In today's text the Lord talks about the spiritual blindness and the spiritual illiteracy of many of the people of Isaiah's era.
"Be stunned and amazed, blind yourselves and be sightless; be drunk, but not from wine, stagger, but not from beer." (Isaiah 29:9) This blindness is willful. Just as in our own day people like to turn a blind eye to the laws of God so they won't have to acknowledge how they've transgressed His laws, a lot of the people of Isaiah's day are doing the same thing.
Because the people want to be blind to their sin, the Lord says something like, "Have it your way, then." He will allow them to do as they wish for a season. "The Lord has brought over you a deep sleep: He has sealed your eyes (the prophets); He has covered your heads (the seers)." (Isaiah 29:10) It's not that the Lord wants people to ignore their sins and it's not that He prevents anyone from repenting. It's that a number of the people have ignored the words of the true prophets for so long that, as discipline, the Lord has few words to say to them through the true prophets.
It's often easier to get someone's attention with silence than with words, isn't it? Have you ever had anyone repeatedly ignore your warnings or your complaints about a particular situation? Have you ever noticed that, if you go silent, they suddenly pay attention to you and start asking what's wrong? The Lord has sent message after message to His people and a lot of them have refused to hear the prophets. He will have to use silence to get their attention; then they will want to hear Him.
The people's refusal to heed the word of God and obey it has rendered their hearts hard. They have ignored His words for so long that when they hear a true message from Him, it's difficult for them to recognize it as the word of God. They've refused to heed their consciences for so long that even when they read the word of God it doesn't immediately have an impact on them because they have become spiritually illiterate. "For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say, 'Read this, please,' they will answer, 'I can't; it is sealed.' Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, 'Read this, please,' they will answer, 'I do not know how to read.'" (Isaiah 29:11-12)
It is a dangerous business to harden our hearts and our consciences against the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit reveals to us our shortcomings. The Holy Spirit opens the Scriptures to us. If we repeatedly harden our hearts against what He has to say to us, we may find ourselves looking as confusedly at a passage of Scripture as one who cannot read at all. And if we show the passage to someone who is as hard-hearted as we are, they will be unable to explain it to us. This is the spiritual condition of a great number of the people of Isaiah's day: they have become spiritually illiterate.
That doesn't mean all is lost! They can repent and turn back to the Lord. They can submit themselves to the teaching of the Holy Spirit. They can pray and they can meditate over the Scriptures. The Lord never refuses to help anyone who sincerely wants to know Him and who wants to understand what He has to say to mankind. The problem is that a lot of the people of Isaiah's time do not want to do those things. That is why we conclude today's study with these words of the Lord. "The Lord says: 'These people come near to Me with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.'" (Isaiah 29:13a)
They are talking the talk but not walking the walk. Outwardly they are using religious phrases and making a show of being children of God but it's all talk. The Lord sees into their hearts and knows that things are not as they should be in their hearts. Thankfully, this won't be their permanent condition, but as we continue on through the books of the prophets we learn that their spiritual condition gets worse before it gets better.
No comments:
Post a Comment