In case you’re just joining in, I’m now in day 5 of my journey through the Bible in a year. If you’d like to read along, you’re more than welcome! In fact, I’d encourage each of you to do so! The reading plan can be found here.
Anyway, Thursdays are spent in prophecy, so I don’t doubt that I will often be confused by what I’m reading on this day each week. We start in Isaiah, chapters 1-6.
Today’s thoughts:
Isaiah 6:1-8 (NIV)
1In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”4At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”
6Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
This is one of the more familiar passages in Isaiah… his calling to serve as prophet. It seems logical to go with this first…
Anyway, do you notice anything interesting?
I do… it appears he didn’t know what he was volunteering to do. God simply asked, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” No details as to what, when, where, why, or how… just who will go?
Yet Isaiah jumps up and says, “Me, me… Send me!”
Now that’s faith. How many of us are willing to jump in with both feet to do ANYTHING (let alone anything for God) without knowing at least some of the details?
Isaiah obviously knows God well enough to trust Him completely. Do you?
Isaiah 1:2-4
2Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth!
For the LORD has spoken:
“I reared children and brought them up,
but they have rebelled against me.3The ox knows his master,
the donkey his owner’s manger,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.”4Ah, sinful nation,
a people loaded with guilt,
a brood of evildoers,
children given to corruption!
They have forsaken the LORD;
they have spurned the Holy One of Israel
and turned their backs on him.
The spiritual condition of the children of Israel is revealed from the get-go. And the descriptions only get worse from there.
Isaiah 1:11-13
11“The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the LORD.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.12When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?13Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your evil assemblies.
Oh how this had to hurt the people of Israel… “What are your sacrifices to me?” “Stop bringing meaningless offerings!” “I cannot bear your evil assemblies.”
Painful judgments from God Himself.
Isaiah 2:20-21
20In that day men will throw away
to the rodents and bats
their idols of silver and idols of gold,
which they made to worship.21They will flee to caverns in the rocks
and to the overhanging crags
from dread of the LORD
and the splendor of his majesty,
when he rises to shake the earth.
Chapter 2 is spent talking about the day of the Lord… when God returns in glory to judge his people.
The account of the reaction of people is powerful… throwing away all the worthless idols… fleeing to hide from God’s splendor and majesty… dreading the Lord wholly.
How good it is to know that faith in Christ frees us from the judgment, and that we need not have such fear of the Lord!
Isaiah 5:1-7
1I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.2He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.3“Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.4What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?5Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.6I will make it a wasteland,
neither pruned nor cultivated,
and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it.”7The vineyard of the LORD Almighty
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah
are the garden of his delight.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.
I really like how poetically these verses convey the message of Israel’s failure… I can imagine the conviction they felt as they heard the first six verses read… and the sheer agony of knowing that this is about them that comes from verse 7.
Now I realize, what is written here in Isaiah is written to the people of Israel. God loves and delights in those he calls His own… and how it must have pained Him to see them reject Him time and time again.
I wonder if Isaiah isn’t just as applicable to those of us who call upon the name of Jesus… in whom God also loves and delights? Do you ever take time to think and wonder what kind of pain our fruits must present to Him? How our rejection of Him and failure to follow Him wholeheartedly must hurt?
Convicting thoughts.
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