January 23 - Isaiah 17

Notes:
Aram: nation with capital, Damascus aka Syria
Starting in v. 10 - it speaks of the plants that they have imported, the beautiful gardens they make, etc. They have become obsessed with nice things..

There is always some sort of distraction to take our eyes off of our Creator (vv. 7-8). It keeps us looking everywhere else except to our Creator. We keep looking to the things we make. Today, there are obsessions that mask themselves as reality TV shows. Extreme Makeover Home Edition and various other "creative" shows (even Top Chef or Project Runway) reveal the obsession we have with our own creation. It keeps us preoccupied and really we end up worshipping the "art" or even a sport rather than the One who Created Us. And here we find that all of this will amount to nothing in the end

Think about it:
How much time do you devote to an activity? (games, art, music, etc.)
How much money have you spent on said activity?
How much thought do you give to it?

Remember that the things around us a just the mediums with which we praise and worship our Creator. They are not to be worshipped.

What is distracting your worship of our One Creator God?


Try reading a part of this chapter in the Message translation:
^4-6"The Day is coming when Jacob's robust splendor goes pale
and his well-fed body turns skinny.
The country will be left empty, picked clean
as a field harvested by field hands.
She'll be like a few stalks of barley left standing
in the lush Valley of Rephaim after harvest,
Or like the couple of ripe olives overlooked
in the top of the olive tree,
Or the four or five apples
that the pickers couldn't reach in the orchard."
Decree of the God of Israel.

^7-8Yes, the Day is coming when people will notice The One Who Made Them, take a long hard look at The Holy of Israel. They'll lose interest in all the stuff they've made—altars and monuments and rituals, their homemade, handmade religion—however impressive it is.

⁹And yes, the Day is coming when their fortress cities will be abandoned —the very same cities that the Hivites and Amorites abandoned when Israel invaded! And the country will be empty, desolate.

You Have Forgotten God

^10-11And why? Because you have forgotten God-Your-Salvation,
not remembered your Rock-of-Refuge.
And so, even though you are very religious,
planting all sorts of bushes and herbs and trees
to honor and influence your fertility gods,
And even though you make them grow so well,
bursting with buds and sprouts and blossoms,
Nothing will come of them. Instead of a harvest
you'll get nothing but grief and pain, pain, pain.

^12-13Oh my! Thunder! A thundering herd of people!
Thunder like the crashing of ocean waves!
Nations roaring, roaring,
like the roar of a massive waterfall,
Roaring like a deafening Niagara!
But God will silence them with a word,
And then he'll blow them away like dead leaves off a tree,
like down from a thistle.

¹⁴At bedtime, terror fills the air.
By morning it's gone—not a sign of it anywhere!
This is what happens to those who would ruin us,
this is the fate of those out to get us.