Here Isaiah uses four terms to describe the northern
kingdom, Jacob, Israel, Ephraim and Samaria.
The Lord's judgment is against them and they don't get it at all. They
think that even though the walls have fallen and they are destroyed it is no
problem, they will rebuild with even better materials. The Lord's anger, however, is not satisfied
or completed yet. There will be no
rebuilding at all. The fact there is a
northern kingdom is an abomination. The
capital and temple are in Jerusalem and a divided nation is no nation at
all. His charge against them is plain,
"everyone is godless and an evildoer, and every mouth speaks folly."
Everyone, not just some of them,
all of them, just as in the days of Noah when the only intention of man's heart
was only evil all the time, came under this judgment. Leaders and prophets alike come in for this
judgment as well as the young men. There
is no one exempt from His judgment on the people. Nevertheless, they do not turn to Him.
John's mission was to prepare a people to greet the coming
of the Lord. It takes for granted that
there is not a people who are prepared for that coming. John isn't willing to be immersed in society
and he has withheld from himself all the "pleasures" of society. He wore rough garments and limited his diet
in a way that is even more restrictive than the Nazirite vow his parents took
on his behalf. He could have walked away
from that vow when he came of age, but he not only renewed it, he took it to
another level. We certainly have reason
to fast in our age, to distance ourselves from the privileges and pleasures of
the world as we await the coming of the Lord.
It should be a regular part of our walk to fast and pray, isolated from
the world for a time. We can fast to
come close to the Lord and we can fast to remember that there are many in the
world today who hunger. We are called to
unity with all our brothers and sisters, not only those who are near to
us. The Lord wants "a" people
and he wants us to be one. Consider
taking up a fast of some duration as a regular part of your disciplines to
remind yourself of all you have and of those who don't have that.
Judgment is a reality.
Peter points to history to show that truth and to remind his readers to
be vigilant concerning both sin and destructive heresies in the church. The ruin of the church is when it becomes
insensitive to these two things. The church
in the west today could use a good cleaning up.
We have tolerated both heresy and sin and the result is the decline of
the culture at large, the culture has rotted from the inside out. How is the church fulfilling its prophetic
and priestly role in the culture and how is it failing? We need a time of self-examination and
repentance if we are to recover from our failures.
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