Passage Read: Isaiah 3-6
Meditation Verses: 6:9-13
Thought
The Lord is furious with His people! In just these few chapters, He has declared multiple times that He is going to bring judgment on them. Their leaders have not led them in the His ways, so He will give them children and women to lead, and the chaos will increase. He will remove His protection from them, they will be trampled underfoot, and He will withhold rain from the land. Only brambles and thorns will grow there. He will call for a distant nation to come and plunder them and they will be overthrown. He will stop up their ears and blind their eyes and harden their hearts so that they can't see or hear or understand and repent. He will devastate them because of their rebellion, because they boldly reject the Lord and His rule. Yet a remnant will be preserved, just a tenth portion, a tithe. It will also suffer discipline, but it will survive. The righteous will be preserved, despite what comes. In the end, it will go well with those who remain faithful to Him, though their number is so small and though they too suffer in the consequences for the majority.
Application
The Lord has many tools to bring discipline and punishment into the lives of those who claim to belong to Him, who bear His name, whether worthy of it or not. His name is blasphemed among the nations by those who claim to or should in fact walk in His ways. It is no light thing to invoke His name on myself. If I claim to belong to Him, I had better know what He wants His people to be and do, and I'd better do it. He will separate Himself from the congregation that refuses to listen to and honor His leadership. He can appoint for them women and children to lead; that is an embarrassment and condemnation, not a point of pride. He can revoke all blessing and protection, and multiply their enemies. He can harden their hearts so they cannot hear or recognize rebuke and never come to repentance. That is a hopeless place to be, and it is happening to church after church today. I don't want to go there, so I need to humble myself all the more under His rule and discipline myself to walk ever more faithfully in His ways. I don't want to learn from the world and go with what is popular with the up-and-coming generation, but with those who went before me, who stood closer to the Lord and walked more faithfully with Him. Wisdom is with the aged, not the young, with the old, not the new. The Scriptures are trustworthy, though 2,000 and more years old. I may have to suffer along with the rest who do not care what the Lord wants as He shows all Creation that He is against the rebellious "Christians" and not aligned with them. But as I choose to walk in what are truly His ways, He will preserve me and bring me into His eternal dwelling. It cannot go better for me than that!