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 64-66.

    Do not blame God if your troubles overwhelm you. He is ready to help if you ask Him for it. Do not claim that God does not make Himself obvious when you are not even looking for Him. People claim that God does not help them when they are unwilling to follow His commands. They claim that there is no evidence for God when they do not wish to find Him. People who are busy defiling themselves isolate themselves from those they consider impure. When I first read this I saw it as applying to two groups, but as I started to write I realized that both groups are variations on the same mistake. When the prophet condemns those who say, “Don’t come too close or you will defile me! I am holier than you!” he is speaking to everyone who will not associate with those they consider unclean. There are those who call themselves Christian who will have nothing to do with those who do not because they are afraid it will defile them. There are those who will not associate with those who hold differing political views because they think those others are evil. We cannot serve as God’s hands and feet to reach those He desires to draw to Him if we will not associate with those who do not yet know Him. IF we think we are holier than others, we are defiling ourselves. It is only when we have a humble and contrite heart, when we acknowledge our unworthiness before God, that we will begin to experience the holiness which comes from Him. It is then that He will transform us into holy people.

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 Jesus returned from being tempted by Satan in the wilderness He read from this passage. My understanding of First Century rabbinical traditions (which is limited) suggests that Jesus did not mean that just the verses He read were fulfilled, but I am unsure how much more of the passage He was saying was fulfilled (although I think His listeners would have had a pretty good idea). The passage which Jesus quoted seems to be the culmination of what was in the previous chapter which is addressed to the people of Israel (or perhaps the people of Jerusalem). In light of Jesus declaring this passage fulfilled in Him I believe the previous passage is addressed to those who chose to make God their God.

    When Jesus quoted from this passage He quoted a message of hope. However, the very next sentence contains a warning for those who resist God’s will. The prophet has made several references to the day of God’s vengeance (or, as the NLT puts it here, anger), the day when He would exact justice on those who oppressed and tortured others. Chapter 63 in today’s passage contains powerful imagery about that day. The beginning of this chapter has always reminded me of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and vice versa. It is a song which has dimmed in popularity because of its connection with militarism, which is a shame (although understandable) because it contains some powerful lines. God’s truth is indeed marching on and the American Civil War was most certainly a day of God’s Judgment. The people of the United States paid a heavy price in blood and treasure for their sins as a people up to that point, but that price is as nothing next to the one that is coming due.

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.

    The passage begins with a short explanation that sometimes the reason good people suffer an untimely death is to save them from experiencing evil later on. For those who love the Lord, death is not a terrible thing. For those people, death is not the end. They will enter into the presence of God and know peace that we can never experience in this life. It is worth noting that the prophet contrasts the untimely death of the righteous with the lives of wickedness and sin lived in an attempt to avoid what they dread and fear. Yet, in the end they will fail to escape judgment. They will experience that which they fear and dread.

    Chapter 58 contains a great summation about hypocrisy. Fasting does not serve a useful purpose if we do not use the time to examine our lives and see how we can better serve God. God does not want us to fast, or pray, or go to Church, or any of many other things for themselves. Going to Church and worshiping God are good things, but if we do not come out of them inspired to care for those in need our worship is empty. I want to emphasize that this about examining our lives to see how we can feed the hungry, free the oppressed, or clothe the naked, not to condemn others for not doing so. I just realized that most of the time when people go over this passage they stop before they get to the end of this passage, where the prophet says exactly that, “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,…” Notice how he puts blaming others for doing wrong right alongside of oppressing people yourself. The writer actually expands on this in chapter 59. If we do not make our arguments with integrity, if we attempt to win with deception and lies, then God will not give us justice. Yet, God will come, indeed he has come, as a redeemer for those who repent of their sin.

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.

    Starting in chapter 52 verse 13 through the end of chapter 53 is the passage that is often referred to as the “Suffering Servant” passage. It is one of those clearly messianic passages which as a Christian I see as a reference to Jesus. However, there is a lesson not directly related to the Messiah for us in this passage. It tells us that God’s Servant had nothing about him to attract us to him, that he was despised and rejected. No one cared that he died. Yet, it was because of Him that we are counted as righteous. How many other people do we treat as the prophet tells us that the Messiah was treated? How many of them are, also, God’s servants? Truly understanding this passage should cause us to seek to be friends with the outcasts, with those whom society says are “untouchable”.

    Isaiah 55 is one of the greatest chapters in the Bible. I absolutely love the way it reads in the NIV. The first couple of verses are a foreshadowing of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:6. Actually, I suspect that what Jesus said there is partially derived from the beginning of Isaiah 55. However, the key part of Isaiah 55 begins with verse six. Each one of us has a window of opportunity to turn to the Lord. I will not pretend to understand how it works, but if we choose to turn away from God when He makes His present felt by us, we may never get another chance to turn to Him. Never pass up an opportunity to do God’s will, you may not get another one.

    I am hoping my thought processes here make sense to you. There is a connection between what I wrote in the first paragraph of yesterday’s blog and chapter 55 here. We often think that we know better than Scripture how to do God’s will.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.

The idea is continued and expanded on through the rest of the chapter. God promises that if we stay true to His word, listen to His word, and preach His word, as He has given it to us in Scripture, it will accomplish the purpose for which He gave it. It is important to remember that this means actually reading and teaching what is actually written, not what we think what was actually written means. It is OK to do the latter, but only as long as we start by recounting what it actually says. I cannot emphasize that enough, we need to make sure that when we teach God’s word we refer to the written word and not rely on what we think it says.

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.

    God has given us the prophetic words in Scripture so that we would know when they came to pass that He is God. This prophetic word is more than just predictions about the future. He has done this because He knows how stubborn we are, how determined we are to deny that He is God. I remember reading “The Road Less Travelled” by M. Scott Peck. In the book he discusses how he was working on his research into the role forgiveness plays in mental health. At the time, the idea that we needed to forgive those who wronged us was a new concept in psychology. Modern psychology was just discovering how devastating refusing to forgive was to mental health. Dr. Peck wrote how he was surprised to learn that the New Testament spoke of this very things, 2,000 years earlier than modern science had discovered this truth. It was this revelation which led him to come to know the Lord. There is a cycle which mankind goes through time after time: we reject God’s teachings, we suffer the consequences, we discover that the teaching we had rejected was right, we claim to have known that all along, we use a misrepresentation of this truth as an excuse to reject another of God’s teachings…and the cycle repeats.

    At the beginning of Chapter 49 there is a passage which is, correctly, often seen as a prophecy about Jesus’ ministry, but, like so many of the prophetic writings in Scripture, there is more to it than that. It is a prophecy directed at each and every one of us. God called you before you were born. Not you in a general sort of way in which He might have called anyone who would answer. No, He called you specifically, by name. He said, “You are my servant and you will bring me glory.” Further, the prophet reminds us that we are not alone in thinking that our work for the Lord is worthless. The prophet felt the same way. Yet God declared that the prophet would bring His salvation to the ends of the earth. In between those two parts is the thing which we must do: we must leave it in God’s hands.

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.

    This passage is so chock-full of things I want to write about that I do not know where to start. So, I will start with the first thing that came to me as I read it through for the first time (I usually read the passage at least twice before I start writing). The writer begins today’s passage by telling the people of Israel, the descendants of Jacob, that God has told them not to be afraid because He has ransomed them. God will gather them together from the distant corners of the earth. He will instruct the earth to gather them together for Him. Then comes the interesting part, God tells those gathering His people together to gather everyone who claims Him as their God. Throughout today’s passage this theme keeps coming up, the prophet refers again and again to the fact that God will welcome all who claim Him as their God. Through this prophet, God predicted that people from every nation and ethnicity would claim Him as their God and this has come to pass.

    The main theme in today’s passage, around which several other themes wind (such as the one I mentioned in the previous paragraph), is that there is no god other than God. Nothing and no one is comparable to Him. The prophet goes on to write about the different ways in which people make their own gods from wood or from precious metals. The writer does not list this out, but there is another way in which people create their own gods, they do so by the works of their minds. Some people become enamored of the products of their mind. They begin to worship their own thoughts, or the thoughts of others. Throughout history various people have come up with ideas which they believe will allow them to predict the future. In modern times, we call these ideas “science”. While there is some utility in using science to predict the future, whenever we become convinced that we understand this world well enough that we no longer need God, God shows us how limited our science truly is. Those who put their full trust in science rather than God will soon discover that it is no more reliable for what is important than an image made of wood, or one made of precious metals.

    The final theme in today’s passage which I want to touch upon is the writer’s disdain for those who believe that, when He made them, God got it wrong. Whether it is those who believe that their hair is the wrong color, or their nose the wrong shape, or their sex the wrong one, in every case what they are truly saying is that God got it wrong. We are to God as clay is to the potter. If God decided to make us a “vase”, than a “vase” is what we were meant to be. It gains us nothing to argue that we should be a “pot”. We are what God has made us and desiring to be something else will only result in unhappiness. However, if God made you a “vase”, He made you one according to HIS specifications, not according to any human’s. So, if God has created you a man, or a woman, listen to what He tells you that means. Do not allow the people of this world to define what it means to be a “man”, or to be a “woman”, not even if they go to the same congregation you do. This is where it gets complicated because those who are seeking to serve God may provide an avenue through which God will tell you what it means to be what He has made you. But listen closely for His words and seek what He has to tell you and reject those who speak only with human wisdom.
    As a Church we have become lost because we did not talk about this when people started to be unhappy with the shape God made their nose, or the color He chose for their hair, or the myriad other ways in which people objected to the way God chose for them to look. God has a purpose in the way in which He shaped us, rather than reject it, let us embrace it.

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.

    My first thought when I read where this passage talks about Clearing the way for the Lord and how transient people are was about how so often we set aside God’s directions for human ideas. Time and again I have heard people in the Church say that a particular passage, which they do not like, was written in a “different time”. They will say that life was different then, or the culture was different. Those passages no longer apply because people have changed. However, God knows how people change over time and His commands and instructions cut through the mountains and valleys of culture. God’s word will straighten the curves and fill in the rough places of human culture. If we follow the Scripture we will see that they clear a path through the wilderness of the culture around us.

    What I wrote in that previous paragraph is a bit of a stretch from the message I think the writer meant to convey, but it is consistent with what he wrote later in this passage. He tells us that the words of Scripture go back to before the world began. I do not think he means that literally. What it means to me is that the commands given in Scripture, the instructions in those passages which some of us dislike, are expressions of God’s intent from before He made the first human. The author addresses the idea that people have changed, that culture has changed, so that those passages no longer apply in chapter 41 verses 21-24. Those “changes” that supposedly invalidate the words of God are no more than idols. They are unable to tell us what is going to happen in the future. In fact, their very premise is that they cannot tell us what is going to happen in the future. Worse than that, those “new” ideas are unable to make things better now. They fail to show us a path into the future, and they fail to aid us today.

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.

    The official message given by the Assyrian chief of staff contained a modicum of respect. It lays out the reasons why King Hezekiah and Jerusalem cannot withstand the Assyrian army: Egypt is too weak to defend them, King Hezekiah had insulted God by forcing everyone to worship Him in Jerusalem (indicating a lack of understanding about God), The King of Assyria had more spare warhorses than Hezekiah had soldiers, and God Himself had told the Assyrians to attack Judah. While this is somewhat arrogant (claiming that God had sent them to conquer) and demonstrates a lack of understanding of God’s will (not realizing that centralizing the worship of God in Jerusalem was God’s will), It is not blasphemous, or something which would otherwise anger God. However, when the Assyrian chief of staff went “off script” and revealed what the Assyrians really thought he went too far. In his address to the people on the walls of Jerusalem, and then Sennacherib’s letter to Hezekiah a short time later, they revealed what they truly thought of themselves and of God.

    The Assyrians did not believe that God was any more than the gods of the other nations. I believe that the Assyrians did not believe that there truly were any gods. Or, at least, the ruling class of Assyria did not believe there were any gods. They believed that they themselves were gods. They were convinced that nothing and no one could stop them from doing whatever they pleased. As this passage demonstrates, whenever people begin to believe that they cannot be held accountable, that they are the sole arbiters of what they can accomplish, God is prepared to show them that they are mistaken. There can be no doubt that no human agency was involved in preventing the Assyrians from conquering Jerusalem. There was no human agency that was capable of preventing the Assyrians from conquering Jerusalem. Nevertheless, not only did the Assyrians fail to conquer Jerusalem, they never even laid siege to the city. I am sure that, in the day, many people said that Jerusalem got lucky because plague struck the Assyrian army before Sennacherib could turn his army to attack Jerusalem. However, those with the eyes to see and the ears to hear knew (and know) that this was the hand of God, not just coincidence.