ISAIAH

Chapter 9
Hope on the horizon

The choices of God's people brought darkness and distress upon them.
But God reveals that there would be something to look forward to.
Into that great darkness and hopelessness,
there would be a dawning of a great light.
Bondages would be broken, oppression would end.
A child would be born from among them
who would govern with justice and righteousness.
His kingdom would have no end.
This would be accomplished by the Lord Almighty.

From the leaders of the people to those they led,
all had succumbed to pride and the arrogance of the heart.
None were innocent.
They did not stop to reconsider their ways;
they did not choose to return to the God they had abandoned.
Despite the devastation, they determined to rebuild.
They had great ideas.
While God had instructed that altars be erected with uncut rocks,
the people decided to use dressed stone in the process of rebuilding,
and they opted to plant cedars to replace the fig trees ~ upgrading, as it were.

So God continued to allow their enemies access.

Wickedness is as fire, consuming all that is around.
It is not selective in its choice of fuel; it uses what is available.
It continued to destroy, both land and relationships.

Twila Charles Leichty
April 2, 2009


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ISAIAH

Chapter 10

Those who have made unjust laws and issued oppressive decrees
to acquire wealth and power of their own
will be no better than those they have taken advantage of
on the day of reckoning.

The power that God allowed access to His people,
to humble them,
had a growing ambition,
that of seizing Jerusalem as it did the surrounding land.
The very sin that was offensive in His people,
a proud and independent spirit,
focused on its own power and sufficiency,
is addressed by God with the foe:
“Does the ax raise itself above him who swings it,
or the saw boast against him who uses it?”
(verse 10:13a)
Strength was taken from the enemy's hand.
It's victory is time-limited.
It will know the sting of defeat, destruction is in store,
for it's pride, self-reliance, is a stench in God's nostril.
It will not be allowed to continue.

God welcomes back a remnant people,
those who have seen and acknowledged their waywardness,
and reassures them His anger against them will not last forever.
He will come to the side of His people and act in their behalf.
Those who do not honor and worship God will be brought down.

Twila Charles Leichty
April 2, 2009

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ISAIAH

Chapter 2

There is a day when God will take His rightful place,
when God will be acknowledged as God alone.
It will be a time when what God says is heard;
His judgments will be considered just.
Differences and difficulties between people and nations will dissolve;
there will be no more war.
All will live in the light of God – in His ways and at peace!

Right now it may seem as though God has walked out on His people,
but look closer.
His people have forsaken Him.
They've followed after the gods of their neighbors.
They've fashioned their own gods.
Their time is spent on what they determine to have value;
they have established their own priorities and ignored His law.
(I wouldn't blame God, were He to walk out on His people.
They are so disloyal, acting in open defiance, being rebellious.
They have forsaken their commitment to Him!)

God will not put up with this forever.
There is coming a day when man will acknowledge that he is man
and that God is God.
God will show Himself greater than man's greatness
by bringing down all that man has worshiped.
Man will run and want to hide.
Man will see the worthlessness of all that He has valued.
God will show Himself strong.
Yes! He will assert Himself and take His rightful place.

Twila Charles Leichty
March 10, 2009

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ISAIAH

Chapter 5

God prepared a vineyard.
The soil was cleared of stones and cultivated.
It was planted with the choicest vines.
A watchtower was erected and a winepress was hewn out of stone.
He anticipated a crop of good grapes,
but, alas! he was “rewarded” with bad fruit.
He had done all He could have done.

So, He tore down the hedge that kept out those
who take without the right to do so.
The garden became a wasteland.
The vines were not pruned; briers and thorns took over.
And there was a drought.

What He wanted and what He got were two different things:
instead of justice, there was war,
instead of righteousness, the distress of evil.

The accumulation of material wealth,
the indulgence of self and disregard for the needs of others,
leads to ruin.
His people, forgetting the One who had created them
and provided them with instructions on living
(that would yield good fruit),
chose to find a way of their own.

Their waywardness was destined to take them into exile.
By choosing not to follow Jehovah,
they were choosing to follow the god of their own making,
one that would lead them further and further away from the blessings
He wanted to bestow upon them.
They were choosing their thinking and logic,
their preferences and feelings as guides in behavior.
Their judgments were producing the odor of decay
and the stench reached God's nostrils!

The judgment of God was visited on His people.
Their self-indulgence, disobedient and rebellious ways,
tore down the walls of God's protection
and provided their enemies easy access.
Their ways led them into captivity.
The light that God had given was but dimly seen;
They were captives by their own choosing.

Twila Charles Leichty
3-25-09

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ISAIAH

Chapter 6
Commissioned by God


When he saw the fullness of God
His righteousness, His glory,
Isaiah was overwhelmed with his own sinfulness.
And he saw himself among a nation
of those who had closed their eyes to seeing God's truth,
their ears from understanding.
Their hearts were calloused
because their wills had not been trained to obey.
He recognized his uncleanness and his acknowledgment of it
released the atoning work of God.
God was seeking a prophet.
He sought a man who, rightly, knew himself,
who acknowledged and worshiped The Holy One of Israel,
and was willing to be used by God
in the delivery of His message to His people.
His response: “Here am I. Send me!”
showed the willingness of a grateful heart,
for he had experienced God's mercy.

The message was not an easy one:
He was to tell them there was a difference
between hearing and understanding,
between seeing and perceiving.
It was a heart condition that could have been corrected,
had they submitted their hearts and wills to Him.
Time had run out; the sentence had been decided.
And Isaiah was to continue speaking this message
until the cities, houses, and fields were ruined and ravished
and the people taken captive to another land.
But, just as mighty trees leave stumps when they are cut down,
they would not be totally uprooted and die.
A small number of His people would remain as “seed.”

Twila Charles Leichty
3-26-09

DISABILITIES revisited

Blind ~ an inability to see what is.
We are all blind until we see the truth.

Lame ~ an inability to walk without a limp.
We are all lame until we walk in love.

Deaf ~ an inability to hear what others say.
We are all deaf until we hear God's voice.

Mute ~ an inability to speak words clearly.
We are all mute until we experience a loosing of the tongue
to speak helpful and encouraging words to others.

Twila Charles Leichty
April 1, 2009

~ SCARS ~
The result of His atoning work

“He was pierced for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him,
and by His wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 53: 5

Jesus took the punishment we deserved
for our willful disobedience.

His body was badly bruised;
His flesh was cut and torn from the scourging.
Wounds were inflicted by the spear in His side
and the nails in His hands and feet.

Scars are evidence that wounding has occurred, that one has been hurt.
They bear a message.

When Thomas saw the scars, he was able to believe;
He knew and acknowledged that the One before him was indeed Jesus.
“My Lord and my God!”
(John 20:28)
Scars convinced when words were cast aside.

God provides what He knows we need.
(What we stubbornly insist on may be something different.)

To ponder:
Have you “seen” Jesus' scars?
How did He “show” them to you?
Has that made a difference in your life...your mission?

Has another ever “worn” scars you've inflicted?
What have you thought and felt? How has that impacted your life?

Twila Charles Leichty
April 1, 2009

ISAIAH

Chapter 7

God does not want His people to align themselves with those about them.
He knew their tendency to absorb the values, thinking and behaviors of others.
They wandered so quickly from His way.
Yet the king, because of fear, was seeking coalition with others.
Isaiah, God's messenger, reassured the king that within a relatively short time
the powers he feared would be powerless.
He was to stand firm in his faith ~ or he would not stand at all.
Whether the king refused to acknowledge Isaiah as God's messenger
or if he was simply stubborn and wanted to do as he wanted to do (or both),
he would find that God had revealed truth in the years to follow.
God would work through the Assyrians to humble His people.
Their land would be plundered.
Yet, despite this, there would be those who were faithful to their God,
and these would know His provision amidst the devastation.

Twila Charles Leichty
April 1, 2009




ISAIAH

Chapter 8

As God released His enemies to reveal the truth of His word,
God encouraged Isaiah to stand firm,
not to go with the people's thinking and course of action.
He was to continue to stand strong in his faith,
to continue to follow, without fear.
His trust in God Almighty would be rewarded.
He would be protected, sheltered from ruin.
He and his family would dwell securely in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, as those things God said would be, were happening,
the people who had followed their king would find themselves starving,
would lash out against their ruler (and God),
and consult other sources they credited as knowledgeable,
but the light of truth was no longer available to them.

Twila Charles Leichty
April 1, 2009