When We Mix Other Things In

Good morning. Today we are in Isaiah 17, and we see fallout from King Ahaz and the failed attack against Jerusalem and Judah.

When King Ahaz was king, Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Ephraim, formed an alliance and came together to attack King Ahaz.

And we've read so much about what King Ahaz did in bringing Assyria in, and what happened to Syria.

And we've been in this long patch of God pronouncing judgment.

And we're not—we're not done yet, because now it is Damascus and Ephraim's turn to face God's judgment.

And as you walk through this, I first got stuck on verse 4 that says:

"Now on that day, the glory of Jacob will fade, And the fatness of his flesh will become lean."

And I'm like, "But wait."

And I went, "Oh no, they're not talking about Israel there. They're talking about Ephraim and how they have walked away from God."

And then in verses 10 and 11 we have:

"For you have forgotten the God of your salvation And have not remembered the rock of your refuge. Therefore you plant delightful plants And set them with vine shoots of a strange god. On the day that you plant it you carefully fence it in, And in the morning you bring your seed to blossom; But the harvest will flee On a day of illness and incurable pain."

And I know that there are other—there's different ways to interpret verse 10, but what it really made me think of was: we plant good plants, and then we mix in other things.

And that made me think of how we sometimes—how I have sometimes—approached God.

And it reminded me that not only is God righteous, and is He holy, and is He just, He's also jealous.

And it seems like what Ephraim did is they sort of took their beliefs with God, but then they allowed the nations that they were now surrounded with to start influencing their religion.

I say religion because at this point, it was no longer really a relationship.

Their hearts were not aligned with God anymore.

But they thought they were.

But they allowed other things to come in and mix it.

There's Hosea 7:8, which cracked me up when I read it. It says:

"Ephraim mixes himself with the nations; Ephraim has become a round loaf not turned over."

Like, well, that's one way to see people.

And then Hosea 4:17 says:

"Ephraim is allied with idols; Leave him alone."

I was like, "Oh, that's very direct."

I mean, very short and very much letting you know God's stand on that.

And it made me think about how now sometimes we try to mix God up with other things that we're comfortable with.

One way that I've seen people do it is they say they've come to Christ, and then they still continue to do tarot readings.

And tarot readings are witchcraft.

It's demonic, and it is not biblical.

And you cannot follow Christ in obedience while still doing tarot cards.

You can't mix those things.

That's probably a more severe way that we do it, but sometimes we do that in far more mild ways.

Or sometimes we want just enough God to be blessed, but not enough to, like, change us.

We wanna keep doing the things that we're doing.

We wanna keep acting the way we're acting.

We're comfortable.

And we don't—we don't have a desire or need to go all in because things are okay.

And they're okay until God chooses to remove His blessing because we continue to walk outside of His will.

We continue to walk in disobedience.

And I think we're always a bit shocked when all of a sudden we realize that we're no longer getting the blessings of God because we're no longer walking with Him.

And we're like, "Well, but I did this. You know, I did this little bit, and I just thought that would work."

And God's like, "No. That—that's not how a relationship with Me works."

When you come to Me, you change masters.

You change from the master of your flesh to Jesus Christ being your Master.

And God just will not allow that to come in and dilute His—well, not His will—our obedience, or how we see God.

Eventually His jealousy will show up, and He will, in righteousness, judge for how we're walking.

And that's what Damascus and Ephraim get because they walked away.

So what stuck out for you from the prophecy about Damascus here in 17?

What verse made you stop?

Oh, dear Heavenly Father, Lord, I feel so discombobulated.

And I just ask that You show us how to walk fully with You as our Master.

That You would reveal anything that we have in our lives that we keep instead of coming into alignment with You, and that we will release those things in obedience to You.

That we won't try to dilute You down into what we want You to be, how we think You should be, but instead that we would allow You to reach in and change us.

I just ask that You be with us as we go out and do the things You've laid out in front of us.

That we will slow down.

That we will hear what You need us to hear.

That we will walk in obedience.

That we will care for the people in front of us.

Oh, precious Lord.

It is in the precious name of Jesus that I pray. Amen.

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