9.30.09, Isaiah 24:1-2

¹ See, the LORD is going to lay waste the earth
and devastate it;
he will ruin its face
and scatter its inhabitants-

² it will be the same
for priest as for people,
for master as for servant,
for mistress as for maid,
for seller as for buyer,
for borrower as for lender,
for debtor as for creditor.

Justice & Grace

What follows in the next few chapters of Isaiah is a description of God’s wrath and destruction over the earth, and how he will humble the oppressor and reveler, and tend to the oppressed and poor.  A central idea of these chapter is destruction, this absolute and total desolation that will fall, and how God uses this desolation to accomplish what ultimately are his purposes.  As shocking as this is, I think this is a good reminder not to dilute our concept of God.

What strikes me about the opening passage of chapter 24 is verse 2, where Isaiah specifically details how no one will be exempt from this destruction, no matter their status, or wealth, or accomplishments.  All will suffer the consequences for their actions, without exception.  This is the root of justice, that it falls impartially without regard to status or wealth, that both the poor and rich can be vindicated through it.

(This immediately reminds me of the current situation with Roman Polanski, how there has been an outcry in the artistic community that he was arrested for raping a 13 year-old, outrage that the authorities should prosecute a man so distinguished for a crime so dated.  But if justice is truly to be fair, it matters not if the crime or criminal is old, nor that the criminal has added value to the community – he should still pay the price for his crime.)

There are two insights that I take away from this: first, that no talent or resource will protect me from the judgment of God.  I could be the richest, smartest, most successful person in all of history, but the day I die, I am exactly like everyone else: defenseless before God’s judgment.  So don’t rely on wealth, or education, or position to save you – all of those things have a shelf life that expires the day that you do, no exceptions.

The second insight is that the judgment of God sheds such clear light on the mercy of God through Jesus Christ.  Humanity’s crimes cry out for justice and punishment…all laid upon the shoulders of Jesus.  In the same way that justice is supposed to be afforded to everyone, no matter their background or status, grace is afforded to us, completely unearned and undeserved.  So before we see God as this divine being hammering us from the skies, we should remember that the hammer fell most heavily upon his own Son, and not for the sake of His sins…but our’s.

Questions

1. Is there anything in your life that you feel is supposed to protect you from hardship or difficulty?  Your education, job, your spouse or significant other?  Has that thing ever failed you before?

2. What is one unfair or unjust situation in the world that you feel really burdened by?  How can you begin to pursue and advocate justice for this situation?

Reflection on Isaiah

I wanted to change things up for one day, and instead of going through a passage, instead share how Isaiah has been affecting my life and my responses to a specific situation:

Carol and I closed on a house very recently, and we were very excited – we grabbed the keys, immediately drove to our new place to check it out…and noticed something was wrong as soon as we walked through the door.  The kitchen cabinets were on the floor.  There was garbage everywhere.  We walked around, and the wrongness only got wrong-er – the sinks and toilets had been detached, or taken, and all the ceiling fans were gone.  We realized that someone had broken in, and stolen anything of value from our house.  And to boot, there was water damage everywhere because they had ripped the fixtures out so forcefully.

I was crestfallen – only moments earlier we were overjoyed at starting our life in the city, and now, moments into that life, we were victims of a crime.  Walking from room to room, the thoughts only got darker and more pessimistic – I doubted the wisdom of bringing my little girls into a city full of crime, wondered if I was really built for urban ministry, even toyed with the idea of buying a gun to protect my family, something I had never even dreamed of previously.

But as we drove away from our house, something from Isaiah came to mind, something that I had shared about earlier – it was from Isaiah 5:8-10

⁸ Woe to you who add house to house
and join field to field
till no space is left
and you live alone in the land.

⁹ The LORD Almighty has declared in my hearing:
“Surely the great houses will become desolate,
the fine mansions left without occupants.

¹⁰ A ten-acre vineyard will produce only a bath of wine,
a homer of seed only an ephah of grain.”

In that posting, I shared how real estate cannot ensure against danger or difficult circumstances, and this is something that Isaiah repeatedly touches upon throughout his prophecies, that God alone is our sanctuary and refuge, and trusting in the protection of other nations or our possessions or idols will only lead to ruin.

I began to realize that I too had crept into the same mentality that the people of Israel had – my house was supposed to bring wealth and equity.  It was supposed to be a refuge against crime and the outside world.  But God showed me, as he showed the people of Israel, that this is so unwise, because these things fail us so often.  God alone is our faithful refuge and our enduring wealth and our eternal hope.

After I remembered the words of Isaiah, I took a deep breath, and tried to regain a Godly perspective on the whole situation: praise God that we weren’t in the house when it was broken into!  Praise God that none of our really valuable things were inside the house yet!  Praise God they didn’t rip the very pipes and wires out of the walls!  Praise God that although our house and the real estate market may let us down, God never does.  Praise God!

Isaiah is a very good book for me, and for all of us.  In it, Isaiah methodically pricks all of our dangerously flimsy life preservers that we had been placing all our trust and hope into, and instead forces us to focus instead on the only one who can save both life eternally – Jesus Christ.

Peter

Non-Devotional: A Truly Prophetic Role

As a result of discussions I’ve had in the past few weeks, I have put a lot of thought into what it means for a church or group to have a “prophetic” voice (in a non-charismatic sense).  Typically this is conceived as someone who challenges and goads the church into coming closer to the will of God.  In this way, the modern Christian movement towards compassion, mercy and justice has an element of the prophetic because as we’ve seen in passage after passage in Isaiah, God’s heart is for the fatherless, the alien, and the widow, and so our heart should be with them as well.

But I don’t think this is the end of what it means to have a prophetic voice.  There is an additional element to this calling, one that was characterized by the lives and ministries of the prophets of the Old Testament, and that was the counter-cultural dynamic.  The prophets were not preaching to choirs, but to people who were murderously inhospitable and violently opposed to the Word of God.  These people were completely unaware of their sinfulness, and would sometimes be so outraged by the prophets’ words that they would torture and kill those who told them they were in the wrong.  That is how many people believe Isaiah died, that he was sawn in two by the king of Israel, Manasseh.  So being prophetic does not just mean calling God’s people to come into God’s will, but also includes the willingness to do so in the face of persecution, and against the prevailing culture.

And this is what I find lacking in the modern church.

The modern evangelical church has passionately taken up the causes of poverty, human trafficking, social justice, and I am overjoyed at this development.  But we must not forget that the causes of poverty, human trafficking, and social justice are now popular causes that no one in American, nor western, culture takes issue with in the least.  So we should not rest on our laurels, content with our renewed focus on compassion and justice, for it takes very little courage to take up causes that are universally accepted and supported by all.

Instead, I wonder if the church still has the courage to stand up and publicly preach God’s Word on issues that are not supported by prevailing culture, issues that may earn them ridicule, censure, even persecution from the people around them.   I see endless Facebook postings about ending global poverty and human trafficking, but none that relate to abortion, or promiscuity and sexuality.  Yes, these issues are controversial and the Christian opinion is increasingly the minority and counter-cultural one, but this should not stop us from humbly, lovingly and firmly proclaiming what is right.  We cannot abandon this calling to courageous counter-culturalism, for that is a major part of what it means to be prophetic, a calling that I believe the church is still called to fulfill.

And in this dichotomy, I see the past church and the present church: the past church, so outspoken and outlandish in their defense of morality, and the modern church, so compassionate and compliant with culture.  The two are often in unspoken conflict with one another, when in reality, both desperately need to learn from and unify with each other in order to adequately take on the role of prophet to our broken world.

9.25.09, Isaiah 23:1-14

A Prophecy About Tyre

¹ An oracle concerning Tyre:
Wail, O ships of Tarshish!
For Tyre is destroyed
and left without house or harbor.
From the land of Cyprus
word has come to them.

² Be silent, you people of the island
and you merchants of Sidon,
whom the seafarers have enriched.

³ On the great waters
came the grain of the Shihor;
the harvest of the Nile was the revenue of Tyre,
and she became the marketplace of the nations.

⁴ Be ashamed, O Sidon, and you, O fortress of the sea,
for the sea has spoken:
“I have neither been in labor nor given birth;
I have neither reared sons nor brought up daughters.”

⁵ When word comes to Egypt,
they will be in anguish at the report from Tyre.

⁶ Cross over to Tarshish;
wail, you people of the island.

⁷ Is this your city of revelry,
the old, old city,
whose feet have taken her
to settle in far-off lands?

⁸ Who planned this against Tyre,
the bestower of crowns,
whose merchants are princes,
whose traders are renowned in the earth?

⁹ The LORD Almighty planned it,
to bring low the pride of all glory
and to humble all who are renowned on the earth.

¹⁰ Till your land as along the Nile,
O Daughter of Tarshish,
for you no longer have a harbor.

¹¹ The LORD has stretched out his hand over the sea
and made its kingdoms tremble.
He has given an order concerning Phoenicia
that her fortresses be destroyed.

¹² He said, “No more of your reveling,
O Virgin Daughter of Sidon, now crushed!
“Up, cross over to Cyprus;
even there you will find no rest.”

¹³ Look at the land of the Babylonians,
this people that is now of no account!
The Assyrians have made it
a place for desert creatures;
they raised up their siege towers,
they stripped its fortresses bare
and turned it into a ruin.

¹⁴ Wail, you ships of Tarshish;
your fortress is destroyed!

A Global (and Personal) God

Whew!  These prophecies have been tough, but we’re almost through it – and despite their difficulty, I think there have been a lot of good and applicable insights for us to take away.

What is striking about this description in chapter 23 is its geographical breadth: Isaiah mentions Sidon, Tyre, Tarshish (all areas of Lebanon), Assyria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Egypt – this basically covers all of the ancient middle east, and parts of Europe as well.  And what we see is the shared fates of these nations, that the hardship of Tyre affects Egypt, which reverberates in Cyprus, and so on.  This reminds me so much of our current global economic crisis, how the financial missteps of this nation have rocked countries all around the world…

And at the epicenter of this chaos is God, who orchestrated it all in order to humble the proud, even on an international scale.  You see, God is not just working on refining the lives of individuals, nor single nations.  He is, in infinite wisdom and with infinite perspective, working on a global scale to accomplish his will.  The trials of one nation are used to bring his purposes about in another nation, and to the individuals living there…

This should help us remember the vastness of God’s wisdom and plans, that he is a global God, working to redeem all nations and all creation back to the way he had always wanted them to be.  But at the same time, this should also serve to help us appreciate his personal love and knowledge of us as individuals, that he knows even the number of hairs on our head!  The God we serve is eternal, global…and personal.

And no where, or in no one, is this “personal” dynamic more perfectly revealed than when our infinite and global God became, quite literally…a person!

Questions

1. How has this vast, global financial crisis affected you personally, and daily?  How has it affected those around you?

2. What is one global situation that you are really concerned about?  How do you think God is at work in that situation?

3. The entire infinite deity of God was embodied in Jesus Christ – in other words, he was fully God in every way.  How does this inform or change your understanding or perspective of Jesus?

9.23.09, Isaiah 22:7-11

⁷ Your choicest valleys are full of chariots, 
       and horsemen are posted at the city gates;

 ⁸ the defenses of Judah are stripped away. 
       And you looked in that day 
       to the weapons in the Palace of the Forest;

 ⁹ you saw that the City of David 
       had many breaches in its defenses; 
       you stored up water 
       in the Lower Pool.

 ¹⁰ You counted the buildings in Jerusalem 
       and tore down houses to strengthen the wall.

 ¹¹ You built a reservoir between the two walls 
       for the water of the Old Pool, 
       but you did not look to the One who made it, 
       or have regard for the One who planned it long ago.

A Mighty Fortress

I have always been fascinated with ancient architecture, especially castles, because they had to serve so many purposes.  One of the main purposes behind a castle was defense against invasion – the defenses had to be planned far ahead of time, with adequate access to water, the ability to cut off strategic points of entry, things of that nature.  And this is what Isaiah is describing here, how the leader of Jerusalem is building up the defenses of the city against attack, but totally forgot about the One who made and planned it – God.

Now, as modern people, this context might seem altogether too ancient for us, but we have a very close analogue to the castle/fortress.  I call them “resumes”.  We build resumes, stacking it with jobs and accolades and recommendations, all in the hope that when the time comes, our resume will ensure our safety and future providence.  But we totally forget the one who gave us the talents and skills to make our resume possible, the one who planned the trajectory of our lives from long ago – God.  

God tends to be our very, very last resort, no-options left kind of thing.  We consider our boss, wife, children, entertainment first, and then the wisdom and plans of God last.  This was a recurring problem with Israel as well, and led to its downfall time and time again.  We should learn a lesson from their history, and let our first thoughts, rather than our last, be on God.

Questions:

1. Think about the last tough decision you had to make in your life – where was God in the decision making process?

2. What would it look like to make God our first thought and defense in times of trouble?

9.21.09, Isaiah 20:1-6

A Prophecy Against Egypt and Cush

 ¹ In the year that the supreme commander, sent by Sargon king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and attacked and captured it- ² at that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, “Take off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.” And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot.

 ³ Then the LORD said, “Just as my servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt and Cush, ⁴ so the king of Assyria will lead away stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks bared—to Egypt’s shame. ⁵ Those who trusted in Cush and boasted in Egypt will be afraid and put to shame. ⁶ In that day the people who live on this coast will say, ‘See what has happened to those we relied on, those we fled to for help and deliverance from the king of Assyria! How then can we escape?’ “

Stripped

(I shared this during a sermon recently, which can be downloaded here)

Throughout the ages, humankind has always waged war against itself.  And in every war, we do the same thing to prisoners of war and refugees: we strip them naked.  Aztec frescos depict naked prisoners of war being paraded to their execution, and this passage describes the Assyrians doing the same to the Egyptians and Cushites.  In World War II, there are terrible images of naked herds of people being led to death in gas chambers.  And even closer to home, we have the startling images of Abu Gharib prison, naked men forced to form human pyramids, smeared with human feces.

This is just what humans like to do to each other.

In the Bible, nakedness represents shame.  You see this right from the very beginning of time, that as soon as Adam and Eve disobey God and eat from the tree of knowledge, they feel shame at their nakedness.  And this is not the sexy nakedness we see everywhere in fashion magazines and in the movies, it is the nakedness of a prisoner of war: humiliating and shameful.  Shame is the consequence of sin, represented by nakedness.

But when Christ was crucified, he was naked, as was the practice of the Roman authorities – and so, as he hung naked upon the cross, it is our shame that was crucified there as well.  On the cross, we see Christ taking on our sin and our shame and crucifying them there, and what are we given in return?  

Galatians 3:27 – “For you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself in Christ.”

Questions

1. When was the last time you felt ashamed of yourself?  Do you think that is how God wanted you to feel, or feels about you?

2. What most often makes you feel ashamed?  Why do you think that is?

3. What does it mean in your mind to instead by clothed with Christ, rather than to be in sinful nakedness?

9.18.09, Isaiah 19:18-25

¹⁸ In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD Almighty. One of them will be called the City of Destruction.

¹⁹ In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the heart of Egypt, and a monument to the LORD at its border.²⁰ It will be a sign and witness to the LORD Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the LORD because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. ²¹ So the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the LORD. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the LORD and keep them. ²² The LORD will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the LORD, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.

²³ In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. ²⁴ In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. ²⁵ The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Common Prophecy, Uncommon Intention

Isaiah 19 begins in much the same vein as the passages that came before it, a prophecy towards Egypt that their day of reckoning and humbling will come.  That is what we found in Isaiah 18…and 17…and 16…and 13.  And once you get to this prophecy against Egypt, you begin to get a little complacent and think to yourself, “Yeah, yeah yeah, more prophecies against nations, this is nothing different.”

But what I’ve learned is to always be patient with Scripture, because it will always surprise you.

When you get to the end of Isaiah 19, you see God’s ultimate intention in punishing these nations – so that they, even the foreign nations, would be brought into the Kingdom of God.  There is this implication in verse 22 that even the plagues of Egpyt served a greater purpose, not just in freeing the people of Israel, but trying to force Egypt to acknowledge and be healed by God.  We have to keep in mind that God punishes as a good father or mother does – with greater purposes in mind.  He did not strike Egypt viciously and with no cause…he did so to free both Israel and Egypt.

And then, this amazing final verse, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”  All people of earth belong to God, are God’s children.  All nations are his creation.  And his desire is for all the peoples of this earth to be in perfect relationship with Him once more.  And this is what we read in the famous John 3:16 verse, that God so loved the world (translated, the universe), that he would give his only Son, so that whoever believes in him, would not perish, but have eternal life.  Jesus is the gift to all nations.

One final note: some of the oldest churches in the world are Egyptian.  In the first century, in the early church, Egyptians embraced the gospel and became the Coptic church.  Although much of Egypt has converted to Islam, the Coptic church still survives to this very day, and even has large churches in the Virginia area.  The prophecies of Isaiah, and the intentions of God, have been fulfilled and are continuing to be fulfilled to this very day.

Questions

1. God never punishes without purpose – if he has punished (or is punishing!) you, what is his purpose?

2. Egpyt and Assyria were the enemies of Israel.  Who are your “enemies”, and how does this passage change your view of them?

3. Have you ever had an been blessed by an encounter with a very different type of Christian or Christianity than you were comfortable with?

9.16.09, Isaiah 17:10-13

¹⁰ You have forgotten God your Savior;
you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress.
Therefore, though you set out the finest plants
and plant imported vines,

¹¹ though on the day you set them out, you make them grow,
and on the morning when you plant them, you bring them to bud,
yet the harvest will be as nothing
in the day of disease and incurable pain.

¹² Oh, the raging of many nations—
they rage like the raging sea!
Oh, the uproar of the peoples—
they roar like the roaring of great waters!

¹³ Although the peoples roar like the roar of surging waters,
when he rebukes them they flee far away,
driven before the wind like chaff on the hills,
like tumbleweed before a gale.

While the Nations Rage

Another prophecy, another revelation of the power of God as compared to the “powers” that be – the rage of nations is nothing compared to the power of God – it is like wind blowing away the chaff!  It immediately brings to my mind a wonderful song by Rich Mullins, and I’ll let his interpretation of this passage be our encouragement today:

“While the Nations Rage”, Rich Mullins (you can listen to the song here)

Why do the nations rage
Why do they plot and scheme
Their bullets can’t stop the prayers we pray
In the name of the Prince of Peace
We walk in faith and remember long ago
How they killed Him and then how on the third day He arose
Well things may look bad
And things may look grim
But all these things must pass except the things that are of Him

Where are the nails that pierced His hands
Well the nails have turned to rust
But behold the Man
He is risen
And He reigns
In the hearts of the children
Rising up in His name
Where are the thorns that drew His blood
Well the thorns have turned to dust
But not so the love
He has given
No it remains
In the hearts of the children
Who will love while the nations rage

The Lord in Heaven laughs
He knows what is to come
While all the chiefs of state plan their big attacks
Against His anointed One
The Church of God she will not bend her knees
To the gods of this world though they promise her peace
She stands her ground
Stands firm on the Rock
Watch their walls tumble down when she lives out His love

It really can’t be said any better than that.

9.14.09, Isaiah 16:1-5

¹ Send lambs as tribute
to the ruler of the land,
from Sela, across the desert,
to the mount of the Daughter of Zion.

² Like fluttering birds
pushed from the nest,
so are the women of Moab
at the fords of the Arnon.

³ “Give us counsel,
render a decision.
Make your shadow like night—
at high noon.
Hide the fugitives,
do not betray the refugees.

⁴ Let the Moabite fugitives stay with you;
be their shelter from the destroyer.”
The oppressor will come to an end,
and destruction will cease;
the aggressor will vanish from the land.

⁵ In love a throne will be established;
in faithfulness a man will sit on it—
one from the house of David—
one who in judging seeks justice
and speeds the cause of righteousness.

Helpless Children

Again, I love the imagery of Isaiah, how he uses every description and tool at his disposal to describe God’s relationship with people, and vice versa.  Here, the imagery used in this passage give a sense of complete helplessness: a lamb being sent to slaughter, a young bird pushed from its nest, fugitives fleeing from violence.  And the refuge for all of these will be a man from the house of David, who will sit on a throne as a Righteous Judge.

With this, we realize that these images describe all of us, that we are all helpless in so many ways.  Most of the time we really don’t believe this – we kind of need God, but can get by just fine on our talents, our wealth, and our friends and loved ones.  But this is truly an illusion, and people who have gone through tragedy of any kind know how illusory these resources are.  Your talents are no guarantee of success.  Your wealth can be lost in a single moment.  Your friends and loved ones can leave us.  A bad storm can wipe away a city, a wave can wipe out an entire generation of lives.

It is counter-intuitive to some degree, but we have to reclaim our helplessness, and even celebrate it.  We are helpless, it’s true, and our strength can be sapped so quickly.  But this is okay, because our strength is not found in our assets and resources, but in the King who sits upon the throne.  And this way, we spend more time developing our real strengths, rather than our false ones.

Questions

1. When things get difficult for you, to whom or to what do you usually turn for help?

2. Have you ever experienced a time where you realized you were truly helpless to change your situation, no matter how desperately you wanted to?

3. Have you ever experienced a moment where God gave you hope in a hopeless situation?

9.11.09, A personal posting…

Here are the lyrics from a very popular United Live worship song:

“You will above all else
My purpose remains
The art of losing myself
In bringing you praise

My heart and my soul, I give you control
Consume me from the inside out
Let justice and praise become my embrace
To love you from the inside out.”

Now, this is my personal opinion, but I don’t know what this means really. If I take time to think about it metaphorically, perhaps – but not simply, directly, or clearly.  I have to re-interpret, re-contextualize, and assume.  Not to mention that this song is bloody hard to sing because the chorus is actually sang an entire octave higher the second time through.

In contrast, I’ve been listening to my daughters’ worship songs from their VBS camp this summer. Here are the lyrics from a song called “God Forgives Us”:

“God forgives us when we do wrong, oh-oh, oh-oh!
So we’ll forgive each other
God forgives us when we do wrong, oh-oh, oh-oh!
So let’s forgive each other too

When a friend’s unfair or doesn’t seem to care
When he makes a promise he won’t keep
When I’m feeling bad cuz someone’s made me mad
I stop and think how God’s forgiven me

People speak their mind with words that are unkind
But we know there are times we’ve done the same
So we will not react or try to get them back
Instead we will forgive in Jesus’ name.”

Now, this makes sense.  I know what I praise God for, and I know what to do as a result.  It is simple and biblical and incredibly applicable to our everyday lives.  And I think that this serves as a good reminder that Christ never called us to “adult” faith – complex, nuanced, and fearful.  He called to live lives of child-like faith – bold, trusting, and simple.  You see, there is a big difference between being “simple”, and being “simplistic”…