Monday, December 5, 2022

Of Prophecy and Partying

Monday, December 5, 2022

Look!  The Lord is about to destroy the earth and make it a vast wasteland.  He devastates the surface of the earth and scatters the people.  Priests and laypeople, servants and masters, maids and mistresses, buyers and sellers, lenders and borrowers, bankers and debtors—none will be spared.  The earth will be completely emptied and looted.  The Lord has spoken!  The earth mourns and dries up, and the land wastes away and withers.  Even the greatest people on earth waste away.  The earth suffers for the sins of its people, for they have twisted God’s instructions, violated his laws, and broken his everlasting covenant.  Therefore, a curse consumes the earth.  Its people must pay the price for their sin.  They are destroyed by fire, and only a few are left alive.  The grapevines waste away, and there is no new wine.  All the merrymakers sigh and mourn.  The cheerful sound of tambourines is stilled; the happy cries of celebration are heard no more.  The melodious chords of the harp are silent.  Gone are the joys of wine and song; alcoholic drink turns bitter in the mouth.  The city writhes in chaos; every home is locked to keep out intruders.  Mobs gather in the streets, crying out for wine.  Joy has turned to gloom.  Gladness has been banished from the land.  The city is left in ruins, its gates battered down.  Throughout the earth the story is the same—only a remnant is left, like the stray olives left on the tree or the few grapes left on the vine after harvest.  But all who are left shout and sing for joy.  Those in the west praise the Lord’s majesty.  In eastern lands, give glory to the Lord.  In the lands beyond the sea, praise the name of the Lord, the God of Israel.  We hear songs of praise from the ends of the earth, songs that give glory to the Righteous One!  But my heart is heavy with grief.  Weep for me, for I wither away.  Deceit still prevails, and treachery is everywhere.  Isaiah 24:1-16

Isaiah gave himself to God as a prophet, committing to tell God’s truth, whether anyone listened or liked what God was saying.  Every preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ must make the same commitment, if there is to be truth combatting the evils of treachery, deceit, and debauchery.

The prophet spoke a word to two generations.  The first was his own, with the looming peril of Babylon, poised like a cobra, ready to strike Jerusalem down.  Like all true prophecy, the destruction of the city happened (in AD 587), and with that enemy siege came the residual horrors of brokenness, mobs, violence, ruin, famine, disease, and gloom of the total collapse of hope.

The second generation to which the prophet speaks is to those who came after, every generation since the destruction of Israel’s glory, down to this day, and until the very moment Jesus returns.  That’s where prophecy is inescapably pointing; we are headed for the conclusion of God’s plan for humanity.  That plan is destruction of all that is this world’s system of values, deceit, greed, anger, violence, and selfishness.  In the wake of that obliteration, will rise the city of hope, New Jerusalem, and a thousand-year (eternal) reign of Christ.

With his final words, Isaiah gives away his heart’s heaviness.  His ministry was in Jerusalem, a prophet to the movers and shakers of that generation, purveyors of a greedy lot, steeped in deceit and treachery.  It’s enough to make one envision the halls of today’s seats of worldly power.

For You Today  

For now, those who reject God’s Word and God’s Son, refusing to hear the prophecy, choose a party of emptiness.  When Christ comes, those who have received and obeyed the prophecy will see the real party begin…joy, unspeakable, and full of glory.[1]  So…heed the prophecy; don’t miss the party.

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

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

       No More Tambourines   and   Of State Dinners and Spies

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©  

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