Year 6, Day 2: Isaiah 17

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Appetite

• Appetite: We all have needs that need to be filled.  When we allow ourselves to be filled with the people and things that God brings into our life, we will be satisfied because our In will be in proper focus.  But when we try to fill ourselves with our own desires we end up frustrated by an insatiable hunger.

Appetite is a great perspective through which we can view the oracle against Damascas.  After all, one of the premier words that Isaiah uses to describe the people of Syria is “fat.”  So much of this oracle is spent talking about how the people of Syria will have their possessions, their livelihood, even their very being stripped away.  They will become lean and desolate.  Their plants will produce little fruit.

Of course, this is a great place to return to the idea of appetite.  Why is it that the people will come upon this judgment?  The people come upon this judgment because they have forgotten God.  They have forgotten from where their salvation comes.  They have become a people that get their fill upon their own strength, their own productiveness, and their own thinking.  They have lost any acknowledgement that God is the main reason that they are fruitful.  Their appetite is focused inwardly upon themselves.

When our appetite is focused anywhere but God we simply grow more and more hungry.  The only way to bring us out of that hunger is through judgment.  We are weaned off of that which made us fat.  In other words, we must be made lean again so that we can learn to have an appetite that is based upon God and His ways.

This is not just the story of Damascus in Syria.  This is the story of all humanity.  We should learn what we can here.

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