May 9, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“‘Why are Your clothes red, and Your garments like one who treads the winepress?‘ [I asked. He answered,] ‘I have trodden the winepress alone, and no one from the nations was with Me.’” (Isaiah 63.2-3a)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD TO US:

Do you remember the “conclusion” of Isaiah’s encounter with God who was “…high and lifted up with His train filling the Temple“? (Isaiah 6.1) Here is it: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying: ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?’ And I said: ‘Here am I. Send me!’” (Isaiah 6.8-9) Do you notice how this dialogue differed from that, say, of God and Moses? There on Mount Sinai as Moses was tending Jethro’s flocks, another encounter with God was experienced. It was not in the Temple of Jerusalem because there was none. In the vast expanse of the earth with Heaven as its canopy space, God introduced Himself to Moses in a burning bush. Moses was commanded to “take off his sandals because the ground he had stepped onto was holy [sanctified, or set apart.] Moses did not seek to build a tabernacle there because of the experience as Peter suggested on Mount Tabor when Jesus was transfigured before him, James and John with the Moses and Elijah. It was as if that Triumvirate of Heaven had become the “burning bush” of the Sinai. Take those scenarios into consideration for comparison and contrast. Use Isaiah’s as the benchmark. In Isaiah, God asks for volunteers. Isaiah, moved by the redemption experience of a hot coal pressed to his lips to purge them of uncleanness, speaks without delay. Of course, Isaiah was caught in the moment like Robert DeNiro in “Taxi Driver,” with the understanding of “You talkin’ to me? There’s no one else here.” Imagine the awkward silence in the Temple if Isaiah ignored the action of God’s salvation upon his life. Isaiah responded, however, not because he was the only one in the Temple at the moment. Isaiah had entered the Temple as the representative of the nation of Israel. Remember what he said? “I am a man of unclean lips who dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah was not simply volunteering his services to God to speak the truth. Isaiah was, by implication, bringing the whole of Israel into the fray against unrighteousness of which they had become “all about.” Not so with Moses, who was commanded to go and take along with him the Law of the Lord and the authority of God’s Name. What of Peter, James and John. They were not in a hurry to head down the mountain. They wanted to revel in their “mountaintop” experience as if it were a deserved honor. Jesus led them down the mountain after God declared, “This is My Son, listen to Him.” How do we respond to such revelatory moments when God makes His presence known to us?

As you consider that, consider then the verses for reflection today. Chapter 63 presents an interesting dialogue between Isaiah and God. We do not know the location of that dialogue. It may have been in the Temple again. Isaiah may have never left the Temple at all, like John the Elder was present “in the heavenly places” during the Revelation from the Glorified Jesus who was, is and will always be “the Christ.” The first look at this chapter I present is the question which almost seems to be the antithesis of chapter 6. In chapter 6, God asks all those present (Isaiah and the angels attending God) “Who will go for us?” We know Isaiah’s response was “Here, I AM, send me!” However, in chapter 63, God returns, or is still present from the first encounter of chapter 6, and is covered in garments of red. Isaiah mentions as if God had been in a winepress stomping grapes. It was grapes…grapes of wrath. Where was this winepress? It was out among the nations apart from Israel. Was God wreaking havoc on the foreign nations? Well, in great part, yes. But we have to consider the very nature of those nations. Those nations were vicariously under the influence of the Jews who lived there. Yes, the call of Jesus to go out into all the world and make disciples “of all nations” carries the weight of this reality. Paul’s missionary work was, according to Romans, “…first to the Jew and then to the Greek (Gentile.)” Jesus had established the paradigm with the disciples as the ministered to or sought help from the cities through which they passed. Jesus said, “If you are not received, shake the dust from your feet and move on.” (Matthew 10.14) What is presented here in chapter 63 is the meting out of justice according to the righteousness of God. That blood on the garments like the stains from “the grapes of wrath” was most likely co-mingled between Jew and Gentile. Why? Because the Jew should have known their first calling was to be “a light unto the world.” That light was to draw all people to God for the sake of righteousness not for the sake of Judaism. Imagine the story of Jonah and Nineveh. Jonah did not wish to fulfill his calling. He knew the power of God’s word to transform, deliver and save. He did not want his enemies to be saved from the wrath any more than he desired the King of Judah to heed the word of God he was sent to deliver. Having repented, literally turning the other direction, and go to Nineveh, the people of Nineveh from the king to the pauper repented and received God as their God and the joy of their salvation. What if Jonah had not gone? Would God send another? Would God have simply obliterated them in their unrighteousness regardless of “good intentions”? Had Israel, in their unfaithfulness and thus in their being scattered among the nations, actually been used by God who “works all things together for good to serve His will and His people.” God had already demonstrated how He would use the enemy to exact justice on His own people who refused to worship and serve the Most High God. Could it not be the other way around? Jews were used to bring others into the light of faith?

But, where Isaiah had been willing and made able to speak the truth of God so that justice could be served, God found no one among the nations. Since the covenant charge and call was with God Himself, He would be the one who would execute justice. It would be a holy and righteous justice for the sake of His people. It would be evidence of His faithfulness to the commitment He had made in the blood of the Lamb “past, present and future.” The question is “Are we with God today?”

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

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness which we know is folly but righteous works which declare Your glory and further witness the truth that can set all who believe free from death. So may we live by the name of Jesus our Christ in whose name we pray. AMEN.