Bible In One Year Day 218 (Isaiah 57-58, Ezekiel 17-18, Proverbs 13:5-8)

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Day 218:  Each will be Judged

Agape Bible Study 
Isaiah 57-58 

Chapter 57: Peril of the Righteous and Condemnation of Israelites Prior to the Exile

Isaiah 57:1-2 ~ The Plight of the Upright

Since the righteous have been abandoned by false prophets and failed religious leaders, they will have no one to guide them in the coming tragedy of the conquest of Jerusalem and the exile. But there is still hope because the suffering of the righteous will count toward their eternal peace and the rest they will find sleeping with a clear conscience.

Isaiah 57:3-13 ~ The Perversion of Idolatry

In this passage Isaiah denounces the Jews/Israelites who have become idolaters.
Question: How does he describe them in verses 3-4?
Answer:

1. They are children of sorcery.
2. They are an immoral, adulterous race of prostitutes.
3. They are rebels and liars who continue in the sins of past generations.

Question: How does the prophet describe the sins of the unfaithful people who engage in idolatry because they lust for power apart from God and what is the result of their obsession for idolatry? See verses 5-10.
Answer:

1. They sacrificed their own children to false gods.
2. They built pagan worship sites all over the land.
3. They brought their idols and pagan symbols into their homes.
4. They engaged in immoral pagan fertility rites.
5. They engaged in seeking the advice of mediums to consult the dead.
6. They had been so obsessed with their idolatry that they would not repent.

Isaiah 57:14-21 ~ Salvation for the Weak and Judgment for the Wicked

For the righteous that did not fall into sin but remained faithful to Yahweh's covenant, God will bring healing and restoration, but He will bring judgment to the wicked. This will be accomplished in four phases:

1. God will build a "highway" to bring His people home (57:14).
2. He will be with the humble and contrite even as He brings judgment to the unrepentant, rebellious sinners who acted out of their own free (57:15-17).
3. In spite of their past sin, God will proclaim the restoration as He heals, guides and comforts His people (57:18-19).
4. He will warn those who persist in wickedness that they can have no peace apart from Him (57:20-21).

Chapter 58: The Call to True Righteousness

Through His prophet, God calls His people to be examples of repentance and righteousness. Isaiah will focus on three aspects of being examples of true righteousness:

1. They must live in the joy and obedience of true discipleship (Is 58:1-2).
2. They must demonstrate the discipline of fasting combined with acts of charity (Is 58:3-12).
3. They must be obedient to the Sabbath obligation (Is 58:13-14).

Isaiah 58:1-2 ~ The Call for Repentance

God calls His people not to hold back but to boldly declare their sins. If they submit in this way and are obedient to His Laws that place them on the path of righteousness, they will become true disciples of the Master and will draw closer to God. True discipleship is demonstrated by learning and following the Word. The person who only listens but then does not apply what he has learned to his life is not a true disciple.

Isaiah 58:3-7 ~ The Israelites Complain and Abuse the Law of Fasting

Question: What complaint does Isaiah say the people make to God's call for repentance in verse 3a?

Answer: They complain because God has not been honoring their fasting; they feel they have humbled themselves by abstaining from food but God has failed to acknowledge their act of piety.

Question: What is Isaiah's response to their complaint in 3b-5? What are the five abuses that are listed?
Answer: Isaiah provides God's answer to their accusation. The problem is that their discipline of fasting has produced no evidence of a change of heart. They show their false penance by empty outward signs for public display and by unjust actions:

1. public self-mortification
2. the public show of repentance by handing one's head and wearing sackcloth and ashes
3. quarreling with each other
4. committing acts of violence
5. exploiting the oppressed

Question: In contrast to the list of five abuses in verses 3-5, in what five ways does God define true acts of humility and repentance that are pleasing to Him in verses 6-7?
Answer: True acts of humility include:

1. righting injustice by freeing the oppressed
2. sharing food with the hungry
3. sheltering the homeless poor
4. clothing the naked
5. aiding family members in distress

The only fast required according to the Law was on the Day of Atonement (Day of Expiation and in Hebrew Yom Kippur) in Leviticus 23:26-32. The command required: Anyone who fails to fast that day will be outlawed from his people; anyone who works that day I shall eliminate from his people. No work will be done; this is a perpetual law for your descendants wherever you live. It must be a day of complete rest for you. You will fast; on the evening of the ninth day of the month, from this evening till the following evening, you will rest completely (Lev 23:30-32). But at times the religious or civil authorities prescribed a number of fasts to be added either to commemorate national disasters or to implore God's mercy and help (see 1 Sam 14:24; 1 Kng 18:41; 21:9, 12; Zec 7:1-5; 8:18-19, Jer 36:6, 9; Jon 3:5; Mt 9:14).

Jesus acknowledged the discipline of fasting united to prayer and almsgiving that is pleasing to God in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:1-18. In verses 16-18 Jesus warns that to properly humble your spirit in the discipline of fasting, one must not be a hypocrite and publicly advertise acts of penance to receive the admiration of others. Those who act in that way will not receive a heavenly reward. 

Isaiah 58:9-12 ~ The Blessings of Righteous Actions

Isaiah tells the people that a change of heart demonstrated by righteous and just actions will result in God's approval and in God's blessings.
Question: What are the blessings that Isaiah lists in verses 9-12?
Answer:

1. The Lord's divine presence and the light of His glory will surround them.
2. God will answer their prayers.
3. Their spiritual darkness will be displaced by God's light, and the Lord will refresh their souls.
4. They will rebuild their long abandoned cities and God will provide for them (the one temporal blessing).
5. God's presence with His people will allow them to accomplish all His plans for them.

Isaiah 58:13-14 ~ Observing the Sabbath Obligation

This is the second time Isaiah has brought up the Sabbath obligation since 56:1-8 where the Sabbath obligation was mentioned in verses 2, 4 and 6 (see the previous lesson). He will mention the Sabbath again in the concluding passage of this book in Isaiah 66:23.

Question: What are the two necessary characteristics of true Sabbath observance that Isaiah describes in verses 13-14?
Answer:

1. True Sabbath observance means giving up the ordinary routine of the other six days.
2. True Sabbath observance means finding joy in worshiping the Lord on the one day set aside from all other days as a day of worship in communion with the Holy One of Israel and putting God above all other things in one's life.

Agape Bible Study 
Ezekiel 17 - 18 

Chapter 17: The Parables of the Two Eagles and the Two Shoots from the Cedar Tree

 

This parable concerns three historical events:

1. King Jehoiachin's exile to Babylon (2 Kng 24:8-12; 2 Chr 36:9-10).
2. The elevation of his uncle Zedekiah as the Babylonian vassal king of Judah (2 Kng 24:17).
3. Zedekiah's death after he revolted against the Babylonians and allied himself with Egypt (2 Kng 24:20-25:7).

Ezekiel 17:1-7 ~ The Eagle and the Cedar

God commands Ezekiel to tell a riddle or parable to the Israelites in exile. He tells an allegory that has three stages:

• Stage 1 in verses 3-4 describes an eagle, later identified as King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who breaks off the topmost branch or shoot of a cedar tree and carries it away to "the country of merchants" and "city of shopkeepers." The palace of the Davidic kings had huge cedar columns and was called "the House of the Forest of Lebanon" (1 Kng 7:2; Ps 92:12; Is 22:9). Therefore, the topmost branch or shoot symbolized the then ruling Davidic king, Jehoiachin (Is 11:1), and the "land of merchants" is Babylon (Ez 16:29).
• Stage 2 in verses 5-6 describes the planting of one of the "seeds" of the House of David that becomes a vine, identified as Zedekiah, the uncle appointed ("planted") by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to succeed Jehoiachin as King of Judah.
• Stage 3 in verses 7-8 describes the second great eagle who is the Egyptian Pharaoh Psammetichus II (595-589 BC). He is the ruler to whom Zedekiah turned for support in his revolt against Nebuchadnezzar (Jer Chapter 27).

Ezekiel 17:9-24 ~ The Parable Explained

A review of the first parable:

1. The first eagle (verse 3) is the king of Babylon.
2. The "top branch" (verse 4) is Davidic King Jehoiachin, deposed and carried away to Babylon (2 Kng 24:11-16) six years before Ezekiel utters the parable.
3. The "seed" (verse 5) planted by the eagle/King of Babylon is King Zedekiah (2 Kng 24:17).
4. The second eagle is the Pharaoh of Egypt (verse 7) with whom Zedekiah sought to make a treaty and to break the hold of the Babylonians on Judah. For his treachery, the Babylonians capture Zedekiah, blind him, take him to exile in Babylon, and destroy Jerusalem (verses 13-21).

Ezekiel 17:22-24 ~ The Parable of the Second Shoot from the Cedar Tree

In 2 Samuel 7:8-29, God made an eternal covenant with His servant David in which He promised David that his throne and his kingdom would endure forever (also see 2 Sam 23:5; 1 Kng 2:4; 2 Chr 13:5; Sir 45:25). The prophets, like Isaiah, promised a future Messiah from the House of David: A shoot will spring from the stock of Jesse, a new shoot [branch] will grow from his roots. On him will rest the spirit of Yahweh...He will strike the country with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips bring death to the wicked...That day the root of Jesse, standing as a signal for the peoples, will be sought out by the nations and its home will be glorious. (Is 11:1-4, 10).

But the Davidic kings became arrogant and took the promise of David's eternal covenant to mean there was no limit to their exercise of royal power. They began to think of themselves as the people's masters rather than God's servants, forgetting God's warning to David that He would chastise the Davidic heirs when needed (2 Sam 7:14). 

The symbolic imagery in Ezekiel's parable of the second shoot:

1. The great cedar tree is the House of David (verse 22a).
2. The "shoot" is the Davidic Messiah (verse 22b).
3. The "shoot planted on a high mountain in Israel is Jesus on the Cross outside the gates of Jerusalem, a city 2,500 feet above sea level on Mount Moriah (verse 23a).
4. The "tree" that grew from the "shoot" is the Church of Jesus Christ (verse 23b).
5. The "trees of the field" are all the people of the earth (verse 24a).
6. To bring low the "high tree"/ "green tree" is the humbling of the wealthy, proud and arrogant, while the lifting up of the "lowly tree"/"withered tree" is the salvation of the humble and dispossessed (verse 24b).
7. It is God's divine will that the Church of Jesus Christ will surpass the Kingdom of David to become a new creation and a new Kingdom that will offer shelter to all peoples of all nations and have dominion over all the earth (verse 24c).

Chapter 18 ~ Individual Responsibility

For the second time, Yahweh addresses individual responsibility for one's actions and the consequences of those actions (see 14:12-23).

Ezekiel 18:1-9 ~ The Upright Man Defined

The Lord begins by rejecting the proverb that suggests if the parents are sinners their children will inherit the same dispossession to sin. While sin can become a learned behavior in a family, every person in the family has the free will to choose or reject sin, and each person will be judged according to the choices he or she makes. 

Ezekiel 18:10-18 ~ The Unrighteous Man Defined

The passage defines the person who is not righteous as the reverse of the previously listed qualities. However, whether saint or sinner, every person will be judged on the merits or defects of their life aside from the merits or defects of their parents or siblings.

Ezekiel 18:19-24 ~ The Question of Ancestral Guilt

This passage rejects ancestral guilt and upholds individual accountability, affirming the law in Deuteronomy 24:16, Parents may not be put to death for their children, nor children for parents, but each must be put to death for his own crime. God does not hold one generation accountable for the sins of past generations. The passage also condemns the ancient practice of holding on to wrongs that generate blood feuds over generations, a common practice in the ancient Near East that continues in the Middle East today.

Ezekiel 18:25-28 ~ Virtue and Repentance

To those Israelites who complained that God was not just in harshly judging the sins of a formerly virtuous person, God replies through His prophet that it is rather the sinful ways of the Israelites that are unfair (verse 25). The punishment the Israelites will suffer is because of personal, unrepentant sins or the people's collective unrepented sins that led to God's just personal and collective condemnation (verse 26). And yet, as God's prophet assures the people in verse 27, God in His mercy is always ready to forgive the sinner who repents, turns away from his sins, and turns back to God (verse 28). God, in His mercy, has even promised that He will not remember any of the transgressions which the sinner committed and repented, nor shall those sins be held against him (Ez 18:22). In verses 31-32, the Lord in His mercy makes one final appeal: 31 "Shake off all the crimes you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why die, House of Israel? 32 I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord Yahweh, so repent and live!"

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A Daily Defense 

DAY 218 Christian Hypocrisy

CHALLENGE:“Christians are a bunch of hypocrites.”

DEFENSE: Yes. And?

Consciousness of the fact that we don’t think and act the way we should is a human universal. So is the desire for others to think well of us. Everyone wishes to save face and, at one time or another, either shades the truth or flat out lies to appear better than he is. This makes hypocrisy another human universal, and it applies to Christians and everyone else. 

When confronted with the fact that we don’t live up to our moral standards, we have several options. One—which is not good at all—is to abandon our standards. Reviewing them to make sure they are correct is one thing, but tossing them aside so we can indulge in immoral behavior is another. It also will not work in the long run, for we cannot escape the moral law written on our hearts. We can only temporarily suppress it.

A second choice—also not good—is to pretend we are better than we are. This is the option of hypocrisy. It is not good because it’s an offense against the truth. Hypocrisy is a form of lying specifically, lying about our own behavior, using either words or deceptive actions (CCC 2483).

Hypocrisy is also risky, because in the long run the truth tends to be found out, and people will see you for the hypocrite you are. For Christians, hypocrisy takes on added gravity because it can push people away from God (Rom. 2:23–24).

The third choice—and the only good one—is the hardest. It means maintaining our moral standards, being honest about the fact that we don’t live up to them and seeking God’s grace to do better in the future. This doesn’t mean telling everyone everything we’ve done wrong (CCC 2489). Frequently, it is none of their concern, and in some situations knowing could even hurt them (e.g., marriages can be harmed by a naive and imprudent sharing of information about one’s sexual failings). However, it does mean being humble and willing to admit the fact that we are sinners.

Christians may share the universal inclination to hypocrisy, but that doesn’t mean Christianity is false. Christianity teaches that we are all sinners. The good news is that there is mercy, even for hypocrites like us.

Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist