Isaiah 34:1-17.  Today and tomorrow we come to the last two chapters in this section.  The question of sections in the book is sometimes a fine line to draw.  We discussed this a little in the 5/8/12 post.  It appears that these two chapters (34-35) are sort of a conclusion to the stuff in chapters 13-33.  13-23 had a group of messages called burdens.  These were predictions of judgment on different nations.  Chapters 24-27 acted as a sort of conclusion to that information.  Those chapters included information of a final day of judgment for all nations and the assurance that god was not backing out of his promises to Abraham’s descendants, the Israelites.  Those 4 chapters also included songs of praise to God.  Chapters 28-33 included “woes”, they are almost screams of pain or warning, and seemed to center around the idea that Judah needed to look to God rather than surrounding kingdoms, especially Egypt, for help against the attack of Jerusalem by Assyria.  Now we come to the end of all of these messages about destruction with a final perspective.  Isaiah wants the people of Judah to have a clear understanding of how their history is going to play out.

As you read this, the picture seems pretty obvious and gruesome.  Notice that this message is for “the nations” to hear, the “whole earth” and God is mad.  That’s not a good thing if you are on the receiving end of the anger.  This kind of talk really upset Oprah Winfrey who said she didn’t really need an angry God.  But the problem is that we deserve His anger.  We have been rebellious since the beginning.  In you’ve read the first three chapters of Genesis you know that God lovingly created a perfect world for mankind and we screwed up.  The rules were clear and so were the consequences and we broke the rules anyway.  So there is a day coming when God will deal with all of our evil and rebellion (v. 8).  In verse 6 Edom is used as a symbol for the world and Bozrah was the capital of Edom.  I wonder why Isaiah didn’t use Assyria as the symbol, maybe because the trouble with them was too current and God was going to deal with them soon.  Edom on the other hand was going to be a nagging drip in the lives of these people for many decades to come.  Maybe we are like that to God, our sin is a drip, drip, drip, in his ears.  I had a faucet in by bath tub that was like that.  We have kind of bad water in our area and it would eat up the part of the faucet that seals.  I had to repair it about once a year.  One day I had had enough so I demoed the tile and replaced the whole faucet.  Guess what, no more drip.  So there is a day coming when the leaky faucet is going to be dealt with and it is us.  And the solution is not going to be for a year but forever (I don’t think my new faucet will last that long).  Verse 8 tells us that all of this is for the Zion, the mountain that Jerusalem is built on.  Zion here probably represents more than the physical city or even the people in it or of it.  The idea here is what Zion represents, God with his people.  The reason for this final “Day of the LORD” is to finish the fix of mankind’s broken relationship with God.  Jesus made the path back to God and with the final judgments God will restore the place of our shared existence.  In verses 16-17 Isaiah challenges us to check it out.  This is all stuff that God has been telling us for a long time.  With each new fulfillment of a predictions we should become more sure that God will finish his work for us.  Lord thank you for fixing our relationship.  Thank you for making your plan clear.  Yet still we don’t see or hear.  Open our eyes and ears and hearts.  Help us accept your salvation, help us honor you for who you are and what yo have done for us.  Lord I am sorry for what ever I have contributed to the evil on this earth.  Let your Spirit control me more and more each day.  Thank you for telling me about Jesus, help my life and words tell others.