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Category: Isaiah (Page 1 of 12)

Micah 6: Priorities

November 5, 2025 / / 0 Comments

“He has showed you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” ~Micah 6:8

God has announced to Israel that they have broken the covenant, that he is going to punish them because they have been disloyal to him, and they immediately figure it must have something to do with their corporate worship. What do I sacrifice to make God happy? How do we do church right? How do we need to worship correctly? What sacrifices do I bring, and how much?

And our God says, No! It’s not about the sacrifices. It’s never been about the sacrifices. The very heart of the covenant has always been you loving other people and treating other people the same way I’ve loved and treated you. Everybody.

See, God’s covenant is a relational covenant. He is in relationship with us. And his covenant relationship with us lays a holy claim on all our relationships. The relationship between you and your spouse. The relationship between you and your children. You and your brothers and sisters in your church. The relationship between you and your boss, you and your co-workers, you and your teachers and classmates, Your relationship with your neighbor on food stamps. Your relationship with your enemies. With your customers. With the lady in front of you at the store. Your relationship with the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant at the wall. All these people. Every single relationship. Everyone in your community. How do you treat them? What do you think about them? What do you say about them? What do you do for them?

Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

It doesn’t matter what happens in the temple on Saturday or at church on Sunday if your life with your neighbors is out of whack the other six days of the week. God’s people know this. We’ve always known it.

“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice.” ~1 Samuel 15:22

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.” ~Hosea 6:6

“Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me!… I cannot bear your evil assemblies!… When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen…. Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” ~Isaiah 1:11-17

It’s very similar to what our Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount. If you’re offering your gift at the altar and remember you’re crossways with somebody, if you’re not acting with love or mercy or justice with somebody, get out of the temple! And don’t come back until you’ve made things right!

The expert in the Law told Jesus that to love God and love neighbor “is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:33-34). Jesus told him that his statement was correct and that he was “not far from the Kingdom of God.”

You know, it’s dangerous for Jesus to insist that loving your neighbor is more important than what happens in church services, but that’s what he always says all the time.

“You hypocrites! You give a tenth of all your spices–mint, dill, and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law–justice, mercy, and faithfulness (Jesus is quoting Micah 6)… You strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel!” ~Matthew 23:23-24

You can do worship exactly right–whatever “right” means to you or your friends or your group. You can close your eyes during every prayer, keep your hands in your lap while you sing ancient hymns, look up every Scripture during the sermon, and read Matthew 27 silently to yourself during communion. It doesn’t matter if you lied to your boss Friday and you plan on lying to him again tomorrow.

You can clap and raise your hands to contemporary praise songs and kneel down on the floor during every prayer and read responsive psalms ’til the cows come home and recite the Apostles’ Creed. But it’s not doing you or God any good if you’re ignoring the poor or cheating your customers or posting hateful speech online.

Priorities. Knowing how to pay attention to what really counts versus fooling around with insignificant issues. We don’t want to major in the minors. Jesus calls that neglecting the more important matters. The weightier matters. The heavy stuff.

If the specifics of our corporate worship are not the number one concern of God, why is it sometimes our number one priority? Have we misunderstood what pleases God? Or are we really just concerned with what pleases us?

Why are God’s people in Micah so willing to do the religious stuff, but not the heavy stuff that God cares the most about?

Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

Peace,
Allan

GCR’s Theophanies

September 24, 2024 / / 2 Comments

In Acts 4, the early Church is facing cultural opposition and political oppression in Jerusalem. Peter and John have been jailed, interrogated, and ordered to cease speaking and teaching about the resurrected Jesus. So they go “back to their own people,” they gather with the Church, and they pray for God to give them even more boldness to continue speaking about Jesus and they ask God to stretch out his hand to heal and perform even more miracles and wonders to glorify Jesus.

Our God responds to the prayer immediately by shaking the building and filling them all with Holy Spirit courage.

It’s called a theophany. it’s a visible appearance of God. God revealing his presence in a real, physical way you can see or feel.

God did this for Moses at the burning bush. The fire and the smoke got Moses’ attention and our Lord told him, “I am with you.” God said, “I will be with you,” and he gave Moses the boldness he needed to speak to Pharaoh.

God revealed himself this way to his people on Mount Sinai. There’s thunder and lightning, smoke and fire and noise, and the whole mountain is shaking. “I am with you,” God says. “You are my people and I am your God.” His presence gives them the increased courage and faith they need to obey the commands he gives them on the mountain.

Isaiah experiences the same thing. He goes into the Temple and sees our holy God on his eternal throne. There is smoke and noise and the whole Temple begins to shake. God asks, “Who will go for us?” And Isaiah goes from “Woe is me; I am ruined,” to “Here I am! Send me!”

Go and tell the people. I am with you. Go and speak. I’m right here. Go and live. I am with you. Go and proclaim.

It happens to the first Church on the Day of Pentecost. Those 120 disciples of Jesus praying in the upper room are blown away by the noise, the wind, and the fire. God is here with us! All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, Scripture says, both the men and the women, and they began to speak.

I suggest to you that these kinds of things are still happening today if we’ll pay attention and notice. Our spiritual God is still making himself known in physical ways in order to assure us of his presence and fill us with Holy Spirit boldness. We get these theophanies here at Golf Course Road all the time.

In the past 22 months since we launched our vision of transformation and mission–just a little less than two years ago–we’ve had 174 people place membership at GCR. That’s 174 men, women, and children who are jumping in with our church family. And we don’t know how they’re getting here or why they’re coming. With a lot of our new members, there’s no real connection, no personal invitation, or particular event. They’re just showing up and forming relationships and embracing the mission and becoming important parts of what God is doing in us and through us here. It’s a physical reminder that our God is the one who gathers his people and brings them together for his holy purposes. We’re seeing it here. It’s real.

In that same time frame, in a little less than two years, we’ve had 61 baptisms here at GCR. That reminds us that, yes, God is still saving people. God is still at work in people’s lives. God is still rescuing people and snatching souls from hell! We’re seeing it all the time.

Last May, there were about 30 kids at Emerson Elementary who had lunch debt in the school cafeteria  and were about to be cut off. They were going to be served inferior lunches in special bags for the last month of the school year. It would mark these students as different. It would make them stick out. So we paid off their debt. We didn’t ask any questions, we didn’t ask anybody to fill out a form. Did you know you were in debt? How much debt do you owe? Are you trying to pay off the debt? Would you meet us halfway with your debt? No! We didn’t do any of that, we just paid it all off. Just like Jesus. Just like our God in Christ who forgives our debt and pays off our sin and rescues us from bondage. These students and their parents got a physical, tangible, living parable or proof of God’s grace that sets us free.

Those one hundred Mission Agape boxes we provide every Thanksgiving. Our people buy the food and pack the boxes, and we distribute them to families in need in Midland County. That’s physical proof that our God is still providing what people need through our community of faith.

The “4 Midland” worship services with First Methodist, First Presbyterian, and First Baptist. There are always 800-1,000 of us in each other’s buildings, singing with our combined choirs, praying together in our different traditions, loving and accepting one another in the name of Jesus, putting aside our denominational differences to unite for the sake of our city.

That takes Holy Spirit courage! That’s Holy Spirit community! That’s proof that our God is determined to bring all things and all people together in Christ, and he’s doing it in us and through us at GCR! Yes, our God is still stretching out his hand to heal, he is still performing miracles and wonders through the name of his holy servant Jesus! And we’re experiencing it here all the time!

Our spiritual God is constantly making himself known to us in physical ways. We know our God lives inside us and we know his Son is our Lord. So we are not defined by the times. The government does not control how we live our lives. Technology does not define our existence. Postmodernism does not determine how we think. News and entertainment does not account for who we are. We must break the faithless and ignorant habit of letting the journalists tell us what’s doing on. We need to at least give the Holy Spirit equal time!

Peace,

Allan

Good to Remember

September 23, 2024 / / 0 Comments

It is good for God’s people to be together on Sundays. It is good for us to be reminded. To remember together. To affirm together as one people that, yes, this world is being saved. This whole world is being redeemed and restored. Everything that’s broken is being fixed and everything’s that’s gone wrong is being made right.

Not by politicians or platforms or parties. Not by power or force or money or threat. This world is not being saved by democracy or elections or the media or your favorite website.

Salvation is being won by God’s love and mercy grace. Reconciliation is happening through forgiveness and service and sacrifice. Our salvation and the salvation of the entire planet belongs only to our God through our risen and coming Lord Jesus!

“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid.
The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.
Give thanks to the Lord; call on his name!
Make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted!
Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things!
Let this be known to all the world!
Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion!
For great is the Holy One of Israel among us!”
~Isaiah 12

It’s good to be reminded.

Peace,

Allan

Preaching is Faith

July 24, 2024 / / 0 Comments

On the surface, it doesn’t make sense. Preaching? In the ears of the unbelieving world, preaching is silly, a trivial exercise in regurgitating verses from an ancient book or pronouncing religious doctrines and practices for a group of willing listeners. But I believe preaching is a bold act of faith.

“God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.” ~ 1 Corinthians 1:21

If I didn’t believe God was doing something with these human words I proclaim every Sunday, I wouldn’t do it. Every week, I am counting on our God to put his Word right into the heart and soul of the hearer. Preaching is God’s deal, not mine. I am diligently studying, I am praying and reading and writing and practicing as faithfully as I can. But this is God’s work. I open my mouth in faith, believing that God’s Holy Spirit is directly communicating his Word to the listeners in ways I can’t understand. Through preaching, our God is doing what he wants and accomplishing what is needed. I’m honored to be a conduit, I’m privileged by God to be his instrument. But these are God’s words and God is the one who makes things happen in preaching. All preachers have to believe that or they wouldn’t preach.

It’s also an act of faith for the hearer. The disciple has to believe that God is speaking to him/her through this fallen, broken, flawed, sinful preacher. The church ordains the preacher as an act of faith, asking God to and believing that God will speak to us through the preacher. It’s not Allan, Steve, Ruth, or Darrin speaking; this is God’s will and God’s Word, God’s correction and God’s encouragement, God’s wisdom and God’s character being placed into my heart and soul by God’s Spirit. If we didn’t believe that, why would any of us listen?

“My Word that goes out from my mouth will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” ~ Isaiah 55:11

Peace,

Allan

Everything New!

January 12, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The five most exciting words in all of Scripture are “I am making everything new!” I think the Lord’s words in Revelation 21 and Isaiah 43 are electric with excitement. These five words just crackle with potential and promise. They explode with hope and expectation and possibilities. “I am making everything new!”

We are moving from an old year into a new one. We are also moving toward God’s glorious forever where everything we know is made new. Individually, each of us is always moving somewhere, to something. So let’s be intentional about it. Let’s pay attention to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At GCR this Sunday, we are beginning a new five-weeks sermon series on the story of Naomi and Ruth. The whole story is about moving: from Moab to Israel, from bitter to full, from three funerals to a wedding and a new child, from famine to harvest, from no future to complete redemption. The story is full of ordinary, mundane matters such as family and work, cities and laws, life and death. So much of this story is easily relatable to all of us today. And we see God’s gracious hand at work in the middle of it all to bless his people and bring salvation to the world.

So, yes, the whole stage and front of the GCR Worship Center is filled with moving boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape, and dollies. We are really focusing on the idea of “moving.” We want to embrace and embody the concept of “moving” toward a wonderful place with our Lord and with one another in his will.

I know we just moved into our newly remodeled room. I know. Don’t worry, we are not planning to move out. But, by our God’s amazing grace, we are wanting to “move” into his “everything new.”

Peace,

Allan

Light from Somewhere Else

December 15, 2023 / / 1 Comment

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”
~ Isaiah 9:2

This is a very well known Christmas text. It’s a famous text that speaks to the coming of the Christ. And it describes the conditions the Christ is coming into as darkness. People walking in darkness. People living in the land of darkness. And we read this a lot at Christmas, but we don’t ever read the verses right before it. The four verses right before it tell us why the world is so plunged in darkness.

“When people tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law! And to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this Word, they have no light of dawn! Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. They will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.” ~Isaiah 8:19-22

People know they need help, but they’re looking for it in all the wrong places. They’re looking to the earth, they’re looking to themselves for wisdom and salvation. They’re looking to superstitions, they’re looking to their king, they’re looking to the culture — they’re looking to themselves.

Yes, we’re living in darkness. Yes, things are really messed up. But we can fix it ourselves. Yes, there’s war and violence and injustice and racism. But if we’ll all just love each other, we can fix it. Yes, there’s poverty and hunger and greed and lust. But if we’ll all just give to the right organizations, we can change it. Yes, there’s broken lives and broken hearts and broken relationships; there’s twisted bodies and warped minds and institutional vileness all around us. But if we’ll just vote for the right people, if we’ll just pass the right laws, if we’ll just use the right technology, we can overcome it.

The message from the Hallmark movies, the holiday music, the Coke commercials, the ad agencies, the billboards, and the Facebook posts is that we have it within us. The love and goodwill that exists inside each of us is enough to make the world a place of unity and peace. In other words, we have the light inside us. And if we just work together, we can eradicate the darkness. If we’ll all come together, we can overcome poverty and injustice, violence and evil — sin. With what’s inside us, we can build a world of love, joy, and peace.

Really? Can we?

We can’t save ourselves. Maybe you’ve noticed. We’ve been trying for centuries. We are completely unable to save ourselves. In fact, believing that we can save ourselves — that education or party politics or hard work or some system or ideology  can save us — that’s only led to more darkness!

See, the Christmas message gives us a very realistic way of looking at life. At its core, Christmas is very unsentimental. It’s not mushy or fantasy. Christmas is not, “Cheer up! If we all pull together, we can make the world a better place!” Christmas is not optimistic thinking like, “We can fix the whole world if we try really hard.”

The heart of Christmas is this: things are really terrible and we cannot heal or save ourselves. Things really are this dark. Everywhere. Nevertheless, there is great hope. On those living in deep darkness, a light has dawned!

It’s not, “A great light has sprung up from the world!” It’s not, “The people have finally produced the light!” It’s, “ON the people a light has dawned!” It’s, “ON the world a light has come!” The light has come from outside us. It had to. The hope comes from outside the world. There was never any other way. And that salvation light is Christ Jesus. That light is the promised Messiah, the holy Son of God!

“In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it… The true light that gives light to every person was coming into the world.” ~John 1:5-9

The true light was coming. The eternal light that gives life to all people has come. The brightest light that shines in the darkness and conquers the darkness, the light from above, the light from outside us has come!

How? When?

“To us a child is born. To us a Son is given.”

Peace,

Allan

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