Year 9, Day 35: Isaiah 51

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In Isaiah 51, the Lord seeks to comfort His people.  They have been judged.  They have been exiled.  They have known oppression, enslavement, relocation, warfare, hunger, and all kinds of other hardship.  They are tired and beaten down.  Their resolve is failing.  In a word, they are humbled.  They are right where God can use them.

I love the passage in this chapter that says, “Who are you that are afraid of man who dies?”  In that verse, there is an eternal perspective.  What can mankind to one another?  Truthfully, a great many things!  We can inflict all kinds of pain and misery upon one another.  But we cannot do anything eternal to each other.  The worst we can do is to kill, but that only ceases life in this world.  No person who has ever lived, who is alive, or who will live can affect us beyond the grave.  Is there much to fear among mankind?  Of course there is!  Yet there is nothing eternal to fear among mankind.

This is God’s point.  Yes, the Hebrew people have endured a great many hardships.  They are greatly looking forward to the promised end of their exile and the return to their promised land.  In the end, though, all of these things are temporal. 

The reality is that God is still their God.  Forgiveness is still possible.  Redemption is still an offer.  Eternal life with our creator is still something that is unchanged.  No amount of temporal hardship can alter the reality that we know in God.  Yes, life can be tough.  But every hardship, even death, is at most temporal.  God is our God of the eternal.

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Year 9, Day 34: Isaiah 50

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Isaiah 50 starts with the Lord making an inquiry.  The Lord wants to know where the faithful are.  He wants to know why after all the provision that He gave to them, nobody was there to answer His call.  That is why there was judgment and condemnation.  This is why the exile into Assyria and Babylon happened.  God came looking for righteous people and He found rebellion instead.

However, we then get to the position of the second half of the chapter.  All is not lost.  There are some who can teach properly.  There are some who can uphold the righteous banner.  There are those who choose to be sustained by a word of the Lord instead of live for rebellion.  There are those who do not turn when the Lord calls.

How do these people live?  They set their face against the world, knowing that in the end they will not be put to shame.  These are people who will stand knowing that vindication will come from the hand of Lord.  There are people who will stand because they fear the voice of the Lord and obey Him.

The challenge from today’s chapter is simple.  Kindle our fire for life in the Lord and walk in His light.  Equip ourselves with His ways.  Live in the Lord, stand firm, knowing that in the end He will redeem.

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Year 9, Day 33: Isaiah 49

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Isaiah 49 gives us perspective on the redeemer.  I love how this chapter ends.  It speaks about the prey being taken from the mighty and the captives being taken from the tyrant.  These are strong images.  They are also counter-intuitive examples.

When we think of the tyrant, we think of a person who has incredible power to dominate and enforce their will.  When we think of a mighty person, we think of a person who is capable of taking what they want and keeping it.  Intuitively speaking, both of these scenarios are about people who do what they want and get what they want.

Yet, the Lord comes along and says that He will be able to take from the mighty and free from the tyrant.  The Lord is able to usurp the status quo.  The Lord is capable of doing that which seems impossible.

To put this in literal context, remember that the Hebrew people of Israel had been taken by Assyria and scattered to the Assyrian Empire.  The Hebrew people of Judah were taken by Babylon and scattered to the Babylonian Empire.  From the perspective of the Hebrew people, these Empires were insurmountable.  They executed their will and won.

Into this context comes the Lord, who promises restoration.  He can bring back the exiles.  He can restore the Hebrew people who have been scattered to the foreign empires.  He can do that which human intuition says is impossible.  He redeems.

Now, look more deeply at the process of redemption.  Earlier in the chapter, the Lord speaks about the redeemer as one who is despised among the nations, who is deeply abhorred, and who seems but a servant.  Naturally, Christians hear this description and can’t help but think of Christ, who is the exemplar of this passage.  However, I think that these verses are actually a call to all those who are in relationship with God.  God calls the outcast.  He calls those who are despised.  He calls those who seem abhorrent.  He isn’t the God of the pretty, popular, and accepted.  He is the God who can work with anyone and everyone.

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Year 9, Day 32: Isaiah 48

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Isaiah 48 evokes a myriad of emotions.  We have love.  We have sorrow.  We have hope.  We have regret.  We have forgiveness and redemption.

At the beginning, God speaks to the Hebrew people about their stubbornness and their love for idols.  He reminds them that He has spoken truth across the ages, something they attribute to their idols but the idols can’t actually deliver. 

Yet in spite of the obvious irritation that the Lord has, there is hope in this passage.  The Lord tells the Hebrew people that He is deferring His anger.  The Hebrew people have largely turned their back on Him, still His response is to invite them into relationship.  He still refines them regardless of their attitude towards Him.  He works in them even if they are unwilling participants!  This is love.  This is genuine unconditional love.

God genuinely wishes that they had not rebelled.  He wants a relationship untainted by rebellion.  He knows this isn’t a reality, however.  We, like them, are sinful.  We are rebellious.  We will go our own way.  God desires that our lives would be lived in His provision and not within our sinfulness.  Therefore, He continues to call us.  Like the Hebrew people, He calls us to go forth and proclaim our redemption.

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Year 9, Day 31: Isaiah 47

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Isaiah 47 gives us words against Babylon.  I’ve personally always thought that the study of Assyria and Babylon in the Old Testament is underdone.  We can learn so much from God’s relationship and use of Babylon, especially with respect to God’s understanding of righteousness.

We know that both Babylon and Assyria were brought onto the scene when the Hebrew people became rebellious and turned to foreign idols.  God called them out of their land to conquer the Hebrew people.  He wanted to show the Hebrew people that their foreign gods cannot save them.  He wanted to show them that they could not save themselves.  He wanted to show them their need for Him and His redemption.

However, look at what the Lord says about them.  He says the same thing about Babylon as He said about Assyria.  Although they were called to be implements of judgment, the were merciless.  They were ruthless.  They were cruel.  They took pleasure in beating other people down.

God may have wanted to judge His own people, but there isn’t a need to do the job without mercy.  God’s point is clear here.  Someone has to be judge, jury, and executioner.  But we don’t have to relish the task.  We don’t have to enjoy watching other people go down.  We certainly don’t have to enjoy benefiting at their expense.  We don’t need to look for ways to take advantage of other people’s circumstances.

The Assyrians and the Babylonians did more than what was called for.  They took God’s calling and turned it into their own scheme for glory.  They abused God’s provision.  Therefore, God gives us chapters like this where he speaks about punishing them in turn.  When we take God’s call and turn it into our advantage, we invite God’s judgment onto us as well.  That’s a fairly significant lesson to learn.

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Year 9, Day 30: Isaiah 46

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Isaiah 46 is a hidden gem of a chapter.  At first, it seems like a simple chapter against Babylon.  It seems like a small chapter bemoaning the Babylonian love for their false gods and their inability to know God.  There’s more to this chapter, however.

This is a chapter where God is fighting for His people.  He knows that the Hebrew people are captive and in a foreign land.  They are presented with all kinds of different thinking.  They are tempted into false worship.  They are tempted to think that God has abandoned them.  In this chapter, God presents a case against all of these things.

The neat part about this chapter, though, is how God goes about the task.  God doesn’t use His power to force the people to obey.  God doesn’t snap His fingers and make the people obey.  God doesn’t remove their free will.  He doesn’t even impinge upon their free will.  God doesn’t use His incredible power against His people.

What God does is to appeal to their rational nature.  He argues His case.  He gives reasons why they should worship Him. He reminds them of how He carries them through life.  He talks about what He can do for them in their times of need.  He appeals to them rather than forces them.

I think this is one of the most profound attributes of God that many people in the world get wrong.  People think of God’s omnipotence, but they don’t often credit God with how often He doesn’t use His omnipotence and instead allows people to have free will.  People attribute all kinds of things to His power without also crediting Him with the times that He lets us be ourselves.  God doesn’t want to force us into relationship, He wants us to choose it for himself.

I love this aspect of God and to be honest I believe that I could benefit from emulating it more.  In many places in my life I have power over others.  Life is best lived, however, when instead of using my power over others I mentor and teach people into good decisions instead of force them into the right way.  God understands this, I should employ this tactic as much as possible, too.

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Year 9, Day 29: Isaiah 45

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Chapter 45 begins with a look at the Lord’s anointed.  There is something interesting about the Lord’s anointed, though.  The name given is Cyrus.  Cyrus is a Persian king.  The Lord’s anointed – His messiah, quite literally translated – is a Persian king.

It’s important to remember that much like the word “antichrist,” the word for anointed and messiah are used generically and specifically.  Anyone who does the will of the Lord is anointed.  Anyone who allows the Spirit of the Lord to be within Him is His anointed.  That doesn’t make a person the Anointed or the Messiah.  God’s Anointed, God’s Messiah, is the one who will save humanity once and for all.  That would be Jesus.  Don’t confuse the issue here.  There are many people whom God anoints; there is one Anointed.

A powerful subtheme comes through this point about Cyrus.  Cyrus is anointed by God and he is a Persian king.  Once more God demonstrates that he is the God of all people.  He is the God of the Gentiles as well as the God of the Hebrew people.  God will call and use a Persian king.  He will continue to call and use Gentiles after Christ’s work on the cross as well.

God continues this theme in the second half of the chapter.  He speaks to the nations and reminds them that He has always been there speaking truth.  He wants them to realize that He has been with them, too.

This is an important point to consider.  God acknowledges that they have truth in their communities.  Their wise people have found some wisdom.  The problem isn’t that they are ignorant of the truth, the problem is that they are attributing the truth to the wrong thing.  They think their wisdom is coming from other human beings or false idols of their own making.  They are missing the source of all truth.

I love the fact that Isaiah informs us that other cultures do have truth within them.  So often, it is all-to-easy to think of truth as something “we have” and therefore “others don’t.”  That simply isn’t the perspective of God here.  The nations have access to truth just like the Hebrew people do.  The issue isn’t that they don’t know truth, the issue is that they’ve missed the genuine source of the truth.

I have that same problem from time to time.  I occasionally think I’m wise when I should be giving the glory to God.  I occasionally think other people are wise when I should be giving the glory to God.  I occasionally judge other people foolish instead of looking for where they might have access to truth.  I have much to learn from Isaiah’s perspective.

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Year 9, Day 28: Isaiah 44

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This chapter gives us a very honest look at humanity.  I love the middle section that talks about a human being who plants a tree.  The worldly rain waters it.  Humans tend it.  Eventually human beings cut it down.  Part of it they cut up to throw in a fire and bake bread.  The other part they cut and shape into a god.  They then bow down and worship it, thinking it has some special power.

This is a hysterical thought!  If the wood had special powers, why would it let itself get chopped down, cut up, and burned?  In converse, it the wood that was burned had no special power, why do people think that the wood that wasn’t burned has any different power?

This sounds very common sense.  However, we are all guilty of the same thinking.  How many of us worship the very money that we slave over to earn!  How many of us worship the cars and clothing that we spend our own money to possess?  How many of us worship our own children, kids that we brought into existence?  The truth is that human beings excel at worship that which we make ourselves.  We love to worship the fruit of our efforts.  We should be worshipping a God who can create out of nothing; we end up worshipping a god of our own creation.

As I said yesterday, the neat part about this is that God knows this. He gets us, even though we sin.  He provides redemption for us.  It’s not like our sinfulness catches Him off-guard.  He redeems even as He plans to judge our sins.  He can judge us because He also knows our redemption.

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Year 9, Day 27: Isaiah 43

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Isaiah 43 helps us start to make the transition between the Assyrian and the Babylonians.  God defeated the Assyrians and sent them packing, but that wasn’t enough.  The Hebrew people of Judah repented for a little while but then went back to their old ways.  That’s the trouble with humanity.  We repent, we try, but we don’t live sin-free.  We don’t have it within ourselves to be free from sin.

This is why we need a savior.  This is why we need a redeemer.  We need God.  We need Hm because we cannot do it ourselves.  Only God can take us and promise a future when we’ll be able to live the right way.  Only in God do we have that hope.  We can live in this world on our own without Him, but we’ll never get it right forever.  We’ll always make mistakes.  We will always need a God with is other to make us right.

This is why God looks to His people and tells them to fear not.  Yes, God knows they have made mistakes.  God knows that they have gone to their own devices and abandoned His statutes.  He knows this; we cannot hide it from Him.  That being said, that is why He brought Assyria!  That is why He will bring Babylon.  The people are in need of judgment, but not abandonment!  The point of judgment isn’t punishment, it it repentance and redemption!

I love the exchange between god and His people that begins in verse 8. “Bring out the people who have eyes but do not see.”  That is so true for all of us.  We can try the best that we can, but who among us can actually know the future?  We can make the best choices, but they will always be in the moment and not with the full wisdom of God.  Even our choices made with the best of intentions don’t always work.  We have eyes, but we sure can’t see like God can see.

We does He redeem us?  Yes, because we need Him.  That isn’t why He redeems us, though.  He tells us why He redeems us.  He redeems us for His sake.  He redeems us because He is righteous.  He redeems us because He sees that we are in need and He gives us His aid.  He redeems us because it is who he is.  He redeems us because He is God and capable of doing it.

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Year 9, Day 26: Isaiah 42

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While reading Isaiah 42, it sometimes feels backwards.  After all, Isaiah 42 starts with a hopeful look towards the Lords anointed.  Then it speaks to reasons to praise the Lord.  Finally, it turns to a rebellious Hebrew people who refuse to listen to Him.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to speak about the rebellion, turn to hope, and then praise God?

Remember the point of the prophets, especially the major prophets and especially the early prophets.  The prophet’s were the people of God through whom the Lord spoke when He needed to get the attention of the people and draw them into repentance.  Specifically with Isaiah, this prophet gets to look at the fall of Israel, deal with that event, warn about the near fall of Jerusalem, and then begin to pick up those pieces.  Isaiah was a prophet leading up to the exile of the northern kingdom and show serious concern about the exile of the southern kingdom.

In this light, Isaiah does want to give hope.  Even in the midst of sinfulness, God looks for a time when the sinfulness will be overcome and repentance will happen.  He longs for a time when the people will be ready for a good leader – ready to be led the right way.  He waits for the time that the people will desire to be led by someone who will not grow weary in doing what is right.  People often talk about how the world needs good leadership, and it does.  We often forget that good leadership can only exist when there are people who are willing to embrace it and promote it.

This brings us to the praise of God.  He is the one who brings peace to us.  He is the one who makes all things new.  He is the one who is worthy of our praise.  He is the one who fights for us.  He is the one who brings light into the darkness.  We should indeed praise Him!

After these great passages of hope, why then would Isaiah turn to the rebellion of the people?  Why would Isaiah end here after such a great start?  The answer is simple.  The earlier sections are a look into the future.  The job of the prophets is to remind us of the present reality.  There is hope coming.  There is hope in the future.  But the reality is that the Hebrew people were in rebellion.  They were headed down a bad path.  They needed to be held accountable and shown their sin.  They need to be brought to a place where they can compare what could be or what will be with what actually is.  That is why Isaiah ends with the rebellion of the people.

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Year 9, Day 25: Isaiah 41

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I really enjoy the opening half of this chapter.  The Lord wants His people to fear not.  He wants them to anticipate comfort.  He wants them to know that He is still there for them, even in the midst of their judgment and trial.

It is comforting to know that the same God who judges us an restore us.  He who makes the populated places into a wilderness can take the wilderness and make it populated.  He can turn the fertile places into parched land and back again.  He can shut up the rivers and open them up again.

I don’t know a single person who is able to judge righteously.  We all have sin and a most imperfect amount of power!  We are all limited.  Not so with God!  God can judge us perfectly, knowing our sin.  He also can judge us perfectly, knowing the grace that He longs to impart upon us.  He is the one who can send us into exile as well as bring us back out.

In this context, God then addresses false idols.  He asks them who can predict the future or even bring something into existence.  The reality is that the things we lift as gods in our life are unable to do what He does.  They might appease us for a while and bring a certain limited amount of pleasure into our life.  But they cannot truly create.  They cannot truly save.  They cannot continually speak truth into our lives.  Only the God who is perfectly capable to judge and restore can do these things.

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Year 9, Day 24: Isaiah 40

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Isaiah 40 begins with a voice of hope.  In fact, it is such a voice of hope that the passage is quoted into the New Testament and used in reference to the coming of God’s Messiah.  The amount of hope meant to be contained in this chapter is similar to the amount of hope that God desires to come to us through His Son.  Prepare the way of the Lord!

Remember what Isaiah has been talking about.  The people of Israel went into exile under Assyria.  Much of Judah was conquered by Assyria as well.  Only the people in Jerusalem were spared from the Assyrian judgment.  In the past two chapters, Isaiah has looked forward to the return from exile.  Into this context we hear Isaiah proclaim that we are to prepare the way of the Lord!

The reason that the Hebrew people went into exile was because they abandoned the ways of the Lord.  Therefore, the people returning from exile will return after repentance have occurred and the ways of the Lord have been embraced.  Forgiveness and restoration naturally follow genuine repentance.  When we prepare the ways of the Lord – when we genuinely repent and follow Him – we fid ourselves back under the protection, guidance, and provision of the Lord.  When we prepare the ways of the Lord, we are in the relationship that He intended to have with us.

This is why this chapter speaks so loudly into the story of John the Baptizer and the coming of Jesus.  John is calling people into repentance.  John is asking people to change their ways and return to the Lord.  John knows that the path to peace and hope begins with our repentance and embracing God’s wisdom.

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Year 9, Day 23: Isaiah 39

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There are 2 really neat thoughts that come through in this passage.  The first one is comes through Hezekiah’s desire to show the envoys of Babylon all that he has.  Isn’t the pride of humanity really foolish?  Hezekiah has just come through the siege of Assyria.  He thought his life was over.  As soon as it is over, some people come from Babylon under the guise of wishing him well.  Hezekiah takes them in and shows them all the splendor of Jerusalem.  It never crosses Hezekiah’s mind to think that maybe these Babylonians were coming in to see if it is worth bringing forth a siege of their own!

Of course, I’m not one who is in a place to judge.  After all, how often do I do something cool or unique and I want to show other people?  I don’t think that they might steal the idea and take the fame and glory for themselves.  I don’t think that they might use it to their own glory.  No, I simply want other people to be impressed with me (there’s the pride part) and I get so caught up in the vain pursuit of pride that I don’t really think.  That just about sums up Hezekiah’s action in this passage – and I’m no different.

The second lesson in this passage shows Hezekiah’s focus.  He hears Isaiah’s critique of his actions and tells him that the day is coming when the army of Babylon will conquer Jerusalem and plunder all that it has.  Look at his response.  He says that it is a good word from God.  Don’t get me wrong, all words from God are good.  But look at his motivation.  He is fine with the judgment because there will be peace in his day.  In other words, he doesn’t really care what happens to Jerusalem after he dies, what’s it to him – even if it does mean that his own offspring will suffer?

I find this to be a horribly narrow and narcissistic attitude.  Yet, it is rather popular among human beings.  Why should I care if it doesn’t affect me?  Why should I care if I don’t get hurt by it?  Why should I care unless I have skin in the game?  These are essentially the same thoughts as Hezekiah offers up.

The reality is that human beings talk a great talk.  We talk about social justice, peace, and equality.  Yet, the truth is that what we really want is social justice for me, peace for me, and equality for me.  Most of us can’t be raised up to be bothers about social justice of other people.  After all, how many people around the world can’t find food to eat?  How many people around the world can’t find quality water to drink?  How many people send their nights in place that is neither safe nor warm?  Yet how often do we do anything about it (myself included)?  We talk a great game, but most of us feel like Hezekiah on most days.  If it doesn’t affect me, why should I care?

I thank God that He is not like most of us.

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Year 9, Day 22: Isaiah 38

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The flight of the Assyrians before God is one of my favorite single acts of the Old Testament.  Here we have a massive army with all the human power it wants.  They have the advantage of time and with an elongated siege can starve the Hebrew people out if they want.  There is no reason that the Assyrians should have lost.

There is no earthly reason, that is.  God sends a plague among the Assyrians and decimates their camp.  The Assyrians turn tale and return home in defeat.  It is a great victory for God, done simply because Hezekiah and the Hebrew leadership repents before their God.  It is proof that in the right circumstances, the most powerful position a human can bring is on their knees.

As a part of God bringing punishment upon the Hebrew people, Hezekiah is himself is told that he will die.  Once more we see the power of repentance.  He repents and God decides to spare his life.  He is granted 15 more years of life.

Repentance, though, doesn’t have changing God’s mind at its core.  Repentance is not a way for us to secretly manipulate God’s action.  Listen to Hezekiah’s account.  Hezekiah says, “It was for my welfare that I had great bitterness.”  Repentance is for us, not for God.

God wants to bless His people.  He longs to be in meaningful relationship with them.  He brings judgment because we are in error and are choosing not to self-correct.  Even in the judgment, though, God would prefer to be in positive relationship with us!  Therefore, when we repent we are not changing God, we are changing ourselves so that we can experience God’s blessing instead of His wrath.  It is not God who changes, it is us.  Because we change, we alter the tactics that God must use in His relationship with us.

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Year 9, Day 21: Isaiah 37

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It is amazing what a little repentance can do.  Hezekiah sees the Assyrian army take up positions against his city and knows that there is no way out except to come before God and beg.  Hezekiah does just that.  He goes before the Lord and pleads.  He confesses his faith in the Lord and asks Him to intervene.

The Lord listens.  He responds.  He slaughters almost 200,000 Assyrians overnight and sends the Assyrians back to their home with their tails tucked between their legs.  The defeat is so bad that Sennacherib’s own sons come in and kill him.

Look at the difference between humble repentance and self-indulgent pride.  Hezekiah comes before the Lord humbly and the Lord listens and saves Jerusalem.  Sennacherib grows more and more self-indulgent in the pride he has over his growing power and the Lord shows him His wrath.  The difference between humbleness and pride cannot be any greater than we see here in this passage.

The Lord doesn’t need obsequious behavior.  He doesn’t need spineless pathetic people.  That isn’t the point of being humble.  Humble people know from where their power comes and acknowledge it.  The Lord desires that we come forth boldly into His plan, giving Him the glory and the honor for what He has done.  When we make a mistake, He simply asks us to repent of the mistake, owning it and changing so that the mistake doesn’t happen again.  That’s what Hezekiah does here in this chapter.

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Year 9, Day 20: Isaiah 36

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Isaiah 36 reveals the dangerous pride that easily overcomes God’s servants.  This chapter is all about the coming of the Assyrians.  At God’s request, remember, the Assyrians came out of their land and descended like a plague upon the Promised Land.  Syria fell.  Israel fell.  The countries east of the Jordan fell.  Now Assyria comes to Jerusalem to see if Judah will fall.  Do not forget that all of this was at the will of the Lord!

The problem, though, is that Assyria becomes arrogant.  They forget their place.  They forget why they are here as well as who enabled them to be here!  They forget everything that is important as they become drunk on their own importance.  They become intoxicated with their own power and their own strength.  Humbleness is replaced with arrogance.

Hear the words of the servant of the Assyrian king as he speaks.  Can it really be that he insinuates the Lord cannot save Judah when he speaks in Isaiah 36:15 as well as in Isaiah 36:18-20?  Look at the pride and arrogance that comes.  Look at how the servant Assyria, called out of their place by God, has forgotten their place!

This is what is bred by success.  Success done wrong breeds pride.  Success done wrong counters humility.  Success done wrong leads us to the antithesis of God.  Success done wrong pulls us away from God and our understanding of our place within His plan.  The Assyrians fall not because they were conquerors but because they became arrogant and forgot their place.

They challenge God, and God proves them wrong.  Isaiah says it again and again.  The judge will become the judged.  The conqueror will become the conquered.  Their pride will be their downfall.  They forgot their place in God’s plan and fell because of it.

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Year 9, Day 19: Isaiah 35

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As bleak as Isaiah 34 is, Isaiah 35 is filled with hope. In this chapter we have creation celebrating.  Happiness abounds.  Order is reset.  Life seems to go on as it was meant to be.

This is the way of all good love stories.  Every Hallmark movie ever made follows this plotline: Boy meets girl, relationship happens, there is a crisis point, busting through the crisis reveals a greater relationship, the movie ends happily.  For the record, every Disney movie typically has the same sequence: Main character is living normally, along comes something of interest (usually a person of the opposite gender, a crisis threatens the main character’s normal life, bursting through the crisis reveal a new and improved life.  It is the way that stories are told.  Human beings learn best by bursting through moments of crisis.

The Bible is no different.  God knows this about us, He created us!  Isaiah is giving the Hebrew the full picture, because they are in the middle of the story and cannot see it completely.  They entered a relationship with God.  For a while, life was great.  Then the Hebrew people fell away from God and the crisis of the Assyrians (and later, Babylonians) would come.  The part that they can’t see is after the Assyrians and Babylonians come there will be restoration and an even better relationship with God.

This is true on a much bigger scale for all of us.  God gives us His relationship with the Hebrew people as an example for us to learn from.  We will all go through life, reaching several crisis points along the way.  We will have social crises, emotional crises, physical crises, spiritual crises.  When we overcome these crises, though, we will find a new and deeper life waiting for us on the other side.

What is neat about this chapter of Isaiah is His desire to not only teach us this pattern but to also include creation.  Isaiah ties the world around the people into the story.  The world around the Hebrew people will rejoice and celebrate when the crisis is past.  So does the world around us celebrate when our crisis is past.  As poets and storytellers often reveal to us, once we find a new and deeper existence, the colors are always brighter, the sounds are always clearer, and world is just a better place.  Human beings encounter crises all the time; we are better for them once we are able to proper get through them and learn what it is that God would have us learn.

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Year 9, Day 18: Isaiah 34

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Isaiah 34 is a rather bleak chapter.  We hear about judgment.  We hear about violence.  Perhaps most disturbingly, the violence is being done by the Lord’s own hand.  The Lord has had enough, and judgment comes against the nations.

Why is the Lord angry?  Judging from the imagery in this psalm, we can say that the Lord is angry with how human beings are violent towards one another.  We dominate over one another.  We do not support each other.  We take advantage of one another.

Because of this, the Lord comes in judgment.  His sword is sated in blood.  It comes from the heavens to strike against the earth.  People will be struck so hard that wild animals will come and dwell in the places of civilization.  Thorns, nettles, and thistles grow in the places where civilization once existed.  In other words, judgment will be thorough.

How do we avoid this fate?  Seek and read the word of the Lord.  Familiarize ourselves with them.  He has commanded, we should know what He desires.  He has spoken, we should listen and obey.  God’s judgment comes, the best way to avoid it is to not put ourselves in harms way in the first place.

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Year 9, Day 17: Isaiah 33

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Isaiah addresses several groups of people in this passage.  First comes the words for the destroyer.  These words most likely apply to Assyria.  They are the ones that God has called out of their place to bring His people into judgment.  God wans them that when they are done destroying they will be destroyed.  God called them for the purposes of being the consequence for the insolence of the Hebrew people, but the Assyrians took the power God gave to them and abused it.

The second group of people receive the majority of words.  These are the faithful remnant.  Even as the Assyrians come towards Jerusalem, there are a group of people who continue to have faith.  There are those who see the Lord as their salvation.  He is their arm, they wait for Him.  They know that He scatters the nations.  They believe that in Him is an abundance of salvation.

These are the faithful remnant.  They believe when others feel hope failing.  They turn to the Lord when others turn to human sources of strength.  They stay loyal when others grasp at straws.  They continue to place their hearts on the things of God while others give birth to chaff and stubble.  They fear the Lord, and this becomes the treasure of the Lord.

The third group of people are spoken of near the end.  When the Lord rises up to save His people, we are told that those who are saved will no longer see the insolent people.  The people who have an obscure speech will be gone.  The people who stammer and cannot be understood will be gone.

These words indicate a people who do not live in truth. They do not speak the truth.  They do not use words that inspire truth in others.  They do not have the ability to speak words that last and have a deeper meaning.  They are not God’s people; they are people who pursue their own desires, their own thoughts, and their own ways.

The point at the end is that they are gone.  They are put away from God and God’s people.  They are dismissed from God’s eternal presence.

In the end, we see a people beloved by God juxtaposed between two examples of people who are dismissed by God.  In the one case we have people who are empowered by God and abuse the power for their own selfish gain.  In the other case we have people who deny God’s truth and instead utter their own folly.  The ones that God treasure wait for Him, stay loyal to Him, and have the ways of the Lord near to their hearts.

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Year 9, Day 16: Isaiah 32

Theological Commentary: Click Here

I find the opening verses of Isaiah 32 extraordinarily interesting in today’s political climate.  In the United States, we have a government shutdown while politicians that few people really trust squabble over immigration, health care, taxes, national debt, and other various topics.  In England, their government continues to wrestle with Brexit.  Debates rage.  Hostilities boil over.  Agenda lines are drawn in the sand.

All the while, the people are forgotten.  It used to be that elected officials were expected to represent the wishes of their constituents.  It used to be that government agencies were supposedly about protecting the interests of the people.  Now our leaders fight amongst themselves, viciously scrapping for any power they can get their hands upon.

In this cultural milieu, we hear the opening to Isaiah 32.  A king will reign in righteousness.  He will be like a shelter from the wind.  He will be like a stream in a dry place.  He will be alike a great shade in a weary land.  It almost sounds like the leaders in the day about which Isaiah writes will be refreshing!

Isn’t this a novel idea?  Imagine a place where one’s leaders can be trusted.  Honestly, imagine a place where one’s leaders can even be understood!  Imagine a time when decisions that are made are done with righteousness and fairness in mind.  Imagine a time when instead of skepticism and fear we view our leaders through eyes of faith and anticipation!

This is the hope that we have in the Lord.  I truly long for the day when I will have absolute trust in those who are set over me to lead me.  I can’t wait for the day when I meet a leader and genuinely believe that they care about me and not either what I can do for them or how their power can benefit themselves.  How refreshing that day will be when the Lord rules over us directly.

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