Cracking the Book of Isaiah
Overcoming intimidation; finding Jesus
In recent years, seemingly without intention, my heart began to beat with God’s promise to draw all nations to Himself. Increasingly, I found myself dreaming of the time when people from every tongue and tribe and people and nation would come to worship Him, and that dream became the subject of my prayers.
I wouldn’t call my prayer life robust by any means; it just seemed a disproportionate amount of time was directed toward this one thing: to see the glory of the LORD displayed in all the earth. As I would read the Scriptures or listen to a favorite teacher, verses promising that very thing would pop out at me. And I noticed that many were from the prophecy of Isaiah.
I had kept Isaiah at arm’s length for a long time. Even though I was familiar with many New Testament quotes from his prophecy — there are more than 200! — I wasn’t quite ready to dive into the whole. But somehow, the commentary I’d purchased years ago, The Prophecy of Isaiah by J. Alec Motyer, made its way from the shelf to my desk and sat there, challenging me. The size of the book itself is intimidating — 544 pages.
So I tried to ignore it; pushed it aside for another day. But the book won.
