Tuesday - Isaiah 58 - Show My People Their Transgressions

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o thanks! Who wants to be assigned the task of telling everybody what's wrong with them? Well, I take that back. Some self-righteous folk relish correcting others, but it isn't about their sincere desire either to obey God or to help others. We all know a few miserable souls who enjoy making themselves feel superior by reminding everyone around them about just how inferior they really are. That's not what's going on in this chapter. However, I'm sure all of us get a little suspicious in our guilt; suspicious of the motives behind the correction that exposes our guilty pleasures as actual infractions.

God commissioned Isaiah to show Israel their sins. And, the two main things that God took issue with were certainly not what anyone might have guessed. 1. They fasted, but for the wrong reasons. 2. They celebrated on the Sabbath, but they celebrated the wrong thing.

So, today, if the preacher tells us that we are selfish, self-centered, proud, materialistic, humanistic, hedonistic, covetous and ungodly... especially if it is true, and if God has commanded the man of God to say this, how should we respond? Well, 2 things again: we should be thankful for the warning and we should be repentant. The Jews in Isaiah's audience should have been grateful for the corrections, and they should have adopted a new attitude toward their fellow men, toward God and about themselves. They didn't. Will we?