Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 29-31.
Isaiah warns us against paying lip service to obeying God while seeking loopholes in His commands. All too often we think that if we obey the letter of God’s law we need not obey its spirit. What we fail to understand is that the letter of God’s law is merely a human construction, which, at its best, is an attempt to help us understand how to do that which God desires of us. We pretend to ourselves that God cannot see our intention to circumvent His desires. We think that we know better than God what will bring us the greatest joy, forgetting that He made us and thus knows things about us that we will never comprehend, and other things about us that we can only begin to comprehend after we have chosen to do as He directs. Isaiah warns us against making plans and forming alliances without looking to God for guidance and seeking His aid. Isaiah warns us of those who will try to silence those whom God sends to speak His words to them, and he warns us not to be like them.
Those who reject God’s message end up relying on oppression and deceit. Throughout this passage I keep seeing Isaiah talk about those who do things I see being done in our society today. Isaiah speaks of the day when the deaf will hear and the blind will see, when the humble will rejoice in the Lord and the ruthless will disappear. God will bring His judgement on those who use false testimony to make people out to be guilty. We must strive to be among the humble who rejoice in the Lord, but be careful that we are not just saying the words without meaning them in our hearts.
“Because you have rejected this message,
relied on oppression
and depended on deceit,
Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help,…,
but do not look to the Holy One of Israel,
or seek help from the Lord.
In a very short time, will not Lebanon be turned into a fertile field
and the fertile field seem like a forest?
18 In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll,
and out of gloom and darkness
the eyes of the blind will see.
19 Once more the humble will rejoice in the Lord;
the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
20 The ruthless will vanish,
the mockers will disappear,
and all who have an eye for evil will be cut down—
21 those who with a word make someone out to be guilty,
who ensnare the defender in court
and with false testimony deprive the innocent of justice.
I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.