November 13, 2024

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Unless the Lord Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” (Isaiah 1.9)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

You know those “good news/bad news” jokes, right? They usually start with the question “Which do you want to hear first? The good news or the bad news?” It’s a crapshoot at best for any of us. What can improve our odds for good news being good and bad news not being so bad? I would hope we would all declare “faith in God.” If we do not have faith in God, then what hope do we have for any good news? The Apostle Paul wrote to the faith in Christ fellowship in Philippi, “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” (Philippians 4.11) Where does such contentment come from? Deluding ourselves in order to be oblivious to the circumstances and their consequences? Some might say that is the very failure of those who declare “I have faith!” But what is it that Paul said about faith? Ah yes, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen.” (Hebrews 11.1) Having faith in God is not foolishness nor delusional. Our faith and our hope is in God and must be in God alone. So, regardless of that questionable “good news and bad news,” we are surrounded in faith and hope with the good news that endures, comes after and will always be. It enriches the good news (which is the gospel of Jesus Christ) and translates the bad news (in this world there will be trouble but never fear, I have overcome the world.) Here, even in these beginning verses of Isaiah which are an introductory summary of the entire scope of work, we are confronted with that “good news/bad news” offering. What does Isaiah recognize about where he and Israel are in their season of life? Verse 9 says it plainly “Unless the Lord Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” Here is that good news: if the Lord had simply given up on us and vacated His promise to be our God if we would be His people, we would be no better off than Sodom and Gomorrah. Wow. Now that’s a graphic picture if there ever was one. And while we have not seen Sodom and Gomorrah, we have seen the aftereffects of devastation from natural disasters to the holocaust perpetrated by human beings from gas chambers to nuclear bombs. At this point, Isaiah was not thinking of the “before.” Isaiah was picturing the after. It had to be an image talked about in the annals of Jewish lore. It would have, or should have, struck fear in some realization of “it has happened before, it could happen again.” Yes, there were those who had ventured into that Dead Zone. The Badlands of the Dakotas don’t even do the image justice as they are the remnants of natural processes. Sodom and Gomorrah, what was left of them, were the remnants of those “unnatural” processes…in more ways than one. But take hope in the fact that there were survivors. Literally, Abraham, Lot, and Lot’s daughters were the survivors to tell the tale. Who was not with them? Lot’s wife nearly survived but in disobedience, that which makes us unnatural, she turned to the past and was forever solidified into that harsh reality.

It was not the first time we hear of such disillusionment. [Mind you: there will be a last time, however.] The Hebrew exiles from Egypt were called out to return to the Promised Land. It sounded like good news to them to be free from their taskmasters and told of such freedom and prosperity awaiting on the other side of the desert. Yet, it didn’t take long for them to begin to grumble about how hard the journey already was. Some longed to go back to what they could count on: bricks with no straw but food and shelter. Moses only had to remind them of the fate of those same taskmasters who now were fish food in the Red Sea as the mighty waves swept over them and carried them to the ground on which their own feet had walked by God’s command. We only need to consider the number of times those sojourners turned away from God’s promise and sought their own way. At Mt. Sinai, the earth swallowed them up in belching fire and brimstone. At the gateway to Canaan, their fear of giants loomed over the trust in the Lord and they returned to the desert until another generation was gone. Still, there were survivors. If there were no survivors, then there would be no one alive to tell the tale and bear witness to what was and what could have been. This is the good news Isaiah was projecting to the people. There is still hope if we press forward even in desperate and seemingly impossible times and trust God. Trusting Him meant to become obedient and faithful. It meant to remember their natural identity and not their unnatural persona. They were the people of God’s hand and the sheep of God’s pasture. Even if the pasture seemed barren, the same God who could bring water from a rock, quail out of thin air, manna from heaven and deliverance through the tempest waves could bring life out of death.

This is the word for us even now in these difficult and trying times. The future may be presented as bright and hopeful by the promises of political and “religious” leaders but “If we do not repent and turn from our vile and detestable ways, if we do not humble ourselves before God and call upon His Holy Name, then He will not listen to us though He will hear and answer our prayers and fulfill the promise He has made to be our God if we will be His people.” It isn’t about making America great again or Israel or any other nation for that matter. It is about those places being filled with the survivors who trusted in God in all things and at all times speaking the good news: “as bad as it has been, there is good news of a great joy- Jesus is Lord!”

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit brought us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit in order that others be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind so we would know we are Your people and You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.