Scripture

Don’t call everything a conspiracy like they do, and don’t leave in dread of what frightens them.

Observation

The Lord tells Isaiah to take a large signboard and write on it the words “swift to plunder and quick to carry away.” When his wife becomes pregnant, he is to call his son by this name.

The Lord’s care for Judah is like a gently flowing river. but because the people are rejoicing over the fate of foreign kings, the Lord will overwhelm them with a mighty flood, that is, the king of Assyria.

The lord tells Isaiah to not think like everyone else does. He is not to call everything a conspiracy or to live in dread of the things that frighten them. They are to live in hope and trust in the Lord.

When people consult mediums for guidance, Isaiah says, ”Shouldn’t you listen to the Lord? People who contradict God’s ways are living in the dark.”

Application

Conspiracy theories arise when people feel afraid and unable to have any agency. The COVID pandemic led to many conspiracy theories – some of which turned out to be true. Often, though, the people thought to be pulling all the strings are either incompetent or just as much victims as the rest of us.

Isaiah tells us that we should not think like worldly people. We should not be afraid or believe the conspiracy theories (even the true ones!) because we trust the Lord.

In the end, our trust is not in our knowledge of what is “really happening”. We trust in the Lord. As Jesus shows us at Easter time, He has conquered even death, so we are safe in the hands of the Lord.

The “elites” can silence people, murder people, cause people to disappear, or keep us all drugged and helpless. It doesn’t matter, because our lives are not in their hands but in the hands of the Lord. My eternal destiny is not determined by any person or corporation, but by the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.

Prayer

Thank you Lord for the knowledge that you are in control. You are greater than the people who think they run things. My trust is in the Lord. Amen.

Scripture

The Lord Himself will give you the sign. Look! A virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel which means God is with us.

Observation

Syria and Israel join forces to attack Jerusalem. The Lord tells Isaiah to go to meet King Ahaz and tell him to stop worrying about these two kings. The Lord says the invasion will not happen.

Later, the Lord sends a message to Ahaz to choose a sign of confirmation. Ahaz refuses to test the Lord in the way. Isaiah says that the Lord will give him the sign. A virgin will conceive and she will call her child Emmanuel, which means God is with us. By the time the child is old enough to know right and wrong, he will be eating yoghurt and honey for the lands of these two kings will be deserted.

Application

This prophecy about a virgin conceiving was to reach it’s fulfilment in the birth of Jesus, and we often remember it at Christmas.

At the time, the kingdom of Judah was facing an existential threat as the kings of Israel and Syria were planning to invade. How comforting the name Emmanuel must have been to King Ahaz.

Jesus is Emmanuel, God is with us.

He has promised to be with us always, regardless of where we might go in the world. “I will never leave you or forsake you,” He promises us.

God is also with us in the sense of being for us. Those who are in fellowship with Jesus can be certain that God is with us. He will not smite us, destroy us or let us down. He is for us, not against us. He loves us and will always work for our good.

Emmanuel – God is with us.

Prayer

Thank you Lord for the encouragement of this scripture. You truly are Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.

Scripture

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. he touched my lips with it and said, “See this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.”

Observation

Isaiah sees the Lord in the temple. The Lord is sitting on a high throne and the train of his robe fills the whole temple. Mighty seraphim surround the Lord, calling out His praises.

Isaiah is terrified. He recognises his sin in the presence of God’s holiness. A seraph takes a burning coal to Isaiah’s lips and says his guilt is removed and his sins are forgiven.

The Lord asks whom can he send as a messenger? Isaiah volunteers to go. Isaiah is to call the nation to repentance, but their hearts will be hardened. This will go on until the whole country is abandoned. The Lord will leave a stump from which Israel will grow back.

Application

Some christians believe that the Old Testament only about the law. A person had to obey God’s Law to be considered holy or righteous. But in this chapter, we read about Isaiah’s sins being removed by a seraph with a burning coal.

Everything about God’s dealings with people revolves around grace. Isaiah did not have to offer a sacrifice to be forgiven. He didn’t need the seraph to touch his lips; this was just a teaching aid to help Isaiah receive God’s forgiveness.

Jesus died once and for all. His death covers all the sins of all people through all history.

To be effective, we have to receive the gift. Isaiah could have turned his face away from the coal and held onto his guilt. People do just this. For a variety of reasons, they refuse God’s offer of grace through Christ. They remain unforgiven even though the offer is available.

If you have not accepted God’s forgiveness through Christ, do it now.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, your death on the cross took my sins away. I am forgiven and restored. Thank you. Amen.

Scripture

“When I expected sweet grapes, why did my vineyard give me bitter grapes?”

Observation

The Lord had a vineyard set on a rich and fertile hill. He ploughed the land, planted the best vines, and waited for the harvest. Yet it produced bitter grapes. Now he will tear down the vineyard and let it be destroyed.

The Lord expected to find righteousness and justice in the in the nation of Israel, but He found oppression and violence.

The people will go into exile far away. What sorrow awaits those who mock God. What sorrow for those who call evil good and good evil and for those who are wise in their own eyes.

T Lord’s anger burns against the people. He will whistle to distant nations and they will come and carry off their victims.

Application

The Lord is always expecting a harvest of righteousness and justice from His people.

There is a common form of “easy believeism” or cheap grace in which salvation is preached as a gift that comes when we say a prayer. Salvation is so much more than a transaction enacted in a church service. Unless a life is changed, or a heart transformed over time, then the person has not been saved.

Isaiah condemned the people of Israel for their corruption, self-indulgence, and injustice. They produced only sour grapes, not the sweet grapes the Lord intended for them.

There are many people who profess to be Christians who live the same sort of lives that the people of the world live. They have the same ambitions, plans ans dreams as unbelievers. The gospel hasn’t changed anything about them.

To repent means that we turn our lives away from sin and towards God. Over time we become more like Jesus.

Prayer

Thank you Lord for salvation. Please show me any part of my life that is displeasing to you. Amen

Scripture

But in that day, the branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious; the fruit of the land will be the pride and the glory of all who survive in Israel.

Observation

After the punishment, the destruction and the degradation of Israel comes the restoration. There will be so few men left alive that seven women will fight for each man.

But then the branch of the Lord, the remnant, will be beautiful and glorious. The land will be cleansed so that it is again fruitful.

The people will be holy. The Lord will wash the filth from Zion with the hot breath of Judgement. then He will provide a canopy of cloud during the day and fire by night over all the land. It will protect them from the heat and the storms.

Application

The branch of the Lord refers to the remnant of the people of Israel. They are going to go through a disastrous time of discipline in which the Lord will strip away the corruption of Israel. What is left will be holy and beautiful, a people dedicated to the Lord.

The branch of the Lord also remind us of another promise in Isaiah; that a branch will grow from the stump of Jesse. This time of the year, we tend to think of Jesus as being that branch. Jesus is the one who is beautiful and glorious. He is the one who makes the land fruitful.

We can see in this also a reference to the church. Israel had not been faithful to the lord. Israel rejected the Messiah. So the church became a branch that brings pride and glory to the Lord. We are the branch, grafted in, as Paul describes it in Romans. We are the holy remnant, the people of the Lord.

Prayer

Thank you Lord for grafting me into your chosen people. I did not deserve this, but I am now a part of the holy priesthood of God, through the grace of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Scripture

For Jerusalem will stumble and Judah will fall, because they speak out against the Lord and refuse to obey him. They provoke him to his face.

Observation

The Lord of Heaven’s Armies will take away from Jerusalem and Judah everything they rely on – bread, water, heroes, judges, prophets, craftsmen, and astrologers. Children will rule over them.

Judah and Jerusalem will fall because they oppose the Lord. They display their sin like the people of Sodom

Jerusalem is like a beautiful woman. But everything that makes her beautiful will be taken away by by the Lord. The city will be like a ravaged woman on the ground

Application

The Lord is going to judge Judah and Jerusalem severely. Everything, even the skilled leaders and craftsmen, will be taken away. There will be no food and no water.

Why does this awful judgement come to pass? Because they have refused to obey the Lord. They revel in their sin and sneer at God’s law.

That sounds awfully like our country today, and many others.

We are racing towards catastrophic judgement unless our society, especially its leaders, turn to the Lord.

Our values are all mixed up and contradictory, but nobody is allowed to correct them.

It is more difficult to adopt a baby than it is to abort it. We promote all kinds of aberrant and abhorrent sexual behaviour and wonder why depression and loneliness are pandemics in our society.

We desperately need revival before the Lord pronounces judgement on the nation.

Prayer

Lord, please call people back to you. Turn Australia into the Southland of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Scripture

In the last days, the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all – the most important place on earth.

Observation

Although Jerusalem is now in ruins, in the last days the mountain of the Lord’s house will be the highest of all. The nations will come to the mountain of the Lord hto learn His ways.

The Lord will mediate between nations. They will hammer their swords into plough shares and will not train for war.

Israel is full of riches and weapons, but it is also full of idols. Human pride and arrogance will be brought low and only the Lord will be exalted.

When the Lord shakes the land, people will abandon their gold and silver idols. The false gods cannot save them in the in the presence of the Lord

Application

We are living in what the prophets called “the last days” (Acts 2: 16, 17). The last days are not the end of the world, but the end of the old covenant.

In these last days, people are coming to a mountain of the Lord that his spiritual not physical, to the house of the Lord that is spiritual not physical.

All over the world, people are coming to the Lord in unprecedented numbers.Whole nations, especially in Africa, have turned from false gods and idols in the space of a couple of generations.

The “mountain of the Lord’s house” is the church. All over the world, millions upon millions of people are participating in church every week. We are starting to see hints of revival in North America and in Europe.

These are the days of the vision that Isaiah saw. It started on Pentecost in Acts 2 and slowly, over the millennia, God’s kingdom is spreading over the world.

Prayer

Thank you Lord for the privilege of living at this time. Thank you for he revival that is happening worldwide. Please bring it to Australia and to my town. Amen.

Scripture

“Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord.“Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them white as wool.”

Observation

God’s children, the nation of Israel, rebelled against Him. Even an ox knows its master, but Israel does not know its master, the Lord.

Why do they invite punishment? They are already battered and bruised. The country is in ruins, and Jerusalem abandoned. If the Lord had not saved a remnant, they would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah.

The Lord is not pleased with their sacrifices and rituals. He hates their festivals and refuses to look when they pray.

If they come to the Lord in repentance, He will wash them clean. Their sins will no longer be like crimson, but they will be as white as wool.

Application

The Lord hates sin. He loathes religious hypocrisy. Unless we allow Him to transform our hearts and wash our sins away, then we are headed for judgment.

Many people do not think about sin. They are sure that if there is a God who judges, that they will be OK. At least they are not murderers or paedophiles.

But sin is sin, and however small itseems seems to us ,sin corrupts our souls. It captivates our hearts. It takes us away from the the Lord.

The Lord is always waiting for us to turn back to Him. No matter how evil, sinful or corrupt we are, He can take our sins away.

All of this points to Jesus. His death on the cross is the payment for the sins of the world. God’s forgiveness is available to everyone who will receive it.

Prayer

Lord, I acknowledge that my sins are scarlet, my soul is crimson in corruption. Thank you for your offer of forgiveness. I receive it today. Amen.