Unwilling To Llsten

Unwilling to Listen Isaiah 30:8-11 2 Timothy 4:3-4 Scripture Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness. These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord's instruction. They say to the seers (prophets, preachers, missionaries) "See no more visions!" and to the prophets, "Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!" For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. You know what is amazing? The more I read the Old Testament, especially this book of Isaiah, the more I find the antecedents, the foundations, for what is written in the New Testament. Now, it should not surprise me, but it does. It should not surprise me because the Old Testament was the only Bible that the writers of the New Testament had. * They wrote the events in the life of Jesus with an eye to his fulfillment of prophesy. * They wrote the letters with a glance back at the traditions and customs of the past, but informed by the grace that they had received. * They wrote instructions for how to live in this new paradigm from the inspiration that they had received from the Holy Spirit who also guided them in understanding the shadows and the forms that were hidden in the ancient writings. (Now, when I say that they were hidden, I am not telling you to look for some secret code to unlock the mysteries of the future. No, I am telling you that much of what was written by the prophets was veiled (just as the face of Moses was veiled to hide the glory of God) until the Spirit revealed them in the light of Jesus, Messiah, King of kings, sacrifice, the Holy One of God.) But, humanity has a problem. We want to be masters of our own fate. We want to be in charge. And not only do we want to be in charge, but we want for others to affirm our ability, our opportunity, our duty to be in charge. We want for others to tell us that we are OK, that the path we are on is the right path, that the decisions we have made are the right decisions. We want to believe that God will simply look the other way; that God will be pleased with us because we have been the best we could be, at the things that we wanted to do with our lives. Our problem is not so much that we are insincere, but that we are very sincere about the wrong things. This is what Isaiah tells us about human nature. This is what Paul writes to us about our times, about our temptations. We accumulate to ourselves. We are the king makers. We exalt people who tell us what our itching ears want to hear. And, worse yet, we convince ourselves that what we are doing is fine because now we have someone telling us, a trusted teacher teaching us, exactly what we already wanted to know. Our culture wants to hear that sin is fine, so we find those people who will teach us, tell us, inform us, and even indoctrinate us that God loves everyone. They tell us that God made people this way or that way. They tell us that God understands and loves us anyway. And there is a great truth in what they say, but there is a shred of lie, and it is that lie that poisons the whole pill. They bend the truth of God to justify their sin and they lead others to follow them. Our culture wants to accumulate worldly possessions and goods and money. So, we have promoted and exalted those who tell us that God wants us to have those things. And it is true that scripture tells us that God will "give us the desires of our heart," and that "God will supply our needs according to his riches in glory." They forget to tell us that God will transform our desires into what he desires. They skip over Jesus telling us that we should not be overly consumed with "storing up treasures on earth." You know what happens to treasures that are stored up on earth? They rust, they rot, they decay, they get stolen, they crash, they are eaten by moths and termites, and they are left behind for others. Jesus encouraged us to store up treasures in heaven, treasures that are eternal, treasures that are protected and secured by his power and his might. There are teachers and leaders, today, who twist and turn the Word of God into the things that we, our selfish, itching ears, most long to hear. But, what we most need to hear is that God does not bend to our standards of right and wrong. God expects us to conform our will, our opinion, our understanding to his standards of right and wrong. God does love, the Bible tells us that God loves us "even while we were sinners." And while God loves us right where we are, God does not leave us right where we are. God takes away the sin and shame and replaces it with holiness and forgiveness. God cleanses us from all unrighteousness and helps us resist the temptations of life so that we do not sin, so that we are not found to have fallen short. The Apostle John warned us about this influence in our lives: "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world..... the are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood," (1 John 4:1, 5-6). I believe that Paul and Isaiah were on the same wave length. I believe that God had given both of them a very similar message about the people of their day, even about the people of our day. But this is our charge: "Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction," (2Timothy 4:2). Just because the people of our culture don't want to hear the truth, does not mean that we should stop speaking the truth. In fact, because there are so many false teachers, itching the ears of those who don't want to know the truth, it makes it even more imperative that someone actually proclaim the truth, that someone actually give careful instruction, that someone actually represent God in our poor, pathetic, pitiful culture, a culture that thinks it is rich when it has really become poor, spiritually bankrupt, devoid of real understanding. It is even more imperative that we use great patience (forbearance, long suffering) because there are so many in our world who have good hearts, but have lost patience, and in that state they appear angry and filled with wrath, forgetting that each of us was once a sinner, but grace transformed us and will for those around us. 1