Today, I am reading and commenting on  Isaiah 64-66.

Since I am going to be on vacation from July 31-August 9 I have already written my blog posts for these days and scheduled them to be posted.  However, I may not be able to post a link to them on FaceBook, Gab.com, or MeWe.com during every day (or any day) during this time period.  So, please continue to visit my site to read my daily devotional.

Yet another day where I am not quite sure what I am going to write.  So, I will just start writing the thoughts which I have and see where that leads me.  Isaiah asks how can we be saved when all of us are unclean and our righteous acts are filthy rags.   God answers Isaiah’s question by telling us that He revealed Himself to those who did not ask for Him and was found by those who did not seek Him.  But God also condemns those who hold themselves better than others while wallowing in sin.  Of those he says:

“I called but you did not answer,
    I spoke but you did not listen.
You did evil in my sight
    and chose what displeases me.”

Instead let us humbly throw ourselves upon God’s mercy, for He tells us:

“These are the ones I look on with favor:
    those who are humble and contrite in spirit,
    and who tremble at my word.”

I recognize that I am not worthy of God’s forgiveness, but He extends it to me anyway.  And, if He is willing to forgive me, surely He will forgive you.  Please understand, we should all take that attitude.  All anyone must do is recognize their own sinfulness and turn to God, asking Him to transform them into His likeness.

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

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

Since I am going to be on vacation from July 31-August 9 I have already written my blog posts for these days and scheduled them to be posted.  However, I may not be able to post a link to them on FaceBook, Gab.com, or MeWe.com during every day (or any day) during this time period.  So, please continue to visit my site to read my daily devotional.

According to the Gospel of Luke when Jesus began His ministry in Nazareth, He read from Isaiah 61 and said that it was fulfilled in their hearing.  He stopped with the phrase, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  However, rabbinic tradition was (and I believe still is) that to quote the beginning of a prophecy is to call out the entire passage.  Which is interesting because the sentence Jesus ended with concludes with “and the day of vengeance of our God.”  Now most of chapter 61 continues speaking about things related to the “year of the Lord’s favor”, and I believe that Jesus’ ministry was (and is) about God’s love and forgiveness.  However, I also believe that God’s vengeance against those who will not turn from evil, as described in chapter 63, goes along with His renewed offer of forgiveness.  Whenever I read this I am reminded of the song, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (also known as “Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory”).  While some have said that the song glorifies the war making of the Union Army during the Civil War, I have always thought of the death and suffering experienced on both sides as examples of God “trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”  The terrible suffering of the Civil War came about because of the grave sin of the way slavery was practiced in this country (I believe that many other countries are still suffering from the ways in which they practiced slavery).  I fear that a new day of such suffering will come upon this country when God pours out His wrath over the innocent blood which is shed in our abortion mills.  Let us fast and pray that God transform our society before that day comes.
I want to note that the passage tells us that it is but a day of God’s wrath with a year of His favor.

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

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

Since I am going to be on vacation from July 31-August 9 I have already written my blog posts for these days and scheduled them to be posted.  However, I may not be able to post a link to them on FaceBook, Gab.com, or MeWe.com during every day (or any day) during this time period.  So, please continue to visit my site to read my daily devotional.

I wrote yesterday how I saw Isaiah’s writings as applying to our society today.  I see more of that in today’s passage.  The following passage seems to me to describe our society:

You burn with lust among the oaks
    and under every spreading tree;
you sacrifice your children in the ravines
    and under the overhanging crags.

I think the first part needs no further exposition.  In the past, I saw the way our society deals with abortion as being related to passage like the second part.  However, today I realized that there is much more to our society’s sacrifice of children then just abortion.  There is the way we encourage them to see themselves as sexual beings before they reach puberty.  There is the way in which we permanently alter their bodies on the basis of childhood fantasies. In seeing the ways in which our society fulfills this, let us not lose sight of the important part of this: all of this happens because we choose not to obey God.  Which leads me to one of the most hopeful passages in the Bible:

“I have seen their ways, but I will heal them;”

God will bring healing to those willing to repent of their sin.  Despite our knowing embrace of sin, God will pour out His Spirit upon us, inspiring us to turn from that sin to Him.  Let us call on God to do so for our society today.

Many people use what Isaiah says in Chapter 58 to argue their case.  There he writes of people who call on God while mistreating their fellow man, people who practice religious rituals but exploit their workers. Isaiah goes on to tell us that the religious practices which God truly desires is for us to share our food with the hungry and to provide shelter to the poor wanderers. However, many of those who appeal to this passage forget where he also tells us to do away with the pointing finger and the malicious talk.  More importantly, they do not follow what Isaiah tells us is the biggest problem in our society, “no one pleads a case with integrity.”  Too many, on every side of every issue, are willing to make their case by presenting misleading information.  We cannot have justice and righteousness unless we plead each case with integrity.

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

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

Since I am going to be on vacation from July 31-August 9 I have already written my blog posts for these days and scheduled them to be posted.  However, I may not be able to post a link to them on FaceBook, Gab.com, or MeWe.com during every day (or any day) during this time period.  So, please continue to visit my site to read my daily devotional.

There is so much in this passage which I want to write about that it would go beyond the length I wish to keep these entries.  I will start at the beginning and see how far I get.  The beginning of this passage makes me think of some of what is going on today.  In Isaiah 52:5-6 the following is written:

“Why are my people enslaved again? Those who rule them shout in exultation. My name is blasphemed all day long.  But I will reveal my name to my people, and they will come to know its power. Then at last they will recognize that I am the one who speaks to them.”

I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it sure looks like the line “Mu name is blasphemed all day long” applies in our society today.   Yet God promises that He will reveal Himself and those who turn to Him will know His power.  To the point where people will see what they had not been told, and understand what they had not heard about.  We live in a society where the haves are getting more, while the have-nots are finding it harder to make ends meet.  And don’t mistake, many of those talking about this are the haves getting more at the expense of those who have little.  They talk a good game, but use it to exploit those over whom they have power.  Yet God’s faithful love will remain, even when the mountains move and the hills disappear.  God’s thoughts are not like our thoughts and His ways are higher than our ways. Let us seek the Lord while we can find him and call on him now while he is near.  Do not be afraid to speak God’s word because it will accomplish all that He want it to.  Things may seem bad, and they may get worse, but God will bring His people home to Him.  Some of those He brings to Him will be those we consider foreign to Him.

Please read the passage.  When I read what I wrote above it does not convey what I tried to pull from the pasasge.

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

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

Since I am going to be on vacation from July 31-August 9 I have already written my blog posts for these days and scheduled them to be posted.  However, I may not be able to post a link to them on FaceBook, Gab.com, or MeWe.com during every day (or any day) during this time period.  So, please continue to visit my site to read my daily devotional.

Once again, I am not sure how the points I want to make from this passage fit together. So, I will start writing about them and see where the Spirit leads me (and if it makes no sense whatsoever I suspect that means I did not truly listen to the Spirit of God as I wrote).

An important theme which appears throughout the Book of Isaiah (and the entire Bible, for that matter) is that God does not speak in secret. So, if someone claims to have secret knowledge of God, or of His will, they are lying.  God has not communicated secret messages to anyone (the only exceptions are the visions which a few prophets have seen and been told not to describe to anyone).  God speaks openly with mankind because He seeks to teach us what is best for us.  God is not like those who lie to us in order to get us to do what they believe is in our best interest.  God does not attempt to deceive us in to doing what He knows in our best interests, which gives us a hint as to whether those claiming to act in our best interests are actually doing so: those who are genuinely acting in our best interests have no reason to deceive us.

Isaiah’s prophecies concerning God speaking openly lead up to him prophesying about the coming Messiah.   God told Isaiah that He did this so that no one could claim that the Messiah was predicted by man made gods (although, as I pointed out the other day, they try to do anyway).  In his prophecy of the coming Messiah Isaiah “quotes” Him as saying, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all. Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand,  and my reward is with my God.”  And if we look at Jesus’ life from a human perspective and only look at what He accomplished in His lifetime, it certainly looks like He had not accomplished much.  At the time of His death, Jesus had, at most, a few hundred followers in a backwater province of the Roman Empire.  And yet, what Isaiah wrote a few verses later is true of Him, “Kings will see you and stand up, princes will see and bow down,…”  Look at the history of the world since Jesus’ death and you will see how true that is of Him.

Before I was born the Lord called me;
    from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.

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

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

Since I am going to be on vacation from July 31-August 9 I have already written my blog posts for these days and scheduled them to be posted.  However, I may not be able to post a link to them on FaceBook, Gab.com, or MeWe.com during every day (or any day) during this time period.  So, please continue to visit my site to read my daily devotional.

Initially I intended to write about how Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 43 looks so much like what happened with the modern state of Israel:

“Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
    I will bring your children from the east
    and gather you from the west.
 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
    and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’
Bring my sons from afar
    and my daughters from the ends of the earth—”

Those of Jewish descent have come to the modern state of Israel from the ends of the earth, wherever they were found.  In some cases, great effort was made to extract them from places which were hostile to them and where attempts were made to prevent them from leaving.  Then a little later in what appears to me to be the same prophecy, Isaiah wrote this:

“Yet you have not called on me, Jacob,
    you have not wearied yourselves for me, Israel.”

This also reminds me of the modern state of Israel, with its explicitly secular nature.

However, when I read the end of the passage I was struck by the connection between what Isaiah said at the end of today’s passage.

“those stargazers who make predictions month by month,
    let them save you from what is coming upon you.”

This reminds me of those today who tell us that this or that disaster is coming if we do not repent of sins which are not among those sins mentioned in the Bible (some of those “sins” to which I am referring are telling people about the sins which ARE mentioned in the Bible).  Isaiah warned them:

“Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you
    when you say to yourself,
    ‘I am, and there is none besides me.’
Disaster will come upon you,
    and you will not know how to conjure it away.
A calamity will fall upon you
    that you cannot ward off with a ransom;
a catastrophe you cannot foresee
    will suddenly come upon you.”

These prognosticators think that they are gods, but God tells us through Isaiah:

“I am the Lord,
    and there is no other.
I have not spoken in secret,
    from somewhere in a land of darkness;”

That last part is important.  There is no “secret” knowledge.  God has made His will known for all who care to listen.  I don’t need to be taught by someone to whom secret knowledge has been passed to know God’s will.  Nor do I need a degree from a properly accredited institution.  God has provided each of us a mind which is capable of analyzing the evidence for ourselves.  If the experts claim that you must take their word for it because you are incapable of understanding it for yourself, they are not speaking of something which comports with God’s will.

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

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

Since I am going to be on vacation from July 31-August 9 I have already written my blog posts for these days and scheduled them to be posted.  However, I may not be able to post a link to them on FaceBook, Gab.com, or MeWe.com during every day (or any day) during this time period.  So, please continue to visit my site to read my daily devotional.

There are multiple things in today’s passage which are worth giving thought, but I want to write about God’s call on the idols of this world to tell us what is going to happen, and then His claim to be the first to reveal things to man.  For whatever reason, reading this made me think of all of the things which Christianity supposedly borrowed from other religions.  For example, Zoroastrianism contains many similarities to Christianity and is older than Christianity.  However, none of the pre-Christian documents concerning Zoroastrianism contain the elements which Christianity supposedly borrowed from Zoroastrianism.  All of the documents which contain those elements first appear long after the New Testament was written.  If one examines the similar claims from other religions, one discovers the same sort of thing, all of the documentation which is older than Christianity does not really look like the ideas in the New Testament.  Only after the New Testament was widely known do writings connected with these other religions contain elements which look like the elements of Christianity which were supposedly borrowed from those religions.

I know the above is a bit of a stretch from what is said in the passage (although I do believe it to be consistent with the point Isaiah is making here).  However, it is something which stirs me, because I used to believe those who claimed Christianity was derivative.  Perhaps someday soon I will do a separate blog on the topic of things which people claim Christianity borrowed.

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