Today’s passage: Isaiah 1:1-20
Helpful thoughts:
- Isaiah prophesied during the decline of Israel and also to the kingdom of Judah. His ministry took place leading up to and quite possible after 700 B.C., through the reigns of four kings in Judah.
- Forsaking and despising the Lord are held as parallel acts. To forsake the Lord is to despise Him.
- As we also saw in Hosea, the people of Judah have NOT stopped their sacrifices and religious practices to the Lord, but their heart was not in it. They were abusing what God had given them for their own inferior/counterfeit personal gain.
- Judah has sunk from the heights of the days of David and Solomon’s reigns to appearing like a temporary tent in a field.
Questions to consider:
- Why were there still people in Judah who were following after the Lord? (Verse 9)
- Why is God not satisfied with people simply going through the motions? Why shouldn’t we be satisfied with going through the motions? What are we robbing ourselves of if we are only doing good things in order to check off a list and move on to something else?
- What did God promise repentance would result in? Would the people of Judah had actually been clean? Would all of their old sin have simply disappeared? What would God need to do to wash them clean? How should we compare verses 16-20 with a passage like Ephesians 2:8-10?