Today’s Podcast
Today’s Scriptures
Today’s Bible reading plans include:
Ready – Isaiah 1:2–20
Set – Isaiah 1; Titus 3
Go! – Isaiah 1–3; Titus 3
Isaiah 1:2-20
2 Listen and take note,
from the farthest reaches to the nearest!
Listen up heaven and earth,
for the Eternal One has spoken.
He is not happy with the children He raised.
Eternal One: Despite all I’ve done,
My children have rebelled against Me.
3 Oxen know their owners;
even donkeys know where their master feeds them,
But Israel is ignorant.
My very own, they ignore Me.
4 Truly this is a wicked nation,
a people fat with wrongdoing,
Like a litter of miscreants,
a pack of wilding adolescents.
They’ve rejected the Eternal,
despised the Holy One of Israel;
they’ve turned their backs on Him.
5-6 Why do you insist on taking a beating?
Why do you persist in such reckless rebellion?
Your bodies already suffer head to toe—
your heads ache and hearts flutter;
Your skin is covered with bruises,
swollen with welts, and gaping with wounds,
with no tending, no healing, no soothing.
7 Your country is a waste.
Your cities are dead, sooty rubble.
Your farms and fields are consumed,
everything you worked for destroyed
by foreign armies as you look on—helplessly.
8 Zion, our portion of heaven on earth, is no longer protected;
Jerusalem stands like a watchman’s shelter in a vineyard,
Like a hut in a melon field,
like a city assaulted and besieged.
9 Except for the fraction of us who hang on
by the grace of the Eternal, Commander of heavenly armies,
We’d be destroyed and deserted
like Sodom and Gomorrah, utterly done in.[a]
10 Listen to the word of the Eternal One,
you rulers of Sodom!
Attend to God’s instructions,
citizens of Gomorrah!
11 **Eternal One**: What do I care for all of your slaughter-gifts?
I have had enough of your burnt offerings.
I’m not interested in any more ram meat or fat from your well-fed cattle.
The blood of bulls, lambs, or goats does not please Me.
12 When you come into My presence,
who told you to trample down the courtyard of My temple bringing all of this?
13 Just stop giving Me worthless offerings;
your incense reeks and offends Me!
Your feasts and fasts, your new moons and Sabbaths—
I cannot stand any more of your wicked gatherings.
14 Likewise, I deplore your holidays,
those calendar days marked specially for Me;
They weigh Me down.
I am sick and tired of them!
15 When you summon Me with your hands in the air, I will ignore you.
Even when you pray your whole litany, I won’t be listening
Because your hands are full of blood and violence.
16 Wash yourselves, clean up your lives;
remove every speck of evil in what you do before Me.
Put an end to all your evil.
17 Learn to do good;
commit yourselves to seeking justice.
Make right for the world’s most vulnerable—
the oppressed, the orphaned, the widow.
18 Come on now, let’s walk and talk; let’s work this out.
Your wrongdoings are bloodred,
But they can turn as white as snow.
Your sins are red like crimson,
But they can be made clean again like new wool.
19 If you pay attention now and change your ways,
you can eat good things from a healthy earth.
20 But if you refuse to listen and stubbornly persist,
then, by violence and war, you will be the one devoured.
These things were spoken by the very mouth of the Eternal.
Today’s Devotional
From today’s background scripture God might say:
I don’t care about the stuff you try to give Me or the rituals you perform. I established the system of sacrifices and offerings Moses presented to the Israelites at Mout Sinai and carried out in the tabernacle and the Temple before their exile. But when the system becomes mindless ritual, I’m no longer interested in hearing it. I want your worship to come from the heart.
I used Isaiah to give that message to the Israelites and the message hasn’t changed. The only real sacrifice I want is you. I want you to willingly give of yourself. The bulls and rams and grain offereings only symbolized what I really want from you. Those give their all when they are laid on the altar. They give their life’s blood as a symbol of devotion. But it’s only a symbol.
What I want is you. I want your total devotion. Your total dedication. Your total worship. I want your willing acceptance of the tasks I give you to perform. I want you to lift your hands, not because some worship leader asks you to, but because you feel something in your spirit that stirs you to point to Me as the supreme entity. I want you to realize I am above everything. All except Me is part of creation. Everything has been created except Me and I am the One who began all of creation put it into order.
As you understand who I am, you will understand why nothing short of you is acceptable as an offereing to Me. Paul tells it best. “Offer yourself as a living sacrifice – this is your spiritual worship.” One day you will bow to Me and know I alone am worthy of worship. I ask you to do it now so you can do it throughout eternity with Me instead of apart from Me.
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