Week 6: Lacking Care for a Calling

Isaiah 1:21-23 English Standard Version (ESV)

21 How the faithful city
has become a whore,
she who was full of justice!
Righteousness lodged in her,
but now murderers.22 Your silver has become dross,
your best wine mixed with water.23 Your princes are rebels
and companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe
and runs after gifts.
They do not bring justice to the fatherless,
and the widow's cause does not come to them.


Jerusalem, once a faithful city, built for your glory by your servant David, has through successive generations, become an unfaithful city. Once a place showing God's righteousness to the Nation of Israel and those surrounding her, has now become a spiritual ruin. The picture given of the silver and the wine show that while to appearances the city and its practices are pure and righteous, in reality they have become base, full of impurities, mixed with the water of the world. It sounds much like what Christ said about “salt that has lost its savour,” as noted by Ellicott.

But the city is only a reflection of those who rule and control it. The removal of those who seek God for its rule has led to a governance by those who seek only personal gain. They have rebelled against God and seek only the wisdom of corruption. The worst of their crimes might be the lack of caring for those that are totally dependent on others, the fatherless and the widows, who are being left to scrounge for themselves living and dying uncared for by those who were called to.


The parallels to the church are striking, sounding similar to some of the letters to the churches in Revelation. And we are called now to be the comfort and caretakers of the fatherless and the widow. With so many of our church leaders living in and for the world quite often our care for those in need has become at best a show and at worst a total lack of regard for them. I pray that we as your body would see what you are speaking to us through your servant Isaiah and take it for a reprimand not only to the city of Jerusalem, but to us as your representative here on earth.  

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