Steps to walk in a different wayIsaiah 8 - 11For the LORD spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me,
and(R) warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: 12"Do not call(S)
conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and(T) do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. 13But the LORD of hosts,(U) him you shall honor as holy.Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. 14And he will become a(V) sanctuary and(W) a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 15And many(X) shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken."
- Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy
- My take on this particular passage is judgment. Let us be careful of how our judgment lines up with other people's viewing glass. This seems harmless from the outside, but judgments are made on a standard. Having similar judgments compared to other people shows a similar worldview, or a similar standard of truth. E.g. if you lose all your money to a storm and call it a tragedy, then you are showing your standard of good is "with money". In the same way, if you find yourself judging a situation very similar to those around you, then you need to re-evaluate your truth center, and truth priorities.
- do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread
- This is more of the negative version of the first point- do not fear what they fear. The simplest one is dying. We need not fear death as the rest of the world does, for we have a saviour, and a wonderful heaven awaiting us, where we will be with our God, our Lord. The only requirement is that we would want to go there. If we don't love God, the God of the bible, how shall we go there? And if we get there and do not love being with him, then what use or bliss is heaven?
- On another level, we should not fear the world, nore words, nor grades, nor people, nor poverty, nor sickness. Did not the Lord cause us to be born? Did he not cause us to grow into maturity? How can we claim and fear that our lives have started, and no one is watching our paths? If God shall start it, if god shall work it even when were not cognizant as infants, then how shall he not finish it, even we are conscious?
- One of the more striking aspects of the stories of Jacob, Moses, David, and others is the fact that God interceeded from the beginning. Not only that he interceeded when they were children, and also, if any of these men were equipped with power, he also interceeded then. How shall God NOT be able to influence these silly capitalistic eyes?
- Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread
- It is a strange comparison to compare worldy fear to God. I fear being hungry tomorrow. Instead, i should fear God somehow? How? That I shall die? Even unbelievers fear that moment by moment. We can fear death without fearing God! Sickness, death, famine, all these things we can fear without fearing the Lord. How does fearing the Lord, and letting him be our dread replace all the commonplace fears that clog most people today?
- Suggestion: perhaps fearing the lord is the standard and the power. For instance, my fear is that I am hungry now, but perhaps my fear should be that i might cross my God in some evil way. Or that later today i shall find myself very close to a sinful vice. Is it him that we fear to displease? One who has given so much, one who has destined so much of our life from Good? How shall we leave and walk away from such a God?
- Do we fear the Lord?
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