1 The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
2
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth!
For the Lord has spoken:
“I have nourished and brought up children,
And they have rebelled against Me;
3
The ox knows its owner
And the donkey its master’s crib;
But Israel does not know,
My people do not consider.”
So, the Word that the Lord spoke to Isaiah starts out in a way that should be familiar enough to us. It's about ingratitude, and about a nation that the Lord blessed and provided for turning against Him to the point that they can't even recognize Him or know where their blessings come from. As the Lord put it to the prophet Hosea, "I held you by the hands when you were learning to walk, but you don't even recognize me." We were His baby, Daddy's girl, and now the Lord and His ways are strange to us. We imagine our nation is blessed because of its political system or its natural resources or its talented people but all that we have is really a gift from Our Father, and forgetting that has unavoidable consequences.
4
Alas, sinful nation,
A people laden with iniquity,
A brood of evildoers,
Children who are corrupters!
They have forsaken the Lord,
They have provoked to anger
The Holy One of Israel,
They have turned away backward.
5
Why should you be stricken again?
You will revolt more and more.
The whole head is sick,
And the whole heart faints.
6
From the sole of the foot even to the head,
There is no soundness in it,
But wounds and bruises and putrefying sores;
They have not been closed or bound up,
Or soothed with ointment.
We keep saying God Bless America, and praying to avoid His wrath, but what does He say about having wrath on us? He says, "What's the point?" We are too sick to be corrected by wrath. No matter how hard He hits us, we are too stupid to improve. A father knows that there is a time when punishing the child is a waste of time, no matter how you do it, and the grief of Our Father seeing that in us is a terrible thing. Solomon says somewhere that a wise man turns at a mere rebuke, but a fool won't turn even if you beat him one hundred times. That is where we are. Our sin has penetrated every part. We are utterly corrupt, beyond the point of correction. The reason we don't see any great and signal judgments from the Lord on our country's sin isn't because of the divine patience or mercy. It's simply because the sickness has gone too far for that.
7
Your country is desolate,
Your cities are burned with fire;
Strangers devour your land in your presence;
And it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
8
So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard,
As a hut in a garden of cucumbers,
As a besieged city.
9
Unless the Lord of hosts
Had left to us a very small remnant,
We would have become like Sodom,
We would have been made like Gomorrah.
Once, when somebody wanted to apply words like this to our home it took some imagination, some poetic effort, but now our cities are literally on fire. Everything is literally being consumed by a horde of foreigners, and the perversions of Sodom and Gomorrah are not merely accepted but enforced as a social orthodoxy. You don't need a guy in a pulpit to tell you this. None of this is news, certainly it's not Good News.
10
Hear the word of the Lord,
You rulers of Sodom;
Give ear to the law of our God,
You people of Gomorrah:
11
“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?”
Says the Lord.
“I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
And the fat of fed cattle.
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
Or of lambs or goats.
12
“When you come to appear before Me,
Who has required this from your hand,
To trample My courts?
Not only is wrath useless in our situation. But so is religion. The funny thing is, it is the American people's zeal for religion that has caused our fall. American exceptionalism was caused by our taking religion seriously in the public arena, we didn't just give lip service to our ideals, we set slaves free, lifted up the oppressed, and we had a real sense of guilt and made efforts to fix the injustices in our society. That's how the false religion of equity and reparations made such deep inroads so quickly and the nation that once led the way in freedom and righteousness now leads the way in totalitarianism and sin.
13
Bring no more futile sacrifices;
Incense is an abomination to Me.
The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies—
I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting.
14
Your New Moons and your appointed feasts
My soul hates;
They are a trouble to Me,
I am weary of bearing them.
15
When you spread out your hands,
I will hide My eyes from you;
Even though you make many prayers,
I will not hear.
Your hands are full of blood.
Many peoples have fallen into immorality and injustice through irreligion, but has any fallen so rapidly and completely as we have through our religion? Our culture war, our attempts to save ourselves and our country have forced us down this path more quickly than the Progressives ever could. The conflict between the two sides has driven both to more and more extremes of partisanship and each party works with any ally, uses any tool, considers nothing to be out of bounds in its quest to enforce its vision on us. It is the betrayal by Conservative governors and Congressional leaders and Judges that has really made our current situation hopeless. We have been betrayed by electability at the cost of integrity, by effectiveness at the cost of character, by pragmatism at the cost of truth. But, we already knew all of that. And I wouldn't have bothered to write any of this if that was all I had to say. What I really want is for us to feel the reality of the first 15 verses of the Lord's Word to Isaiah, what I've already read, so that we can feel the sharp irreality, the intense discontinuity of what comes next.
16
“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean;
Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes.
Cease to do evil,
17
Learn to do good;
Seek justice,
Rebuke the oppressor;
Defend the fatherless,
Plead for the widow.
18
“Come now, and let us reason together,”
Says the Lord,
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
They shall be as white as snow;
Though they are red like crimson,
They shall be as wool.
19
If you are willing and obedient,
You shall eat the good of the land;
20
But if you refuse and rebel,
You shall be devoured by the sword”;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Does anybody really believe that this might happen? Is there any chance of the American people, of us, just giving up our sickness and walking away from it? Like the lame man took up his bed and walked? Do you think that we are gonna cease to do evil and start to do good? Can all of America make a turn as dramatic as the Damascus Road? The Lord promises forgiveness and blessing IF we are good, and death IF we refuse Him and rebel, and my heart sinks because it is very clear in my mind which way it is gonna go. The Lord's requirements of us are right, and they may not be impossible for us to meet in some technical sense, but we all know that they aren't going to happen. We have been told as far back as I can remember what we need to do to win the country back, to find victory in the culture war. And I have come to believe that everything we have done is only pushing us further down the road to hell. What is actually gonna change things?
There is a long-standing debate on passages like this, going back at least to Martin Luther. He would preach man's inability to change and His opponents would point to passages like this and say, "If we can't do what the Lord is requiring of us, then He is just mocking us. To hold out all of these promises that we can never obtain is just cruel." And there is a certain truth to that. But when they hold out a false hope based on our ability to repent, our ability to make righteous contributions, our ability to save ourselves we know that they are false comforters. The Protestants and Romanists debated the grammar of this passage and the logic. Luther said that the Lord speaks in an imperative, a commanding mood, He requires what is right and that doesn't imply our ability to perform. Although there are according to the grammarians several "moods" of speech, human speech all boils down to either an indicative, saying that something will happen, a subjunctive saying that something might happen, or an imperative saying something should happen. And none of that is really good news for us. When the Lord says "Cease to do evil. Start to do good." "Your sins are as scarlet but they shall be as white as snow." How is He speaking? How do we get from where we are to the place He requires us to be? I have said that human speech all boils down to either indicative, subjunctive, or imperative, but what about divine speech? What if He is speaking in a way that has no mirror in our experience, in the Creative mood, where He calls those things which do not exist, like our righteousness and forgiveness of sins, into existence? What if, "Cease to do evil", is spoken as He once said, "Let there be light", and there was light? The power then, is not in the doing but in the calling. The burden is not on us to achieve victory but only to proclaim a victory which is already won.
21
How the faithful city has become a harlot!
It was full of justice;
Righteousness lodged in it,
But now murderers.
22
Your silver has become dross,
Your wine mixed with water.
23
Your princes are rebellious,
And companions of thieves;
Everyone loves bribes,
And follows after rewards.
They do not defend the fatherless,
Nor does the cause of the widow come before them.
24
Therefore the Lord says,
The Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel,
“Ah, I will rid Myself of My adversaries,
And take vengeance on My enemies.
25
I will turn My hand against you,
And thoroughly purge away your dross,
And take away all your alloy.
26
I will restore your judges as at the first,
And your counselors as at the beginning.
Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.”
27
Zion shall be redeemed with justice,
And her penitents with righteousness.
28
The destruction of transgressors and of sinners shall be together,
And those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.
29
For they shall be ashamed of the terebinth trees
Which you have desired;
And you shall be embarrassed because of the gardens
Which you have chosen.
30
For you shall be as a terebinth whose leaf fades,
And as a garden that has no water.
31
The strong shall be as tinder,
And the work of it as a spark;
Both will burn together,
And no one shall quench them.
When conservatives and liberals are both destroying us what is to be done? When our religion and our irreligion are both turned against the Lord, when hope and despair, faith and cynicism are equally worthless, how should we now live? Make no mistake, it is the entire system of this world that exalts itself against Our God and His Christ and that despises the foolish Way of the Cross. It is both those who wish to conserve or restore the old versions of the system and those who press on ahead to systems that they imagine are our future who are our enemies.
May I suggest a new and untried tactic in the war for our country? We are involved in this war in a sense accidentally. You see it isn't really poor, pitiful us that the masters of this world want to fight. The current world system has triumphed mightily over all previous world systems and crushing you and I is not a victory worthy of the greatness that it sees in itself. It really wants to make war on the Creator. The world really wants to gather all of its economic, and scientific, and military, and moral and spiritual might and show itself greater than the Lord of Hosts. We just happen to be in the way. Crushing us is not the main event. My suggestion is that maybe we should throw in the towel. Stop fighting and let ourselves be pinned. What if our strategy in the culture war is simply to wait to get out of the way? Let the great war between the governments and systems of this world and the Angel of the Lord get going and we just pop some popcorn and enjoy the show. What if there is nothing to be done until the Lord Jesus Christ stands up for us? Sinful men work and scheme and struggle, but the Lord's martyrs wait under His altar and cry out, "How long Oh Lord faithful and true until you avenge our blood?" We cannot act in any meaningful way until He calls us. None of the same old shit is gonna change our situation.Until He speaks something new into existence, righteousness and repentance, it will not be. You and I cannot call the things that do not exist into existence and we have no other hope.
