8. Uncovered

MEDITATIONS IN ISAIAH – No.8

Isa 3:18 In that day the Lord will snatch away their finery: the bangles and headbands and crescent necklaces

Deception is a deadly thing. Jesus once told a parable about a rich farmer who kept building bigger and bigger barns to store his wealth (crops), and who concluded, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” (Lk 12:19) but he didn’t realise he was at the end of his wasted life: “But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” (Lk 12:20). Affluence is very deceptive. It can make us feel secure and in our (false) security we forget God and forget our spiritual wellbeing. Before we know where we are, disaster strikes and our lives collapse (see also Jesus’ parable of the two house builders – Mt 7:24-27).

After the verses we considered in the previous meditation, Isaiah goes on to speak against different groups of people. As we noted he speaks against a general group first of all, the wicked: “Woe to the wicked! Disaster is upon them! They will be paid back for what their hands have done.” (v.11). Now we tend to think that ‘wicked people’ are really evil, but I suspect from what follows that it would include large numbers of our own society. “Youths oppress my people.” (v.12a) In some parts of Western society, certain parts of towns are ‘no-go areas’ because of youth gangs. “Women rule over them.” (v.12b) When God had ordained men to take the lead, the prophet speaks against the women who had taken control. How many people would this word upset today in the West? “The LORD enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his people.” (v.14). Young people and then women and now leaders come under God’s spotlight.

See how the Lord comes to them: “The LORD takes his place in court; he rises to judge the people.” (v.13). Our guilty consciences may make us feel that this is a bad picture but it is a picture of the Lord who comes to assess guilt or innocence and it is only the guilty who have cause to fear. Justice is about fair and rational assessment of the truth. The innocent have nothing to fear. Indeed the innocent can rejoice that injustices are about to be dealt with!

Sometimes people have funny feelings about God’s judgment, speaking harshly about Him, but look at see what He is moving against: “It is you who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?” (v.14,15). His vineyard is a picture often used of the nation, God’s people. He is speaking against those who have robbed from the poor, who have trodden them down. Wouldn’t we all cheer at this?

But then he comes back to the women: “The women of Zion are haughty, walking along with outstretched necks, flirting with their eyes, tripping along with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles.” (v.16). These are the affluent women of Jerusalem, the modern affluent girl power, full of pride, sexual desires and indifference to God. Affluence, we said above, is deceptive and these women are typical of the attitude of the people of Jerusalem and Judah. They think they are something and they care nothing about the poor who were referred to earlier. Ms Materialist cares nothing about God – or about others. Self-centredness is the name of the game.

Now we have considered in previous meditations the Lord’s intent, which is to draw His people back to Himself. In their folly they have made themselves weak and a prey to other nations and other ideologies, which is why they worship idols from elsewhere. The only way to bring them to their senses is to strip away their finery, strip away their material wealth and wellbeing. We can often cope with a reduction in our wealth, but the removal of our wellbeing really brings us down and brings us to our senses. So how is the Lord going to deal with them? “Therefore the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the women of Zion; the LORD will make their scalps bald.” (v.17). Oh my goodness, He’s going to attack their beauty and their makeup! He’s going to remove their fashion accessories by which they hold so much store! See verses 18 to 23 for a list of their finery with which they adorn themselves and which deceive them into thinking they are great and they are secure. He’s going to remove it all to bring them to their senses!

We need to understand here, or remind ourselves if we took in the previous meditations, that the Lord’s intent is to bring this people into a place of real blessing, instead of this surface, counterfeit. It is not only what people look like on the outside that makes them rich, it is what they feel like on the inside, how they think of themselves, of God and of others. A self-centred, self-serving people are not rich, however many bits and pieces they have to adorn themselves or their homes. It’s not wrong to have money and possession, but if we obtain those at the cost of losing our soul, we have indeed become very confused and deceived. In the materialistic day in which we live, we would do well to really thing about these things!

7. Righteous Rescued

MEDITATIONS IN ISAIAH – No.7

Isa 3:10 Tell the righteous it will be well with them, for they will enjoy the fruit of their deeds.

There is a temptation to wrong thinking that regularly crops up in the Christian life, I believe. It is that we are just the same as everyone else and therefore the same things will happen to us as happen to everyone else. We see Christians prematurely promoted to glory through accident or illness and the enemy says, see, God doesn’t care for you any more than those non-Christians who live around you! Now I’ve thought about this long and hard, especially after a man I esteemed very highly as a servant of God was taken ill and quickly went to be with the Lord, as we say. But therein is the answer. He went to be with the Lord and, I may be wrong, but I think God had something for him to do in heaven that no one else could do and so just moved him on. Shocking for us with limited vision, but perhaps one day we’ll see the wisdom of it. Actually his being promoted to service in heaven was him enjoying the fruit of his deeds, to use Isaiah’s phrase.

Now this verse above is significant because of where it comes. It comes between two ‘woes’. “Woe to them! They have brought disaster upon themselves.” (v.9) and “Woe to the wicked! Disaster is upon them! They will be paid back for what their hands have done.” (v.11). The land was in a godless state and so God, as we have seen in previous studies, was taking action to draw them back to Himself. Now we need to see this clearly. They will either turn back to the Lord or they will be moved on from this earth. Very often, when we look at the subject of God’s ‘judgment’, we get upset at the thought of Him ‘killing people’ whether He does it personally or whether He uses a human agent such as an invading army.

What we fail to realise is God’s power and holiness and our sin. If we were an artist and started a painting, first using a pencil outline, and we made a mess of it, we’d just scrap it and start again. Every now and then, I see my wife, doing some knitting, pull the wool off the needles, undo it and start again. She complains that she did it too tight or missed a stitch, and so starts again. A gardener sees plants blighted by disease and so pulls them up to stop them infesting the rest of the plants. If we were able to see the human race in the same way as we have seen these examples, we would know that God would have been in His rights to completely wipe out this sin-infected human race that turns in on itself, fights and wars, causes hurt and upset, pollutes and destroys the planet and generally disregards God. We are still alive only by the mercy of God – and we don’t realise it!

There is an existence after our time on this world and we move into it according to how we have lived here. If we responded to God’s overtures here then we go to live with Him there. If we didn’t then we don’t. It IS that simple. God also sees what we might become if we are left to our own devices and so He in His wisdom decrees when we depart this planet. For a variety of reasons beyond our understanding people leave ‘prematurely’. Sometimes they leave for obvious reasons. When God spoke to Israel and was disregarded, then they left. In His efforts to draw the nation back to Himself, the Lord was about to do some ‘removing’: “See now, the Lord, the LORD Almighty, is about to take from Jerusalem and Judah….the hero and warrior, the judge and prophet, the soothsayer and elder, the captain of fifty and man of rank, the counselor, skilled craftsman and clever enchanter.” (3:1-3). All those who should have known better and who held roles of influence, influence that should have been for good, but which had not been, these people are about to be removed so their influence will no longer be there to lead the people away from the Lord! As we said previously, they could either repent or they will leave!

It is in the face of this scenario that the righteous might fear, will I be taken as well? This is when the Lord brings the reassurance of our verse today. No, He says, tell them it will be well with them. It’s all right! When our nation is under God’s judgment, as I believe is happening in the West today with America and Britain, then we who are seeking God’s righteousness and seek to live righteously, may have to cope with the folly of the world around us, going deeper and deeper into the fruits of godlessness and unrighteousness, but God’s grace is still there for us in the midst of it all. It’s all right, says the Lord, you will enjoy the fruit of your deeds. Your righteousness and your righteous living will mean blessing flows out.

In the same way that we often take Paul’s words as a warning, they can also be used as reassurance: “A man reaps what he sows.” (Gal 6:7) because Paul went on to explain good and bad outcomes: “The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Gal 6:8,9). There at the end of that quote is a key assurance: “we WILL reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Right! Let’s make sure we don’t give up! Maintain godliness in the face of an ungodly world. Maintain righteousness in the face of an unrighteous world! And watch for the harvest!

6. Superstition Removed

MEDITATIONS IN ISAIAH – No.6

Isa 2:6,9 They are full of superstitions from the East; they practice divination like the Philistines….. man will be brought low and mankind humbled

For many years I have preached, “God loves you so much that He loves you exactly like you are, but He also loves you so much that He has something better for you than you are now.” Here is a central truth of the Bible. That God loves us – and He takes us just like we are. That has always amazed me; that God takes imperfect people in the Bible and enters into a relationship with them while they are still very imperfect. But what has amazed me even more is that He has put up with them while they are imperfect and has worked to bless them and bless them again until they are changed by His blessing into something more wonderful, men and women of faith, living righteously. That is God’s objective and so when He comes across us in a mess, He doesn’t just leave us in it; He works to do something to get us out of it.

Now there is a further truth that we really do need to take hold of. Blessing from God doesn’t just come like a wave from a magic wand, it comes with the very presence of God Himself. In other words, it comes out of a living relationship with Him. God doesn’t want to bless us from afar, He wants to come close in a personal relationship so that He can help us, care for us, protect us, guide us and inspire us – close up and personal. That’s why He has put His Holy Spirit in us when we came to Him and were ‘born again’ (Jn 3).

So, when we get into a mess, it is almost inevitably because we have lost contact (is how we feel it) with God and gone and done our own thing which has got us into trouble. God’s objective therefore, is to get us back into relationship with Him. When that happens, everything else will fall into place. Now the difficult bit is how do you get someone to come back to God? Well, when someone has listened to the enemy and drifted or specifically turned away from the Lord, the very nature of their going away means that they will need a strong nudge to come to their senses and turn back. What the Lord does is either take away the protection or restraining factors that keep us safe and secure, or He specifically nudges detrimental circumstances into being. The result of both is that we find ourselves in deeper and deeper water and it is only as we realise that we are drowning that we call out for the Lord to come and help and save us, and He restores us.

We see this happening again and again in the book of Judges. The people turned away from the Lord, they got into trouble with their enemies, they cried out to the Lord, and then He sent them a saviour to rescue them and restore them to God. This same principle is seen when the apostle Paul speaks to the Corinthian church and says, “hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved.” (1 Cor 5:5) i.e. put him out of the church so he no longer has its protection and will be subject to God’s discipline through Satan that will bring him to his senses. That clearly had effect because in his second letter Paul is able to speak about restoring him (2 Cor 2:6-8). Now we need to say all this to understand Isaiah.

Isaiah describes Judah’s state: they are superstitious, practicing so-called spiritism and worshiping idols (v.6,8) which are nothing. He doesn’t spell this out at this stage but elsewhere in Scripture we are reminded that idols are simply models made by the hands of men and therefore are utterly powerless and lifeless. This people have turned to superstition and the Lord needs to draw them back, but it is a tough job because they have allowed their hearts to be so entrenched in this belief in manageable ‘gods’ that it will need something quite drastic to change it. It will need something so dramatic that it will remove the idols and drive this foolish people out of superstition back into reliance on the Lord where, once again, they can receive the blessing of the Lord.

Something is going to happen! God is going to do something dramatic to bring this about! At the moment men are stuck in their pride. In their folly they have settled in a place where they think they know best and they are in control. To bring them back into relationship with Him, the Lord is going to have to do something dramatic. Isaiah describes its outcome: “man will be brought low and mankind humbled” (v.9) and “The eyes of the arrogant man will be humbled and the pride of men brought low; the LORD alone will be exalted in that day.” (v.11 and following verses). At the end of it, “the idols will totally disappear.” (v.18).

How will this happen? “the splendour of his majesty.” (v.10) and “the LORD alone will be exalted in that day.” (v.11) and “dread of the LORD and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth.” (v.19) i.e. the Lord is going to come and reveal Himself in such a way that all of this stupid worshipping of idols will be seen for what it is, and it will all be swept away in the glorious presence of the Lord. Do we see this as harsh, or as wonderful? Your answer will reveal your state of heart.

5. Promise of Peace

MEDITATIONS IN ISAIAH – No.5

Isa 2:2,4 In the last days…. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

Suppose you have a bad back and go and see a specialist and he says, “Yes, you’ll need weekly massage and then strenuous exercise before this gets better.” You accept that as normal. Or perhaps you go to the dentist and he says, “I’m afraid you have some decay and I have to do a number of fillings.” Again you accept that you are going to have to go through a period of discomfort before, eventually, you come to a good place.

Our trouble, often, when we read books of the Bible like Isaiah, is that we get bogged down with the negative diagnosis and the painful ‘treatment’ and tend to forget that always the Lord is seeking to bring His people through to a good end. In chapter one we had a lot of painful diagnosis of Israel’s state but now as we enter the second chapter we see that the Lord is aiming for something quite specific. Yes, there is violence at the present as nation rises against nation and the sin of mankind is expressed at a national level, but God is aiming for something beyond that.

Note first that this is what Isaiah “saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.” (v.1) This was the land and this was the city that so often went through turmoil as other nations invaded in their ‘down’ times. So much for the location; next the timing: “In the last days”. (v.2a). The ‘last days’ tends to refer in Scripture to an end time period when God winds up all that is at the present and brings in something new. That is obvious in what follows. “the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains.” (v.2b). Jerusalem was sited on seven hills; not very big hills admittedly but hills nevertheless.

The very first time Jerusalem was referred to as a ‘mountain’ was in respect of Abraham where he went to sacrifice Isaac: “So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.” (Gen 22:14). We believe this location was what became to be Jerusalem because we find, “Then Solomon began to build the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah.” (2 Chron 3:1). Later Zechariah was to prophesy, “Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth, and the mountain of the LORD Almighty will be called the Holy Mountain.” (Zech 8:3). Perhaps ‘mountain’ is used to refer to a high place, a place where God dwells above all humans, reflecting something of the Sinai experience (see Ex 19). Mountain may also, perhaps, refer to ideologies of the world. Whichever it is, the picture is clear – the Lord’s dwelling place will be the chief or supreme of all such places that mankind might look to.

Thus, although Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God in the Old Testament period, was now in a weak and vulnerable position, a prey to invading forces, that is only a temporary state. Ultimately it will become the focal point for the world. Now whether that focal point is the place of the Cross of Christ which establishes the Christian faith, or something else, time will tell. But the end is clear: the Lord will reign and people will come to Him: “Many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” (v.3). There will be a heart desiring for the Lord and His ways, so people will seek Him. This suggests an end-time revival, bigger than anything the world has known, where large numbers of the world are drawn to the Lord.

But then it is as a result of that, that we come to our verse above: “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” (v.4). Do you see this? Because people come to the Lord, there will be peace! It is peace because they submit to the Lord and His blessing comes to them. The apostle Paul understood this when he wrote: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.” (Rom 14:17,18). God’s rule brings righteousness, peace and joy in our lives. How different this is from the foolish ideas that the world has accepted from Satan: “The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. “Let us break their chains,” they say, “and throw off their fetters.” (Psa 2:2,3). Sin, stirred on by Satan, sees the Lord’s rule as hard, but in fact it is exactly the opposite. It brings peace and joy. Those are not characteristics of a hard life!

Oh the folly of sin! How it distorts our thinking! It makes God out to be a hard and harsh God, but in fact, He is the exact opposite. Sin looks at Scripture through a twisted lens and so the truth is distorted. It picks on the corrective parts and sees them in the worst possible light. It fails to see the love and goodness of God shining through in the midst of man’s stupidity. Check it out in yourself. How do you (honestly!) view the Old Testament? Do you feel God is hard? Do you focus on judgment or can you see the restrained, corrective, gentle hand of a loving God shining through, even in the words of a prophet who struggles with the folly of his own people?

4. Promise of Transformation

MEDITATIONS IN ISAIAH – No.4

Isa 1:18 Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool

I have lived long enough to have heard a variety of sermons interpreting this verse in a variety of ways. However, I am going to argue as logically as possible to obtain the simplest possible understanding of its meaning. It starts with the Lord’s invitation to talk out their situation. Very often when we are not in a good place we hide away from the Lord and from other people, just like Adam and Eve did (Gen 3:8), but the Lord takes the initiative, as He so often does, and invites us to talk. It is when we talk that we can come to a place of fresh understanding. The communications slogan, “It’s good to talk,” really does apply when you are hiding away, cowed by the enemy into believing lies about yourself and about God. We also hide away when we feel we will be condemned for our sin, but the Lord’s intent is very different.

He brings two contrasting pictures. The first is of their sin which He describes as scarlet or crimson. The second is the Lord’s intended outcome, what He intends to do with their sin, and their end outcome is simply described as white as snow or as wool, which is also white. Now whatever clever applications we try and see in this, I would simply suggest that this is a picture of total transformation. One minute their sins are like a bright red colour, the next they are pure white. This is a complete transformation. Let’s just see it like that!

Now of course we do tend to use the expression, “Pure as the driven snow” and the whiteness described does suggest purity. What is there to suggest our understanding is correct? Well the first part of the chapter is clearly a negative assessment of Israel’s state and so the next verse comes as a complete surprise in the light of those earlier negatives: “If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land.” (1:19). The Lord never blesses sin and so this offer of goodness must accompany the picture of complete transformation. What is it that will bring this transformation? Willingness and obedience! The matter is in their own hands. The Lord intends them good (as He always does), but it is only their sin which stops that happening. Now we shouldn’t see this as some magic formula or even as a means to criticise the Lord. There are those somewhat unthinking people who speak negatively of the Lord in these sort of situations. Look, they say, He just looking for an opportunity to judge them. How silly is that! It is exactly the opposite; He is looking for an opportunity to bless them but their foolish behaviour prevents that.

Now it is not that the Lord is inadequate and cannot bless people, but if they are harming themselves and He won’t force their wills, then it is only going to be bad coming into their lives because they are bringing it on themselves. Consider the godless person who lives a completely promiscuous life, say. This person just happens to express their godlessness in promiscuity. It could have been in a number of ways, but they chose to be promiscuous – and then they caught a sexually transmitted disease. If I jump from an upper storey window I am going to seriously hurt myself. I can’t blame God for not catching me. He would have been speaking to me previously encouraging me not to jump. Thereafter He respects my free will and allows me to make sovereign choices – as harmful as they may be. To talk about Him blessing me when I am having to live with the consequences of my sovereign choices is just plain silly. Remember the willful child I used as an example in the previous meditation? Away from the family home they cannot receive all the goodness of the home. Like the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable he ends up eating with the pigs (Lk 15:16). We really have to take responsibility for our own actions and realise that we reap what we sow (Gal 6:7).

One side of the coin is the blessing the Lord offers us, by living in accordance with His design-laws, so that he can add blessing to us. The other side of the coin, as we have seen, are things going wrong, “but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” (1:20). Why? Is this the Lord being nasty or is it a natural outworking? I suggest first the latter. If they disregard the Lord, then they will be spiritually, morally, socially and militarily weak, and being weak they will become a prey to the surrounding nations. Now the Lord isn’t being ‘nasty’ but sometimes He does bring discipline by either stepping back and allowing the neighbours to invade Israel, or even at times provokes them to invade, but it is always with the intent of turning Israel around and back to the place of blessing. The father who refuses to bail his child is allowing them to feel the full weight of the Law to help them come to their senses. The mother who allows her children to hurt themselves by way of the learning process (without serious danger) is allowing them to learn that we reap what we sow, dangerous things cause harm and are to be avoided. The society that overprotects erodes personal responsibility and we are poorer for it.

These are the lessons that the wise parent knows the child needs to learn, and God is the wisest of all parents! Thus we will find again and again, when Israel stray they get into trouble, but that is how life is in a Fallen World, and this no way detracts from God’s love that will always be there working to bring good to us out of every situation (Rom 8:28). Let’s learn the lessons.

3. Religious Wrongs

MEDITATIONS IN ISAIAH – No.3

Isa 1:10 Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

Isaiah has just compared Judah to Sodom and Gomorrah, so now he calls them by those two names, the inference being that morally they were similar. He tells them to hear and take note of God’s word and His law. In this case they are one and the same thing. The Lord is having to speak to Judah about their behaviour and therefore He is referring to things which come under the category of His law. Now I have already referred to the Law as God’s design-rules for Israel. Essentially, they call Israel to live lives that are in line with the way God has designed us to ‘work’ best. This is very basic teaching and yet one which is so often forgotten. When the Lord created the earth, and us on it, it was ‘very good’ (Gen 1:31). He designed us to function in certain ways and when we function outside those parameters, our lives break down, and we see this being worked out in the West in the early part of the twenty-first century.

Now there is a refinement to what we have said so far. The most crucial thing about the Law was that it was all about living in harmony with God as well as with our fellow human beings. Thus when the Lord introduces what we now call the Ten Commandments, we find Him saying, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Ex 20:2). He is reminding Israel that He is the God who has saved them and a God with whom they can having a living relationship, and that relationship is the all-important issue. Now this is important to understand because we next find the Lord criticising their religious habits. Their natural feelings were obviously, “Well as long as we do the things God told us to do in the Law, it will be all right,” and therefore once they did those things, they felt they could do what they liked in the rest of their lives, but what they then did indicated that the ‘religious things’ really didn’t come out of a relationship with the Lord, but as a pretence of a relationship. If they had a genuine relationship with the Lord, they could not have done some of the things they were doing. Bearing that in mind, let’s see what Isaiah says.

“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. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations– I cannot bear your evil assemblies.” (1:11-13) i.e. why are you bringing all these sacrifices, why are you offering incense, why are you celebrating all these special days? The implication is that they are all meaningless. All of this religious ritual is meaningless! Indeed the Lord tells what He feels about them: “Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.” (1:14) i.e. I intensely dislike these days that you call special.

Even more, He declares, “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen.” (1:15) What? God is saying He will take no notice of someone’s prayers? Why? “Your hands are full of blood.” (1:15c) Ah! There is injustice in the land! Now look at His instructions to them.

“Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” (1:16,17). They are polluted with sin and need to wash themselves. They need to get rid of these sins; they need to stop doing them. When you have a relationship with the Lord you CANNOT keep on sinning! The apostle John taught, “I write this to you so that you will not sin.” (1 Jn 2:1) and “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning.” (1 Jn 3:6) and “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.” (1 Jn 3:9). The apostle Paul taught, “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Rom 6:2) and, “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Rom 6:11) and, “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” (Rom 6:18). The New Testament writers confirmed what the Old Testament prophets declared: you cannot have a living relationship with the Lord and carry on sinning.

Thus Isaiah tells them to learn to do what is right. Our new lives involve us in learning what God’s will is: “be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Rom 12:2). This is to have a practical outworking; they are to work for justice, lift up those who are oppressed and care for orphans and widows. The apostle James reiterated this: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (Jas 1:27). God cares for all people, especially those who are vulnerable, and the church is to really look after these ones.

Do we see this? God wants to bring His blessing into our lives as a community, and therefore, as a community, we are to care for one another. When a community does this it creates security, a sense of goodness in living. That is this God of love’s intent, to bless us in community, so that we feel it is good to be part of it. That’s how it must have been in the early church as we read, “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.” (Acts 2:44-47). Is that how ‘church’ is for us? If not, we have something to work for!

2. Survivors

MEDITATIONS IN ISAIAH – No.2

Isa 1:9 Unless the LORD Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.

Isaiah challenges us over this matter of God being a God of love, because he records God’s dealings with Judah and Jerusalem during a time when all was not well in the nation and they were far from being the people that God had called them to be. Now we have to recognise and remember certain basics here.

First, God had called Israel at Sinai to be His special people: “if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:5,6). That had been God’s invitation to them, and they had responded, “We will do everything the LORD has said.” (Ex 19:8). That had committed the nation to this ongoing relationship with the Lord. Essentially Israel were to be God’s prototype nation, a nation that would receive His guidance (laws) on how to live in accordance with the way He had designed mankind and to be able to relate to Him despite being part of sinful mankind (ceremonial/sacrificial laws).

Second, they were still human beings with free will which meant that if they were to live out this relationship with God, they needed to choose to do that. Of course they were also free to choose to do the opposite, i.e. to go their own way, which is what they often did. Now when they lived contrary to God’s design-laws for them, when they were out of relationship with Him, then they failed to receive God’s blessing (decree of goodness and protection) and because they were spiritually weak, they so often also became morally, economically and militarily weak which made them vulnerable to attacks from surrounding predatory nations. Now sometimes this is attributed simply to their sin, and sometimes it is specifically attributed to the Lord’s hand of discipline on them, and we need to understand this feature of their life.

Because they were supposed to represent God to the rest of the world, and represent His goodness, as perhaps was seen at the height of Solomon’s reign, when they went away from Him they were revealing a very different picture of God’s people and were thus misrepresenting the Lord. Because of this the Lord would do all in His power (beyond taking away their free will) to bring them back into a good place, a place of relationship and a place of blessing. Now we shouldn’t see this as anything strange, this absence of His blessing when they turned away from Him. Imagine a child brought up in a wealthy home. They have everything they could want. They are truly blessed, but then they decide to ignore their parents and leave home and they fall into bad ways. Obviously they are now no longer in the place of receiving all the good provision of their parents at home, but we would not blame their parents for this; it is simply that they have chosen to move out of the place of blessing, and that it how it so often was with Israel.

So in Isaiah chapter 1, we find Isaiah identifying this time as such a time: “Ah, 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” (1:4). He describes Israel as sinful (wrong-doing), loaded with guilt (it IS their fault), children (of God), given to corruption (corrupt – tainted or infected [by sin], think of a corrupted hard drive on a computer) and why? Because they have forsaken or spurned God and turned their back on Him, just like the child I cited as an example just now.

And what had happened to them? “Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire; your fields are being stripped by foreigners right before you, laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.” (1:7). They had become weak and malnourished and thus a prey to enemy invaders. Look how he pictures them now: “The Daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons.” (1:8). They stand out like a sore thumb, we might say, in their desolated state, like a hut left after harvest, standing all alone (implied). Then comes our verse today: “Unless the LORD Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” (1:9) Sodom and Gomorrah, of course had been totally destroyed, but the Lord, Isaiah says, has saved them from that. And there we find a feature of the Lord’s activity with this sinful people: He constantly saved a remnant. The Lord was not going to allow this people, who he had saved from Egypt to be a light to the rest of the world, to be totally destroyed.

Again and again He preserved some of them, the righteous remnant, we will see. Yes, even though the majority of the nation turned away from God, there would always be a few that would remain faithful and these ones the Lord always preserved. They were not going to get swept away in the folly of the majority. In His love for the nation, He would preserve the righteous ones, even when an enemy came in and plundered the land. These ones would be saved even from that invader. We will see this activity of the Lord again and again in these chapters of Isaiah, and indeed in the writings of the other prophets as well. The others may perish in their folly as they refused the word of the Lord coming to them, refused the Lord’s attempts to bring them back from that folly and save them, but the righteous ones of the Lord would be preserved and maintain the name of Israel. Watch for this as you read the prophets.

1. The Challenge

(Today we start a fresh set of meditations as we take a break from Luke – we will come back to Luke later on.)

MEDITATIONS IN ISAIAH – No.1

Isa 1:1 The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

I approach this set of meditations more self-consciously that I have ever written before. This is going to be a challenge. I have read Isaiah a number of times, I have written a number of Bible studies from within it, and it’s an amazing book. However, over the past two years, I have been challenged by facing up to some of the more prominent atheists of the world who question the Old Testament and who say that it portrays an angry, vicious God who is totally different from the God portrayed in the New Testament. I confess that this has helpfully stirred me to challenge my thinking and my Bible reading, to see the God, who is described by the apostle John as ‘love’ (1 Jn 4:8,16), as the God of love in the Old Testament. That will be one of the key ideas I will be working on in these studies in Isaiah.

I am also going against the grain of some commentators in that I am going to assume that the book we call Isaiah was written by just one person and was not written by several people. My assumption is that if there are two or more phases of writing in this book, it is simply because Isaiah went through phases of understanding or revelation, as we all do. Again, as I tend to do with all these mediations, I am calling them meditations rather than studies because although there is a study element in them, I want to be wider ranging and verging on the devotional or personal. I may also range over broad swathes of a chapter at a time, and sometimes verse by verse.

This is first for my benefit and then for yours. I want to enjoy this book and enjoy writing about it, as I have so often enjoyed many other parts of Scripture. This is not a ‘hard’ exercise, but an enjoyable one! Yes, the subject matter of the first half of Isaiah especially, is about failure and destruction, yet let’s face it honestly, with the full revelation of Scripture, and see both the awfulness of sin and the wonder of the mercy and grace of God that is here revealed. (I’m not sure as I start this particular set whether we will cover the whole of Isaiah or just the early chapters.)

After the above introduction, telling us that Isaiah received revelation during the reigns of four kings, we find him – whoah! Hold on, we mustn’t go too fast. Look what that first verse says – The vision. Singular! The whole book comprises a panorama that affects Judah and Jerusalem. Yes, there are going to be a number of ‘oracles’ (e.g. 13:1. 15:1, 17:1 etc.) and there are going to be included a number of personal happenings involving Isaiah (e.g. Ch. 6,7,8, 20 etc.) but all of these things contribute to the big picture that involves the Lord and His people. Jerusalem was all important as it was the place God had established His ‘house’, the Temple, the place of encounter between God and His people. This whole book with its many facets and styles, which have confused so many commentators, is actually like a patchwork quilt, or a mosaic, or a collage, and it all contributes to the vision, the overall revelation from God for His people at that time, so we must see it all as a complete package. Yes, there are specific individual bits but we must recognise that they are just parts of the collage that make up the whole.

So, here he goes in chapter 1: “Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the LORD has spoken.” (v.2a). Isaiah has caught a sense of God’s voice speaking. What has the Lord said? “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.” (v.2b). God speaks as a father whose children have rebelled against Him. Now something I have observed over the years is that we attribute to God feelings that we have, and so you can take the Lord’s words in different ways and with different feelings behind them, depending on how we view Him. Some people have a negative view of their father and so attribute negative attitudes to God. Now of course we’ll never know the complete truth until we get to heaven, but bear in mind the challenge that I spoke of earlier – that we learn to see God as the God of love who is the same in the Old Testament as He is in the New.

Listen to how He continues to illustrate what has happened: “The ox knows his master, the donkey his owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” (v.3). You can take that as a negative if you wish, but look at the description of Israel, “my people”. God is hurt, as a father is hurt by his children disregarding him, but God still speaks of them as my people. Yes, He is not casting them away simply because they turn from Him. In the West today it is common, when one partner in a marriage has been unfaithful, for the other partner to divorce. Separation comes so easily, but the Lord is not doing that. They are still His people, still His children, and so He wants to remedy the situation. Simply, His people do not understand. They are short sighted and cannot see the folly of what they have been doing. Now the Lord could have abandoned them, given them up and walked away and started afresh with a new group of people – but He didn’t! They may not be committed to Him but He is committed to them! That is love! Love can say some strong words, but it still hangs in there, it still remains committed.

There are a lot of chapters in Isaiah, a lot of words, so this is a lot of communication from God, sharing His vision about Israel. It is a vision that sees their past and the folly that has brought them to the present. It is also guidance and direction of how to deal with their present plight, so that they may be part of His future blessed people. It has warnings in it, to be sure, but it also holds out great hope. Let’s try to see as much as we can through this kaleidoscope of a book, and try and catch as much of the vision as we can, the overall picture of the revelation of God about His people. Only He sees truly, only He sees the reality of life, and so only He can share that reality. Let’s watch for it.

Forgiveness by Faith

Readings in Luke Continued – No.32

Lk 7:48-50 Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”  The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”  Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

We’ve said it a number of times before in these meditations and we’ll no doubt say it again, but there are times in Scripture when you wish more was said so that it was a lot clearer to us. As we read this account the woman says nothing. Everything attributed to her by Jesus is through her actions. She came, she wept, she wiped and she washed with perfume – but she doesn’t say anything. She is a known sinner in the town and Jesus now pronounces forgiveness for her. Just a minute, we say, doesn’t forgiveness come from God ONLY when there has been repentance? Yes, and so Jesus reads in her and in her actions, repentance. He even declares that it is her faith that has saved her. How come?

Go back a verse and you find Jesus explaining to Simon, summing up his chiding of Simon, following the little illustration of two debtors with, “Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven–for she loved much.” (v.47). Jesus, as we considered in the previous meditation, put a very favourable spin on her actions, he saw her actions in the best light possible. As we have previously considered her actions and considered the possibilities, we considered very human actions and responses which may well have started out with human reasoning and self-centred motivations, but we did also recognise that in Jesus’ presence her heart is broken or melted or won over and now Jesus interprets all she did in a good way.

The truth is, of course, that Jesus sees her heart. He knows what has been going on inside her and knows the transformation that has taken place. The only way that our interpretation of events could be wrong is if Jesus had previously met her, and spoke to her, so that her coming to the house was a response of repentance to his words – but there is no evidence that that happened.

Now, says Jesus, it is her faith that has saved her, so what signs are there of her faith. Well first of all there is the fact of her coming into the house and looking for Jesus. As we’ve noted previously this was quite a difficult thing for her to do. Something in her is stirring her to come and see Jesus. Jesus said elsewhere, “My Father is always at his work to this very day,” (Jn 5:17) and part of the Father’s ‘work’, I believe, is to speak to people. I am certain that God speaks to every person many times in their lives. Whether they hear and respond to Him is another matter, but Paul was to write, “faith comes from hearing the message,” (Rom 10:17) and so when there is faith, it is always responding to God’s message. Admittedly Paul was referring to the preached message in the context of what he was saying, but it is also true in respect of anything God whispers directly into our mind. The fact that the woman came looking for Jesus, is an indication that she is responding in faith to an inner prompting. But that isn’t enough.

She finds him, stays with him, and responds to him. As we’ve previously suggested, Jesus almost certainly would have acknowledged her in some way and that way indicated to her acceptance. It is that acceptance, we suggest, that breaks her heart and opens the floodgates of tears. Now we have suggested before that it is possible that she came in weeping out of anguish because of her life situation which was crushing her, but here we are now considering an alternative reason for her tears – they are tears of thankfulness – someone understands me, some knows me and accepts me. Her tears of anguish become tears of relief. When we come to see that for the first time it is a mighty liberating thing. Have you ever come to that realisation? If you have it will almost certainly have been accompanied by joy and by tears, or both. If you’ve never had that joy or those tears it is possible that you’ve never ‘seen it’ or realised it as a truth, and maybe you want to ask the Lord to reveal it to you.

If her tears are now tears in response to Jesus’ obvious acceptance of her, it is a response of faith that says, “Yes, he DOES accept me!” and that in itself is an act of faith. As she wipes his feet with her hair and then wipes perfume on them, these again can be seen as heart responses to Jesus. Yes, we have previously interpreted them as acts of embarrassment and appeasement, but Jesus interprets them as acts of faith, acts that, for whatever reason, want to please him. Her heart, in whatever way, is reaching out to Jesus, and when a person does that they let go their old life, and transfer their allegiance to Jesus, together with an allegiance to goodness and righteousness. For these reasons, Jesus looks into her and recognises genuine repentance and for that reason he pronounces forgiveness for her and declares that it is forgiveness that comes in response to her acts of faith.

We can never earn our forgiveness. We can only repent. We don’t deserve forgiveness, only Jesus has earned it: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.” (Eph 1:7) It can only come to us because of what Jesus did on the Cross. As we respond to God’s drawing, as we respond to His prompting, and come in repentance, it opens the way for Him to declare the forgiveness we need. We haven’t earned it, we just come to receive it and we don’t come until we repent.

The coming is, in itself, an act of faith, and that is what the Lord looks for in us. The coming is followed by responses to Him that indicate our repentance, and that He also looks for. Jesus saw it in the woman, even though she never said a word. That isn’t to say that we are not to say a word. The words would follow with the woman. As Paul wrote: “if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” (Rom 10:9,10). Repentance involves confession and belief. For the woman it was ‘confession by deeds’ and Jesus was happy with that, for the time being at least! Hallelujah!

Signs of Love

Readings in Luke Continued – No.31

Lk 7:44-47 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”

I want to suggest that there is a sign of love in this passage that is not obvious but crucial once we really start thinking about what was going on here. The obvious love is that which Jesus spoke about – “for she loved much”. Jesus is using her apparent love in direct comparison with Simon’s attitude. Simon had invited Jesus to dinner but had, according to customs of the time, given him the barest of considerations. Today, if we invited someone in at the end of a hot day, we might point them towards the bathroom and say, “Would you like to just freshen up?” In other words we would give them the opportunity to use our things to clean up and feel better. In their day, with dusty roads and sandals, an honoured guest would have their feet washed by the servants of the house; that was the barest minimum you would do for them. If you wanted to really bless them you would given them oil for their head, rather like we put things on our hair to tidy up. But Simon had done none of these things. He gave Jesus minimal hospitality, because he was really only inviting him in to find grounds to criticise him.

The apparent love that Jesus spoke about, contrasting Simon’s poor attitude was that of the woman. Remember we saw in earlier verses she was well known and had “lived a sinful life in that town,” (v.37), quite possibly a prostitute – but she had come seeking out Jesus. There would have been no other reason that she would enter this house of a Pharisee because, like her, he was probably well known in this small town, and she would have know that she was the very opposite of everything he stood for, and would have been the subject of his condemnation. She has obviously heard about Jesus and, it would appear, was sufficiently desperate that she didn’t mind what people thought or might say. No, she came looking for Jesus and when she found him, she stood behind him weeping.

Now we speculated before why she was crying. Was it that she was so desperate? Was it that when she found Jesus, he simply smiled up at her, a smile of acceptance that broke her heart? Was she overwhelmed by the sense of God’s presence and it was a beautiful, accepting presence, so that her heart was melted and she knew she was accepted. We don’t know, we just have to speculate because Luke doesn’t tell us. Whatever else, she felt secure by Jesus. Presumably he had acknowledged her presence in some way and so she remains with him and just weeps and then wipes his wet feet with her tears and then gently rubs perfume into them. Whatever she felt when she came in, whatever had been her motivation then, now it is love in the awareness of being accepted.

Isn’t one of the preliminary facets of love being accepted by the other person? When you meet another person, your relationship cannot develop unless they accept you, and indeed the more they get to know you, the relationship will only develop if you both accept each other as you are. For real love to develop there must first be complete acceptance of each other as we are.

So the obvious love is the woman’s love that Jesus speaks about, a love that has quickly developed and which flows from the way Jesus has just accepted her. John was later to write, “We love because he first loved us,” (1 Jn 4:19) which explains what went on here. The less obvious love, because it is not spoken about, is Jesus’ love of this woman, seen first in the way he accepts her ministrations, while knowing exactly who she is. But I think there is a second way that his love is demonstrated here: it is the way he interprets her actions. It isn’t just to make Simon feel bad, it is a genuine interpretation of her actions. He sees them in the best light possible. Love always looks for the best in a person and sees what they say and do in the best possible way. Yes, it is possible that the woman came in with mixed motives, possibly ready to pay Jesus for help, possibly not even sure why she was there, but the more she remains with him, the more her heart goes out to him as she senses the warmth of his acceptance. It doesn’t matter if she wept out of anguish, it doesn’t matter if she wiped his feet out of embarrassment, it doesn’t matter if she put on the perfume out of guilt, Jesus saw it all positively. It’s like he might have said, “I don’t mind why you did it all; I just take it as an expression of your growing love, and for that I am grateful.” That’s how love responds and that’s why Jesus spoke as he did here to Simon in our verses today. In today’s language we might say he was putting a positive spin on it, but then that’s what love does.

But we always say that we need to look at what Scripture says to us personally. What does this response of Jesus say to us? Well I find it a challenge. Do I look for the best in people? Do I look to see what they say and do in the best light? Do I accept people like Jesus did so that they feel secure with me, safe and able to be themselves? Am I there for the underdog who is condemned by the safe, secure and affluent part of society? Am I willing to be associated with them, even when everyone else is condemning them? Am I so concerned for their salvation that I am willing to risk my reputation to reach out to them with God’s love? These, surely, are the key issues that leap out of this account that Luke brings to us and these are issues that I must deal with in my life, if I am truly to be a disciple of Jesus. May it be so!