“I,
the Lord, invite you to come and talk it over. Your sins are scarlet red, but
they will be whiter than snow or wool.
If you willingly obey me, the best crops in the land will be yours. But if you turn against me, your enemies will
kill you. I, the Lord, have spoken.” Isaiah 1:18-20
The Jewish people had vacillated regarding their
relationship to God for many generations. They had disobeyed Him constantly and
for that reason the Lord speaks out against them in the first chapter of Isaiah
the prophet. In spite of all their
sinning, their blood red stain could be made whiter than pure driven snow. Only God can do this. All they had to do was obey Him. They seem to have had a real problem doing
that with any consistency.
Are we today any different?
Although we live during a period of grace (God’s unmerited or undeserved
favor toward sinful man) we still must obey the will and the word of God. Like the Jews of the Old Testament, we also
lack consistency in our quest to obey. Our
sins run deep. Think about how difficult
it can be to remove a deeply embedded blood red stain. Understand that our sin
was not a surface stain, but deeply ground into the very fiber of our
being. No amount of hydrogen peroxide* will
remove the stain we have. Only
acceptance of God’s gift of forgiveness will purge the stain from our soul.
And what of this notion that their enemies will kill those Jews
turned against God? That was very much
true in the Ole Testament, but what of us today? I submit to you that we are our own very worst enemy.
We will end up killing ourselves if we don’t submit to the precepts of
the Lord. God won’t need to kill us and
indeed will not. Our own ignorance and
stubborn arrogance will end up being our demise in the end if we ignore that
which God has revealed to us thru the death of His Son. What was true then remains true today. Those who go against God by virtue of their
disobedience to His word, will shrivel up and die spiritually and in the end be
thrown into the lake of fire for all eternity.
Giving our unflagging allegiance to God and living for Him
is a serious matter. God truly does know
what works best for His children. Obey
God and reap the best He has to offer in this life. Until next time, walk with the King and be a
blessing!
* A remover of blood stains;
however, can possibly weaken the integrity of the fabrics fibers or possibly
leave a stain itself.
