Isaiah’s Remit: Isaiah 1-6 (3)

Pray Psalm 79.8, 9.
Oh, do not remember former iniquities against us!
Let Your tender mercies come speedily to meet us,
For we have been brought very low.
Help us, O God of our salvation,
For the glory of Your name;
And deliver us, and provide atonement for our sins,
For Your name’s sake!

Read Isaiah 3.

Reflect.
1. What were the primary sins for which God was coming to judge His people? 

2. What form would that judgment take (vv. 1-7, 18-26)?

Meditate.
God established an order and rulers to administer His law and lead His people ever more deeply into the promises of His covenant. He gave them kings and princes, priests, elders, and judges, so that the divine order would prevail throughout the land, and the blessings God promised in passages such as Deuteronomy 28.1-14 would reach to all the people.

But the rulers of Judah and Jerusalem had become totally self-serving. They loved the prestige attached to their offices, and the deference of the people they were supposed to be serving. They delighted in the pomp of office and the material benefits that accrued to them and their wives. They were acting like spoiled children, and they turned the divine order of justice, righteousness, and neighbor-love upside-down. Like Solomon, they patterned their behavior after the example of the pagan nations around them; and they considered that their way of running the country was better than that which God commanded (v. 8). They practiced evil before the Lord, and now they would bring greater evil upon themselves (v. 9).

There were some righteous people – like Isaiah – still to be found in Jerusalem and Judah, and God promised to take care of them through judgment. They would suffer, but He would sustain them (v. 10). Not so the wicked. They would be utterly undone.

Note that phrase which begins verse 13: “The LORDstands up to plead, and stands to judge the people.” God does not bring His discipline against His people without first warning them, pleading with them to turn from their rebellion and return to His ways. This was one of the roles of prophets such as Isaiah.

But God also knew such preaching would not be heeded. He spells out the form judgment will take, so that, when judgment began, the people would know for certain that God had done it. All the pretty things and pompous delights the rulers had indulged would turn to sackcloth and stench (vv. 18-26), as the Lord brought His wrath to bear against His sinful and unrepentant people.

Prepare.
1. The rulers of Israel were appointed as shepherds to the people of God (cf. Ezek. 34.1-10). As shepherds, what should they have been doing? What were they doing instead?

2. The shepherds of Judah and Jerusalem were guilty of leading the people astray (v. 12). Does this still happen in our day? How can we know when the shepherds God has appointed over us are beginning to lead us astray? What should we do at such a time?

3. Is the temptation to seek deference, power, prestige, and material boon still a threat to the order of God’s churches today? Explain. 

Again, they are to be admonished that if they are not afraid of being wicked; they should at least be ashamed of being seen for what they are. Often a sin that is concealed is avoided, because a mind that is ashamed to be taken for what it does not fear to be in fact is sometimes ashamed to be in fact what it avoids appearing to be. On the other hand, when a person is shamelessly and notoriously wicked, then, the more freely he commits every kind of evil, the more he thinks it lawful, and in imagining it lawful, he is thereby without doubt immersed in it all the more. Therefore, it is written, “They have proclaimed abroad their sin as Sodom, and they have not hid it.” Gregory the Great (540-640 AD), Pastoral Care 3.31

Lord, I pray for myself, and for the shepherds You have appointed over us, that we may rest in Your order and…

Pray Psalm 79.
Asaph saw Isaiah’s day coming in his own, as he watched the way Solomon and his friends turned from the Lord to riches and compromise with pagan religions (1 Kgs. 10). As you pray this psalm, let the Lord speak to you about conditions among His people in our day. Are we heading to a similar confrontation with the Lord? Pray for mercy and grace in this time of need.

Sing to the Lord.
Psalm 79 (Passion Choral: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded)
O God the nations all Your inheritance have spoiled!
Your City have they ruined, Your temple they have soiled!
Your servants’ bodies all to the birds of heav’n are thrown;
The flesh of all Your faithful the jaws of beasts now own.

The blood of faithful servants like water flows around;
And none are there Your saints to commit into the ground.
Our neighbors mock and scorn us: How long, O Lord, how long?
How long will You be angry and scorn our mournful song?

Pour out, O Lord, Your wrath on all who deny Your Name;
Who trust You not nor seek You, bring down to deepest shame!
For they have with great rancor Your precious saints devoured;
Lay waste their habitation at this late dreadful hour.

Why should the nations mock and say, “Where now is their God?”
Let there be known among them harsh vengeance for our blood!
Hear, Lord, our groans and sighing; preserve us by Your pow’r.
For we are fairly dying each day and hour by hour.

Reproach those who reproach us with judgment sevenfold!
Let thanks and praise to You by Your precious flock be told.
We are Your sheep, O Savior, we thank You all our days.
Look on us with Your favor as we declare Your praise.

T. M. Moore

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All psalms for singing adapted from The Ailbe Psalter. All quotations from Church Fathers from Ancient Christian Commentary Series, General Editor Thomas C. Oden (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006).All psalms for singing are from The Ailbe Psalter (available by clicking here).