Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my forty first episode. Tonight I want us to take a look at Isaiah chapter two. But before we get into any of that, I want to tell you all about something that I’ve been thinking about lately. It’s called dialogical teaching. The idea is that two instructors sit and have a conversation with each other with the aim of teaching an audience who is observing. Dialogical teaching has been studied by Cambridge University, University of California, BSU, Concordia, and many others. The research indicates that dialogical teaching provides an improved student learning experience and a heightened ability to take in and retain information about complex ideas. I believe this to be true.
I’ve tried to focus my understanding into three major reasons. Number one is that talking is the highest form of thinking. This is why communication is so effective at solving problems in interpersonal relationships. It’s also why psychotherapists encourage their patients to talk about their thoughts and feelings. The guided conversation helps the patient sort out their thoughts and gain a better purchase on reality. The second reason dialogical teaching is superior is because of the tension between the known and unknown. There are two hemispheres in your brain. The left hemisphere is responsible for things like logic, structure, mathematics, and science. The right hemisphere is responsible for things like creative expression and the arts. You can think of the left side as being involved in the known and the right side as being involved in the unknown. During a lecture, there is little to no element of the unknown. The speaker usually has prepared a lesson ahead of time and spends nearly all of the lecture going through what he or she has prepared. During a dialogue, there is both the elements of the known and unknown. This is because each participant in the dialogue comes to the table with a bank of information, which would be the known, but each participant does not know what the other is going to say in response to them. This would be the unknown. This tension between the known and unknown produces a situation that is riveting for an audience to watch and actually causes both hemispheres of their brains to activate simultaneously. This effect takes place whether the audience is verbally participating in the dialogue or simply observing it. This type of brain activity is the same activity you can see in someone who is experiencing a profound sense of meaning. The tension between the known and the unknown is why so many people love movies but hate spoilers. The third reason dialogical teaching is superior is that abstractions are easiest to remember as stories or dialogues. This is why we can remember complex information when it comes to something like gossip, but why we can’t retain information as well by listening to a lecture.
So that’s the secular rundown of why I think dialogical teaching is better than lecturing. Now I’d like you to consider these biblical points. In Matthew 18:20 Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered in my Name, I am there among them.” God is omnipresent, which means everywhere at the same time. So why would Jesus make a point to say something like this? I think it’s because when a group of people sit down to have an honest conversation in a good faith effort to get closer to the truth, that conversation will be guided by the Holy Spirit and God will reveal Himself. Also in Mark 6:7 we see that Jesus sends out his disciples in pairs, not alone. Often, the disciples would preach in pairs. If lecturing was optimal, Jesus would have sent them out alone. In Revelation 11 we see that there are two witnesses preaching the gospel. Is that just a coincidence? I don’t think so.
Finally, consider this: every totalitarian state ever has had to deploy some form of speech censorship. All of them, without exception. And isn’t interesting that we are made in the image of God and one of the few things human beings can do that no other species on earth can do is discuss ideas with language.
So that’s what I have on dialogical teaching. I will update you further as I continue to experiment and observe the results. Now let’s take a look at Isaiah chapter two. I want you to keep three questions in your mind as we go through this:
- Why is walking with God a better teacher than experience?
- How do we control pride?
- Why is understanding the world different from trusting it?
I’m going to read the chapter in its entirety and then we will break it down. Please enjoy.
Isaiah 2
The Lord’s Future Reign
2 This is a vision that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem:
2 In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all—the most important place on earth. It will be raised above the other hills, and people from all over the world will stream there to worship. 3 People from many nations will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob’s God. There he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” For the Lord’s teaching will go out from Zion; his word will go out from Jerusalem. 4 The Lord will mediate between nations and will settle international disputes. They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore.
A Warning of Judgment
5 Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the Lord! 6 For the Lord has rejected his people, the descendants of Jacob, because they have filled their land with practices from the East and with sorcerers, as the Philistines do. They have made alliances with pagans. 7 Israel is full of silver and gold; there is no end to its treasures. Their land is full of warhorses; there is no end to its chariots. 8 Their land is full of idols; the people worship things they have made with their own hands. 9 So now they will be humbled, and all will be brought low—do not forgive them. 10 Crawl into caves in the rocks. Hide in the dust from the terror of the Lord and the glory of his majesty. 11 Human pride will be brought down, and human arrogance will be humbled. Only the Lord will be exalted on that day of judgment.
12 For the Lord of Heaven’s Armies has a day of reckoning. He will punish the proud and mighty and bring down everything that is exalted. 13 He will cut down the tall cedars of Lebanon and all the mighty oaks of Bashan. 14 He will level all the high mountains and all the lofty hills. 15 He will break down every high tower and every fortified wall. 16 He will destroy all the great trading ships[a] and every magnificent vessel. 17 Human pride will be humbled, and human arrogance will be brought down. Only the Lord will be exalted on that day of judgment.
18 Idols will completely disappear. 19 When the Lord rises to shake the earth, his enemies will crawl into holes in the ground. They will hide in caves in the rocks from the terror of the Lord and the glory of his majesty. 20 On that day of judgment they will abandon the gold and silver idols they made for themselves to worship. They will leave their gods to the rodents and bats, 21 while they crawl away into caverns and hide among the jagged rocks in the cliffs. They will try to escape the terror of the Lord and the glory of his majesty as he rises to shake the earth. 22 Don’t put your trust in mere humans. They are as frail as breath. What good are they?
First let’s take a look at verses 2-5. The mountain of the Lord’s house that is described here is referring to Mount Moriah where the Temple was built. The Temple was highly visible to all people in Jerusalem. In the last days, it will be God’s presence and influence that will attract the nations to this location. It’s interesting that we already see human beings behaving in this way. For example, when Osama Bin Laden was killed the military had to bury him at sea. This was because they wanted to bury him within 24 hours so as to respect Islamic tradition. But they couldn’t select a location on land because his grave site would become sacred ground for other Jihadists and sympathizers. Bin Laden’s martyrdom would turn his burial location into a rallying spot for other terrorists. So the military buried him where no one would find him – in the sea.
Next I want you to notice the prophecy about the New Jerusalem. This scene is also described in Revelation 21. This is a time of peace where everyone will be taught God’s laws and obey them. Jesus will bring peace to His creation, once and for all.
Let’s take a look at the first question. Why is walking with God a better teacher than experience? The answer is because experience needs to be interpreted. Every one of us has an interpretive structure that mediates between us and the facts of experience. For example, If I own a red car, then when I see a red car it has a certain element of meaning to me because it’s the same color as my car. When you buy a car and then you start seeing that same model car everywhere else, that’s because your interpretive structure has changed and you experience reality differently. This effect is most obvious in people who have PTSD. Let’s say I was attacked and beaten nearly to death by a group of people who drove up and got out of a red car. I’m going to have a totally different experience when seeing a red car than someone who doesn’t have PTSD. The interesting thing is, it is often times experience itself that can cause these bad distortions to your interpretive structure. Walking with God is a better teacher than experience because if biblical values are what shape your interpretive structure, I would argue that is the only way you can get a true reading on reality.
Now let’s look at verse six. Here we see the people following the practices of the Assyrian Empire. During the more sinful periods of Israel’s history, the people worshiped pagan gods like Dagon, Ashtoreth, and Baal-zebub – they even gave them Hebrew names. These pagan religions often involved human sacrifice, especially child sacrifice. In verses eight and nine we see discussion of idol worship. Often, people think that idol worship has to be a graven image or a statue – but it can be anything that you put in place of God: things like cars, homes, money, and even other people. The “day of reckoning” mentioned in verse twelve is Judgment Day. We want to make sure our relationship with God is right on this day. We do not want to be proud or exalted on this day. Verses fifteen through seventeen: Here we see high towers and man made defenses. The principle in these verses is the same as that in The Tower of Babel story found in Genesis. The Tower of Babel story teaches us that our attempts at utopianism, or constructing a perfect world, can only lead to totalitarianism. The original sin is pride. Pride is what fuels the work of utopianism. It’s the idea that we will be the first generation to be perfect even when so many other generations tried and failed.
This leads to our second question. How do we control pride? I want to tell you here that humility is not the same thing as self deprecation. True humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less often. This means doing acts of kindness that no one will ever notice. It means doing your best at thankless work. It means loving your enemies. It means thanking God for your salvation during times of suffering. Virtue signaling and “humblebragging” are both variations on the sin of pride. Being a part of a raft of good deeds and making sure everyone around you knows about how good you are is not humility. If your motive is self gain, then whatever you’re doing is not being done out of humility. Make love your motive, and you will be humble in your thinking and behaviors.
Verse nineteen: Here we see the fear that people who stand in opposition to God will experience on Judgment Day. The Bible discusses two types of fear. People who trust in Christ do not have to feel this type of fear. Our fear is a respect or reverence for God (it’s like the “I’ll tell Dad” type of fear). Verse twenty two: Human beings are mostly ignorant, biased, and severely limited. We are given explicit instruction not to trust in mere humanity or in the worldly domains. Many Christians interpret this idea as needing to remove themselves from the world – this causes a huge disconnect. And it brings us to our third question. Why is understanding the world different from trusting it?
As Christians, we live in a society that is becoming more secular each year and the reality is that the universities and the scientific disciplines are acting as the guiding light for our ethics. This is part of what has given rise to the horrible problem of postmodernism and political correctness. This will lead to censorship and persecution if we don’t engage with the problem and try to solve it. I knew a pastoral student who said that Scripture does not command him to do weddings and facilitate marriage, so why should he bother? Here’s why: if you distort the biblical model of the family then you will destroy it. If you destroy the family, then you can bring down the nation. If the informed faithful are not the ones who are teaching and facilitating marriage, then who is going to? As Christians, we may not be responsible for the advent of secularism, but the fact is we are in that situation now and so we have an obligation to react to it properly. This means becoming literate in the disciplines and showing people how God’s Word reflects the truth that is sporadically distributed among such disciplines. The worst thing that the church can do during this generation is give up hope that we can influence the West and correct the course of history. We may be the people who determine whether this civilization can be preserved. Every Christian has a moral responsibility to step up to that challenge.
If you find this content valuable, feel free to share it and to use it in your own studies. If you’d like to support this podcast, you can do so at www.patreon.com/michaelhbaun. There is a link in the description. Your generosity goes a long way to promoting the growth of this enterprise and the cause of free speech. Thank you all for joining me this evening, and I will see you in the next episode.
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