Can I pray for you in any
way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.
In Christ, Mark
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.
(a people) who sit among the graves
and spend their nights keeping secret vigil; who eat the flesh of pigs, and
whose pots hold broth of impure meat.
Isaiah 65:4
This ends today’s reading from God's holy
word. Thanks be to God.
Today we look at the third devotion of a seventeen
devotional series titled, The Lord Speaks, as we conclude the study of the Book
of Isaiah. Thus far, we have heard the Lord saying this:
“I am forever revealing Myself to everyone, making Myself known
and offering eternal life to anyone who would call on My name.”
and
“I despise obstinate people who choose to walk in sin and
chase after their will and desires, those who have no problem with provoking Me
with their disrespect and disregard.”
So the Lord is always revealing Himself to others but there
are those who choose to not receive Him and live in sin, a choice that shows
nothing but disrespect and disregard, a choice that provokes the Lord to anger.
Today, we find the Lord continuing to speak about those who
choose to live apart from Him and through the practices of the Old Testament
Israelites, we find a truth revealed that applied then and now to all
non-believers. Before we get to that truth that the Lord is telling us today,
let’s look again at verse 4 of Isaiah 65:
(a people) who sit among the graves and spend their nights keeping
secret vigil; who eat the flesh of pigs, and whose pots hold broth of impure
meat. Isaiah 65:4
The people the Lord is referring to here is, of course,
none other than the Israelites, the alleged people of God who were supposed to
be giving Him their fullest dedication and devotion, just as He gave them.
But note the problem here. The people were choosing to hang
out with the dead instead of the only One, the Lord, who could truly give them
life.
You see, the Israelites were spending their nights in
secret vigil among the graves, a popular pagan practice known as necromancy.
Those who participated in such a ritual hoped to gain some kind of future
vision of things to come by summoning the spirits of the dead for guidance and
direction. The entire matter was completely prohibited by the Lord and those
who would spend time at the graves were considered to be committing unclean
acts, unclean being a code word for sinful.
Further, the Israelites were also eating the flesh of pigs,
another act of uncleanliness, and in cooking these prohibited meats were also
defiling their pots which would end up filled with the broth of the impure
meat. It’s not that pigs were the only food the Israelites had to eat. They had
plenty of foods to choose from that would have been allowable by the Lord but
instead of choosing to be obedient to His commands, they instead chose to sin
against Him and dine on illicit meats. Their actions remind us of the couple
who brought sin and disobedience into the world in the first place, as Adam and
Eve opted to eat fruit forbidden by the Lord and mankind has paid the penalty
for their insubordination ever since.
Caught consulting the dead instead of trusting a Lord who
was very much alive.
Eating foods that the Lord had strictly banned.
Both were signs that the people of Israel had decided to do
whatever they wanted to do, no matter what the Lord has said. The ways of the
world had become more attractive to them than the ways of the Lord.
And sadly, just as we saw in yesterday’s devotion, I’m
afraid that people today are a lot like the Old Testament Israelites in the way
they’re living. For people are still seeking their guidance and direction from
all the wrong places, not even seeing the Lord as an option, and they still consistently
choose to do what they want to do instead of being obedient to God’s wishes.
So what’s the message here for today? What is the Lord
trying to say to us?
I believe we need to go back to the first item of issue in
today’s scripture and then dig just a little deeper within.
For the Israelites, in making it a bigger priority to seek
the dead than the Lord who was living, showed us that when we walk apart from
the Lord, we are choosing to live nearer to death than life. In other words,
walking the path of sinful wickedness that leads to destruction means more than
walking the path of righteousness through the Lord, the only path that leads to
life, now and forever.
In these words from Isaiah, the Lord is asking us the
following question and asking us to evaluate the way we are living:
Are the ways of the world of greater importance to you than
My ways?
Pick carefully because you cannot be in the middle. You can’t
toe the line between the world and the Lord.
For the Lord, who gives us His fullest devotion, will
accept nothing short of our fullest dedication in return. It’s time we all
started doing just that or else.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment