For you and for all

nobody important · Young Wolf Joined: 16 Nov 2006 Posts: 517

Hear the word of the lord, princes of Sodom; listen to the instruction of our God, people of Gomorrah. "What care do I have for the number of your sacrifices" says the lord. "I have enough of burned rams and in the blood of lambs, calves and goats I find no pleasure". "When you come to visit me", says the lord, "who asks these things of you"?

"trample my courts no more, bring no more worthless offerings, your incense is loathsome to me, new moon and Sabbath, the calling of assembly’s, octaves with wickedness, these I can not bare, your new moons and festivals I detest, they weigh me down, I tire of the load, when you spread out your hands I close my eyes to you, though you pray even more, I will not listen, your hands are full of blood, wash yourselves clean, put away your misdeeds from before my eyes cease to do evil and learn to do good, make justice your aim, redress the wronged, hear the orphans plea and defend the widow - An excerpt from Isaiah.

You have just read one of the scariest, if not the scariest verse in the bible, first of all Isaiah starts off by saying hear the word of the lord, princes of SODDOM listen to the instruction of our God people of GOMMORAH. Now what does that invoke in your minds?

Sodom and Gomorrah, places of wickedness a place so evil. God has to come down from heaven to punish it. Nobody wants to be like Sodom and Gomorrah.

God is not talking to Sodom and Gomorrah

You know he was talking to?

His own people!

The people he chose!

The people to whom he revealed himself, the people with whom he entered into a covenant with, the people he rescued from Egypt and brought into the promised land, and the people he loves the people whom he says I am your father.

In this passage, he is talking to his own people not outsiders, not foreigners not pagans, but his very own people.

His own people, and he is saying Sodom and Gomorrah, he is calling his own people names.

One of the scariest passages in the Bible, he goes into this litany that basically says I am fed up with you, and he says when you spread out your arms in prayer. I close my eyes to you, even though you pray all the more I will not listen…. now that is scary!

Because if we can’t do anything to help ourselves in a moment of difficulty at least we can say God can hear my cries. Even if it is silent, deep within my soul and there is not a single person around that I can share my grief my distress my anguish my anxiety with. I know that God listens, and I can pray to him. He can read my mind and knows my heart, and here he say's go-ahead and do that I am not listening anymore.

Something in this passage, something went very wrong with the relationship between God and his people, now this has to concern us all. Whether we are homebound in-hospital weather we are young or old the one thing that unites us all is that in his spirit, we can all pray to him and he says I do not want to hear your prayers. I don't want your sacrifices “trample your courts no more”. Who asks these things of you when you come to visit me. When you offer the sacrifices the new moons. The festivals and the music and the incense who asks these things of you?

The strange thing about this is the answer is, if you read the rest of the Old Testament God himself asks for these things. He established the feasts. He called the sacrifices he even talks about incense and here God says I am tired of it. I don't want your incense any more…. well, something went wrong.

And fortunately God not only tells us what went wrong specifically and what is now blocking them from him. But he also gives them the solution, so let us see what it is and how it applies to our day and age.

Here is the problem in one sentence of that passage.

“Your hands are full of blood”

That's the problem right there, your hands are full of blood.

So in other words, we killed somebody?

And actually the answer is no his people didn't kill anybody, what it boils down to is this. It wasn't that they were killing anybody. It's that other people were and they were not doing anything to stop it, that was the whole problem here. And so God was saying wait a minute. Killing is going on around you bloodshed is happening in the land. My land that I gave you, sacred land holy land blood is being shed in the Promised Land. Blood is being shed all around you, but you're not doing anything to stop it. You're saying well, I am not doing the killing. I must be okay and god is saying no you are not far from it, you're not okay. If the blood shed is happening all around you and you're not doing anything to stop it. You are not okay. Because that blood cries out from the ground and you my people must answer for it, your hands are full of blood.

And obviously you and I know how that applies to our day and age. There are many things that take human life and we need to be concerned about all of them. We need to protect human beings; we need to love human beings we have to be concerned about other human beings as part of our relationship to God. It is not something extra added on to it. We cannot have a relationship with God in prayer or in worship and then ignore our neighbour. This is fundamental, both in the new and old Testaments.

What God is saying here put in other words, is that don't come in front of me and say, Lord have mercy, Lord, save me. And then ignore your brother’s and sisters who are saying the same thing to you. “Help me, save me, have mercy on me” if someone outside your door needs our assistance to save their life. And they have no one else to help them except me or you and we are saying to God. We have no one to save us. We need you please save us and then we go outside and we see our fellow human being. And we just walk right by and say. Oh, that is none of my business. I am not killing him so I don't have to save him, god says no. It doesn't work that way. When you come to me and you worship me. You are committing your self at that moment, to save the vulnerable. When you say, save me. You have to have your ears open to other human beings who are saying to you save me. There is nothing that takes more human life in the world than the daily killing of children in the womb. This continues to happen, and this applies directly to this passage from Isaiah. Because a lot of people say, well, I am against abortion and pro-life for myself saying, I have never done it. And I never would, I guess I am just fine…. no you're not.

The fact that other people are doing it. The fact that you are living in a land that allows it means that you are also responsible for doing something to bring it to an end. People say but it is non-of my business, I would never do it. This doesn't go far enough, I would never do it. But if someone else does. It is not my business what this reading is saying is. It is your business, because that child is not just somebody else's child. It is not just somebody else's problems, God entrusts us to the care of one another and that is your child. That is your concern, that is your problem. And so God goes on to say wash yourselves clean, put away your misdeeds from before my eyes. In other words, okay first of all don’t do it. Don’t participate in, support, advocate, justify don’t do anything that relates to abortion. But then he goes on to say not only ceased doing evil. Learn To do good, make justice your aim, redress the wronged, and hear the orphan’s plea….

who is more of an orphan than a child, whose mom and dad want to kill him...hear the orphans plea, redress the wronged, these children are wronged even before they are killed, because the government says “you are not a person” you don’t have the right to life, your not equal to everyone else… we are going to redress that wrong. We are going to stand up and protest that wrong. This is a lot more than just a political issue, and why is that? Well lets think for a moment about violent crime, we always try to develop programmes and policy to stop violent crime but are we ever 100% successful? Violent crime has always occurred and always will occur, but the fact is society has agreed that it is wrong, society has a standard, the government and laws have a measuring line in place that says you can not cross this line, you can not shoot somebody in the street, you cant attack some or blow someone up with a bomb, you cant do it, that is not civilized behaviour, we are not going to tolerate it, we are going to punish it, we are going to do everything we can to stop it, zero tolerance….we have a standard, and people never say oh well you know your never going to eliminate violent crime so why do we have any laws against it, there is a good reason why we have laws against it, because as a society we can tell the difference between right and wrong. Yet somehow when it comes to that which takes more human life than any violent crime or war or act of terrorism, namely Abortion, people say oh well you know there is always going to be abortion, we will try to reduce the numbers… it is not enough when somebody says we are going to try to reduce the numbers, its not enough when political parties are saying we want to reduce the numbers of abortion while in the mean time they are saying that we are going to keep it legal because if you keep it legal, you no longer have a standard about human life, your saying its ok to kill children! What kind of an insane policy is that? It is insane! You cant say that and then at the same time say we don’t want any rape or child abuse or we don’t want people being shot in the streets, but have a doctor take some forceps and rip the arms and legs off a child and throw them in the medical waste, oh that is legal we don’t want to interfere with that… that is an insane way of thinking!

Society can not survive without a basic standard about human life and that is why it is not enough to reduce the numbers of abortions. We must have public policies and we have got to put into office those who understand the line has to be drawn. When a state is no longer the common home of all peoples where there right to life is recognised as soon as you take anyone group and say you are excluded from the protection of the law then the state has become a tyrant state, it is not a simple issue, it is the very meaning of what kind of state, what kind of government we have. You know when political men and women say, I respect your views but we have to represent all the people, not just pro life people, we have to represent all the people, in reality that is what we are trying to say to them…. You can’t represent all the people until you start protecting all the people, we are saying t them you have to represent all the people and there is a group of people that they are not even recognising as people.

Then there are others who say well I believe like you do, but I can’t impose those beliefs on everyone else! Our response to that is, we are not asking you to... the law that protects you does not require somebody to believe something about you, maybe they believe that your not worthy of protection, maybe they believe that your not human maybe they believe that you came from mars, did they break a law by believing that…. NO!

But if they try to kill you as a result of that belief, that is when the law steps in, so the law is not trying to change their beliefs, the law is trying to protect your life despite their beliefs. So we are not saying that the law is forcing any beliefs about anything, we are saying that no matter what people believe, no matter what they believe everybody has to be safe, that is all we are saying. Some law makers say, we shouldn’t be practicing medicine…. We are not asking you to practice medicine, we are asking you to prevent the abuse of medicine… when you tell the doctor he cant kill the patient that is not practicing medicine, that is practicing government and practicing the first purpose of Government which is to protect human life.

we could go on and on arguing and arguing but this is not simply a matter for arguments, like the passage at the beginning says, it is a matter of intervening…. “Do justice”

We have to remind ourselves this is real, this is not just about concepts and beliefs and view points, this is about bloodshed, this is about victims, this is about what Isaiah is preaching about in the above passage, this is dead children.

If you take a one dollar bill on the back you will see a pyramid an unfinished pyramid and an eye, the eye of god looking down on the unfinished pyramid and Latin words that mean, “he favours our undertakings” he blesses the work we have begun and The Christian nations have begun to build a great society based upon human rights for all people regardless and the fundamental right to life for all and we have built a pyramid to protect those rights to put a kind of fence up against those who would destroy those rights we have built a pyramid of equality and what Isaiah said in that passage.. justice!

but the pyramid is not finished, we always have more work to do, we always have to be vigilant, we always have to build justice in the protection of human rights but god in his providence has blessed the work we have begun… do justice, keep building and support those who know the difference between serving the public and killing the public. May those of you who use the dollar bill use that as a reminder to work for justice, to work for change and to trust in God.