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Encouragement for the journey from God’s Word. Today's Scripture: Isaiah 3-5 / Proverbs 22:28-29
Well, a good Friday morning to you. We are approaching another weekend and looking forward to the Lord's Day. This coming Sunday in the Adult Bible Study, we'll be looking at the last lesson in this series on the Lord's Day.
Once again, we're in the book of 1 Peter and finding some great encouragement, some truth for troubled times in the book of 1 Peter. Sunday night we come back to the book of Mark, the Gospel of Mark. Looking forward to a good Lord's Day.
I hope you can gather together with us on that day and in those times. If you can't, we do live stream the services. Don't do the Adult Bible Study, but do live stream the services. Those would certainly be available at the service times.
Sunday school 9 .30 and the morning service at 10 .30 and the evening service is at 6 o 'clock on Sunday evening. Again, I hope you can join us for those times together on the Lord's Day. Today we're reading in Isaiah chapters 3, 4, and 5.
I want to zero in on the way chapter 3 begins. I want us to listen to these words of prophecy against the people of Israel. Let's listen and hear if we hear anything that sounds familiar to us. Let me just read that and listen.
Listen to see if you hear anything that sounds familiar to our day and age. Here's what the Lord says, for behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stock and the store, the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water, the mighty man and the man of war, the judge and the prophet and the diviner and the elder, the captain of 50 and the honorable man, the counselor and the skillful artisan and the expert enchanter.
I will give children to be their princes and babies shall rule over them. The people will be oppressed, everyone by another and everyone by his neighbor. The child will be insolent toward the elder and the base toward the honorable.
I don't know about you, but that sounds an awful lot like stuff going on in our own country today, doesn't it? I hate to sound like this is not supposed to be a downer. These are supposed to be encouraging devotionals for God's people, but I do think it is encouraging if we understand what God's doing.
When he announces judgment and he tells you what the form of that judgment is, then you see what's happening and you're able to perceive, oh, this is what God is doing. God is doing this that we might turn to him.
When we look at our world, look at our nation, the prophecy of judgment here is that the Lord is going to take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stock and the store, the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water.
We've been hearing for the last few months that we can expect food shortages, that there's going to be problems coming in our food supply and so on and so forth. Coupled with that is the whole problem of inflation so that your dollar doesn't buy nearly as much as it did two years ago.
My wife pointed that out to me the other day when she came home from the grocery store with just three or four bags, and she said, this is 100 bucks. This is 100 bucks. I didn't get hardly anything. It was over 100 bucks.
I was just amazed. She's also pointed out, I don't get to the grocery store as much as she does, but she also pointed out that there are places where there's some empty shelving where it used to be full.
I'm not suggesting that this is fully arrived, that we're in a dire straight and we don't have anything to eat. We're not there. But I think it is interesting that in this time in which we live, we're hearing about that kind of threat, that with this war in Ukraine and all this kind of stuff, we can expect food shortages, that fertilizer isn't being done and so there's going to be crop shortages and then there's going to be this problem, and food's going to be so expensive you can't afford it, and so on and so forth, which is as good as to say that the supply of bread and the supply of water is taken away from us.
He says that the Lord will take away the mighty man and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, the diviner and the elder. In other words, those individuals who are supposed to be leaders, the leadership of the land.
When God brings his judgment upon a land, he will undermine the leadership. He will take out of the land those who should be leaders. They'll be displaced in some way or another. I don't know about you, I don't mean to sound like this is political or anything like that, but I am grieved over the lack of good, sound leadership in our land today.
Oh, and he goes on to talk about taking away the captain of 50 and the honorable man, the counselor and the skillful artisan and the expert enchanter. In other words, those who are skilled in their craft are not able to carry out their craft.
And regarding that taking away the judge and the prophet, are you at all bothered by the attitude that's expressed toward those serving in the judiciary? The Supreme Court, for example, these five members of the Supreme Court that are conservative members that vote seemingly, apparently have voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade thing and all of the attacks that are being leveled against them.
And there's more to come. And I don't mean just against them, but protests and violence and all this kind of stuff is being fostered, it's being fomented to try to keep that to try to keep that decision back in 1973 from being overturned.
And then he says, I will give children to be their princes and babies shall rule over them. What kind of leadership do we have? I guess I'll just leave it at that. The people will be oppressed, everyone by another and everyone by his neighbor.
You're seeing this oppression come in the form of what we're calling cancel culture today, also in the form of being bullied into silence. I read an editorial recently in the Wall Street Journal about a woman who went to her doctor and her doctor was talking about the fact that this woman had chest cancer.
And the woman bristled at that. She went, wait a minute, no, I have breast cancer. And the doctor said, we don't want to be offensive to anybody. She went on to talk about in this article how successful this oppressive minority has become to get a whole new language imposed upon people, where people are afraid to use normal language, to talk about men and women, to talk about the fact that only women give birth to children, to talk about the fact that there are two biological genders, male and female, and that's it.
That's what God created. That's it. It's not to dismiss the fact that there are some chromosome abnormalities occasionally, but that's not the same thing. That's not what we're talking about. Because of this oppression from a small minority, the majority are afraid to even use words lest they get bullied and get screamed at and yelled at and everything else.
That's what verse five is talking about. The people will be oppressed, everyone by another, and everyone by his neighbor. This isn't oppression coming from the top down. It's not coming from the military forcing us to behave a certain way.
This is the pressure and the oppression that's coming from just those who live right nearby us. The same community. These are some symptoms of a nation when God is bringing judgment upon that nation. I don't want to end this on a total downer, because what happens as we go on in the book of Isaiah is that God has a remnant.
God preserves a remnant. In his grace, even though he will bring judgment upon a nation that has totally turned its back on him, he will preserve a remnant of his people. Be encouraged in that. If you're one of God's people, if you're a follower of Christ, you have been converted, then you're part of that remnant whom God will preserve, even through whatever form of judgment might come upon that land.
Father in heaven, I pray that in this very sobering reality of what can be happening from your hand in our day, I pray that we would be encouraged, we who know Christ, would be encouraged with the fact that you do preserve your people, even through times of judgment.
We thank you for it. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your Friday and a wonderful weekend. Again, I hope we can see you this coming Lord's Day. Good day.