In chapter 5, Isaiah is calling for a full repentance for God's people. There is no quick fix for them, no minor adjustments to be made. This has made him unpopular. Picture the scene: Israel has been preparing for war with Assyria (2 Kings 15:29). This means they need the support of the people. They need confidence and patriotism. Isaiah's words of judgment and calls for repentance sound not only like a spoil-sport. They sound like the words of a traitor. How can he tell Israel that they should focus their energies on repentance instead of on preparation for war? How can he tell them to prepare to come under Assyria's power?
According to George Adam Smith, Isaiah knew that God's honor stands alone. We can't manipulate him. We can't put him in our pocket. He doesn't owe us anything. "To the Jews the honor of their God was bound up with the inviolability of Jerusalem and the prosperity of Judah. But Isaiah knew Yahweh to be infinitely more concerned for the purity of His people than for their prosperity." (Smith, 35) Prosperity is not proof that God is with us. If we love prosperity more than God, God is not fooled.
The heart of this chapter is the wild grapes - what they are and what can be done about them. It opens with a story. God's people - Israel and Judah - had a vineyard. They planted a crop of grapes. But the fruit went bad. Wild grapes grew.
The wild grapes are catalogued in a series of Woes from verse 8 through 24. These are dire threats. "Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field." (v. 8) "Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks..." (v. 11) "Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes..." (v. 18) "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil..." (v. 20) "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight." (v. 21) "Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent." (v. 22-23)
What we have is a picture of two great threats: the love of wealth and the love of pleasure. Smith calls the love of wealth "the instinct to gather" and the love of pleasure "the instinct to squander". They loved wealth, abusing their land. They loved pleasure, over-indulging in alcohol.
Our life with God consists in praying, serving, obeying, and loving him. Life goes terribly awry when we replace these with other things. God's people had grown accustomed to gathering without regard for God. They had also grown accustomed to squandering without regard for God. What Smith claims alcohol was doing to them could also apply to their disregard for God as a whole: "Nothing kills the conscience like steady drinking to a little excess; and religion, even while the conscience is alive, acts on it only as an opiate."
These people are unreachable, as is depicted for us in the third Woe from verses 18 and 19 - "Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes, to those who say, "Let God hurry, let him hasten to his work so we may see it...." They call out for swift judgment - "hurry, God!" - not having the slightest inclination that they are pulling this judgment towards themselves the whole time with their deceitfulness.
These are the wild grapes. And there isn't anything that can be done, as long as they reject instruction. A foreign power will come and sweep them away. Isaiah has told his people of God's judgment and it would soon come.
During the 4th century A.D., the Roman emperor Constantine became Christian. Nearly overnight, the once persecuted faith became fashionable. And as soon as it became fashionable, people found it to be corrupt. There then grew a movement of people who followed Christ together in the deserts near Egypt. They became renowned for their spiritual maturity. One of these "desert fathers" wrote "This is the great task of man, that he should hold his sin before the face of God and count upon temptation until his last breath." (Sittser, 75) This is what God's people failed to do during the time of Isaiah. I think that the experience of reading Isaiah 5 can lead us to a renewed strength to expect temptation, to be ready for it, and to fight it well. We can do this through Christ, "who has been tempted in every way, just as we are" (Heb. 4:15). He is our strength for the fight to stay humble, so that our instincts to gather and squander do not choke the fruit of God's Spirit working within us.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Friday, September 19, 2014
Reading the Bible in 2014 - Day 259: Isaiah 4 - Judgment
Isaiah 4 begins with glory. But this future day of glory will be preceded by a time of judgment: "Whoever is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, once the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning." (v. 3-4)
Commentator George Adam Smith thinks that Isaiah has realized the truth that all reformers must come to: that justice needs a judgment. We all start out as idealists who can picture a world of peace but are naïve about how hard that will be: "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (Isaiah 2:4) For a people yearning for peace, you could hardly pick a better slogan from somewhere in the Bible.
But our idealistic pictures of a peaceful society do not in themselves regenerate society. They only reveal the work we have to do. "It will only reveal social corruption, and sicken the heart of the reformer himself. For the possession of a great ideal does not mean, as so many fondly imagine, work accomplished; it means work revealed - work revealed so vast, often so impossible, that faith and hope die down, and the enthusiast of yesterday becomes the cynic of tomorrow." (Smith, The Book of Isaiah, 31).
We can't be healed until we are properly diagnosed. As Father Brown said, "No man's really good till he knows how bad he is, or might be". We can only reach the glorious future God has for us through judgment.
We think a loving God wouldn't judge. When we think of his judgment, we must keep it wed to his love. God's judgment comes from a merciful desire to restore, rather than a vengeful anger to destroy. George MacDonald wrote: "Nothing can satisfy the justice of God but justice in his creature. The justice of God is the love of what is right, and the doing of what is right. Eternal misery in the name of justice could satisfy none but a demon whose bad laws had been broken." (Unspoken Sermons, quoted from Baptized Imagination, 106)
God isn't a bad sport, pouting up in the attic of the universe, refusing to play. His judgment is a manifestation of his love. And because God is our loving judge, we enter into work of faith, labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 1:3). Jerry Sittser writes about how the early church's expectation of God's day of judgment helped them to live simple, hard-working lives of love: "(Athenagoras) also believed that Christian moral excellence was directly attributable to the Christian belief in the last judgment. "If we did not think that a God ruled over the human race, would we live in such purity? The idea is impossible. But since we are persuaded that we must give an account of all our life here to God who made us and the world, we adopt a temperate, generous, and despised way of life." (Water from a Deep Well, 59)
What we find is that judgment wed to love does not drive us away from God; it focuses us. "There is but one way of escape, and that is Isaiah's. It is to believe in God Himself; it is to believe that He is at work, that His purposes for man are saving purposes, and that with Him there is an inexhaustible source of mercy and virtue. So from the blackest pessimism shall arise new hope and faith." (Smith, 31-32)
Our hope is not that salvation will be easy. Our hope is that no matter how hard it gets, we can still hope in God.
Commentator George Adam Smith thinks that Isaiah has realized the truth that all reformers must come to: that justice needs a judgment. We all start out as idealists who can picture a world of peace but are naïve about how hard that will be: "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (Isaiah 2:4) For a people yearning for peace, you could hardly pick a better slogan from somewhere in the Bible.
But our idealistic pictures of a peaceful society do not in themselves regenerate society. They only reveal the work we have to do. "It will only reveal social corruption, and sicken the heart of the reformer himself. For the possession of a great ideal does not mean, as so many fondly imagine, work accomplished; it means work revealed - work revealed so vast, often so impossible, that faith and hope die down, and the enthusiast of yesterday becomes the cynic of tomorrow." (Smith, The Book of Isaiah, 31).
We can't be healed until we are properly diagnosed. As Father Brown said, "No man's really good till he knows how bad he is, or might be". We can only reach the glorious future God has for us through judgment.
We think a loving God wouldn't judge. When we think of his judgment, we must keep it wed to his love. God's judgment comes from a merciful desire to restore, rather than a vengeful anger to destroy. George MacDonald wrote: "Nothing can satisfy the justice of God but justice in his creature. The justice of God is the love of what is right, and the doing of what is right. Eternal misery in the name of justice could satisfy none but a demon whose bad laws had been broken." (Unspoken Sermons, quoted from Baptized Imagination, 106)
God isn't a bad sport, pouting up in the attic of the universe, refusing to play. His judgment is a manifestation of his love. And because God is our loving judge, we enter into work of faith, labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 1:3). Jerry Sittser writes about how the early church's expectation of God's day of judgment helped them to live simple, hard-working lives of love: "(Athenagoras) also believed that Christian moral excellence was directly attributable to the Christian belief in the last judgment. "If we did not think that a God ruled over the human race, would we live in such purity? The idea is impossible. But since we are persuaded that we must give an account of all our life here to God who made us and the world, we adopt a temperate, generous, and despised way of life." (Water from a Deep Well, 59)
What we find is that judgment wed to love does not drive us away from God; it focuses us. "There is but one way of escape, and that is Isaiah's. It is to believe in God Himself; it is to believe that He is at work, that His purposes for man are saving purposes, and that with Him there is an inexhaustible source of mercy and virtue. So from the blackest pessimism shall arise new hope and faith." (Smith, 31-32)
Our hope is not that salvation will be easy. Our hope is that no matter how hard it gets, we can still hope in God.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Reading the Bible in 2014 - Day 254: Job 10-12 - Questions
We've all understand the importance of questions and answers. If we've been to a conference or to some official talk someone is giving, often there's a "Q&A" section afterward. We all have questions.
Questions keep us up at night. Questions wake us up in the morning. What woke you up this morning? Was it your alarm clock? Or was it a question?
In today's reading, Job bludgeons God with a series of questions: "Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the schemes of the wicked? Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see? Are your days like the days of mortals, or your years like human years, that you seek out my iniquity and search for my sin, although you know that I am not guilty, and there is no one to deliver out of your hand?" (Job 10:3-7)
You don't need to have questions like Job's to appreciate that he asks them. Job doesn't hate God. His questions come from intimacy with God. His questions arise from a life that has been lived in total delight and worship of God. He is offended because God feels distant.
When you pray to God today, what questions do you really have? I recall an overwhelming day, driving in my car, asking God, "why aren't I better than I am by now?"
There is a classic old book called Your God is too Small. It is a corrective for those of us who never risk saying what we really mean with God because we don't think he is very mighty. Job questions God as though he is the ruler of the universe. Job questions him as though he can take it.
Offer to God your real questions today. As you do, know that you are stepping out in faith. You are taking a risk with a real and living God. And think again of today's psalm: "The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore." (Psalm 121:7-8)
Questions keep us up at night. Questions wake us up in the morning. What woke you up this morning? Was it your alarm clock? Or was it a question?
In today's reading, Job bludgeons God with a series of questions: "Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the schemes of the wicked? Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see? Are your days like the days of mortals, or your years like human years, that you seek out my iniquity and search for my sin, although you know that I am not guilty, and there is no one to deliver out of your hand?" (Job 10:3-7)
You don't need to have questions like Job's to appreciate that he asks them. Job doesn't hate God. His questions come from intimacy with God. His questions arise from a life that has been lived in total delight and worship of God. He is offended because God feels distant.
When you pray to God today, what questions do you really have? I recall an overwhelming day, driving in my car, asking God, "why aren't I better than I am by now?"
There is a classic old book called Your God is too Small. It is a corrective for those of us who never risk saying what we really mean with God because we don't think he is very mighty. Job questions God as though he is the ruler of the universe. Job questions him as though he can take it.
Offer to God your real questions today. As you do, know that you are stepping out in faith. You are taking a risk with a real and living God. And think again of today's psalm: "The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore." (Psalm 121:7-8)
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