April 4, 2011

Isaiah 1
Boys and mud go together. I don’t know what it is, but as a kid it was so much fun to get dirty. In the second through sixth grades, we lived in a house on the corner of two streets that were both gravel roads. One day after washing the family car, I noted how the water was running down into the street like a river. They had just finished building Lake Keystone, and we had recently been out to observe the massive structure which created a lake which caused whole towns to be relocated. Being fresh in my mind, I could not help but make the correlation between the stream and the street and the Arkansas River. I wondered if I could build by own dam and have a miniature lake in my street. I began with gusto piling up gravel and dirt in the street to build my dam. Soon I had a little pool forming instead of a stream. But as rapidly as I built the dam, the pool would expand and go around the dam. Eventually, my mom came out to see what I was doing. I was covered from head to foot in mud. She was not pleased, but she wasn’t wrathful either.
Isaiah speaks of the Lord as the Holy One of Israel in this chapter, twelve times in the first half of the book and 14 times in the second half of the book. Why? What is holiness? How does it relate to Isaiah’s message? Basically, holy means separate. He is separate from His creation. In the most fundamental sense, He is separate from us, different from us, other than us. More specifically He is separate from any moral impurity. He will not allow moral impurity in His manifest presence. Isaiah is calling the nation to repentance. They had become dirty. They had been playing in the filth of this world. They were building dams to store up their own supply of water. They were covered in sin which Isaiah compares to crimson. Crimson stood for blood-guiltiness before God. In their day the crimson dye of the scarlet worm was “absolutely colorfast and indelible.” Though their sin had stained them, and it was colorfast and indelible. He promises them cleansing. And how will it be accomplished? He says, “Let us reason together.” To reason means, “To prove, decide, judge, rebuke, reprove, correct, be right.” If we will but come into communion with Him and let Him prove, judge, rebuke, reprove, correct, and make us right, He will remove our sinful-blood-guilty stains and restore us clean! But if we resist, we will be devoured. That is His glory. He takes our blood-guilty stains and washes them in the judgment of His blood, and we come out clean as new-fallen snow! Indeed we serve a glorious King! Speak His glory to someone today!
--Pastor john