We are the most connected people that have ever lived. And are shockingly isolated.
- We are convinced of our rightness.
- We have enthroned ourselves.
- We believe that others orbit around us.
- We treat others as our subjects.
The real issue, the foundational problem, is that this is actually how I treat God. I believe that my way is better; my plans are wiser; my solutions more satisfying.
We have been meticulously designed by God to be knit together with him, under his loving and righteous rule, and to be knit to one another in humble love. Which is exactly how we are NOT living. And so, with a broken heart, the Lord sees our betrayal and calls it like it truly is:
Isaiah 1:4b
“they are utterly estranged”
Estranged. Disconnected. Alienated. Alone. Runaways.
But it’s actually even worse than that. The wording is one of handful of “Word Doubling.” God says that we are “Estranged Estranged” — when a word in Hebrew is repeated back to back, it is going exponential. For instance, 2Kings 25:15 talks about a super refined silver by calling it “silver silver”. We do the same sometime. For teenagers there is an enormous difference between saying “I like him” vs saying “I like like him.” The second involves a much higher degree of passion and heart. And this is exactly what we are being convicted of in Isaiah. We aren’t just estranged from God, we are estranged estranged. In our pursuit of self we have utterly and completely estranged ourselves from our Loving, Providing, Caring, Holy Father (compare this to the younger prodigal son from Luke 15). We want to white-wash it and convince ourselves that we aren’t that bad or that far away. We point to the ways we don’t act like that or reduce the holiness of God in order to not seem so unholy (more on that next week in Isaiah 6).
But God is very painfully clear in Isaiah 1:4. In this one verse He explains in 7 different ways how dislocated we have become from him.
Which makes His Grace and Love all the more!
The more I own the truth of my estrangement, the more amazing I realize that God is because of how far he has come to get me; how much his love must have; how powerful he must be. Jesus himself intentionally distanced himself from The Father to come to Creation, and even more so, he was estranged-estranged on the cross because that’s how far he had to come to get us, and that’s the payment that had to be made on our behalf. Isaiah, 700 years before Jesus, knew this was going to happen and said it like this:
Isaiah 53:4-5
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
May we all truly hear the miraculous and (almost) unbelievable Good News. We have been brought home and the Father through the power and ministry of the Holy Spirit currently, as you read this, has perfectly and utterly “UnEstranged” you. If you are in Christ, he has perfectly paid for and wiped away (see Isaiah 1:16-18) all of our scarlet sins, making them and us pure in him…and this not from ourselves but by faith through Jesus. Your Father, right here and now, has given you “peace” and “healing” (Is 53:5). He sings over you; is satisfied with you; has brought you into him arms and his home. You are no longer estranged…and has set us free so that we can, starting right now, enjoy Him forever.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit, gently open my eyes to how far I have run from you, and then quickly and surely convince my heart that you have come to get me; that I am a new creation that has been brought home with my brothers and sisters to be satisfied in and by you. Convince my heart of your love and forgiveness, and point how how I am an empowered instrument of your Grace right now in the community around me.