A PRICE TO PAY FOR SIN

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In Christ, Mark

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

Has the Lord struck her as He struck down those who struck her? Has she been killed as those were killed who killed her?

By warfare and exile you contend with her—with His fierce blast He drives her out, as on a day the east wind blows. By this, then, will Jacob’s guilt be atoned for, and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin:

When he makes all the altar stones to be like limestone crushed to pieces, no Asherah poles or incense altars will be left standing.

The fortified city stands desolate, an abandoned settlement, forsaken like the wilderness; there the calves graze, there they lie down; they strip its branches bare. When its twigs are dry, they are broken off and women come and make fires with them.

For this is a people without understanding; so their Maker has no compassion on them, and their Creator shows them no favor.

In that day the Lord will thresh from the flowing Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you, Israel, will be gathered up one by one. And in that day, a great trumpet will sound. Those who were perishing in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.

Isaiah 27:7-13

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

The opening six verses of Isaiah, Chapter 27 speak of all the good that could come out of God’s people if they would just choose to be obedient to Him and later His Son Jesus, the coming Messiah. Through faith, belief, and trust in following the way and will of their Lord, they would produce fruits that would abundantly bless others.

There’s only one thing that was wrong with the people of Israel, the ones who are mostly at the focal point of this chapter.

They were sinners and had indeed sinned badly against God. And anytime that happens, there will be a price that needs paid for those sins.

You see, we serve a God who hates sin and will correct anyone or any group of people who so choose to practice it. He hates sin so much that He even passed the death sentence on people and on cities of people who refused to repent from it. You only need to look at what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) to see this first hand as the sinners there paid the ultimate price for their blatant disregard for God, opting for wickedness while snubbing their noses at the righteousness God expected. They became a people described by our scriptures today as having no understanding and as a result losing the compassion and favor of their Maker and Creator.

So what would happen to Israel, God’s beloved and chosen people?

They would have to pay the price as well. And it wasn’t as if God punished them because He loved them less. No, He punished them because He loved them more and wanted them to be better people, fully aligned with His ways and not the ways of the false gods they had turned to in their worship.

This is why we read in our passage that the way that Israel would ensure atonement for their sins would be by willingly destroying all the instruments and places of false worship: crushing the altar stones to pieces and tearing down the Asherah poles and incense altars. The people of Israel had to show they were recommitted to God and God alone before He would show He was fully recommitted to them.

In the meantime, they would have some time to think about their sins and how they would change their lives to get back into God’s favor. For God’s consequence for His people, His price they would have to pay for their sins, was seventy years of exile. If they did not want to honor Him in the land He gave to them, they could go and live in a foreign land under foreign rule and oppression. Whether Assyria or Egypt or Babylon, the people would be cast out and left to think upon the ways they had violated God, to repent for their sinful ways and long for restoration and reconciliation.

The good news is that this time would come. For as we look at our scriptures, we see that the punishment for sin would not last forever. The scriptures in our passage tell us that those who were perishing in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt would once again be able to worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem. The exile would end one day and the Israelites would have a second chance to live their lives in righteousness, fully committed to the one true God who commanded them (and all of us) to worship Him alone.

Friends, the word of God is speaking to us powerfully today. For if we fail to learn from the mistakes of the past, we are doomed to repeat them and if we do, we can expect that there will be a price to be paid for choosing sin over God, transgression over righteousness, iniquity over holiness.

The bad news for us is that we are all sinners and thus prone to sin. The good news is that through Christ Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can always be guided away from sin toward what is right and good, what is pleasing in the sight of our Creator and Maker, to a place where we can live in His favor and not in the crosshairs of His judgment.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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