SIGNS OF A REBELLIOUS NATION – (PART 2 – GOD’S JUDGMENT COMES)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Why do you continue to invite punishment? Must you rebel forever?

Your head is injured, and your heart is sick. You are battered from head to foot—covered with bruises, welts, and infected wounds—without any soothing ointments or bandages. Your country lies in ruins, and your towns are burned.

Foreigners plunder your fields before your eyes and destroy everything they see. Beautiful Jerusalem stands abandoned like a watchman’s shelter in a vineyard, like a lean-to in a cucumber field after the harvest, like a helpless city under siege.

If the Lord of Heaven’s Armies had not spared a few of us, we would have been wiped out like Sodom, destroyed like Gomorrah.

Isaiah 1:5-9 (NLT)

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

How can you identify a rebellious nation?

The beginning of the Book of Isaiah offers answers.

Yesterday, we observed how a rebellious nation will be one who rebels against God and we know God will not be disobeyed or disrespected, especially since He is the Maker and Creator of all peoples and thus the Father of all nations.

Today we will see how this rebelling against God and the subsequent incurring of His displeasure and consequences provide one more sign of a rebellious nation. For a nation that chooses to turn away from the Him is the nation that will experience His judgment.

Exhibit A for this is the nation of Israel.

Here was a nation that had it made. They were the chosen ones of God, more favored and blessed by Him than any other people. They fully experienced God’s provision, His caring and compassion, and His love.

You would think a people who had all this would be the people who would express the utmost gratitude and appreciation for the way they had been blessed and look to honor God with every ounce of their being.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. In fact, what we see when we survey the life of the people of Israel is what I like to refer to as the Old Testament cycle. This is how it works:

1. The people choose to violate God’s commandments and turn to sin and wickedness.

2. God in turn, sends a warning to His people, either directly or indirectly through a messenger (typically a prophet). The message is simple. Stop what you are doing or else suffer judgment and consequences. 

3. The people choose to ignore the warning and continue in their sinful ways.

4. God sends His judgment on the people who experience some form of difficulty or hardship.

5. The people cry out to God in the midst of His judgment upon them, confessing their sins, crying out for His mercy and forgiveness, and asking for the hardship to be removed.

6. God, out of His deep love and empathy for His people, puts His amazing grace on full display and restores the people back to His favor.

7. And then the people go right back and end up at step 1.

It’s true. Do a broad-based study across the Old Testament and the relationship between the people of Israel and God, and you will see it play out over and over.

Today, we see an indication of this ongoing struggle between God and Israel as we look again at the following scripture passage from Isaiah:

Why do you continue to invite punishment? Must you rebel forever?

Your head is injured, and your heart is sick. You are battered from head to foot—covered with bruises, welts, and infected wounds—without any soothing ointments or bandages.

Your country lies in ruins, and your towns are burned.  Foreigners plunder your fields before your eyes and destroy everything they see. Beautiful Jerusalem stands abandoned like a watchman’s shelter in a vineyard, like a lean-to in a cucumber field after the harvest, like a helpless city under siege.

If the Lord of Heaven’s Armies had not spared a few of us, we would have been wiped out like Sodom, destroyed like Gomorrah. 1:5-9

Do you sense God’s frustration with His people within these five verses?

I do. The endless procession of their rebelling and the ensuing punishment God inflicted was wearing on Him, leaving Him to wonder if they will ever wake up and just get it.

Speaking of Israel as a body, God details the long range effects of them repeatedly moving through the cycle. They included:

1. Head injuries.

Your head is injured.

2. Heart disease.

Your heart is sick.

3. Bodily damage and infection.

Your head is injured, and your heart is sick. You are battered from head to foot—covered with bruises, welts, and infected wounds—without any soothing ointments or bandages.

Question: If you were this badly injured as a result of some poor choices you made, would you go out and make that poor choice again?

Only a fool would do that, right?

Well, there’s little wonder why the scriptures in the wisdom books, and particularly in the proverbs, address the benefits of wisdom and the detriment of foolishness. It’s too bad the Israelites failed to learn from those wise maxims. Instead, they chose to continue down the path of destruction, a path that saw their country end up in ruins, its towns burning. The once fiercely protected Promised Land was now being plundered and destroyed by foreigners. Even the beloved, divine, holy city of Jerusalem was left a former shell of its former self, now relegated to the state of a watchman’s shelter or lean-to, left helpless and hapless.

Friends, if a nation is reflecting these kinds of symptoms, embattled and torn, beaten and bruised by attack and destruction, then we need not look for any other explanation than the one we find here in Isaiah. For a rebellious nation will experience the judgment of God and that judgment is not going to be a pleasant experience.

Just ask Sodom and Gomorrah.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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