Have you ever gotten off track, made a wrong turn or something of the like, and didn\u2019t notice it until much later?\u00a0 Do you remember the sick feeling you got when you realized how far wrong you were?\u00a0 Way off course and so much time and distance wasted.\u00a0 There is regret mixed with acceptance that sitting there stewing doesn\u2019t get you closer to your destination.\u00a0 You figure out where you are, make the needed corrections and get back on your journey, sadder but hopefully wiser and more vigilant.<\/p>\n
We are reading the book of Isaiah together as a church.\u00a0 Actually we read through the Bible each year following a rotating plan.\u00a0 My Sunday messages come from the passage we read in the preceding week.\u00a0 So we are reading the heavy hitter of the Major Prophets; and it is full of reminders, reminders that we are not where we ought to be.<\/p>\n
You cannot read the Old Testament without being aware that a relationship with God has moral requirements. Isaiah and all the prophets dealt with the moral failure of the Israelites (among others) and not only called them to live uprightly, but warned them of judgment if they continued in disobedience.<\/p>\n
Too many people today don\u2019t even think about what the Bible says about the way they live every day.\u00a0 They are insensitive to the leading of the Lord and ignorant of His word.\u00a0 In a church I used to attend, we sang a rousing chorus about the army of the Lord.\u00a0 This song had uplifting music with a fast tempo, and everyone loved to sing of the triumph of the Lord.\u00a0 No one, not even the song leader, thought about the passage from Joel that we were singing.\u00a0 The army of the Lord was locusts sent to destroy the land (Israel), strip its crops and bring famine.\u00a0 The words were about judgment; but because the music was exciting, we enjoyed the song and sang stupidly along about tragedy and death.<\/p>\n
The prophet reminds us that we are here in our world, our culture, as standard bearers of God\u2019s righteousness.\u00a0 The church (believers in Christ) is to counter the laziness in the land, the untruthfulness, the pleasure seeking and self-indulgence.\u00a0 The church is to be self-sacrificing and bearing the burdens of others, not selfishly requiring others to fulfill our obligations.\u00a0 Even many of our well-known preachers talk more about getting from God than what God has already given us.\u00a0 We have entrenched in our thinking a spiritualized materialism which leads us to believe that everything revolves around us.<\/p>\n
Maybe it is time to pull over and look at the map.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The words were about judgment; but because the music was exciting, we enjoyed the song and sang stupidly along about tragedy and death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecclesia-real"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorsblog.lakeviewhamilton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}