Originally posted on the RPCC Women's Ministry Blog.
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This past weekend I attended a retreat/conference in
Wisconsin. After quite a few long weeks of work and the daily grind, I was
looking forward to being out of the city, hearing good teaching, and spending
time with old friends and the Lord. I did, in fact, sit in on some good
sermons. But the one that struck the longest chord was based on Isaiah, Chapter59.
Now, if you know anything about Isaiah 59, you know that it
is a dark passage, definitely not the makings of a feel-good sermon. In an
accusing tone, Isaiah paints a very bleak picture of Israel’s sin. He provides an
illustration of the world’s wickedness, describing both natural and habitual
sin. It’s a dark; things are bad and getting worse. All there is left to do is
hope. And then we get a glimpse of something better to come--flickerings of the
Lord at work.
The speaker described the scene as a canvas full of dark
purples and browns, with Isaiah coming alongside the people saying, “Don’t worry;
the Lord has some yellow and orange to come.” The beautiful thing is, we never
appreciate or really see the “yellows and oranges” without all the dark, dreary
mess underneath.
When I heard that, I about wept. The image clicked; my eyes
opened. And the chapter wasn’t even over yet! I am not going to expound on the
passage, I just want to share that visual. The deep, depressing mural of
humanity, made beautiful by Light!
It’s amazing to see how the Lord
speaks into our circumstances. I had been waiting and waiting for some sort of
acknowledgement that I was not in this desert alone. I thought maybe a Psalm
would speak to my heart or something from Romans or James. No, it took a dreary
passage in Isaiah to remind me that God’s plan is one of redemption and
justice; that we need to recognize the sin and depravity in our lives before we
can even begin to understand His deliverance. It takes the evil and oppression
of verses 1-15 for the judgment and salvation of verses 16-21 to make any
sense.
Isaiah 59 closes with these words of promise:
20 “The Redeemer will come to Zion,
to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,”
declares the LORD.
to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,”
declares the LORD.
21 “As for me, this is my covenant with them,”
says the LORD. “My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and my
words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of
your children and on the lips of their descendants—from this time on and
forever,” says the LORD.
