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. 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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