Gathered Together By The Spirit (Isaiah 34:16)

 


Saturday, September 14, 2024


Psalm 34

Isaiah 34

3 John


Observance: Holy Cross


Gathered Together By The Spirit (Isaiah 34:16)


I must admit that when looking for an encouragement to kick off the weekend, I struggle with a passage like Isaiah 34. “The dead bodies will send up a stench; the mountains will be soaked by their blood.” (v. 3) After yesterday’s light skimming over the destruction of Jerusalem at the end of Chronicles, I thought we had gotten off easy. But the prophet always has to come along and ruin everyone’s fun!


Yet, upon a further re-reading, it seems like this is actually the perfect reading to kick off the weekend with encouragement from heaven. Consider how we can read the poetic imagery of Isaiah and recognise that God is not speaking about a wholesale slaughter of humanity (which would conflict with the promise God made to Noah), but a wholesale re-creation of existence from a spiritual perspective.


Nations, mountains, stars, wild oxen, bulls: these all have spiritual components. St Paul tells us that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities, the rulers of the air. The slaughter is to be against evil, and the spiritual forces of evil. God is saying, through Isaiah, that there will be a day when all evil is utterly removed from existence: this is certainly very encouraging for those of us currently straining under the weight of this evil!


Then we read on about some animals, curiously identified by species, who will inhabit the places left empty by God’s cleansing. Do you remember our series through Leviticus? Do you remember when we got some species of animals listed that were “unclean”? Do you see any similarities here?


If there is a spiritual component to what is slaughtered, is there perhaps a spiritual component to those “unclean” animals which will be gathered by the Spirit of God, who will lack nothing, none of whom will be missing, and will possess this new place forever from generation to generation?


In verse 11, Isaiah speaks of a “measuring line of chaos”, starkly reminiscent of Genesis 1, when the earth was formless and void, a chaos over which the Spirit hovered. Isaiah is speaking here of the new creation, of God’s work in making all things new, where there will be no evil. He is also speaking of the Lord Jesus, who has cast out evil from its seat of power, the dead body of evil itself giving off a stench from where he slew it. And he finishes by speaking of us, Jesus’ people, who are gathered in from all over the world, none of whom will be left behind, for he is our Good Shepherd, seeking us, calling us by name, and bringing us home.


We might be tempted to think that “if I were God I would do things differently”. Here in this chapter of Isaiah, we read exactly how God plans on fixing everything. Are you happy with how God is sorting everything out for us? And now that we are tasked with being part of this new creation, what will you keep, and what will you leave as part of the old world?


God of my creation and re-creation: task me with the works of love that overcomes all evil.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Knowing The Difference (2 Chronicles 12:8)

Image
  Wednesday, June 26, 2024 Psalms 137; 138 2 Chronicles 12 James 2:8-26 Knowing The Difference (2 Chronicles 12:8) Let’s be honest for a moment. It is all too easy to look around ourselves, at the world around us, to see how non-Christians are living their lives, and wonder if the grass over there might be greener. Our Lord’s commands often seem confusing, or burdensome, and if we were to pack it all in and go our own way, might not things be easier? Becoming lords of our own destiny is the ongoing temptation of the human race. From the fruit in the Garden of Eden, to today’s mantra of “be all you can be”, we have been trapped in this to-and-fro between the intentions of our Creator and the desires of our own hearts. And why not, thought Rehoboam? Why shouldn’t I look at the success of my own rule, and abandon the law of the Lord? Or perhaps he justified his apostasy not from his success, but from his failure to bring the northern kingdom back in line. P
Read more

Anxiety For All The Churches

  Tuesday, June 18, 2024 Psalm 107:1-22 2 Chronicles 6:32-7:6 2 Corinthians 11:16-29 Anxiety For All The Churches (2 Corinthians 11:28) A phrase I often come across when talking with people about life is “I can’t complain; others have got it much worse.” I appreciate the sentiment; when life turns around and smacks you about, one of the most difficult problems to solve is trying to figure out how to deal with it on a spiritual level. For Australian Christians, it seems like an easy lifeline to consider how good our life is from an overall perspective compared to many other people around the world. But then I read this passage from St Paul and I wonder: is that attitude good enough? What if things get really bad – I mean, really bad – will I be able to say “I can’t complain; others have got it much worse”? Because the apostle had it worse than most: beatings, imprisonment, starvation, homelessness, shipwrecks, he had it all. Who could say they had it wor
Read more

The Lord’s Plumb Line (Amos 7:7)

Image
  Tuesday, July 23, 2024 Psalms 54; 55:1-12 Amos 6:8-7:9 Romans 2:1-11 The Lord’s Plumb Line (Amos 7:7) For all these terrifying words about death and destruction, can we find any positive words about God’s judgement? First, there is a vision of locusts devouring a harvest. This seems pretty bad; and Amos intercedes for the people, and God says that “this will not happen”. Then there is an enormous fire that devours everything, a supernatural nuclear holocaust. Again, Amos intercedes, and God replies that “this will not happen either”. But God is coming to pass judgement. And it is not a judgement of a capricious or arbitrary type. It is a fair judgement. It is the judgement of the eye of the careful builder. God sets a plumb line against his people. We use something similar, and we call it a “level”; that small capsule filled with water, with a single bubble within, set on a straight piece of metal or timber. Line it up against whatever you
Read more