February 23, 2022
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in Isaiah? Here’s today’s reading:
Isaiah 28 (NIV)
Woe to the Leaders of Ephraim and Judah
1 Woe to that wreath, the pride of Ephraim’s drunkards,
to the fading flower, his glorious beauty,
set on the head of a fertile valley—
to that city, the pride of those laid low by wine!
2 See, the Lord has one who is powerful and strong.
Like a hailstorm and a destructive wind,
like a driving rain and a flooding downpour,
Ok. I get this chapter. Jerusalem is being warned of coming woes. The priest are getting drunk. Appalling to God. You know there’s three parties in Washington DC. Rebublican. Democrats and cocktail. They rejoiced in the fall of Samaria. But soon to learn they were guilty of the same sins. VS. 9-13. They also mocked Gods prophets and rejected Gods word. Sounds familiar. God gives them the opportunity for rest vs. 12-20. Their faith was in their government not in God. Farmer uses different tools for planting. God. Uses different tools in our lives he knows are weaknesses and strengths He deals with us sensitively.
Right teaching, the dangers of alcohol and trusting in God are the emphasis of this chapter. God intended for His people to be something beautiful but they are taken down by the pride and frivolity of wine. Their priests and prophets who should be living and teaching right things are staggering around drunk, making wrong decisions and teaching wrong things. God can even use foreign lips to teach His people if their leaders can’t get it right. But God will establish right teaching and right standards through One who will come, a cornerstone on which all truth stands or falls. Israel will either be instructed by it or destroyed by it. But shouldn’t they (and we) trust God. Isaiah says consider the things God establishes in creation, you trust in Him for that in the way you sow and reap. Well then, why wouldn’t you trust Him for every aspect of life. If He is great in one thing, He is great in everything! Can I get an amen?
Amen
Isaiah 28
Amen
Isaiah 29
I like this chapter because it is so real and we have seen it so many times. Drunkenness leads to poor decision making and a feeling of invincibility when all others are pushed away. Delusions of grandeur take over and like is lived in moments of euphoria, followed by the reality of the fall, and the chasing back to that euphoric state again. When people live like this there is no place for the simple truths of God, there is no place for the reality of how much their sin is hurting themselves and others around, and most of all there is no long term thoughts just the gratification they are receiving in the moment.
But regardless of how much of a mess we make God is there and He words are true and He is waiting even when the people in our lives may have walked away….thank you for your mercy God!
Amen. Good summaries, that’s how I read it too.
I like the lines that re-direct to God’s plan and purposes:
Behold, the Lord has a mighty and strong one,
Like a tempest of hail and a destroying storm,
Like a flood of mighty waters overflowing,
Who will bring them down to the earth with His hand.
In that day the Lord of hosts will be
For a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty
To the remnant of His people,
6 For a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment,
And for strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate.
“Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation,
A tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation;
Whoever believes will not act hastily.
For the Lord will rise up as at Mount Perazim,
He will be angry as in the Valley of Gibeon—
That He may do His work, His awesome work,
And bring to pass His act, His unusual act.
And I love the parallel of the farmer and the Lord (can’t wait to garden):
Give ear and hear my voice,
Listen and hear my speech.
24 Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow?
Does he keep turning his soil and breaking the clods?
25 When he has leveled its surface,
Does he not sow the black cummin
And scatter the cummin,
Plant the wheat in rows,
The barley in the appointed place,
And the spelt in its place?
26 For He instructs him in right judgment,
His God teaches him.
27 For the black cummin is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
Nor is a cartwheel rolled over the cummin;
But the black cummin is beaten out with a stick,
And the cummin with a rod.
28 Bread flour must be ground;
Therefore he does not thresh it forever,
Break it with his cartwheel,
Or crush it with his horsemen.
29 This also comes from the Lord of hosts,
Who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance.