GOD'S OBSTINATE CHILDREN

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.

In Christ, Mark

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn

** Become a Follower of The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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

“Woe to the obstinate children,” declares the Lord, “to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin; who go down to Egypt without consulting Me; who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection, to Egypt’s shade for refuge. But Pharaoh’s protection will be to your shame, Egypt’s shade will bring you disgrace. Though they have officials in Zoan and their envoys have arrived in Hanes, everyone will be put to shame because of a people useless to them, who bring neither help nor advantage, but only shame and disgrace.”

A prophecy concerning the animals of the Negev:

Through a land of hardship and distress, of lions and lionesses, of adders and darting snakes, the envoys carry their riches on donkeys’ backs, their treasures on the humps of camels, to that unprofitable nation, to Egypt, whose help is utterly useless. Therefore I call her Rahab the Do-Nothing. Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness.

For these are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the seers, “See no more visions!” and to the prophets, “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!”

Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord.

Yet He too is wise and can bring disaster; He does not take back His words. He will rise up against that wicked nation, against those who help evildoers. But the Egyptians are mere mortals and not God; their horses are flesh and not spirit. When the Lord stretches out His hand, those who help will stumble, those who are helped will fall; all will perish together.

This is what the Lord says to me:

“As a lion growls, a great lion over its prey—and though a whole band of shepherds is called together against it, it is not frightened by their shouts or disturbed by their clamor—so the Lord Almighty will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and on its heights. Like birds hovering overhead, the Lord Almighty will shield Jerusalem; He will shield it and deliver it, He will ‘pass over’ it and will rescue it.”

Return, you Israelites, to the One you have so greatly revolted against. For in that day every one of you will reject the idols of silver and gold your sinful hands have made.

“Assyria will fall by no human sword; a sword, not of mortals, will devour them. They will flee before the sword and their young men will be put to forced labor. Their stronghold will fall because of terror; at the sight of the battle standard their commanders will panic,” declares the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, whose furnace is in Jerusalem.

Isaiah 30:1-11, 31

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

Obstinate children. That has to be how God sees us some of the time, maybe some more so than others. We are His children, all ordained and fashioned by His hands, but just as children tend to rebel, disrespect, and disobey their parents, so too do we against our Heavenly Father.

As Chapter 30 opens, the third chapter of woes spoken to the Israelites through the prophet Isaiah, we find God addressing His children as obstinate and gives specific reasons why they were that way.

The first one was that the Israelites chose to carry out plans that were not from God. His plans were to be the plans of His people. It was as simple as that. And yet, His people had decided along the way to follow other ways and inclinations. Those other ways and inclinations were from the nation of Egypt, one of the focal points of this chapter, as scripture tells us the Israelites went to the Egyptians without consulting Him. It’s very obvious that God was not pleased that they had turned from Him.

The second major issue that incited God’s displeasure was that the Israelites had formed an alliance that was not of the Spirit. In other words, they were chose an alliance without the blessing of God who always leads His people to where He wants them to go and who He wants them to associate with by way of the Holy Spirit.

The third problem that God had with His obstinate children of Israel was that they had opted for iniquity over His righteousness, heaping sin upon sin. Knowing that God hated sin and how He had shown in the past a propensity to pass judgment on anyone who purposely sinned in His sight, this was less than a wise choice by His people to make.  

Finally, the Israelites angered God by looking to gain Pharaoh’s protection and refuge instead of turning to the only One who had the power to protect them fully, in any and all circumstances. No Pharaoh could do that for perfect protection and refuge could only come from the perfect Lord God Almighty.

Why is it important to know why the people of Israel had fallen from God’s favor?

Because we are still doing the same things today, that’s why.

We still think someone else has the better plan for our lives and so we place our faith and trust in an imperfect human being instead of a perfect God who always has the perfect plan for our lives. Sometimes, the imperfect person who’s coming up with all the plans is ourselves when we decide to chart our own course in life apart from God’s direction.

We still choose our alliances based on our own desires and not the desires of the Spirit. Those alliances often bring us to a place where we are yoked to people who drag us further into sin than we already are. There is something to be said about being careful who you associate with as you run the risk of becoming like them. The Lord wants us to associate with Him and Him alone through the Spirit for when we do that, and only when we do that, can we be sure we are aligned with the right person who will lead us to righteous affiliations with others, righteous because He is the One appointing them.

We also still choose to heap sin upon sin upon sin in life. We are in the world and instead of seeking to live separate from its ways by living fully in the ways of the Lord, we choose to be in the world and of it too. The enticements and temptations the world has to offer are too much for us to resist and so we opt to go after those pleasures, even at the risk of infuriating a God who despises transgression.

And we still unfortunately seek our protection and refuge in every other place it seems except in the God who can and will grant it to us perfectly. When we fall under life’s challenges and dangers, we often seek to protect ourselves or invoke another human being to help us, all this while God is only a simple prayer away and indeed knows your situation and needs before you even ask of Him.

Yes, we are still God’s obstinate children today and trust me when I say that none of these errors in our judgment make God any less irritated than they did in the times of Isaiah. If anything else, I would think He would be even more incensed at us because we have His word to gain instruction from, a record of past sins of other men and women who have gone before us, a record that should lead us to not repeat the mistakes of the past. But that record we know as His holy word, the Bible, is only as good as it is practiced and too many of God’s children today have just not practiced what God preached.

That’s why this blog is so important for me to write each day. For I was called by the Lord to impart His holy word on His people in a way that will draw them from their sin and into His righteousness, in a way that leads them to place their faith and trust in Him and Him alone for protection and refuge in good and bad times, in a way that brings His children into an alliance with Him through the same Holy Spirit that gives me the words to type, and in a way that shows people the plans the Lord has for them as they live thins thing called life.

Friends, it’s time to trade in our obstinance along with its tendency to draw to sin and the ways of the world, exchanging it for an abstinence that rejects anything outside of the Lord God Almighty, our Maker, blessed Redeemer, wonderful Counselor, powerful Protector, and fair Judge.

It’s time to freely give the Lord our all because He has freely provided us all we have. He deserves all our attention, honor, glory, and praise, now and forever.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com