October 6, Isaiah 29
And you will be brought low, from the earth you shall speak, and from the dust your speech will be bowed down; your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost; and from the dust your speech shall whisper. But the multitude of your foreign foes shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the ruthless like passing chaff. - Isaiah 29:4-5
God continued to warn and make promises to his people through Isaiah's words. Please consider with me how both the warnings and the promises are expressions of God's great love for his people.
Every parent who loves his or her child understands that warnings are expressions of love. We don't want our kids to get hurt or get in trouble. Some warn them about the consequences that will follow if they do certain things. And we love to make promises about good things they will enjoy when they finish some task or achieve some goal. We know that encouragement energizes our kids, and so we make promises about good things to come. God is the ultimate loving Father. He is not limited by any of the weaknesses and shortcomings of human fathers. He knows all things, so he knows his children and what would be best for them. God warned his people through the prophets because he loved them and did not want them to suffer. He did not want to punish them or see them captured or killed by enemies. Because he loved them, he wanted them to love and obey him. And he promised to bless them richly when they obeyed him.
So he warned Ariel (Jerusalem, the city where the hearth of the holy altar was located) that Assyrians would besiege them and lay them low in the dust. They would be humbled to cry out to God from their pitiful broken state on the ground. But then he promised that their enemies would be reduced to small dust and chaff. The Assyrians' dreams of crushing and consuming the Israelites in Jerusalem would not come true if they humbled themselves and heeded the prophet’s warning. God warned them to be humble and not hardened against God and his will for them. That hardening would render them blind and deaf to God's message. When their hearts and wills were hard, they would be in a deep sleep or drunken unconsciousness about their perilous condition.
Hearts are hardened gradually. The first stage comes when people stop listening to God and choose instead to listen to Satan, who contributes to their hardening with temptations and lying advice. Finally, in the most frightening dimension of the hardening process, God himself may finish the hardening of the willful sinner's heart, as he did with Pharaoh in Egypt. Isaiah warned the people that their ritual routines of worship that did not affect their hearts or their lives were worthless in God's sight. He also warned them that their "secrets" weren't secrets to God at all. They might have been fooling themselves, but never God with their upside down sense of right and wrong. Do you and I need such warnings and reminders? I know I do, and suspect we both need them.
We also need to believe that God's warnings and promises to us are both expressions of his great love for his people in Christ. Both the warnings and promises are serious and sure, backed by God's unswerving faithfulness to his word. So when God warns us about being "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin," we need to heed the warning. When the Lord promises all those blessings to his faithful people in Christ, we can joyfully serve him in trusting faith. We know God will not be unjust to forget our labors of love for him. We can be confident and assured that our labor is never in vain in the Lord.
Our loving God and Father shows us his grace and mercy with both warnings and promises. Let's heed his warnings and embrace his promises. Let’s realize they are expressions of his love, and be grateful.
Copyright © 2023 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—October 2023
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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