A Boomer in the Pew

Isaiah Face to Face With God

Bible in a Year Series - Day #191 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Isaiah 5-8.

 ..."I saw the Lord"...(Isaiah 6:1)

This is one of the most remarkable accounts of the Old Testament. 

Isaiah, in his vision, stood before the throne room of Yahweh, and his response was, "Woe is me". 

What an incomprehensible scene.  Yet, a good Jew knew that to see God was to die, as pure holiness will not be in the presence of fallenness.

Surprisingly, however, Isaiah is not nuked but forgiven, cleansed, and given his call from God.

There is significance for us to learn here.

Rather than suffer you through my attempt, I am going to pass the baton to Dr. Steve Lawson.

Audio:

• Face to Face Before God (Part #1)
• Face to Face Before God (Part #2)

Isaiah's Shocking Message From God: I Will Judge Israel and Cast Her Into Slavery

Bible in a Year Series - Day #190 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Isaiah 1-4.

The book of Isaiah has now joined our chronological journey through the Bible. 

Frankly, the message of this book is so utterly shocking, I find that I am at a loss for words.

God created man.  We rebelled.  God created a chosen nation.  They rebelled.  God came to earth as Messiah.  We killed him.

It makes me weep.

Judgment.  Oh how we hate that word. 

Our human nature is happy to have God as long as he gives us the desires of our hearts, and he leaves us alone while we happily sit upon the throne of our lives.

The great problem with this plan is that although we are physically alive, we were born spiritually dead.  Furthermore, Satan is a foe who is hell-bent on keeping us this way.

Here comes Isaiah with a message for Israel that will set you flat on your butt.

God's chosen Israel is going to come under God's judgment.  He will utterly destroy Israel, but for a remnant of David, and set in place a plan of redemption for all mankind in a coming Messiah King.

There is no way you can read those words, mull them over in your mind, and not be completely stupefied.

Here is a synopsis of Isaiah's message from the ESV Study Bible:

"The central theme of the book is God himself, who does all things for his own sake (48:11). Isaiah defines everything else by its relation to God, whether it is rightly adjusted to him as the gloriously central figure in all of reality (45:22–25). God is the Holy One of Israel (1:4), the One who is high and lifted up but who also dwells down among the “contrite and lowly” (57:15), the Sovereign over the whole world (13:1–27:13) whose wrath is fierce (9:12, 17, 21; 10:4) but whose cleansing touch atones for sin (6:7), whose salvation flows in endless supply (12:3), whose gospel is “good news of happiness” (52:7), who is moving history toward the blessing of his people (43:3–7) and the exclusive worship due him (2:2–4). He is the only Savior (43:10–13), and the whole world will know it (49:26). To rest in the promises of this God is his people's only strength (30:15); to delight themselves in his word is their refreshing feast (55:1–2); to serve his cause is their worthy devotion (ch. 62); but to rebel against him is endless death (66:24).

A microcosm of the book's message appears in 1:2–2:5. The Lord announces his basic charge against the people: they have received so much privilege from God and ought to be grateful children, but “they have despised the Holy One of Israel” (1:2–4). He describes the purpose of the various judgments they face, namely, to bring them to repentance, or at least to preserve a remnant who will repent (1:5–9). Judah is very diligent to observe the divinely appointed sacrifices, but the people's hearts are far from God, as their unwillingness to protect their own weakest members exhibits (1:10–20). The Lord called his people to be the embodiment of faithfulness in this world, and yet they are now filled with rampant unfaithfulness at every level (personal, religious, and social); but God intends to purge Zion of its sinful members and set her up as a beacon of light for the whole world. In view of this glorious future, Isaiah's contemporaries should commit themselves afresh to walking “in the light of the Lord” (1:21–2:5).

In a few days we are going to read of Isaiah's foretold destruction of Israel by God.  It will be most painful to view. 

For us, thousands of years later, we too have been forewarned of God's coming judgment.  This time the message came through Isaiah's prophesied Messiah.  The big problem for mankind is that Messiah said that the coming judgment is a final judgment.

With this coming judgment, there will again be destruction, only this time the destruction is eternal, and God intends to create a whole new eternal kingdom for those who are truly his.

Many scoffed at Isaiah and perished.  Many scoff at Messiah and will perish.

We think that our finite minds are capable of determining what is true.  In fact, today many hold a view that there are many true truths, and to believe the Bible's proclaimed truth is not only ridiculous, but downright arrogant.

We must all take hold our ourselves, read the words given by the God we profess to believe in, tremble at our understanding, and as both Isaiah and Messiah proclaimed:  repent.

I know, I know, we hate that word.  But a serious look in the Bible for yourself, and these are the instructions of our Creator. 

Question is, what will we do?

The Death Rattle Begins to Sound for the Northern Tribes of Israel

Bible in a Year Series - Day #189 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: 2 Kings 15 and 2 Chronicles 26.

We have now passed the fourth generation of sons on the throne of Israel that God promised to Jehu, and it is quite certain that this land no longer remotely resembles a nation wholly devoted to Yahweh.

In fact, Israel's kings have been reduced to seemingly vassal status as Tiglath-Pileser III demands massive tributes, and begins to pick off Northern cities of Israel and captures its citizens for slaves in Assyria.

The end of Israel is near, and I can already hear the people's lamentations.

When I consider the fact that God has allowed me to live where I do, and when I do, I am greatly thankful.  These were barbarous times to live, and I simply can't imagine what it must have been like to see your countrymen defeated, slaughtered, and the survivors hauled off into slavery.

I suspect that if we all had a good understanding of Sovereign God, and his hatred of sin, and had in our immediate ancestry witnesses of God's wrath against evil, we might all behave differently.

Unfortunately, we have misused the many years of prosperity in our land, and I fear that many are more becoming Paris Hilton rather than obedient sons/daughters of God.

Oh that our land might enjoy another Great Awakening.

Would you Rather God Save Osama bin Laden or Nuke him?

Bible in a Year Series - Day #188 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Jonah 1-4.

Before I begin my thoughts for today, I thought I might point you to a few past articles I did from the book of Jonah:

• Jonah, Whale Vomit, and Repentance
• Was Jonah Literally in the Belly of a Great Fish Three Days and Three Nights?
• Are we to Fear God's Discipline?

Unfortunately, in our scheduled chronological journey through the Bible, we don't have time to park in the book of Jonah and muse at great length over how we might apply this book to our lives.

However, I did find this instructive from the InterVarsity Press New Bible Commentary:

The book of Jonah presents a contrast between Jonah’s self–centred hatred of his enemies and God’s compassion for them. It is clearly intended to teach readers of the book that they ought not to reflect Jonah’s attitude and practice. Twice in ch. 4 God asks Jonah what right he has to be angry—first, about God’s sparing Nineveh (v 4) and then about the loss of the leafy gourd (NIV, vine) that had shaded Jonah’s hut from the blazing sun (v 9). This latter God [p. 815] made an object lesson for the prophet. If Jonah cared about a plant, not wanting to see it die, should not God care about a whole city of people, not wanting to see them die (v 11)? Are not people (or animals, for that matter, v 11) much more valuable than plants? Don’t they have intrinsic worth? Even if they are our enemies, that should not mean that we think that they deserve no compassion from God.

    The contrasting of the relative values of plant and people in ch. 4 is only one of the two major object lessons in the book, however. The other is the contrast between Jonah’s gratitude for being rescued from a fate he well deserved, and his resentment at the Ninevites’ rescue from a fate they well deserved. In ch. 1 he confesses to the sailors that the divinely sent storm that threatens their lives is his fault and that his drowning will spare them. About to drown, he is suddenly swallowed, and thus rescued from death, by a large fish or whale (1:17). Ch. 2 records Jonah’s eloquent prayer of thanksgiving for his own rescue, thus setting up a contrast with his hypocritical dissatisfaction at the rescue of the people of Nineveh in ch. 4.

Nineveh lies in current day Iraq, and we can certainly see the bad blood that still exists today between Israel and her Muslim neighbors. For example, I suspect that there are not many in Israel today who might be praying that Yahweh might have compassion on the soul of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

To bring this point home, what if God asked you to head to the door of Osama bin Laden to demonstrate God's love for him, and instructing him to repent for his sins.  Would you do it?  Or, would you rather that God simply nuke him from the face of the earth?

Do you see why Jonah was angry?

Even more difficult, do you see what God was asking of Jonah?

Is There no Good King for God's Chosen People?

Bible in a Year Series - Day #187 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: 2 Kings 14, 2 Chronicles 25.

Each day I arise at roughly 5:30, make a cup of coffee, and make my way to my home office to spend a couple hours reading the days portion of my chronological journey through the Bible.

Lately, while on this great downward spiral to Israel and Judah's destruction, it has been difficult to watch.

Each day it seems I am presented with two more kings, one in the North, and one in the South, "who did evil in the sight of the Lord".

Will no one serve Yahweh with a true heart?  Am I alone in my yearning for the days of King David?  Actually, if we understand the words of King David's Psalms, and now having been knee deep in evil kings for weeks, how we long for Messiah, the coming King that King David prophesied about.

Come Messiah, come.  I am weary of evil, and half-hearted kings.

Longing for the True King Messiah After Watching Centuries of Fallen Kings

Bible in a Year Series - Day #186 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: 2 Kings 12-13, 2 Chronicles 24.

Today we come upon King Joash of Judah.

Joash became king of Judah at the age of seven when the evil "queen" Athaliah was put to death. 

Furthermore, he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord as long as his mentor Jehoiada the priest was alive.

After Jehoiada dies,however, things go down hill quickly.

One of the things that struck me was this:

"At that time Hazael king of Syria went up and fought against Gath and took it. But when Hazael set his face to go up against Jerusalem, 18 Jehoash king of Judah took all the sacred gifts that Jehoshaphat and Jehoram and Ahaziah his fathers, the kings of Judah, had dedicated, and his own sacred gifts, and all the gold that was found in the treasuries of the house of the Lord and of the king's house, and sent these to Hazael king of Syria. Then Hazael went away from Jerusalem." (2 Kings 12:17-18)

I remembered back to Jehoshapht when he was faced with certain doom, and how he sought the Lord and was given a most remarkable victory.  And here, with the faithless King Joash, we find that he is willing to save Hazael king of Syria the trouble of destroying Judah by simply sending him the incredible loot of the kingdom and temple.

Later, at the death bed of Elisha, we find Elisha mad at Joash for his lack of faith, and later still we find Joash killing God's prophet because he doesn't care for God's message to him.

As we continue watching these painful centuries unfold, isn't the message loud and clear?  Yahweh is the one and only God, he opposes those who would serve pieces of wood (false gods), he desires that we be in relationship with him, and is very willing to greatly bless his obedient ones.

Oh my soul, chain yourself to the fountain of life, and continually keep your eyes on Christ.

Spurgeon: Can you Truly be Christian if you Won't Study God's Word?

Bible in a Year Series - Day #185 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible.  Click here to learn more.  You are most welcome to join along at any time.

Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: 2 Kings 9-11.

King Jehu is an interesting fellow.  He is most happy to follow the Lord's desires to rid the land of the family of Ahab, and he even destroys everything that has to do with Baal worship. 

But then, he turns around and continues the practice of abhorrent idolatry by worshiping the still standing golden calves.

One has to wonder, as C.H. Spurgeon asks, "Was King Jehu anything more than the lion that God used to kill the false prophets of earlier times?"

In Spurgeon's sermon on this subject, he then turns the focus on those who might also live a heedlessness in their desire to live in the will of God:

"Jehu took no heed to what? He took great heed to kill Ahab’s family! He took great heed to totally destroy Baal’s worshippers. But he took no heed to walk in the Law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart. This is the point in which a great many flaming professors show their want of vital godliness—they exercise no holy circumspection and show no anxiety to walk in the Law of the Lord their God with all their heart—which they would be very desirous of doing if they were saved men.

There are many, nowadays, who would be greatly disgusted with me if I did not admit them to be Christians—and yet they take no heed to know God’s will. Many professors never gave themselves an hour’s study of the Scriptures with a serious desire to ascertain God’s way of salvation, and God’s rule for a Believer’s behavior in the Church and in the world. Multitudes of so-called Christians nowadays do not read their Bibles. My Hearers, do you? I would not malign modern Christendom, but I am persuaded that crowds of professors treat the Book of God with very wicked neglect. We frequently meet with mistakes which are so absurd that no habitual students of the Word of God could have fallen into them.

So many of you take your religion second hand—you borrow it from the preacher—you copy it from your grandmothers. You follow custom as your guide, and not the voice of God. You do not search the Book of the Lord to discover whether these things are so or not. Why, great multitudes of people go blundering on like Jehu, supposing that they must be right! The uncomfortable but very prudent thought that perhaps all may be wrong has never occurred to them, and a resort to the “Law and to the Testimony” appears to them to be altogether superfluous.

Now, my dear Friends, I do not see how a servant can be thought to be faithful who is utterly careless as to his master’s will. Solemnly I believe that some professors do not wish to know their Lord’s will too thoroughly—there are certain duties whose performance would be unpleasant and therefore they do not want to have their consciences too much enlightened upon the subject! They shun the Light lest they should stand reproved. Brothers and Sisters, if I am afraid of the Light of God, let me rest assured that for some evil reason I have good cause to be afraid of it!"

As is customary with C.H. Spurgeon, he is not afraid to ask the difficult questions of us.  Here he asks if a person can truly be Christian if he has no heart to spend time in God's word and urgently seek His will.

If not, can we be any better than Jehu who was more than willing to worship at the feet of a golden calf?

Penetrating question for us all.