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All right, we're going to take a look
at the first chapter of Isaiah this morning.
And I'll just mention that this will be,
you know, a message a little more on
the teaching side than some of the others
will be.
The Great Arraignment of the Jewish Nation is
the title I'm giving this talk.
And it really is what goes on here.
And I'll basically be covering verses 1 through
4 and 10 through 20.
And I'll make allusion to the other verses
just to kind of keep you in the
loop on what's being expressed.
All right, now we know that chapters 2
through 6 occurred during Uzziah and Jotham's co
-regency.
Or at least that seems fairly certain.
But when was this message given?
There are some people who believe that it
was the first message Isaiah ever gave.
That he, you know, this was his opening
message as it were.
And then he went into the next message,
which basically covered chapters 2 through 5 and
so on.
But I think that most commentators, and I
certainly believe this, think that this was actually
a message that was given much later.
And there's a few reasons why I believe
that.
And I'll give you the reasons why I
think that's the case.
First of all, you'll notice in verse 1
that four kings are listed.
That tells me a couple of things.
For one thing, I'm almost positive that he
continued his ministry on into the reign of
Manasseh.
And Manasseh is not listed, but these four
are.
So that tells me that he gave this
message during Hezekiah's reign.
You see what I'm saying?
Because that's where he was, you know, working
his way through his life when he gave
this message.
And the thought is that he had given
all the messages in the first section of
the book, chapters 2 through 39.
He had given all these different words and
prophecies and so on.
And then he comes back and he gives
this message, which is kind of a summation
of all of them.
It's kind of like wrapping together all the
different words that he had given.
And then he gives this message, or maybe
he just wrote it out as possible.
I don't know.
But he gives this word and uses it
as a preface to all his other prophecies.
And there's one other thing I'll mention about
that as well.
It's my opinion that when he got through
the first 39 chapters, that he thought that
was the end of it.
And he compiled the book and laid it
all aside and all that and kind of
went into retirement when Manasseh came into power.
So that would kind of fit in with
this whole theory as well.
But anyway, so that's one reason is because
these four kings are listed in verse 1.
I mean, it is possible that he gave
the message now and later came back and
listed those kings in verse 1.
That's possible.
But I don't know.
It just seems to make sense that he
gave this later.
Also, chapters 2 through 5, as I just
mentioned, is one flowing prophecy.
Chapter 1 is a standalone.
Chapter 6 is a standalone.
2 through 5 is a long prophecy.
So it certainly wouldn't have been a problem
for this chapter to have been added in
later.
Also, another what we would call internal evidence
would be verses 5 through 9 talk of
the devastation of the country.
And that certainly did not happen during Uzziah's
reign.
Remember, Uzziah was the king that had caused
Judah to really prosper and grow in strength
and grow in fame.
And no one was messing with Judah when
Uzziah was king.
It had been some 40 years since his
father, way back when, the country had last
been devastated.
So it doesn't seem like that that would
be the case.
But yet, when Ahaz was king, the country
was devastated and actually even Hezekiah.
Because when Sennacherib's armies came through Judah, they
pillaged the whole country and arrived at Jerusalem
was their last place.
So it very much could have happened after
all of those events occurred at the latter
end of Hezekiah's reign or even at the
very beginning.
It's possible, I thought of this, that it
is possible that when Hezekiah was ushering in
his great reformation, that this message was part
of that reformation.
And that would make sense as well.
So anyway, it's my guess that this happened
sometime during Hezekiah's reign.
And those are the reasons why.
So, let's look here at a couple of
verses.
The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz,
concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
Okay, so it's limited in scope.
Which he saw during the reigns of Uzziah,
Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth, for
the Lord speaks.
Now, I want to stop there for a
second because that is big.
That is language that is, it's not new.
It's happened before.
In fact, let me just give you some
references.
Psalm 50, verses 4 and 6.
The psalmist said this, And
now, I don't know when this psalm was
written.
It could have been written at this very
time.
I don't know.
But it doesn't matter.
It's still a thought that comes forth in
Scripture.
Micah was a minor prophet who prophesied at
the same time Isaiah was prophesying.
Remember, Isaiah was with the upper class.
He was the prophet who would go in
and confront the king.
Who was in power at the time.
He was ministering from that kind of a
realm.
Well, Micah was a minor prophet.
And he was out with the normal, average
people.
The poor people and so on.
But they were prophesying at the same time.
And this is what he said.
Micah 6, verses 1 and 2.
So, you know, that same thought coming forth
around the same time period for sure.
And then later, Jeremiah said in chapter 2.
He said, And, you
know, he goes on to give a message
there.
But it's the same kind of a feeling.
So this is where people first get the
idea of this being a great trial of
the Jewish people being presented here in the
first chapter.
And I think also it's a glimpse into
the future.
That the Lord is basically saying, Look, you
know, He's putting them on trial.
But He's showing that there's still time to
repent.
There's still time to turn it around.
It doesn't have to end up being this
way.
But one day, if you don't repent and
change your ways and do what you're supposed
to do, this is what you're going to
be facing in the great white throne judgment.
This is what you will face in the
hereafter.
And then there will be no getting out
of it.
You know, so to me, it's an act
of mercy on God's part that He's giving
them a glimpse of what they can expect.
And, you know, it's always God's heart to
see people repent.
All right, so if this is a trial
being laid out here before us, then God
is operating not only as the district attorney
or the prosecuting attorney, however you want to
call Him.
He's being represented as that, as the district
attorney, and He's also the judge.
So He's both in this case.
The jury is heaven and earth.
They're the ones that are sitting back watching
all this unfold, and they're kind of like
the assessors of everything that God is saying.
Isaiah is a witness that is brought forth
by the district attorney to present what he
has seen and witnessed and so on to
give his testimony.
And obviously the defendants are the people of
Judah.
You know, the high, the low, the rich,
the poor, the powerful, the weak, all the
people of Judah are being brought forth in
this trial.
And the defendants, the Jewish people, they never
say anything in here.
It's unspoken, but it's there.
It's inferred that their plea is innocence.
Their plea is, listen, we have been faithful
to bring our sacrifices to the temple.
We have been faithful to do everything that
God has asked us to do.
Well, and we'll see here in a few
minutes that God just decimates their argument because
their argument is all based on outward activity.
It's not based in reality.
They weren't doing it from their heart and
so on.
And we'll get to that in a few
minutes.
And the conclusion of the trial really comes
at verse 18.
One translator said it this way.
The NAS says, Come now and let us
reason together, says the Lord.
And this man says, Come now, let us
bring our reasoning to a close.
And it's like the final arguments in a
trial.
And it's that sort of a thing that
you get the sense there.
And then the Lord goes on to not
only offer a full pardon if they'll repent
and so on, but He also goes on
to say some other hopeful things.
So that's kind of a layout of the
chapter on the whole, kind of what's going
on here in chapter 1.
Let's get back to verse 2.
Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth, for
the Lord speaks.
Sons I have reared and brought up, but
they have revolted against Me.
Now this is a reference to God's great
love for His people.
In fact, Alexander McLaren said this.
He said, It might rather be called a
father's lament than an indictment.
The forsaken father is, as it were, sadly
brooding over his erring child's sins, which are
his father's sorrows and his own miseries.
And so you get the sense there of
the prodigal son and the father who's looking
for him to return and come back and
so on.
And there is always that case with the
Lord.
Whenever God is dealing with His people, no
matter how strong, how harsh, whatever it may
be, He's always hoping for repentance.
He's always looking for that erring son to
amend his ways and to get his life
right.
And how many times, you know, years ago
when I was much more involved in the
live-in program here, and we would bring
some guy in.
He's been nothing but trouble.
He's not doing the things he's supposed to
do, and he's just causing problems with the
other men and so on.
And we'd bring him into my office, and
basically I would tell him, Listen, it's not
working out for you to be here.
You're going to have to leave.
And I've done that a number of times
in those early days, but in my heart
was always the hope, Come on, man.
You know, and obviously I'm not going to
tell him this because I'm not looking for
a performance, but in my heart it was
like, Please repent.
Please tell me, No, please, Pastor Steve, don't
send me out of here.
This is my only hope, you know.
That was always in my heart.
It was that way with Jeff, and it's
that way with Brad now, that when they
have to dismiss a man, and they are
hoping that the guy will just basically, at
least in his heart, fall on his knees
and plead for mercy.
That's what we want to see because that's
our heart.
That's what this ministry is all about is
to see people who have gone astray to
get their hearts right with God.
And I believe that's the Lord's heart.
Even as he's laying out this case against
his people, in his heart he's saying, Please
repent.
All right.
Well, anyway, it goes on, and it's very
sad.
You just feel God's heartache as he's saying
these things.
Verse 3, An ox knows its owner, and
a donkey its master's manger.
But Israel does not know.
My people do not understand.
There's two terms here I want to touch
on.
The one is Israel does not know.
And that word know is yada.
It's a word that's used a lot in
the Old Testament, some 900 times almost, and
79 times just in the book of Isaiah.
So whatever it means, this word yada, which
is to know something, it's obviously a very
important part of the Jewish religion of those
days.
Let me just give you a couple of
verses here to kind of flesh out this
word a little bit.
A good example of it is Psalm 139,
the first four verses.
David was marveling about God's great care over
his life, and this is what he said,
O Lord, you have searched me and known
me, yada.
You know, yada, when I sit down and
when I rise up.
You understand, and that word understand is this
other word we're going to look at, bean.
You understand my thought from afar.
You scrutinize my path and my lying down
and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.
Even before there is a word on my
tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it all.
Okay, now what does that tell us about
this word know?
That it's not a superficial knowledge.
It's the kind of knowledge that there's a
real intense interest in finding something out.
You know, for instance, when I study this
book Isaiah, I'm spending hours and hours on
each of these chapters.
You know, I want to know what is
being expressed in these chapters.
You know, I'm not just kind of breezing
over it and getting this superficial understanding of
it.
I want to know, and I want to
know as deeply as I can know what
is being expressed here, and that's what the
Lord is saying, that they didn't have that
kind of interest.
Basically, to put it this way, they didn't
care enough to search out who this God
was.
But let me give you a couple of
other examples.
Psalm 91 14, the Lord is talking about
His beloved.
He says, Because He has loved me, therefore
I will deliver Him.
I will set Him securely on high because
He has known my name.
In other words, He cared enough about who
I am to search out and find out
about my character, who I am as a
person.
That is the person that He kind of
lifts up as an example to us all.
And then Jeremiah 9 23-24 says this,
Thus says the Lord, Let not a wise
man boast of his wisdom, and let not
the mighty man boast of his might.
Let not a rich man boast of his
riches, but let him who boasts boast of
this, that he understands and knows me, Yada,
that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness,
justice, and righteousness on earth.
For I delight in these things, declares the
Lord.
So that is a picture of what God
is looking for from His people, that they
would care enough to want to know Him.
And then the second word is BEING, which
is sometimes used as UNDERSTAND.
But in the King James, I like the
way the King James says it.
It says, My people do not consider.
And I like that because, yes, UNDERSTAND is
correct, but CONSIDER, that's a word that more
reflects what we're seeing here, that it's a
mental effort being put forth, whereas UNDERSTANDING is
almost a passive thing.
But we saw David using the same imagery
in Psalm 32.
He said, Do not be as the horse
or as the mule, which have no BEING,
UNDERSTANDING, whose trappings include bit and bridle to
hold them in check, otherwise they will not
come near to you.
And then it's used also in Proverbs 19
.25, Reprove one who has BEING, and he
will gain knowledge.
And 28.5, Evil men do not BEING,
understand justice, but those who seek the Lord
BEING, understand all things.
And then Jeremiah 4.22, For my people
are foolish, they do not know me, YAHDAH,
they are stupid children and have no BEING,
no understanding.
They are shrewd to do evil, but to
do good they do not, YAHDAH.
So, you know, we see these words, they're
important.
The reason I went through all the effort
to describe these two words is because this
is where everything begins, isn't it?
This is the way God has arranged religion,
if I could put it that way.
It begins with the man's understanding, and God
presents Himself to our understanding and then tries
to reach our heart through our understanding.
I want to read something that the biblical
expositor wrote.
This man, his name was George Smith.
Let me just read what he wrote.
It's very good.
That God should argue at all is the
magnificent truth on which our attention must fasten
before we inquire what the argument is about.
God reasons with man.
That is the first article of religion according
to Isaiah.
Religion is reasonable intercourse between one intelligent being
and another.
God works upon man first through conscience.
But although the people have silenced conscience and
are steeped in a stupidity worse than ox
or donkey, God will not leave them alone.
He forces Himself upon them.
He compels them to think.
God speaks to men by the reasonable words
of His prophet.
Before He will publish salvation or intimate disaster,
He must rouse and startle conscience.
An awakened conscience is His prophet's first demand.
Before religion can be prayer or sacrifice or
any acceptable worship, it must be a reasoning
together with God.
And that is just so true.
It's just an amazing thing that God will
condescend down to our level to interact with
us.
It's amazing when you think about it that
the Lord is willing to do that, that
He cares enough.
All right, let's continue on.
Verse 4.
And again, you get the sense of a
father's broken heart here.
Alas, sinful nation!
People weighed down with iniquity.
Offspring of evildoers.
Sons who act corruptly.
They have abandoned the Lord.
They have despised...
They have despised the Holy One of Israel.
They have turned away from Him.
Now, that is a lot.
I mean, just that verse is an enormous...
You know, I used to be a bailiff
in the Los Angeles court system there for
a while.
And I would watch, you know, all the
proceedings that would go on.
And when they would have an arraignment of
a suspect, they would bring him into court,
and the district attorney would present the indictment
and all the charges against the man.
And that's really what we're seeing here is
all the charges are being laid forth.
Here is what my grievance is towards you.
And again, you can't get away from the
sense that it's God's love that's compelling this.
It's not just a fault-finding thing.
But I will just touch on one word
out of all these terms and things that
are expressed here.
I want to look at this word corruptly
for a minute.
The word is shechath, and it means to
decay or ruin or destroy.
And it's interesting because...
For instance, in Genesis 6, when it's talking
about Noah and the flood and all that,
let me just read verses 12 and 13.
God looked on the earth, and behold, it
was shechath, corrupt.
For all flesh had corrupted their way upon
the earth.
Then God said to Noah, The end of
all flesh has come before me.
For the earth is filled with violence because
of them.
And behold, I am about to destroy them
with the earth.
And that word destroy is shechath.
So they had corrupted themselves, and the judgment
was that they would, in turn, receive the
same thing.
They were about to be destroyed.
In Deuteronomy 9, verse 12, it says the
same kind of thing.
This is when Moses is recounting what happened
when he came down from Mount Sinai and
the children of Israel had made the golden
calf and all that.
Then the Lord said to me, Arise, go
down from here quickly, for your people whom
you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly.
Shechath, and so on.
And then in verse 26, Moses said, I
prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord
God, do not shechath, destroy your people.
Now the thing that's interesting to me about
this is it's the same sense in the
Greek language.
In the Greek, they use the term phethora.
For instance, in Galatians 6, 8, for the
one who sows to his own flesh will
from the flesh reap corruption.
That's the NAS.
And the NIV will reap destruction.
So it's that same kind of thing.
Or 1 Corinthians 3, 17, if any man
destroys the temple of God, phethora, or corrupts
the temple of God, God will destroy or
corrupt him.
So it's the same kind of a thing.
It carries forth into the New Testament.
And it really says something because with sin
comes its own sentence.
And we know that.
It corrupts us within.
And that inner corruption is what is going
to work forth into the eternal realm.
The only thing that will stop that corruption
is blood and the repentance that allows God
to apply blood to a sinner.
But outside of that, that process of corruption
will go on forever and ever in people's
souls.
All right.
Now verses 5 through 9, let me just
mention this.
I'm not going to get into this and
read it, but it's a very descriptive passage
about the nation of Judah being devastated by
a marauding army.
And at first he's using the analogy of
someone who has been really just beaten down
and wounds all over them and so on.
And basically the whole point is, how much
of this do you need before you'll repent?
That's the point of verses 5 through 9.
And then verse 10, he takes a different
direction with his argument.
Let's start reading here.
Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers
of Sodom.
Give ear to the instruction of our God,
you people of Gomorrah.
What are your multiplied sacrifices to me, says
the Lord?
I have had enough of burnt offerings of
rams and the fat of fed cattle, and
I take no pleasure in the blood of
bulls, lambs, or goats.
When you come to appear before me, who
requires of you this trampling of my courts?
Bring your worthless offerings no longer.
Incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies,
I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly.
I hate your new moon festivals and your
appointed feasts.
They have become a burden to me.
I am weary of bearing them.
Now I'm just going to stop there.
Wow, you just get the sense that this
is an eruption from God's heart.
For years and years and years, He's been
watching His people play this game, this mental
game, if you will.
They come in, they do all this outward
stuff, religious exercises, but their hearts aren't in
it.
And you know what that means to the
Lord, to see people act like they care
about you when they don't.
Imagine being in a relationship with someone like
that.
I don't know if you've ever been in
a relationship with a person who wants something
from you, so they act like they really
care about you.
But you can just see through them.
You can see that they're not sincere.
They're only acting this way because they're after
something.
And I don't know if you've ever experienced
that, but I certainly have.
And it's very difficult to be around someone
like that.
Anyway, to me, when I was reading this,
it brought a whole new light on what
Jesus said to this Samaritan woman when He
said, The Father seeks after those who will
worship Him in spirit and in truth.
Now, that was at the first century.
And how many years?
Some 1,200 years since Moses brought the
children of Israel out of Egypt.
For 1,200 years, He had endured their
falseness, their insincerity, all their formalism, their ritualism,
all the stuff, just the outward motions.
For all those years, God endured that to
varying degrees.
Mostly it was that way.
And so when Jesus said to that Samaritan
woman that this is what God is looking
for, He is looking, seeking, God being the
seeker, God the seeker, looking for people who
would worship Him, who would love Him for
who He is, who would care enough about
Him to pursue a relationship, to obey Him,
to come close enough to Him to where
they could comprehend His greatness and His beauty
and desire to worship Him.
But whatever worship comes forth, it can't just
be mouthing songs on Sunday.
It's got to be something more than that.
The term worship in the Old Testament and
the New Testament, both of those words represent
the same exact thing.
It literally means to bow down before another
person.
And that is in the heart of all
true worshipers.
It's a sense of bowing down.
So to bow down before God in the
spirit rather than in the flesh and to
bow down before Him in truth rather than
in falsehood and insincerity.
I'm going to read what the pulpit commentary
said.
God takes delight in our times of worship.
They are the highest things that can engage
human attention, the seasons in which man transcends
the earthly and anticipates the hallowed occupations of
heaven.
They are the times in which man ought
to be the truest, the most sincere, the
most himself.
All cloaks, all hoods, all masks, all pride
ought to be laid aside whenever we pass
the threshold of God's sanctuary.
Naked, guileless, open souls alone may stand before
the all-holy Lord.
That's a description of the kind of worship
that God is looking for.
And it's interesting to me that in thinking
about this whole idea of false worship, it's
interesting to me that I think that the
mentality of hypocrites is that if they just
will come and do these things, that somehow
that gives them the latitude to do what
they really want to do in life.
Yeah, they can't do the real bad sins,
but somehow by going to church and performing
these rituals, whether it's in Judaism or Christianity,
it somehow gives them license to do what
they really want to do, which is to
live for self.
And they're just lying to themselves.
They're deceiving themselves.
Man, I've seen it so many times.
I know people right now that I would
say are in my life in some degree
that are in that spirit.
And you can't talk to them because they
get defensive and argumentative.
It's like the worst thing that they can
imagine happening is having to face the truth
about themselves and their relationship with God.
I want to read the expositor again.
Let me just read this.
Throughout his prophecies, Isaiah presents God first as
the infinitely high and then equally the infinitely
near.
The Lord is exalted in righteousness, yes, and
sublimely above the people's low thoughts of Him.
But likewise, He is concerned with every detail
of their politics and social behavior.
He refuses to be relegated to the temple
where they want to confine Him.
But through His prophet, He enters every aspect
of their lives, whether it's in the marketplace,
the king's chambers, or the temple.
He fastens His eyes of glory on every
detail of their lives.
Isaiah's unspoken cry throughout his book is that
God is a reasoning being.
Do not act as if there were a
fool on the throne of the universe, which
you are doing with your meaningless worship.
And man, that is exactly it.
People think God is a fool.
They must think that way to do what
they do.
You know what I mean?
Going through the motions of religion without their
hearts being in it.
They must think that God is an utter
fool.
All right, I need to start wrapping it
up.
Let's read through some more of these verses
though.
Verse 15, So when you spread out your
hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes
from you.
Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will
not listen.
Your hands are covered with blood.
Well, first of all, this reminds me of
Proverbs 1, that section, that terrible section where
the Lord is saying, You wouldn't listen to
me when I tried to reprove you.
So now when disaster comes upon you, I
will not listen to you.
You know, it's the same kind of a
thought that came forth there.
But when he's referring to their hands covered
with blood, this is figurative language.
And he's basically describing in the most extreme
form their utter lack of mercy for the
needy amongst them.
And you see it all the way through
the book of Isaiah, over and over and
over.
One of the major indictments on the Jewish
people, and especially the leaders, especially the rich
and the well-to-do, is their lack
of mercy on the orphans, the widows, the
poor.
You know, they were constantly trying to take
advantage of them and just strip them of
everything they could get out of them, basically.
And look what he says now.
Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean.
I mean, that's John the Baptist talk there.
Just repent.
You know, just repent.
Remove the evil of your deeds from my
sight.
Cease to do evil, learn to do good.
I mean, that is it right there.
That is the 180 that we should all
be doing.
You're going in the direction of being a
taker in life.
You need to do a 180 and learn
to be a giver.
I mean, that is really the message.
Seek justice.
Reprove the ruthless.
Defend the orphan.
Plead for the widow.
And he's telling these people that you guys
should be concerned about those in need, those
who are defenseless, those who have no one
to protect them, and so on.
And he's rebuking them because they don't care
about them.
And then here's this wonderful verse, 18.
Come now and let us reason together, says
the Lord.
Though your sins are as scarlet, they will
be as white as snow.
Though they are red like crimson, they will
be like wool.
Now, there's a little more strength to this
than we probably understand.
Those colors, scarlet and crimson, were very strong
dyes that you couldn't get out.
Once you dyed wool crimson, that's it.
It's not going to change back to white.
It will not happen.
And God is saying, unless you repent, the
stain of your sins is going to remain
with you.
Now look at verse 19.
Again, it's a plea.
If you consent and obey, you will eat
the best of the land.
But if you refuse and rebel, you will
be devoured by the sword.
Truly, the mouth of Yahweh has spoken.
And that is a weighty conclusion to it
all.
You know that whenever the prophet says, the
Lord has spoken, that is an assurance that
what I say here is going to happen.
If you'll do the right thing, your sins
will be blotted out.
I will bless your life.
I will bless the nation.
But if you won't repent, you will be
destroyed.
And then the rest of the chapter, he
kind of goes into, it's almost like continuing
the plea in a certain sense.
He starts talking about the future, really.
He kind of sums up the future.
Verses 24 on, he's talking about the restoration
that will come to the land after judgment.
Because judgment is going to come.
Because God knows these people are not going
to do what they need to do.
And so he talks about, like verse 26,
I'll restore your judges.
Well, that's referring to Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah.
Those godly men who led them once they
got back to Jerusalem from Babylon, and after
that you'll be called the city of righteousness,
a faithful city.
Once they got through the Babylonian captivity, the
idolatry was finished.
They never returned to the idolatry again, even
though they did lapse back into formalism.
At least that wicked, devilish idolatry, they were
done with that.
And then he goes on to talk about
what the idolatry is and so on.
Kind of finishes out that way.
Now I just want to wrap up with
one observation about, really it's about verses 19
and 20.
In one sense, it's the conclusion of it.
If you consent and obey, you'll be blessed.
But if you refuse and rebel, you're going
to face judgment, what is being said.
And there are conditional promises, obviously.
But this is an interesting thing, that God
uses throughout Scripture the carrot and the stick.
He just does.
And some people don't want it to be
that way.
But all I can say is, I know
it's very subjective.
God is a mighty God.
He's worthy to be obeyed just because of
who He is.
That is true.
But yet that almighty God condescends down to
our level and basically says, if you'll do
the right thing, I'll bless you.
He doesn't have to do that.
He condescends down to our level throughout Scripture.
For instance, Deuteronomy 12.
Now it shall be, if you diligently obey
the Lord your God, being careful to do
all His commandments, which I command you today,
the Lord your God will set you high
above all the nations of the earth.
All these blessings will come upon you and
overtake you if you obey the Lord your
God.
Then in verse 15, but it shall come
about if you do not obey the Lord
your God, all these curses will come upon
you and overtake you.
And it is God coming down to our
level and trying to reason with us.
That's really what it's all about.
It's the Lord just laying it out there.
He doesn't have to do it, but He
does do it.
And that's really what this chapter is all
about.
It's God saying, I have all these indictments
against you as a people, but if you'll
amend your ways, then I will forgive you,
and I'll forget that any of it happened,
and I will begin to bless you as
a nation.
All right, so that's Isaiah 1 in a
nutshell.
And next week, we'll get into the next
prophecy, which basically extends from chapters 2 on
through 5.
Okay, God bless you all.