When you commit your whole being to knowing and doing the will of God, you quickly get to the point almost nothing around you makes any sense at all. The revelation of God is so very crystal clear, and the darkness and sin which crowds up against your very soul -- you wonder if can hold your sanity. Your spirit cries out for the judging hand of God to fall. Even if it means destroying your very life, you can't take any more offense against the Lord.
This is where Isaiah finds himself. Can the Lord not refresh the experience Israel had before Mount Sinai? What would it take for the fear or God to descend upon this awful world? While the language refers to the impure nations which did not have the revelation of God, we cannot forget how often the Children of Israel themselves acted as if they had never seen or heard the mighty works of God's revelation. To whom does God reveal Himself? Those eager to see, those already committed to whatever that revelation demands of them. People who rush to know their sins so they may repent are the folks who see God.
And, oh -- how very much sin there is to repent! The poetry of Isaiah's confession echoes repeatedly as quotations in the New Testament. Yet the truth came far, far before Isaiah's time. It is the very nature of fallen man, the quandary in which we all find ourselves. Were it not for the resolve of God Himself to save some remnant of Creation for Eternity, there would be nothing today but Hell. We have only the cry for mercy.
What have we done, but raised up Hell in His Eden? The safety of the great City of Zion is a delusion, for it is actually a wilderness of sin. Man's pitiful acts of worship seem almost as destruction of things God made. Isaiah weeps because he knows his nation, the one to whom God gave the full revelation offered no other people on earth, given a homeland and Temple, and called by His name, has made an even greater mess of things than those who never knew Him.
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By Ed Hurst
13 October 2009
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior -- "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23)