June 2

We all want hopeful good news. We can easily be swayed by what appears to be good news, but isn't. Too often, we only hear what we want to hear.

God's people, Israel, wanted good news. Problem was, the (real) news wasn't good, at least for the near term. For generations, they had individually and systemically rejected God. They had defiled their relationship with Him. They were being judged, by being deported, exiled to a strange land.

They had stopped listening to the source of hopeful good news.

Isaiah 30:9-11 says, "For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the LORD; who say to the seers, 'Do not see,' and to the prophets, 'Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.'"

Our North American churches include many people who only want positive news. They don't want to hear about sin, justice or hell. They don't necessarily want a relationship with God; instead, they're content to invent an "contractural understanding" with Him.

And when that fails, they're satisfied to reinvent God to their liking.

Many church goers like the idea of having God on their support team...as long as He doesn't require anything too stringent. So our culture is drunk on the false virtue of "You Be You" autonomy while telling God to get in line.

So from time to time, God introduces hardships into our lives. In these hard seasons, He wants us to repent, and to fix our eyes on Him as the hopeful good news.

Hardship is an effective tool in the hands of a teacher.

Isaiah, in the same chapter speaks for God in verses 20-21, saying, "And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way, walk in it,' when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left."

That's hopeful good news! But this same hopeful good news should result in something. Change. Redirection. In us.

Verse 22 says, "Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, 'Be gone.'"

Hopeful good news has no margin for false conceptions of God, no space for self-serving theologies, no guest room for our idols.

Jesus is the hopeful good news.

And in Him we are changed.

-Mike Rydman, Lead Pastor, Radiant Church | Juneau