When God Hides His Eyes

Good morning. Today we start in Isaiah.

Our first part of Isaiah is going to be Isaiah 1:1-31, the whole first chapter.

I have been staring at chapter 1 for a while this morning. I am a little intimidated by this book. It is a very big book. It's considered the Fifth Gospel just because of how much it talks about Christ, even though this book was written about 700 years before Christ ever walked the earth.

And it's just one of the most beautiful books, I think, of the Bible.

I couldn't necessarily settle on one verse today. I had some things that stuck out, so we're just going to take a journey through Isaiah 1 and some thoughts that I had as we walk through this.

But there is a lot here, and I believe there's a lot here for you to glean from this. So I hope and pray that you slow down and take time to read the chapter on your own and see what God has for you.

So the first thing that stuck out to me was verse 8 because it's talking about a watchman's hut in a cucumber field.

It seems so odd that he uses a cucumber field and a hut, which doesn't—it just feels weird that we would be watching over a cucumber field.

I think the stronger imagery with that is that the city itself is being watched.

It goes on in verse 9 to talk about how there are not many survivors through all the things that they have been going through.

And then my Bible has the next section labeled as "God Has Had Enough."

And he goes on to talk about all of the sacrifices that the Israelites have been doing, and the festivals, and the new moon things, and the Sabbath. And God is like, "They've become a burden to Me."

And in verse 15 He says:

"So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you. Yes, even though you offer many prayers, I will not be listening. Your hands are covered with blood."

And one of the themes throughout all of Scripture is that when you do what God has asked you to do with an unclean heart, they are not seen as clean and holy by God.

We can do those things that we're called to do, but if our heart is a mess, if our actions are contrary to His Word—He's after our heart.

And the contrast here is pretty stark.

You know, doing sacrifices while our own hands are covered in blood from our words and actions.

And just Him saying that He is going to hide His eyes from you.

Ouch.

I don't think I want God to hide His eyes from me.

And there are a few other places in the Bible where it talks about God shining His face upon us.

So Psalm 80:3 says:

"God, restore us and make Your face shine upon us, and we will be saved."

I don't know about you, but I would much rather be living in a place and living in a way in which God wants to shine His face upon us than living in a way in which He wants to hide His eyes from us.

And then He invites them into making a correction.

In verse 16:

"Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Stop doing evil."

He moves on and just shows how much He wants us to turn back to Him, to turn our heart toward Him.

And then we get to go on.

One of my favorite descriptions of Isaiah, as I was looking ahead and sort of trying to learn about Isaiah, is the fact that he is so full of both judgment and hope.

And I love that that is there.

I love that we get God saying, "Hey, this isn't okay," and yet we also get His love and hope for us to turn back to Him.

I just really like that.

And I love that somehow or another Isaiah managed to get the themes of the whole Bible into 31 verses of one chapter.

I think that's going to be something we see a lot of in Isaiah as we walk through it—this compounding understanding, layer upon layer, to bring us closer and closer to Him, understanding who He is.

God, not Isaiah.

So what did you get out of today? What made you pause and think?

Oh, dear Heavenly Father, I thank You for who You are, for what You are doing.

Lord, thank You for books like Isaiah that share Jesus with us long before Jesus was here.

Thank You that it talks about the status of our heart and where we are in relationship with You.

Oh Lord, that our offerings would be pure, that our hearts would be focused on You, that You would shine Your face upon us because we have repented and turned toward You.

Lord, do not hide Your eyes from us.

I ask that You'd be with us today as we go out and do the things You've placed in front of us to do, that we will love the people You put in our path, and that we'll honor You with all that we do.

Lord, it's in the precious name of Jesus I pray. Amen.

As we start to wander through Isaiah, on the website, buttonofsilk.org, there will be additional videos and maybe some commentaries for Isaiah on the Exploring page if you would like to go deeper.

If you don't, not to worry. I just wanted to let you know that those resources are there.

Thank you for joining me today as we wandered through God's Word with wonder.