After Isaiah accepts the Lord's invitation to be His prophet, the Lord provides instructions. "He said, 'Go and tell this people: 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.' Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.'" (Isaiah 6:9-10)
What is the Lord saying? Does He want the people to be lost? No, because the Bible clearly tells us from start to finish that the Lord's desire is for everyone to be saved. When He tells Isaiah to make the people's hearts calloused, what He is saying is that the people will see Isaiah acting as a prophet and they will hear his words but will deny what they see and hear. In denying over and over what they see and hear, their hearts (which are already hard) will grow harder and harder. Every time a person hears the truth of God's word and rejects it, his or her heart grows harder. This makes it more and more difficult for them to "turn and be healed" as the Lord phrases it. A heart can become impenetrable once the shell around it has grown thick enough. At that point the only way a person can be saved is if the Lord forces them to be saved---and that He will not do, for He is a gentleman who does not force Himself upon anyone. As we discussed yesterday, He respects human dignity and the free will He instilled in mankind.
The Lord is informing Isaiah that his commission as a prophet will be largely fruitless. Doubtless, some people accepted his words, but the vast majority of them did not. They will hear Isaiah's words but won't understand them because they don't want to understand them. In our own day, there are people sitting in church on a regular basis, listening to the word of God being preached while at the same time rejecting the word. They don't want to understand what they are hearing because if they understand it they will have to do something about it.
People go to church for reasons other than to worship the Lord, just as in Isaiah's day they went up to the temple with offerings and sacrifices for reasons other than loving the Lord. People may go to church in our times because it's expected of them by their family or because they like the effect it has on their reputation or because it gives them a sense of belonging to a group. They may attend church because they feel lonely or because it's the main social event in their small rural town. There are many reasons why a person attends services and why a person volunteers their time for church projects, and those reasons may have nothing to do with having a relationship with the Lord. There are lost people in our churches. The longer they listen to the word of God but don't repent, and the longer they observe the godly lives of others and don't repent, the more difficult it will be to ever come to the point of repentance. Their hearts grow more "calloused", as the Lord says, as time goes on.
The Lord is telling Isaiah to be prepared for his message to fall upon deaf ears. He is telling Isaiah that he will be scoffed at and ignored. The Lord is fair in His dealings with mankind and doesn't want us accepting a commission from Him blindly. As the Lord Jesus said, we are to "count the cost" of taking up our cross and following Him. (Luke 14:25-33) Jesus warned His disciples that their message about Him would be rejected by many. He warned them that they would be ridiculed and, in some cases, would be beaten or imprisoned or even put to death. Were they willing to go this far or not? When the Lord tells Isaiah his message is going to fall mostly on deaf ears, He's asking him, "Are you willing to preach My message anyway?"
Isaiah is willing. The only question he asks is how long this hard-heartedness of the people will last. "Then I said, 'For how long, Lord?'" (Isaiah 6:11a) Will their hearts be calloused forever? Will they be willfully blind and deliberately deaf forever? Isaiah hopes not. He loves his people and his nation. He doesn't want the people to be lost or the nation to fall never to rise again. He wants some good news to make the bad news easier to bear.
"And He answered: 'Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.'" (Isaiah 6:11b-13) Just as the Lord already stated earlier in the book of Isaiah, the nation will be attacked and conquered. The people will be taken captive and dispersed to foreign soil. But that is not the end! The good news Isaiah was hoping for is in this message.
Judgment would not have come if most of the people had repented at the words of Isaiah and the other prophets. The Lord lets Isaiah know that they will not repent and that the judgment He has pronounced is really going to happen. But He will not make an end of Isaiah's people and He will not make an end of the nation.
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