Isaiah for Everyone Week 2

Isaiah for Everyone Week 2

Small Group Discussion Guide

Read Isaiah 6 (pp. 27-28) as a group

1) What do you think of when you hear the word “holiness”? What does the “holiness” (v. 3) of God mean in this passage? Why do we not use the word “holiness” in our everyday speech? What other words or concepts capture this idea?

2) When have you, like Isaiah, volunteered to do something and had no idea what you were getting yourself into? What was the result?

3) How would you feel if you received Isaiah’s call? How does God call people to particular missions? Does it look like this scene in Isaiah 6? Has God called you to a particular mission? If so, what?

4) Why does God threaten to stop the ears, eyes, and minds of the Israelites? Jesus quotes this passage in Mark 4:12. How does Jesus use these passages?

5) How do you interpret the “holy seed” (v. 13)? What is Isaiah referring to?

6) On pp. 30-31, Goldingay says, “It’s always the aim of a message of judgment that it should make it possible for God not to implement it, though that aim may fail, and then the judgment will indeed happen.” How does this make you feel about God’s judgments? Are you OK with the idea that God judges? What are some “messages of judgment” in our society?

Read Isaiah 7:1-17 (pp. 31-32) as a group

1) What does Isaiah ask King Ahaz to do? How does Ahaz respond? Who has the better argument?

2) When have you had to take Isaiah’s route toward solving a problem by hoping in God, rather than a more pragmatic approach? What was the result?

3) Read Goldingay’s first paragraph on p. 32. How do you think the Jewish lawyer would interpret verses 14-16? How do you interpret it? How do you think Isaiah and his earliest listeners understood these verses? Is there any common ground between the Jewish and Christian perspective of this passage?

4) Read Goldingay’s middle paragraph on p. 34. Are you the kind of person who wants “to believe but needs help” or the kind of person who doesn’t “want to believe and want(s) an excuse for avoiding doing so”?

Read Isaiah 2:2-5 (pp. 10-11) and 10:33-12:6 (pp. 49-51) as a group

1) If you have read these passages before, how have you interpreted them?

2) How do you understand “the end of time” (Isa 2:2)? Do you find Goldingay’s explanation (p. 13) of this phrase helpful or more befuddling?

3) What would it look like today to “beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks” (Isa 2:40)?

4) What did Isaiah mean in his vision of the predators and prey mixing together (Isa 11:4-6)? Has anything like this occurred in your life? Imagine these three verses were the headline on the nightly news. What would the story be?

Summing up

1) What do these chapters say about God?

2) What do they say about people?

3) What do they say about God’s relationship with people?