Advent: Isaiah: 1 - 3

Chapter 1

What can you really do to make someone love you? Seriously. You are either loved or you are not. There is a need by many people to think that we are somehow or other doing God a favor when we go through the motions of worship. There is a belief that God likes our macaroni pictures when we feel we have been compelled to make them.

Isaiah makes it clear God is not happy with our lackadaisical attitude:

“Of what importance to me are your many sacrifices?”
says the Lord.
“I am stuffed with burnt sacrifices
of rams and the fat from steers.
The blood of bulls, lambs, and goats
I do not want.
- Isaiah 1:11 (NET)

How often do we think of appeasing God? God mentions earlier that He brought the people out of slavery, the wilderness, obscurity, nothingness; and for what? Do you think God did this to get burnt offerings? God, who has always been in relationship, wants to be in relationship with us. God wants us to be clean, not because He is a killjoy who wants to see us unhappy and doer, but because doing right brings us closer to Him and to one another. Its just common sense.

Because of this, God will allow the wrath of the universe be it chaos or order to consume this group of people. The notion is that God has been sheltering us and by turning aside (a common understanding of why bad things happened), God was taking away His protection for His people.

Chapter 2

This chapter sees something marvelous happening. It believes that God is something that the whole world is looking for and that Israel has it.

In the future
the mountain of the Lord’s temple will endure
as the most important of mountains,
and will be the most prominent of hills.
All the nations will stream to it,
many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain,
to the temple of the God of Jacob,
so he can teach us his requirements,
and we can follow his standards.”
For Zion will be the center for moral instruction;
the Lord will issue edicts from Jerusalem.
- Isaiah 2:2-3 (NET)

This is the centerpiece of what it means to be Israel. It isn't the trade relations or the nice houses or even the temple itself. It is the fact that God lives there and tells people what the world is like. Isaiah is trying to get the people to look at their most remarkable gift: God chose to dwell with them. Isaiah's vision of people beating "swords into plowshares" and "spears into pruning hooks" seems as far off now as it did back then. There was a notion that when all loved God and the Torah, all would be well finally. Israel was created to share this message just as friendships are nice in themselves but carry the responsibility of giving of what one has in the deepest part of the human soul. Israel has forgotten this though and so have we in America or in the church. There is a poignant plea made by the prophet in 2:5. He says, "O descendants of Jacob, come, let us walk in the Lord’s guiding light."

Instead we trust in idols or human beings. If God is a lie than we have trusted human beings all along and if we have done that, than why should trusting them without the illusion of God be any different? Isaiah looks for a day when all of our idols and hero worship are thrown away and we live in synagogue (the greek word means "bringing together") with, astoundingly, the Holy and one another. This is only made possible by God allowing it to happen. God has been here though, Isaiah is saying, but where are we?

Chapter 3

God gets personal when talking about the leaders we follow. In America we make sport of our leaders and it is not hard to imagine that the Israelites did as well. However, in America we think how we would make fine leaders or how someone who says all the right (or left) words to us is a paragon of leadership. We often ascribe the best qualities to these people. We put them on the same pedestal as God's messiah if only for a purpose. They become the filter of our religion, belief, etc. Isaiah is adamant that God will have none of that because in all this hero worship we disunite ourselves from God and from one another.

The Lord comes to pronounce judgment
on the leaders of his people and their officials.
He says, “It is you who have ruined the vineyard!
You have stashed in your houses what you have stolen from the poor.
Why do you crush my people
and grind the faces of the poor?”
The sovereign Lord who commands armies has spoken.
- Isaiah 3:14-15 (NET)

In the end God, asks us what legal right to we have? We have just been carrying out His Law. He hoped we would do better than we have, but we see what a mess we make of things. Isaiah is clear that there is an ultimate Torah (that is: Law) and that God is the only one worthy of Judgment. It is out of kindness and a desire for our freedom that we are allowed to be judges, but we don't ever do a good job. There are poor and oppressed. The moneyed, powerful, and influential all have more of the Law while those without are left with less. Behind this are the armies of heaven. God has all the power and it is His kindness that leads us to believe He is soft and a pushover.

Meanwhile, the wealthy live lives of, what one sociologist has called, "conspicuous consumption." That is to say, these people show off their goods. God gave these people their wealth not to rub it in other people's faces, but to use it to glorify God. God will take away all the things of beauty and replace it with things that will manifest their shame and dishonor. These were the things they were trying to hide and cover up. How often in America are our outward signs of power and prestige, really cover-ups for our feelings of inadequacy and failure? God's bringing about humility so forcefully leads us to deal with our issues without veneer of self-reliance. There is nothing wrong with wealth, but wealth built on the backs of brothers and sisters in our human family is sickening to God. Wealth used to glorify God and not adorn ourselves is what God wants. This is the notion of selling everything we have. We are selling something to get something we need. But strong men who die in pointless battles and women who try to cover up the fact that they have lost their beauty are lies that whither in the face of a God of truth.