The Gathering Storm
Opening Prayer
Faithful Father, bring Your cleansing, renewing power to my wayward heart.
Read ISAIAH 5:22–30
22 Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine
and champions at mixing drinks,
23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
but deny justice to the innocent.
24 Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw
and as dry grass sinks down in the flames,
so their roots will decay
and their flowers blow away like dust;
for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty
and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.
25 Therefore the Lord’s anger burns against his people;
his hand is raised and he strikes them down.
The mountains shake,
and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets.
Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away,
his hand is still upraised.
26 He lifts up a banner for the distant nations,
he whistles for those at the ends of the earth.
Here they come,
swiftly and speedily!
27 Not one of them grows tired or stumbles,
not one slumbers or sleeps;
not a belt is loosened at the waist,
not a sandal strap is broken.
28 Their arrows are sharp,
all their bows are strung;
their horses’ hooves seem like flint,
their chariot wheels like a whirlwind.
29 Their roar is like that of the lion,
they roar like young lions;
they growl as they seize their prey
and carry it off with no one to rescue.
30 In that day they will roar over it
like the roaring of the sea.
And if one looks at the land,
there is only darkness and distress;
even the sun will be darkened by clouds.
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Meditate
Evil-doers think they have gotten away with their behavior, but God has seen it all. Here, another nation has arisen (Assyria) and will be God’s instrument of judgment. We must not take sin lightly.
Think Further
The first five chapters of Isaiah are the “overture” to his whole work and the precursor to the story of his call in chapter 6. The overture finishes, introduced by two more “Therefore’s,” on a note of somber sadness. With imagination awake, I review the images of my reading: the burning stubble; the earthquake with its unburied victims; the foreign army of “terrifying precision and ferocity”; the growling lions; the storm-bound sailor searching desperately in the dark for a safe harbor. The people have detested and despised the words and the Law of the Lord. Often in the Old Testament, God’s hand (or arm) is stretched out to save his people in distress, but now it is stretched out in anger, a theme to which Isaiah returns (Exod. 6:6; Deut. 4:34; 5:15; Psa. 136:12; Isa. 9:12,17,21).
Some writers have pictured God in the Old Testament as sometimes acting like Mr. Nice and sometimes like Mr. Nasty. My brain cracks as I try to hold together today’s picture of God whistling for the brutal Assyrian army on the one hand, and the picture of God’s pain in verses like Jeremiah 31:20. The Bible risks this language ascribing human feelings to God so that we might know that he is the living God and not just some passionless abstraction. God puts many obstacles, including the prophets and psalmists, in the way of those who are running away from him. The last obstacle is himself, coming among us to live, to love, to die among us and for us. I thank God for the Christmas story, about an inextinguishable light shining in the deepest darkness.
Apply
“A definition of God’s wrath (or judgment) is his opposition to and hatred of evil, together with his intention to punish it” (Millard J. Erickson). What are your thoughts and feelings about the statement?
Closing prayer
Lord Jesus, visibility of God, deepen my knowledge of You, so that I may continue to trust You through dreadful things that happen in the world or to me.
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