Isaiah 35:1-10.  Yesterday we saw the beginning of the end.  The people of Judah were given a hint of how God is going to deal with all of the bad stuff in life, and the picture wasn’t a pretty one, lot’s of blood and guts.  That is where sin leads to, destruction.  Sin destroys the universe and the people in it.  But that’s not the end of the story.  This second chapter gives the other side of the story and as I read these verses I wrote things like “Praise God!” (vv. 5-6), “Awesome!” (v. 7), and “Amen” (which means “let it happen”, v. 10), in the margin by them.  This is a very encouraging picture of the end of time, and the beginning of eternity with God.

Verse 4 mentions the stuff in Chapter 34 when it talks about God coming with vengeance.  I like the dictionary definition of that word, “punishment inflicted or retribution exacted for an injury or wrong”.  It’s not anger it’s justice, like 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10, it’s deserved.  What is not deserved is the life described in today’s reading.  We have no right to have a relationship with God because we all have turned our backs on him somewhere along the line.  But look at the end of verse 4, he saves us.  Look at verses 5-6, he fixes broken things.  God is a creator not a destroyer.  He created the universe for us and then placed us in it.  He created the world a garden, for us.  We violated it when we disobeyed him (Genesis 2:4-3:24).  Destruction is the consequence of excluding God from your existence because God not only creates he sustains.  That word means “to hold from below” we might say holds up, like a parent holding you up on your bike when you are learning to ride.  In Psalm 3 David is being chased by his son, Absalom, who was trying to take over the kingdom.  In Psalm 3:5 he was able to get a good night’s sleep because he had trusted in God and knew God was sustaining him or holding him.  Psalm 37 is even better.  It tells us that one day there will be justice and God will uphold or sustain the righteous (v. 17).  Two more:  Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus holds all things together by the word of his power and Colossians 1:17 talking about Jesus tells us that “in Him all things are held together”.

The Bible tells us that there are no “righteous” people (Romans 3:10).  That word righteous means to do what is right in God’s eyes, you might say obedient or God pleasing.  So how can we be sustained by God (Psalm 37:17).  Most of the book of Romans is about that very question.  We are not right with God but Jesus was and is.  And he wants to share his righteousness with us.  He took our punishment (Colossians 1:12-14) and gave us power to please God with the help of the Holy Spirit (John 14:15-16).  Isaiah 35:8 tells us that in the end there will be a highway in God’s restored world, but only for the righteous.  But that can be any one of us, or all of us, if we will put our lives and our forever into Jesus hands.  We need to let Him hold us up.  For those that don’t there is only eternity without God, and that is a mess.  God is not willing for any to perish (2 Peter 3:9) but to avoid that we need to turn back to him (2 Peter 3:9).

I think that chapters 34-35 are a good conclusion to the situation that the people of Judah had been living through.  They had been drifting from God and were being attacked by ruthless neighbors.  There were promises from God that seemed to be broken.  God reminded them that he was dealing with the situation and that eventually all of the promises for a forever kingdom would be fulfilled.  Evil would be dealt with, including theirs.  But the story is one of hope because of God’s love and forgiveness.  He would heal them and their land, even the whole earth.  And people from many nations would join then in eternity.  We now know that Jesus is the solution, but we need to let him hold us up, we need to let him save us (Isaiah 35:4, Colossians 1:14, Titus 3:5).  God thank you for making this awesome place for us.  Thank you for making it so well that it still works in spite of millennia of sin and decay.  Thank you that one day you will renew it.  And thank you that you will renew all who will turn to you to share this awesome creation with you for eternity.  You are awesome.  Thank you for your love.

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.