Isaiah 29:15-24.  There’s an old saying, “We all have clay feet.”  It’s based on a vision that the prophet Daniel interpreted for a king he worked.  It means we all have limitations, no one is superman.  I seem to be facing that this week as I try to keep up with work and get caught up on my posts.  The last two nights I have been out working late and have just run out of gs to get caught up.  Lame, huh?  So here we are still a day behind.  It’s not the reading that I get behind in but the study to understand some of it.  I hope the study is helping you with the reading.

We are looking at the third “woe” message in this section of Isaiah.  This one’s kind of unique because the others have been to places, a city or a kingdom.  In the earlier predictions in this section we saw the same sort of pattern, cities, kingdoms, or tribes (which were sort of like ‘states” within the kingdom or nations).  There is a place named in this message, Lebanon, the kingdom just north of Israel where modern day Lebanon, but this message is not specifically about Lebanon it is just an example, maybe a contrast.

The warning is to people who think they can hide their actions from God.  “Hey maybe if we do this here God won’t se us, or if we do it at night or when the lights are off or when no body is around”.  Pretty silly, God doesn’t have literal eyes he just knows what is going on everywhere all the time.  The big word for that is omniscience, all knowing.  Verse 16 tells us that this like turning something upside down, like standing on your head.  It’s nonsense.  It’s like a clay pot claiming that the person who made it is like it.  But here is the interesting thing, if we think God doesn’t see or know and he is like us what does that say about us?  In reality it’s us who do not get it, we don’t see and we don’t know.

But there is hope.  There is a time coming when the deaf will hear and the blind will see.  According to verses 18-21 the results of the seeing and hearing will be happiness.  It will be because God is dealing with all of the “stuff” that makes life bad.  Need and unfairness will be dealt with.

Verse 22 starts out, “Therefore”.  There’s an old saying that tells us when we see “therefore” in a sentence we need to ask what it’s there for.  The word is kind of like saying, “because of what you have just read…”  This is a conclusion to the fact that God sees and knows and will deal with stuff.  And remember this is Yahweh (God’s personal name, v. 19 “LORD”) the “Holy one of Israel” (also v. 19.  He is pure and personal in that description), so when he deals with the “stuff” of life we can expect him to be pure and personal.  If that is not enough of a hint about the conclusion God is described as the one who “redeemed” Abraham.  Abraham may be talking about Abraham or he may be used as a symbol for all Israelites.  The Jewish people or Israelites considered Abraham as their ultimate ancestor.  Jacob (which is another name for Israel, see “What’s in a Name”) is also a symbolic way of talking about the people who descended from him.  The word “redeemed” is an interesting one.  It means, rescued, delivered, ransomed, basically we might use the word “saved”.  God “saved” Abraham (either the guy or more likely the Israelites).  A couple of other places that the word is used might help us understand what the Israelites in Judah might have gotten from this message.  Remember it was given at a time when they were facing an invasion by a brutal enemy, the Assyrians.  Also remember they were tempted to put their trust in an alliance with several other kings in the area.  In Job 5:20 Eliphaz, one of Job’s friends, tells Job that when there is a famine God will redeem you from death and when there is a war God will redeem you from the sword.  Under a siege those are the two main things to worry about, starving to death if the siege is long or being slaughtered if the walls fail.  In Psalms 34:22 David (a king well acquainted with war) said that Yahweh redeems the souls of his servants, that nobody who trusts in him will be condemned.  Finally in Psalms 31:5 Daivd tells God that he trusts him with his very existence when he says, “into your hands I commit my spirit, you have redeemed by Yahweh God of truth.”  This one is particularly interesting because it is one of the very last things Jesus said on the cross (Luke 23:46).  That is interesting to me because we think of salvation or deliverance as being from death and yet here Jesus is quoting the first part of Psalms 31:5 even though he is just about to die.  It reminds me of Job’s remark that he had a living redeemer (a different word but the same idea) and would see him even after his “skin is destroyed in my flesh I will see God.”  (Job 19:25-26).

So the conclusion to the people of Jerusalem was that the redeemer of Abraham and Jacob would save them too.  And the result would be the descendants of Abraham, the work of God’s hands (notice the idea of the potter returns here and the idea of God being personal), would honor God, be in awe of him.  Even those who “turned the truth upside down” would see correctly.

The same conclusion applies to us today.  God uses miracles to point to who he is and what he is like.  Our response is to be in awe.  It takes a lot of work to keep denying God’s existence.  We make a lot of excuses because of the mess the world is in.  A mess we made by disobeying God in the first place.  And a mess we continued to make by continually disobeying God.  It would be scary to think that God knows every secret thing that I do except for the fact that God is personally and merciful and wants to forgive, God wants to save.  And it’s not just the Israelites he wants to save, remember Lebanon, it became a beautiful forest in this example.  We need to open our eyes and see and open our ears and hear and give God the credit for what he is doing.  We need to put our faith in God like Abraham did and we will not be condemned.  Then in the end we will stand with Job with our new skin on and when we see our redeemer, Jesus, we will cry out with the angles, “Holy Holy Holy is the LORD God Almighty.”  Lord help me see you today and give you credit today.  Help me not sneak around making my own plans thinking you don’t see what I am doing.  Let me put my life in your hands day to day.  Help me trust and obey.  But most of all help me see so you can receive the honor.  Thank you for being my savior.