I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 60-63.

    When I read the beginning of today’s passage (chapter 60) I wonder if this prophecy about the future of Israel takes place before or after God creates the new Heaven and new Earth. And if before, is it meant to be taken literally or figuratively. Like many of Isaiah’s prophecies I suspect that this passage is intended to foretell more than one point in history. I see elements of the establishment, and current state, of modern Israel in this passage. The passage describes ships from the ends of the earth bringing the people of Israel home to their land. However, there are also many aspects of this passage which contain elements of the descriptions of the New Heaven and the New Earth which God will create.

    Beginning with verse one of chapter 61 we have a passage which Jesus explicitly quoted as being fulfilled in Himself. This passage was Jesus’ mandate, and, if we are imitators of Him, ours as well. We are true followers of Christ if God’s Spirit is upon us to bring good news to the poor, comfort the broken-hearted, and proclaim that slaves are to be freed. Jesus brought that message to us. Now we are to take that message, in His name, to the rest of the earth. But there is also a warning that goes along with that message. God loves justice and hates wrongdoing and robbery.

    When I read the final chapter of today’s passage I am reminded of “The Battle Hymn of The Republic”. Specifically, I am reminded of the images of the horror of the Civil War which it evokes for me. In particular, verse 3 brings that to my mind, and what we can expect if we allow similar injustice to occur again (or perhaps I should say allow such injustice to continue). Verse 3 says, “I have been treading the winepress alone; no one was there to help me.” If you do not understand what I am talking about, read some of the descriptions about how horrific the battlefields of the Civil War, or World War I. Those are two examples of when God unleashed His fury at mankind and began trampling His enemies. The Battle Hymn of the Republic was written, and used, in order to make the Union Army seem like the arm of God’s vengeance, but by the end of the war, I believe that many of the Union soldiers realized that they too had been trampled as part of God’s vengeance on His enemies.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 57-59.

    Today’s passage begins with a condemnation of those who mock believers as credulous fools while themselves believing in many implausible things. I remember a comedian who made a name for himself by mocking Christians as gullible and believing incredulous things. It turned out that he himself was willing to believe the incredulous, as long as those making the claims did not believe in God. In my experience, those who most emphatically do not believe in God are often the most gullible when it comes to other claims. However, perhaps even more relevant to how today’s passage starts are the people who spend their lives looking for spiritual fulfillment. Often times, they started their search for spiritual fulfillment by rejecting Christianity without ever actually learning what Jesus taught. Despite the fact that people often rejected God without ever listening to what He had to offer, if they accept it from Him, He will heal them.

    Worse than those who pursue other gods rather than worshiping the one true God are those who go through the motions in order to appear righteous. They worship God in order to advance their own interests, not to serve Him. God does not want our worship to be about going through the motions or performing the correct rituals. God wants us to treat our fellow man well and care for those in need. In many ways what Isaiah is talking about here reminds me of those who practice “Prosperity Gospel”, who think that being a Christian is a way to become prosperous. Serving God is not about what is in it for me. The benefit of serving God is doing good for others. Perhaps the part of this which strikes closest to home for me is Isaiah’s command to keep the Sabbath Day holy. Isaiah tells us not to pursue our own interests on that day, but we should still enjoy it. I do not believe that the Sabbath Day must be celebrated on either the 7th day of the week, as Jews generally do, or on the 1st day of the week as Christians generally do. However, I do believe that we should set aside one day a week to dedicate to God. That does not mean that we need to spend the whole day at worship services, or reading the Bible, but it does mean that we should not spend time on that day doing things we just did not get to on another day.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 52-56.

    Those who bring the news of God’s salvation to people are beautiful to those who receive their message. We should never forget this because the reverse is true as well. Those who know the news of God’s salvation and fail to pass it on are ugly to those who suffer for not hearing it. If we do not share what we know about God’s saving grace to those we know, they will, rightfully, condemn us in days to come. Let us not fail in our duty.

    I have been really stuck for a bit figuring out what I want to write about chapter 53. It is a very strongly prophecy of the Messiah and for Christians it clearly points to Jesus and His suffering. The word pictures which Isaiah paints here of what Jesus went through in order to reconcile us with God should touch our souls. They are meant to touch our souls. God seeks to restore our relationship with Him, and through Jesus He has made that possible. And yet, so many of us still refuse to listen to the love He offers us.

    Then we come to chapter 55, which gives us a great idea of how good God will be to us. Communism tries to embody what God is offering here. The problem is that Communism wants to do it without turning to God. If you are hungry or thirsty, come to God and He will provide what you need. If we turn to God, He will do great things for us. In order to enjoy God’s offer of bounty, the wicked must change their ways, and, from what was written earlier in today’s passage, the “wicked” includes every one of us.
    Communism fails because God’s thoughts are not like our thoughts and His ways are not like our ways. Communism only works if everyone buys in wholeheartedly, but it provides no mechanism to transform wicked humanity into the godly people needed for it to work. God’s system on the other hand only requires each of us individually to “buy in”, and God will transform those who allow Him to do so. We do not, and cannot, understand how it works, but God sends out His word into the world and it transforms people. We can never predict how that transformation will take place. God’s Spirit reaches out and transforms people we would never expect. His words never fail to accomplish the purpose for which they were spoken.
    I want to write more, but I must move on to other parts of my day. Read the passage, especially chapters 53, 55, and 56. If we wish it, God will give us a place in His family.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 48-51.

    Isaiah, speaking on behalf of God, calls out people for their stubbornness. Because of the fact that people continually make excuses to not believe in God, God declared through Isaiah what He was going to do in the future. God did this so that people could not say, “Oh, I knew that was going to happen all along.” God still does this sort of thing today so that we cannot give credit to objects which we worship for what God has done. Time and again, people see what God has done but quickly make up excuses to not believe that God had done it.
    God teaches us what is good for us, but all too often we refuse to listen to His commands. I am going to go on a slight tangent here because I just wrote something which needs to be emphasized. God’s commands are not arbitrary. Rather, they are good for us and violating them is bad for us. If we follow God’s commands and do as He instructs us, peace will flow over us like a river. Reading chapter 48 verse 18 reminded me of the song “It Is Well With My Soul”. This song was written by Horatio Gates Spafford as he passed over the place in the Atlantic where his four daughters had drowned after a shipwreck as he sailed to join his mourning wife. Despite the tragedies which he had experienced (follow the link I posted to read about them), he could say, “It is well with my soul.” He could say that because he did listen to God’s instructions and obeyed His commands.

    Chapter 49 is primarily a prophecy about the coming of the Messiah, but it contains messages that apply to all who serve God. The Lord called us before we were born and He called us by our names. God has declared that we will bring Him glory. What we have done on this earth seems inconsequential to us (at least mine does to me), but Isaiah tells us that God see it differently. If we leave the results of our efforts in God’s hands, He will use us to serve His purposes. We may be despised and rejected by the people of this world, but, if we are faithful to Him, God will honor us. He will use us to bring His salvation to those who would otherwise never see it. The results of our actions may seem inconsequential to us, but God knows what truly matters.

    Actually, this passage contains many Messianic prophecies. As I read them I see both a prophecy about Christ and a message/lesson for us. God has spoken to us and given us His words of wisdom that we can use to comfort those in need of comfort. However, in order for us to fulfill our part we need to have not rebelled or turned away from God. We need to accept that we will be mocked for obeying the Lord. No, we need to more than accept it, we need to embrace it. We cannot hide from those who mock and persecute us for faithfully doing the Lord’s will. If we offer our backs to be beaten and are determined to do God’s will, He will not allow us to be shamed. God will waken us each morning and open His will so that we can understand (at least, the parts that apply to us).

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 43-47.

    Today’s passage starts with a comforting command from God, “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name, you are MINE.” (emphasis added) We belong to God. He has called each one of us by name. When we go through troubles, God will be with us. He does not promise that we will not face troubles, but when we do we can be sure that He will be at our side. We have been made for His glory and He claims us. This promise applies to all who claim Him as their God. Those who claim God as their God know that He alone is God. We have been chosen to know God, to believe in Him, and to know that He alone is God. He has chosen us and will blot out our sins. He has blotted out our sins. Let each of us proudly proclaim, “I belong to the Lord.”

    God alone is God. There is no other God. There is none like Him. Those who worship something, anything, other than God are fools. Isaiah gives us the example of those who worship objects which have been created. Whether the object is carved from wood or forged from metal, it has no more power than the wood we burn for fuel or the metal we shape to shovel our trash. However, the logic which Isaiah uses here can be applied to other things which people worship as well. Some people worship an organization, thinking that some organization can save them. Perhaps they think that it is the government, or maybe even a Church group. They recognize the failings of humankind, but somehow think that this or that organization made up of humans can redeem them from their lot. I will use those who worship the government as an example. They say that we need the government to save us because the people who run corporations are greedy and evil. They never see that the government is also composed of people. Why would I think that the people who run corporations are greedy and evil, but the people who run the government are not? Whenever we put our trust into something other than God, we run into the same issue. The government cannot save us. The Church cannot save us. Only God can save us.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 39-42.

    The first thought came to me about what to write came when I read Isaiah 40:6-8. Here Isaiah reminds us that people are here for just a short period of time. They flourish and bloom, but soon wither and fade. But God’s words stand forever. This made me think about how our society wants to throw away the guidelines God gave us in favor of human guidelines. God’s rules and guidelines last forever. Those of mankind are just temporary. We hear people talk about “social justice”, “injustice”, and “inequity”. They claim that we need these new rules in order to address these things. However, you cannot have justice if the rules keep changing. Only by following the unchanging guidelines given to us by God can we attain justice and equality.
    Part of me thinks that the above is reading into the passage something which, while true, goes beyond what the prophet intended with what he wrote. Another part of me sees how that connects to the verses just before that which speak of a voice calling us to “Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God!” The call for straightening the curves and smoothing out the rough places is a call to trim away the human distortions of God’s guidelines. Every generation adds addendum and clarifications to God’s guidelines to help others see how they apply. Over time we mistake those aids for the guidelines. When that happens we need to strip the human additions away and go back to what God actually told us. However, all too often people mistake the guidelines God has given us for the add-ons which humans created and try to live without those as well.

    Isaiah goes on to inform us that there is no one and nothing which can be compared to God. As a matter of fact, he is reminding us that by comparing God to people or things we often lose track of the directions He has given us. As I read this I was reminded of how images representing Jesus as a blue-eyed blonde has led some people to mistake European cultural norms for God’s directions and others to mistake God’s directions as merely European cultural norms. When we begin to think that God is more like us than He is like other people we have lost the story. While we should constantly strive to be more like God today than we were yesterday, we should never think that He will favor us over others. The fact of the matter is that the more we become like God, the more we want Him to favor others over ourselves.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 36-38.

    This is the third time I have read the account of the Assyrian invasion of Judah this year. There is an account in Kings, an account in Chronicles, and now this account in Isaiah. In each account when the envoy from the king of Assyria first talks to the officials sent from King Hezekiah to parlay with them he suggests that King Hezekiah cannot rely on God because Hezekiah had torn down the various shrines and forced everyone to worship God in Jerusalem. This initial message focused on the military weakness of Hezekiah’s army, the unreliability of Egypt as an ally, and suggested that the Assyrians had been called by God to invade and conquer Jerusalem. This strikes me as a reasonable position. One which misunderstood God’s commands for the Jewish people, but nonetheless respectful of God.

    However, when the officials requested that the Assyrians conduct the negotiations in secret, the Assyrian delegation’s arrogance took over. They revealed that their initial position claiming to be serving God was not one that they believed. Rather they believed that God was unable to stop them from doing as they pleased. They bragged about the fact that the gods of other nations had failed to stop them. From that they predicted that God would be unable to do so as well. The Assyrian delegation was called back to the King of Assyria and from there the King of Assyria needed to go face an Ethiopian army which had marched to challenge him. Before setting out, the King of Assyria sent Hezekiah a letter doubling down on the arrogance of his envoys. The King of Assyria proclaimed that he had the power to do whatever he pleased, no matter what God might do.

    King Hezekiah’s response to the Assyrian boasts was to turn to God through the prophet Isaiah (and directly by prayer). Hezekiah acknowledged Assyria’s power, but declared his faith that the God of Israel was different from the gods of other nations. Through Isaiah God sent word that the Assyrians would never again threaten Jerusalem. Isaiah prophesied that the King of Assyria would return home from his current battle with no more conquests and die without ever marching forth from his capital again. The Assyrians were confident that no army on earth at that time could defeat them and that no defensive fortifications could stop them. They were probably right, but their mistake was in thinking that God would need to raise an army to defeat them. This mistake has been repeated throughout history. Time and again people believe that evil must be stopped by human agency and become depressed because no human agency seems capable of doing so. In this account we learn that God is not dependent upon human action to bring about His will. The Assyrians were correct, no power on earth could stand against their army. But God is not a “power on earth” and He showed that He had the ability to prevent them from executing their plans.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 32-35.

    I was struck at the beginning of this by a couple of things. Isaiah says that the time is coming when everyone with eyes will be able to see the truth and those with ears will be able to hear it. At first I thought, “Well, he didn’t day they would see or hear. Only that they would be able to do so.” However, he immediately followed that by saying that even the hotheaded would be full of sense and understanding. The thing which really struck me was when he said that in that day ungodly fools will not be considered heroes and scoundrels will not be respected. When I read this last bit it occurred to me that maybe this was as much a condemnation of current society as it was a prediction of some future time.
    A righteous King HAS come and those who wish are able to see and hear the truth. But there are still those in our society who respect scoundrels and hold up ungodly fools as heroes. Isaiah reminds us why we should not respect scoundrels or hold ungodly fools as heroes. Scoundrels lie to convict the poor, even when the poor are innocent. Isaiah is telling us something important there. When caught lying, scoundrels will try to convince us that they did so in the cause of justice, but Isaiah reminds us that those who will lie to convict the guilty will have no qualms about lying to convict the innocent. Once you start lying to accomplish your goals, your goals no longer include discovering and revealing the truth. As for ungodly fools, they make evil plans.

    Later, Isaiah prophesies of a time of economic turmoil. A time when the godless will cry out that no one can keep a business going or even make a living. Isaiah tells us that those who are honest and fair will not find this time troubling. Only those who attempt to profit from fraud and deceit will suffer. The key here is that those latter will be so few that there will indeed be a great economic calamity. This prophecy gives us a guideline to avoid economic turmoil and to survive it when it comes. Those who try to game the system to get rich, who seek to manipulate others to their own advantage, and the disadvantage of those others, hasten the day of economic turmoil. When that day comes, those who took part in the deceit will suffer the most. Those who dealt honestly and fairly will pass through it practically unharmed.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 29-31.

    Isaiah tells us that his vision is like a sealed book to the people of this world. What he says here applies to the Bible as a whole. The people who reject God fall into two categories. Those who read the Bible a little bit, but say that they cannot understand it because it is confusing and contradictory. And those who do not read it at all because they have been told that they will not be able to understand it. Some of the people who say these things claim to obey God. They have made up their own rules, or adopted those made up by others, rather than following those given to us by God. Time and again, God surprises such people by the things He does. The “wise” tell us that such things will not happen. The intelligent and knowledgeable tell us that such things cannot happen. Then, when these things do happen, they tell us that they do not mean that God caused them to happen.

    These same people plan evil things in secret, thinking that no one will ever know and that they can continue to portray themselves as righteous. Despite their failure to understand what God said was coming, they think that they are smarter and wiser than those who understood God’s words. They think that by planning in secret they can bring about results contrary to God’s intentions. Rather than seek to discover what God desires, they make their plans on their own. When they are told that what they are doing is not right, they respond, “Shut up!” They tell those who talk about the will of God that they are stupid and foolish. Instead of trusting in God and His will, they trust in their ability to shut up those who reveal their corruption.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 26-28.

    God does what is right. He eases the path for those who are righteous and put their trust in Him. Isaiah tells us that those who trust in the Lord will follow His commands. The wicked do not learn to do right, not from the kindness of God, the example of others, not even from the threat of God’s judgment. Eventually God’s patience will run out and He will no longer protect the wicked from the consequences of their actions. I do not think what I just wrote is completely coherent. I was hoping that as I wrote it would come together, but it did not. In particular I was hoping I would find a way to connect the previous thoughts on the passage to the next.
    There is a connection. The prophet Isaiah managed to transition between them. Those who strive to serve the Lord will endure agony as they witness the pain of those oppressed by evil. As we seek the Lord, we suffer and squirm but seem to accomplish nothing. We cannot bring salvation to the earth, but if we die in the Lord we will rise again. As I wrote this I remembered a column I read awhile back about a woman who served in the Peace Corps and later worked with the Missionaries of Charity (the Catholic Order founded by Mother Teresa). She said that the Peace Corps compared poorly to the Missionaries of Charity. The former was composed of idealistic young people determined to save the world, who nevertheless embodied some of the most venal aspects of human nature. The latter, she said, was composed of wonderful, kind people. They had no interest in saving the world because they knew that Someone else had already done that. In many ways that is what Isaiah is talking about. Our call to do good in the world is not a call to save the world. God has taken care of that Himself. Our call is to trust in Him and follow His commands.

    In Chapter 28, Isaiah speaks about wealthy and powerful people who think that they can use their power and wealth to avoid the coming destruction. Isaiah tells them that God has set His own standard for withstanding the coming destruction. The deal of these movers and shakers was based on deception, so it will not stand against the coming flood. As I read this I was reminded of several articles I have read recently which talked about how the technology elites of the world are seeking to figure out how they can avoid the disaster they see coming. They foresee the breakdown of our current civilization from one or more of several causes and they are seeking an exit hatch to escape the misery which most people will experience. The answer to them is the one which Isaiah gave the elites of Jerusalem. Those who believe on the Foundation Stone which God has laid in Jerusalem will not be shaken by the coming flood. But those who think that they can make a private deal with death will be overwhelmed and trampled. These elites are correct about the coming disaster, but trust in God, and the obedience which goes with it, is the only place of safety.