After the Fire

 

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Therefore, the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the Mighty One of Israel, says, “I will take revenge on my enemies and pay back my foes!  I will raise my fist against you.  I will melt you down and skim off your slag.  I will remove all your impurities.  Then I will give you good judges again and wise counselors like you used to have.  Then Jerusalem will again be called the Home of Justice and the Faithful City.”  Zion will be restored by justice; those who repent will be revived by righteousness.  But rebels and sinners will be completely destroyed, and those who desert the Lord will be consumed.  You will be ashamed of your idol worship in groves of sacred oaks.  You will blush because you worshiped in gardens dedicated to idols.  You will be like a great tree with withered leaves, like a garden without water.  The strongest among you will disappear like straw; their evil deeds will be the spark that sets it on fire.  They and their evil works will burn up together, and no one will be able to put out the fire.  Isaiah 1:24-31

When God starts a fire, no human being can end it before Heaven allows.  To the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Isaiah brought the quintessential Bad News/Good News message.  The moral/spiritual climate of the nation was past reforming; only transforming by the judgment of God would purge the slag from their government. 

That God does such things, moving in judgment on whole nations, is evident in nature; the parallels of God’s merciful hand straightening our crookedness are impossible to ignore. 

When God judges a nation for its sin, the true story (when recorded accurately) also shows the rebirth of justice.  A forest burns thousands of acres until the natural cycle is reborn…out of the ashes.  The forest regrows, in God’s time, and in God’s way.

Lately I’ve been thinking about that cycle. 

When I was a teenager in the early 1960’s my parents looked at the mania that followed the singing group from England, The Beattles, and they imagined the rapture and Apocalypse couldn’t be far behind.  In retrospect the only revolution John, Paul, George, and Ringo started was a fire that would bring deeper moral wickedness, which always accompanies the downfall of (supposedly) great societies. 

Founded on principles of freedom, and the opportunities a level playing field offers to all persons, America has always stood precariously close to the judgment fires God brings to burn off the slag of turpitude.  The great awakenings of American History with Jonathan Edwards, Finney, Whitefield, and, of late, Billy Graham, always held up the image of God’s fire, and the response saw American culture draw-back, like spiders threatened in their web.  In many ways our blessed beginnings have stood in memory sufficiently to avoid the cataclysmic shattering of America on the level of Greece, Rome, or the Third Reich.  But we aren’t (ever) that far removed from the imposing hand of God’s righteous judgment.

Should that judgment come during my lifetime, or after, is entirely a matter for God’s own choosing.  But the falling of judgment is as certain on sinfulness as the sun is hot, and floods sweep away whole landscapes.  Should America keep on the path it now slithers, Isaiah’s prophecy will be revisited from 7^th century BC Jerusalem to these days in Washington, D.C.  May God have mercy on us.

For You Today

No single person moves history (other than what happened at Calvary!).  But each of us has our own part in history.  Like Whitefield, Wesley, and the firebrand preachers of our history, there were men and women who helped…a little here, a lot there…and God gave the increase. 

May the increase be our shedding of the slag before God has to melt us down.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

For another post on this topic see Awakening and When the Light Dawns