lord. Some scholars see this as an event that might have happened during a time of worship in the Temple when the priests and people would be praising God and burning sacrifices on the altar creating the smoke.
Isaiah offers a prayer of confession acknowledging his uncleansed lips that he has been using to prophesy to the people who are also unclean. Even though he sees himself as a doomed sinner, he sees God face to face. One of the seraphs brings a coal from the altar fire and with it touches Isaiah’s lips forgiving his sins and removing his guilt. Then he hears God calling for volunteers to be sent out and he replies, “Here I am, send me!” When, where and how do you experience God in times of worship? Have you ever heard God calling you maybe in a sermon or during an announcement of needing help for an upcoming ministry opportunity? Isaiah heard it and responded to it.
Then God told Isaiah where to go and what to say to the people. Nearly eight hundred years later, Jesus would share similar words and experiences of people listening to him and not fully understanding and looking but not really seeing what he was trying to reveal to them. Here there seems to be an explanation for that as Isaiah goes out to prophesy with God’s intention to cause the people not to see or hear, or maybe not yet. For Isaiah cries out, “How long, O Lord?” God does not provide a date, but a revelation of destruction and the people being taken away. (You should be aware that Isaiah is speaking these prophesies before the northern kingdom of Israel is sacked and the people taken away by the Assyrians in 687 BCE. Later chapters in this book, especially 40 and beyond, will speak of the return of the people of the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem returning from exile after their defeat by Babylon a hundred years later.)
The people who believed their nation was still blessed and powerful like in the days of kings David and Solomon, could not believe what Isaiah was saying about destruction and exile as prisoners of war. It happened in other places and to other people, but surely not to the people of God! So, Isaiah’s words fell on deaf ears. Yet even so God told him that even in the midst of the destruction a holy seed or shoot would rise up again from the trunk of the mighty tree that had fallen. Like him rising to respond to God after the smoke and burning coal touched his lips, the people of God, the remnant would rise from the ashes. Do you have a story of falling and rising? Is God trying to reveal such a story to you in this time and this place? I invite you to open your eyes and your ears to God.

06/15/2026

A CHAPTER A DAY Mon. June 15 – Read Isaiah 5. This chapter begins with a love song of sorts which also contains a parable. As we read it, we discover that Isaiah is not singing to a girlfriend or wife, but to his beloved God. I have always though that Jesus shows up in the gospels with a new way of talking as he tells parables. But as the gospels note the number of times Jesus quoted from Isaiah and his first sermon was after he read words from the scroll of Isaiah it now seems obvious that he picked up the speaking in parables from Isaiah as well. Here the parable is about God caring for Israel and Judah like a farmer taking care of a vineyard, anticipating that it would bear good fruit. But it does the opposite. It bears rotten grapes.
So, God tears down the walls and allows others to trample it down to an arid wasteland. Then he goes on to explain his parable that it is about God and it is God’s people who are rotten. God expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness but hears the cry of the needy. Then much like Jesus in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes that not only has the blessings on the poor and needy, but also woes to those who were oppressing the poor and needy. Here too God pours out those woes and sees how the mighty will fall. They will loose everything and be destroyed or exiled.
When God’s people do not bring forth the fruit of justice and righteousness for all people, God will. The haughty will be humbled and the lambs, kids, and calves will be fed by the ruins. This reminds me of what Jesus would preach about the first being last and the last being first. What does this parable say to you in this world of haves and have nots, of billionaires while billions of others live in poverty? What do you believe that God believes about our world today? Read again the woes in verses 20-23. What do they say to you?
Then Isaiah turns to the future and the consequences of those actions. Because those in power have rejected Gods instructions and word, and destruction comes upon land and the people. For Isaiah the Lord lashes out with anger and delivers punishment. I believe in God’s love and righteousness rather than the fear or anger of God. But I can see for the self-righteous how God’s righteousness and justice could feel like anger and punishment. Do you focus on the love of God or the fear of God?
Isaiah says this will happen by God calling a faraway foreign army to come at God’s call as the destroying force. What some saw as a great and glorious nation will become distressed darkness. Over the millennia many nations have known such invasions and destructions. Personally, you may have experienced similar dark times in your own life when things were out of your control and went from bad to worse. As you look to your future, the future of your country or the world, do you see brightness and a happy ending or do you see darkness. I happen to see both that things will get worse before they get better. I believe for those of us who will keep the faith there is a new heaven and a new earth as John foresees at the end of the book of Revelation. I don’t know if Isaiah sees it yet but that will change by chapter 40.

06/13/2026

A CHAPTER A DAY Sat. June 13 – Read Isaiah 4. This is an odd little chapter. It begins with a wrap up of the desperation from the last chapter. Then a new life begins. During your life, reflect on the times when one chapter ended and a new one began. It may not always be a clean break, as a bit of the remnants of the bad days drift into the new day. It reminds me of those ongoing television stories that begin by going back over a recap of the previous episode. Here we have seven desperate women who are disgraced perhaps simply because they are single in a culture that valued married women. They are not really looking for a husband to take care of them. They seem to be independent and able to take care of themselves. But following the devastating losses of soldiers and warriors in the war there might have been a shortage of available men perhaps leaving a ratio of one man to seven women.
Then Isaiah turns the page and sees a new age, after the war and destruction a single branch blooms beautifully and begins to produce pride and glory once again for the survivors. The remnant in Zion and Jerusalem will be called holy. As he writes of the Lord washing away the filth of the daughters of Zion, is he referring to the seven women at the beginning of the chapter whose disgrace was washed away? For me there is a significant difference as here it is the Lord who does this and there they were trying to save themselves. We do not need to do what God has already done for us. We do not need to work out our own salvation. We need to work out because of our salvation. What good work might you do today? Isaiah wrote a book. I wrote a commentary. What will you do?
There is a connection in verse 5 with an even older story. I think Isaiah is seeing something in the vision of the smoldering remnants of the city of Jerusalem that will be set on fire by the Babylonians. Not only will the remnants rise up from the ashes, but there is a glimpse here of a past glory as the smoke rises and covers the skies. Do you remember the Exodus story? There was a pillar of smoke by day and of fire by night. God was there in the midst of the people, and they would move forward as it moved. Isaiah sees the holiness of God still in Jerusalem even in the midst of its destruction, even in the worst of times. Without buildings, a Temple or mighty gates and walls, God will be the protection of the remnant of God’s people. Like the clouds of smoke that covered the sky God’s protection would now hover over them. Today, where do you see God? To whom might you point it out?