Woe

DEVOTION

ISAIAH

WOE

Isa 5:18-21

18 Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes, 19 to those who say, "Let God hurry, let him hasten his work so we may see it. Let it approach, let the plan of the Holy One of Israel come, so we may know it."

20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.

NIV

A series of woes for the people of Israel, and maybe for us as well. This drawing sin with a rope, with a cart rope carries the meaning such as a rope maker. He makes his rope and keeps getting it longer and longer with no end to it. They sinned and sinned heaping sin upon sin with no end and to make matters worse it makes it sound like thy laughed at God. “Come on bring on your judgments” “Let that is going to stop us”, Hurry up God, bring it on”. Did they not fear him? What about us? Do we fear him enough, his judgement? “But we have Jesus, our sins are forgiven”, we say. True they are, but should we go on and continue to sin that his grace should abound, God forbid! But it is this defiant sin which is what is depicted here. We do not intend to defy God, we simply make a mistake, forget to keep guard, we slip up, not intentional, but just because we are human, not that we should make that our excuse, but it is a fact. The idea of calling evil good and good evil is again in defiance to God. We will decide what is good and what is evil, it is how we define sin that counts, not how God defines it. See how clever we are, at least in our own eyes. We are a legend in our own minds. We think we are wise, because we study that scriptures and interpret them for our own benefit, seeing the true as we perceive it, using our own filters, our intelligence to define sin, to decide what is good and what is evil, we make our lists of the do’s and the don’ts. That is how we decide what we do and want we don’t do, but our own set of rules, then we gather in groups and set our perimeters, our definitions of what is light and what is darkness, we call ourselves a denomination. How arrogant we have become, each one of our little groups deciding what the truth is, defining what is right and wrong. How wise we have become, or have we? We are so clever, or are we? What are to do?  We certainly do not want to hear the woe.