Old Testament for December 3, 2023

This is one of the more intimate portrayals of the relationship of God and his people in the Old Testament. Not often is God called Father, until the teaching of Jesus; and there is a sense that Israel is completely submitted to the will of the Lord, like clay in a potter’s hands.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 64:1-9
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This oracle from Isaiah looks both backward and forward in time. The Prophet implores the Lord to enter onto the stage of history in a dramatic way:

Oh that you would tear the heavens,
that you would come down,
that the mountains might quake at your presence.

The Prophet is asking that the Lord do what he has done in the past, and intervene in human history.

The context for this plea, according to many scholars, is the post-exilic world of the so-called “Third Isaiah” who some believe wrote at least the chapters from 56 to 64.

While this can be disputed, no one can dispute the powerful petition that Isaiah makes for divine intervention.  The Prophet makes it clear that the God of Israel is unlike any other so-called gods, because the Lord is a God who acts decisively for his people.

God’s intervention is based on a moral compass:

You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness,
those who remember you in your ways.

However, there is also a flip side to God’s intervention — when God’s people disobeyed God’s ways, God became angry.  There is a moral demand that accompanies the divine deliverance in this passage. When the people sin and turn away from God, God also turns away from them:

There is no one who calls on your name,
who stirs himself up to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have consumed us by means of our iniquities.

This oracle has some of the most striking language in the Scriptures:

• Righteous acts are like filthy rags, meaning they are soaked in blood;
• The faithless, hapless people shrivel up like leaves and blow away.

And yet there is the sense that the Prophet has that Israel is still absolutely dependent on God, and that their destiny is shaped by the Lord:

But now, Yahweh, you are our Father.
We are the clay, and you our potter.
We all are the work of your hand.

This is one of the more intimate portrayals of the relationship of God and his people in the Old Testament.  Not often is God called Father, until the teaching of Jesus; and there is a sense that Israel is completely submitted to the will of the Lord, like clay in a potter’s hands.

It is on this relationship that the Prophet presumes to plead for mercy and forgiveness.  He doesn’t deny the sins that have caused God’s anger, but he begs that God might forget those sins.

APPLY:  

When we ask for God to intervene today as he once did in the past, we might want to consider what we are asking.  Isaiah reminds us that God’s righteousness and holiness are absolute, and his expectation of us is that we also be righteous and holy!

The reality is that without the holiness of God at work in our lives, even our most well-intentioned good works and morality are tainted by self-interest and mixed motives:

 all our righteousness is like a polluted garment.

This reminds us of our absolute dependence on the grace of God.  We are to be submitted to God as completely and passively as clay is submitted to the potter.  The clay doesn’t get to tell the potter what it wants to be, or how it should be shaped. Neither should we.

So, when we ask for mercy and forgiveness from God, it is very important that we begin with a sense of complete abandonment of ourselves to God.  God has everything to offer, and we have nothing.

The only works we do that will last are those that derive from God.  Ephesians points out that we are saved by grace alone; but it also insists that:

we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

In other words, from beginning to end our salvation is all God’s work, including those “good works” that we do. The only good works that please God are those that come from God originally.

RESPOND: 

I am reminded of my own mixed motives when it comes to “doing good.”  Do I do what I do because I know that I am clay in God’s hands and that he is working through me, or because I know someone else is watching and will think more highly of me?  When I pray for God to come down and bring judgment, I need to pray first for mercy!

Our Lord, we see so much in our world that we deem worthy of your righteous judgment.  But then we realize that we also deserve your judgment! So once again we find ourselves on our knees begging for mercy.  May we be the clay in your hands, that you might shape us and our lives according to your purposes.  Amen.  

PHOTOS:
“Studio workday” by t. chen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Old Testament for November 29, 2020

This is one of the more intimate portrayals of the relationship of God and his people in the Old Testament. Not often is God called Father, until the teaching of Jesus; and there is a sense that Israel is completely submitted to the will of the Lord, like clay in a potter’s hands.

START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 64:1-9
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM

OBSERVE:

This oracle from Isaiah looks both backward and forward in time. The Prophet implores the Lord to enter onto the stage of history in a dramatic way:

Oh that you would tear the heavens,
that you would come down,
that the mountains might quake at your presence.

The Prophet is asking that the Lord do what he has done in the past, and intervene in human history.

The context for this plea, according to many scholars, is the post-exilic world of the so-called “Third Isaiah” who some believe wrote at least the chapters from 56 to 64.

While this can be disputed, no one can dispute the powerful petition that Isaiah makes for divine intervention.  The Prophet makes it clear that the God of Israel is unlike any other so-called gods, because the Lord is a God who acts decisively for his people.

God’s intervention is based on a moral compass:

You meet him who rejoices and does righteousness,
those who remember you in your ways.

However, there is also a flip side to God’s intervention — when God’s people disobeyed God’s ways, God became angry.  There is a moral demand that accompanies the divine deliverance in this passage. When the people sin and turn away from God, God also turns away from them:

There is no one who calls on your name,
who stirs himself up to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
and have consumed us by means of our iniquities.

This oracle has some of the most striking language in the Scriptures:

• Righteous acts are like filthy rags, meaning they are soaked in blood;
• The faithless, hapless people shrivel up like leaves and blow away.

And yet there is the sense that the Prophet has that Israel is still absolutely dependent on God, and that their destiny is shaped by the Lord:

But now, Yahweh, you are our Father.
We are the clay, and you our potter.
We all are the work of your hand.

This is one of the more intimate portrayals of the relationship of God and his people in the Old Testament.  Not often is God called Father, until the teaching of Jesus; and there is a sense that Israel is completely submitted to the will of the Lord, like clay in a potter’s hands.

It is on this relationship that the Prophet presumes to plead for mercy and forgiveness.  He doesn’t deny the sins that have caused God’s anger, but he begs that God might forget those sins.

APPLY:  

When we ask for God to intervene today as he once did in the past, we might want to consider what we are asking.  Isaiah reminds us that God’s righteousness and holiness are absolute, and his expectation of us is that we also be righteous and holy!

The reality is that without the holiness of God at work in our lives, even our most well-intentioned good works and morality are tainted by self-interest and mixed motives:

 all our righteousness is like a polluted garment.

This reminds us of our absolute dependence on the grace of God.  We are to be submitted to God as completely and passively as clay is submitted to the potter.  The clay doesn’t get to tell the potter what it wants to be, or how it should be shaped. Neither should we.

So, when we ask for mercy and forgiveness from God, it is very important that we begin with a sense of complete abandonment of ourselves to God.  God has everything to offer, and we have nothing.

The only works we do that will last are those that derive from God.  Ephesians points out that we are saved by grace alone; but it also insists that:

we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

In other words, from beginning to end our salvation is all God’s work, including those “good works” that we do. The only good works that please God are those that come from God originally.

RESPOND: 

I am reminded of my own mixed motives when it comes to “doing good.”  Do I do what I do because I know that I am clay in God’s hands and that he is working through me, or because I know someone else is watching and will think more highly of me?  When I pray for God to come down and bring judgment, I need to pray first for mercy!

Our Lord, we see so much in our world that we deem worthy of your righteous judgment.  But then we realize that we also deserve your judgment! So once again we find ourselves on our knees begging for mercy.  May we be the clay in your hands, that you might shape us and our lives according to your purposes.  Amen.  

PHOTOS:
“Studio workday” by t. chen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.