Isaiah 29:1-14.  Not quite caught up but getting closer.  So this reading contains the second woe message and no it’s not to the Little Mermaid.  First of all we see that Ariel is a city where David settled or camped.  David’s ultimate capital was Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5) and that is the city we are looking at here.  Some translations have a footnote that tells us that Ariel means “Lion of God”.  The same word is also used in Ezekiel 43:14,15 and in that passage it is definitely referring to the place where sacrifices were burned in the temple. The temple was in Jerusalem. If you think about the meaning here the woe message make good sense.  Remember that Isaiah is dealing with prideful people who have forgotten God in this book.  In this case it is his own people, in spite of all of the promises he has made to them they are looking for help from other places.  Ironically they are overconfident in their relationship with God, they seem to think they are untouchable, yet they make theses alliances and fear the Assyrians who are moving toward them.

In verse one, then, the woe is actually directed right at the temple, the place where God is supposed to be honored and remembered.  God tells them to keep on following all the rules he gave them in the Law of Moses but he will bring trouble any way.  In fact the city where God is supposed to be honored will become like a burned out altar.  The fist few verses are very disturbing, the people would cry out from the dust, the picture here is of death.  Notice too that it is God who will come after them directly.  Some times God uses other nations but here the picture is of him doing the attacking.  Why would God do that?  Why bring trouble on people who are living for you?  We will see in a minute.

Verses 5-8 we also see an enemy being attacked and destroyed,  they too will be like dust or like the useless part of the wheat plant blown away by the wind during winnowing.  The huge powerful Assyrian army was on the march when this prediction was given and they were coming to to Jerusalem.  On the way they would destroy over 40 towns and cities in Judah and take around 200,000 captives.  But God was going to deal with them too (v. 6) and when he did it would seem like some sort of dream, or nightmare.  It wold be like one of those ultraslow motion scenes in a movie where everyone is sitting around all peaceful then a bomb goes off and sweat and blood and all kinds of stuff go flying and a 2 second explosion takes 2 minutes.  According to verse 8 that is what happens when you attack God’s mountain.  The Israelites would be saved from the Assyrians but not by their own doing, or because of some alliance.  Remember yesterday, God is their secure place.

But, what about the fact that he was going to attack them too?  And especially when they were making their offerings.  The problem is our relationship with God is not about offerings, you don’t buy friends (not real ones anyway).  Verse 9-12 begin an explanation and start out kind of this way, “Check it out, Dawg!  You don’t see it anymore do you.  That’s because I’m not showing it to you anymore.”  Then verse 13 finally gives us the “why”.  Their offerings and relationship with God are fake.  The stuff they burned was real enough but they just did it as a habit, like taking communion at church and not really thinking about your sin and what Jesus did about it.  Verses 14 tells us that God is going to follow through on his promises and plans anyway and they the “wise” people are going to look stupid.  All of those signs recently that say there is no God, all of those teachers telling us that all kinds of bad behavior is OK, all of those scientists telling us that we didn’t have a Creator, poof, like leaves in the wind when God finally shows his hand.  We need to be careful to be real in our relationship with God and not religious.  Religion is about me and my deeds, a relationship is about respect and consideration for each other.  God will always do his part the question is will we do ours.  Will we realize how offensive we have been, will we realize we need god to forgive and to fix, or will we keep making alliances with others and keep trying to do it our way?  Lord I just fall down and cry about how bad of a friend I have been.  And you are so loving and faithful.  Thank you for forgiving me.  Fix me, fix “us”.  Let my offering come from the heart and me pleasing to you, not to buy you off but just to say thank you.  Thank you Lord, thank you.