Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 9-12.
Where to begin today? Well at the beginning I guess. Isaiah begins by telling the lands of northern Israel that the time will come when they will see a great light. After this message of hope (which I will come back to in a moment), he prophesied that God will soon bring about the complete destruction of Israel (in this case Isaiah appears to be referring exclusively to the Northern Kingdom). I have never done a detailed analysis of the fall of the Kingdoms of Israel, but I have a vague feeling that perhaps, for all intents and purposes, the area referred to at the beginning of this passage had already fallen, even though a king still ruled in Samaria. In any case, I think this prophecy really has a lot to say to everyone in every time. It contains a message of hope. While we may be walking in a time of darkness, God’s light will break through. In fact, it has broken through, if we but look for it. And where should we look for it? Isaiah answers that question as well. “For to us a child is born,…” Now, as we look at that, first we must recognize that Jesus’ birth fulfilled it. But, even Jesus’ birth reveals something we do not often look at. He was not born as a man of power in a palace. He was born as a baby in a manger. And Jesus did not gain His victory by winning a great battle. He gained victory by dying on the cross. So, where do we look for God’s light in this world? Not to great and mighty deeds as human perception usually understands them. No, we need to look to the weak and the powerless. We must look to the homeless man who gives the $10 he managed to gather through begging and other endeavors over the course of a day to the rich man who was just pickpocketed so he can catch a cab to see his sick mother in the hospital (I am not sure this has ever happened, but I do remember story somewhat similar that I cannot find at the moment). Let us not look to the great and mighty for salvation. Instead, let us channel God’s love as the weak and powerless.
Then we come to Isaiah’s prophecy about the fall of Israel, the Northern Kingdom. He begins that prophecy by condemning those who acknowledge the troubles they have faced by saying that they will build back better, they will replace the fallen bricks with dressed stone, the fruit trees with cedars. All of this without addressing the reason the brick buildings fell or the fruit trees were cut down. The bad things had happened because those who were appointed to guide the people misled them, and the people followed them even though they knew they were being misled. Then the Isaiah says something which is a foundational point about what God repeatedly tries to tell us: wickedness burns like a fire. The destruction we experience does not result from God’s judgement of our wicked actions. It results directly from our wicked actions. Yes, God punishes us for our sins, but that is to turn us from our sins. When God punishes us for our sins it is like a father who spanks his young son to stop him from doing something which might result in his death. If the child continued and died, the death would not be punishment from his father, it would result from the child’s action. The same is true of us when we do wicked things. God may discipline us, but if we ignore His discipline and continue to sin we will experience a much greater hardship as a result of our actions.
There was more from this passage which I felt I should write about, but I am going to stop there.
I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
