Insights from Isaiah: Part 2

1 Comment / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

Insights from Isaiah Part 2

In my last article, I mentioned that I had asked an AI to identify how Isaiah portrays the nature of God, and that in this current article, I would reveal what it had to say – here it is:

Perplexity’s understanding of God’s nature and character

“The prophet Isaiah reveals God’s character and nature through deeply personal and relational qualities that showcase His heart toward humanity. Rather than merely describing divine functions, Isaiah presents God as possessing profound emotional and relational characteristics that define His very essence.

God’s Tender-Heartedness and Compassion

“Isaiah presents God as fundamentally tender-hearted and compassionate, particularly evident in the second half of the book. The opening of chapter 40, “Comfort, comfort my people,” establishes God’s tender nature as He speaks gently to Jerusalem. This tenderness is beautifully illustrated in Isaiah 40:11, where God is portrayed as a shepherd who “gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those who have young“. This image reveals God’s complete harmony with those He carries, like a parent whose heartbeat calms a restless child.

God’s compassion is rooted in His covenant bond with His people. In Isaiah 63, multiple fatherly characteristics emerge – compassion and kindness, love and mercy, lifting up and carrying, providing rest and guidance, and tenderness. The text reveals that God’s heart yearns for His people, declaring, “Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore, my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him”.

Fatherly Love and Devotion

“Isaiah reveals God’s character as a devoted Father who maintains unwavering love despite His children’s rebellion. In Isaiah 63:16, the people cry out “But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name” This passage demonstrates that even when earthly patriarchs might abandon their descendants due to sin, God’s fatherly love remains constant.

God’s fatherly character includes delight in His children. He genuinely likes His son, delights in him, remembers him, and has great empathy for him. This paternal love is not merely dutiful but filled with genuine affection and pleasure in His people. The Father’s heart is revealed as one that sacrifices to redeem His children, buying them back like any good father would sacrifice his means to rescue his child.

Loving Correction and Discipline

“Isaiah presents God’s character as including loving correction that flows from His fatherly heart. In the opening chapters, God calls heaven and earth as witnesses, saying “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me“. This reveals the pain of a loving parent whose children have turned away despite His nurturing care.

God’s discipline is characterised by patient persistence. Even when His people rebel and provoke His anger, He continues to call them back to relationship. His correction reveals both their true heart motives and His own heart, showing how He feels about their sin while maintaining His love for them. This discipline is described as coming from “inexpressible love” and “love of complacency and delight” that remains “invariable and unchangeable” even under affliction.

Faithful Remembrance and Loyalty

“God’s character is marked by faithful remembrance of His people. Even when they forget Him, He declares through Isaiah 49:15-16: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you. Look, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands“. This reveals a God whose memory of His people is more reliable than the strongest human bonds.

His loyalty transcends human understanding. While earthly relationships may fail, God’s covenant faithfulness endures. His mercies are “renewed every morning,” demonstrating the consistency of His loving character. This faithful nature is evident in His promise to restore and redeem, even after judgment has fallen.

Gentle Guidance and Provision

“Isaiah reveals God’s character as marked by gentle guidance. He “gently leads those who have young,” showing special consideration for the vulnerable and those carrying a burden. His guidance is not harsh or demanding but accommodating to the weakest members of His flock.

God’s provision flows from His shepherd heart. He knows the needs of His people intimately and provides accordingly. His care extends beyond mere physical needs to emotional and spiritual comfort, speaking “tenderly to Jerusalem” in her time of distress.

The Antithesis: Divine Grief and Righteous Anger

“Isaiah also reveals the painful emotions God experiences when His character is rejected. He experiences genuine grief when His children rebel against Him. This is not the anger of a tyrant but the heartbreak of a loving Father whose children have chosen destructive paths.

God’s righteous indignation emerges when His people persist in rebellion despite His patient love. In Isaiah 1, He expresses frustration that even animals know their master while His people “do not know” and “do not consider”. This anger is not vindictive but flows from His love being spurned and His children harming themselves through their choices.

The Integration of Justice and Mercy

“Isaiah’s genius lies in showing how God’s tender mercy and unwavering justice are not contradictory but complementary aspects of His character. His justice flows from His love – He cannot allow His children to destroy themselves through sin. His mercy provides the way back through redemption and forgiveness.

The prophet reveals that God’s character encompasses both the pain of necessary discipline and the joy of restoration. He is simultaneously the God who must address sin and the God who provides comfort and healing. This integration is perfectly demonstrated in the suffering servant passages, where God’s justice and mercy meet in sacrificial love.

Through Isaiah’s revelation, we see a God whose character is fundamentally relational, emotional, and deeply invested in the wellbeing of His people. His nature is not distant or mechanical but warm, personal, and profoundly loving, even when that love requires difficult correction.”

Some observations

The way AI, in its current stage of development, works is that it searches its vast database and the Internet, and then logically deduces its answer from all that information. Its response consists mainly of a filtered summation of the consensus of its available data. That is very useful, but a major caution is that the AI shapes its response, to an extent, by the wording of the questions posed.

In my case, I qualified my enquiry with; “Instead of describing divine functions like ‘judge’ or attributes, like ‘holiness’ rather identify and expand on God’s character and nature in terms of qualities like tender-heartedness, loving, truthfulness, fatherly correction etc. and any antitheses of these you may identify”. So, if I had primed Perplexity with negative characteristics such as wrathful, vengeful, petty, disingenuous, devious, etc. then would I have got back something very different?

Well, guess what, I did just that, and here is what came back:

‘Isaiah’s portrait of God reveals a complex, emotionally rich character rather than a distant or abstract deity. In chapters 1–39, God is depicted as wrathful and passionate, expressing intense anger against injustice and covenant betrayal. His vengeance is not petty or vindictive but is driven by a desire to restore justice and protect His people. God’s jealousy is protective, and His patience is evident—He is slow to anger but decisive when action is needed. Importantly, Isaiah never portrays God as petty, capricious, or disingenuous; His actions are always purposeful and rooted in justice.

In chapters 40–66, Isaiah shifts to reveal God’s tenderness and compassion. God is shown as deeply comforting, nurturing, and merciful, offering forgiveness and restoration to His people. He is faithful to His promises, reliable, and gentle, even likened to a nurturing mother. God’s mercy is profound, as seen in the figure of the suffering servant who bears the sins of others.

Throughout both sections, Isaiah emphasises that God is neither indifferent nor devious. He is emotionally invested in humanity, combining fierce commitment to justice with genuine compassion. God’s qualities—righteous anger, steadfast love, and unwavering honesty—are integrated, not contradictory. Isaiah’s God is not small-minded or cruel but is intensely committed to both justice and redemption, offering a vision of divine character marked by both holy passion and boundless mercy.

My understanding of God’s nature and character, as portrayed by Isaiah the prophet, is very similar to what Perplexity produced in response to both my original query and its later qualification. God is:

Tender-hearted and compassionate
Devoted to his children
Loving in correction and discipline
Faithful and loyal
Gentle in guidance
Generous in provision
Experiences and expresses grief and righteous anger when he is rejected and rebelled against
Expresses intense anger/wrath against injustice and covenant betrayal

What stands out to me is that God is manifestly good and loving towards his children, and that this devotion moves him to anger and just correction towards the people or things that are not in the best interest of his children.

These are the qualities and characteristics that make God GOOD. We get confused when we separate divine anger, wrath, correction, retribution, and so on, from his overwhelmingly displayed love and kindness. Even when he punishes, God provides for forgiveness and restoration.

Now, where do we see the nature and character of the Holy Trinity on full display? Yes, of course, in the Lord Jesus Christ!

Last Word

I have written on this and similar subjects, and you can find them in on truthistheword.com. Here is one that amplifies this current post: https://truthistheword.com/god-is-good-all-the-time/

I have also taken a little more of your time than I usually do, because I think that the matter of God’s nature and character is probably the most profoundly important subjects imaginable. If God is not good then the bible lies in its declarations when it states that he is love and light. If his character is flawed then he is not God at all, but just an illusionary god of religion and human folly. If God is not good then salvation is a myth and there is nothing more to life than this life here and now. If God is not good then we have no basis for hope and true happiness. So, please settle this matter in your own minds and spirits once and for all… God is good all the time and in every way!

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Insights from Isaiah: Part 1 TruthTalks

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Dr Christopher Peppler describes the book of Isaiah as being “… a ‘place’ where I often ‘hear’ the Holy Spirit speaking to me.”

To find out why listen to the first part of this series by clicking on the play button below or click here to read the original post.

When you are in the mood to listen and watch the TruthTalks and sermons don’t forget that they are all here in this handy AudioVisual library.

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Insights from Isaiah: Part One

2 Comments / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

Insights from Isaiah Part 1

There are many books of the bible that I love, but two stand out as my favourites, one in the Old Testament and the other in the New Testament. The Gospel of John fascinates and inspires me, and the book of Isaiah, from my earliest Christian years, has been a ‘place’ where I often ‘hear’ the Holy Spirit speaking to me.

The book of Isaiah is a unique work in several ways. It has 66 chapters, as the bible has 66 books. What is more, it is divided into two sections. The first 39 books reflect the themes of the Old Testament, and the second 27 correspond to the New Testament.

These correlations are not just incidental or artificial. Since the days of the Church Fathers, and more clearly since the medieval period of the church, the first part of Isaiah has been called ‘The Book of the King’, and the second part ‘The Book of the Servant’. Most scholars of all ages have seen these titles as referring to Isaiah’s prophetic insights and prophecies concerning the coming King of Kings, and paradoxically, the coming of a suffering servant who would save Israel from her bondage.

The Thematic Correlations

The correlations go deeper in that the first part of the book focuses on national identity, covenant rebellion, and judgment. The second part of the book has a strong emphasis on hope, redemption, and salvation. The first verses of Chapter 40 read, “Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and that her sins are pardoned. Yes, the Lord has punished her in full for all her sins.” NLT

Unsurprisingly, it is impossible to pair each chapter in Isaiah to each chapter in the bible. However, the first books of both the Old and New Testaments do tie together in significant ways. For instance, both Genesis and Isaiah Chapter One begin with a form of cosmic courtroom scene. Then, Isaiah 1:2 invokes heaven and earth to witness Israel’s rebellion, echoing something of the great rebellion portrayed in Genesis. Then, Matthew 3:1-3 connects with Isaiah 40:3 with: ‘In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'”

There is also a connection between Isaiah 43:10-12 and John 20:30-31:

Isaiah – “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me, no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no saviour. I have revealed and saved and proclaimed.”

John – ‘Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.’

There is one last correlation I want to point out – it has to do with how the book of Isaiah and the last book of the bible (The book of Revelation) end. Isaiah concludes with “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the Lord,” so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord.’ The book of Revelation expands on this in Chapter 21.

The Shrine of the Book

During my third trip to Jerusalem, I visited a building on the Israel Museum campus called The Shrine of the Book. It was built in 1965 to house the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in the year of my birth, 1947. Its centrepiece is a replica of the Great Isaiah Scroll, dating back to about 150 years before Christ. The actual scroll, housed in the vault, is over a thousand years older than the next oldest complete Hebrew Bible manuscripts. Moreover, its text is nearly identical to the modern version of Isaiah, offering evidence for the accuracy of biblical transmission over the centuries.

The book of Isaiah is, in my opinion, the jewel of the Old Testament and is quoted or alluded to 85 times in the New Testament. From the Gospels to Revelation, Isaiah’s voice echoes through time and impacts us powerfully over 2,200 years after it was penned.

How this series will continue

I started by saying that Isaiah has been a source of personal inspiration, comfort and direction for me over the years. I know I am not alone, so I will not be focusing on the passages and verses that have become familiar and treasured for so many. Instead, I will pick up on lesser-known passages or familiar ones that contain insights that some may not have discovered.
An exercise for you
I have always found it more meaningful and exciting to discover things in scripture rather than have someone else point them out. So, I invite you to read through the book of Isaiah (or listen to an audio version if you prefer). This will be much more satisfying for you if, instead of reading passively, you form some questions beforehand and then look for the answers as you progress through the book. Here is a suggestion:

I asked Perplexity AI to identify how Isaiah portrays the nature and character of God. Here is how its response started: “The prophet Isaiah reveals God’s character and nature through deeply personal and relational qualities that showcase His heart toward humanity. Rather than merely describing divine functions, Isaiah presents God as possessing profound emotional and relational characteristics that define His very essence.” So, perhaps you too would like to learn something of God’s nature and character through the eyes of Isaiah the prophet. I will start the next post in this series by reproducing what Perplexity had to say.

Until we interact again in this blog, God be with you and bless you with insight into who he truly is.

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July 2025