Because they would not heed the word of the Lord, the Lord has this message for them through the prophet Isaiah: "The Lord Almighty has revealed this in my hearing: 'Till your dying day this sin will not be atoned for,' says, the Lord, the Lord Almighty.'" (Isaiah 22:14)
What does this mean? Is the Lord saying He will close His ears to the people's prayers of repentance? No, He is not saying that at all, for the Lord always stands ready and eager to hear prayers of repentance.
The main thing happening here, I think, is that the Lord knows repentance isn't going to take place; therefore, He cannot relent from what He is proposing to do. What we have already learned from Chapter 22 is that the people will not repent. Right up until the end, with the enemy literally at the gates, they are partying hearty, as the saying goes. There may have been a few who repented at the preaching of Isaiah and the other prophets, but the majority never did, which is why the Lord followed through on His threat to allow the nation to be conquered.
The Lord already knows everything the people will ever do. He can say with certainty that the fall of the nation is going to occur because He can say with certainty that there will be no repentance, revival, and widespread turning back to Him. He can see the future as clearly as if it has already happened. Their sins won't be atoned for because they won't accept the atonement that comes through repentance and through making the Lord the God of their lives.
Another thing is going on here and the key to understanding this is contained in the words "till your dying day". The Lord tells the people that their atonement won't take place, not even until "your dying day". Forsaking idolatry and a life of sin will not take place during the lifetime of the people who will be living in the nation when the enemy attacks, which is why the Lord doesn't turn the enemy away, which is why the enemy is able to conquer the nation and take most of its people captive. The Lord is warning the people that none who were taken captive by the Babylonian army will return to the land. Those people will not set eyes on their own land again.
When we arrive at the book of Jeremiah we will find the Lord telling Jeremiah that the period of captivity of the people of Judah will last for seventy years. So we know that the thousands upon thousands whom Nebuchadnezzar's troops took hostage to Babylon never again set foot on Judean soil. I am sure that many did repent of their sins in Babylon, after they saw the result of their sins. But, due to the length of time they were held captive in Babylon, they died before the Medo-Persian Empire conquered Babylon and set the captives free.
The Lord hears prayers of repentance and He forgives sins. But sometimes there are natural consequences to our sins that are ongoing. For example, if we are unfaithful to our spouse, we can repent of that and pray to the Lord to forgive us, but that doesn't necessarily mean our spouse will forgive us. They may divorce us instead. Another example would be if we stole from our employer. We can repent of thievery and receive the Lord's forgiveness but our employer may still fire us. Some of the people were sorry for their mistakes after they were taken to Babylon, I am sure. And the Lord, I am sure, accepted their repentance. But that didn't mean anything to the Babylonians; they didn't set the captives free. The period of time allocated for the captivity was what was required for those who rebelled against the Lord to perish in the land of captivity, just as the period of time allocated in the wilderness (in the days of Moses) was what was required for the generation that refused to obey the Lord and go into Canaan to perish. The Lord knows exactly how long a period of difficulty should last and that is why sometimes the natural consequences of our sins don't vanish the instant we repent of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment