Week 1: Isaiah Speaks Out

​ Isaiah 1:1-9
1:1   The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.   1:2   Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.  1:3   The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”   1:4   Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.   1:5   Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.   1:6   From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and raw wounds; they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.   1:7   Your country lies desolate; your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence foreigners devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners.   1:8   And the daughter of Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a lodge in a cucumber field, like a besieged city.   1:9   If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.



   As Isaiah opened with the words of a vision that you gave him Lord, I pray that you would be here in the words that your two servants are writing and that this project would bring glory and honor to you and your name alone.
   Reading this and then looking out at the world, it seems we are living in a day and age not much different, spiritually speaking, than the one Isaiah was called to speak against. The whole thrust of verse 4 sounds very much like the secular nation we are living in, with even some of our churches despising the Holy One of Israel. A far cry from what we were founded upon. “The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint.” With the removal of the morals God has given us with which to govern ourselves by we have become sick and faint.

   But He has “left us a few survivors”! Oh Lord, I pray that we would be of those and that you would add more before we bring judgment upon us as Sodom and Gomorrah brought it upon themselves. Help us to be a part of your true body and to be a light shining out as a city on a hill.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 20: The Only Safe Place

Isaiah 2:17-19   English Standard Version (ESV) 17  And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled,      and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low,      and the  Lord  alone will be exalted in that day. 18  And the idols shall utterly pass away. 19  And people shall enter the caves of the rocks      and the holes of the ground, from before the terror of the  Lord ,      and from the splendor of his majesty,      when he rises to terrify the earth.    With verse 17 we are seeing (with just a couple of words switched around), verse 11 again, which we took that single verse as a full post earlier. (See the entries for January 5th 2019). Why would Isaiah repeat himself so often? It is something that he is trying to drive home to any of the Israelites who will listen, and hence now to the modern world. He then moves on in 18 and 19 ...
Read more

Week 3: To Be Clean

Isaiah 1:16-17 English Standard Version (ESV) 16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. After such heavy words that went past admonishment, showing that the intense faithlessness of the nation had made them worthy of the punishment given to Sodom and Gomorrah, Isaiah gives hope and shows that the God who is over the heavens and the earth wants His people to be restored. How are they to do this? He starts by telling them to “wash yourselves: make yourselves clean”. He is telling them as a nation to perform the cleansing ritual laid out in Leviticus and so as to be presentable to God, much as the individual would be presentable to a priest. Are we not to be “Washing our wives in the word” so that we shall make them presentable to our High Priest? Perhaps one of the many r...
Read more

Open to Glory

From Isaiah 2 – 15 Upon every high tower, and upon every fortified wall; 16 upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all the beautiful sloops… In Becoming Dallas Willard , biographer Gary Moon captures his subject's essence as a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California when he writes that Dallas wasn't satisfied with the divisions between philosophical schools. He kept digging underneath the barriers to the deeper unity. This is the sort of quest on which the checks of God's judgment in Isaiah 2:15-16 insist we go. To the prophet, God displays His willingness and ability to undermine our defensive self assurance, whether the walls we put up our of physical or psychological protection. Our high towers that, we think, will allow us to spot trouble in advance are coming down. God alone is sovereign over the future, and He will not share the honor of provident protection with mere men or their engineering. While protecting His glory, His overarching mas...
Read more