Today’s passage: Isaiah 5:8-30
Helpful thoughts:
- These people were moving in closer together and consolidating their fields in order to work less and entertain themselves more. It was a social construct that can not be maintained, and they suffered for it.
- This group is going to the grave because they can’t stop playing around!
- Verse 18 (“Pulling iniquity with cords of falsehood”) illustrates these people as oxen who continually pull a cart behind them full of things that would hurt them. Yet, they do it with joy and eager expectation for what the cart contains!
- This mentality is not far from addiction.
- It is possible to wholeheartedly believe you are doing the right thing when you are doing a terrible thing.
- Calling evil good and good evil
- Being wise in your own eyes
- The preparedness of the invading armies seems to indicate these other nations had not fallen into the same lazy trap as Judah.
Questions to consider:
- How is the Lord of Hosts exalted in justice when the person who has lived the party lifestyle suffers the natural consequences of their sin? How is He proven to be right and true?
- How much entertainment do you think is appropriate and how much do you think is too much?
- Why is it so valuable to be an active member of the local church? What do we need other believers to do for us in our lives when we are blind to our blindness? Why is it more loving to speak these things to one another than to avoid it and hope it goes away?
- Is our conscience automatically a perfect guide? How must we train our consciences so that when we have conviction, we know it’s accurate? What would we measure our conscience against to know if it’s accurate?