Why We Don’t Want to Hear God’s Word—and Why We Must

Posted on by Adrian Clark

Isaiah 30:8-11 NLT

8 Now go and write down these words.
    Write them in a book.
They will stand until the end of time
    as a witness
9 that these people are stubborn rebels
    who refuse to pay attention to the Lord’s instructions.
10 They tell the seers,
    “Stop seeing visions!”
They tell the prophets,
    “Don’t tell us what is right.
Tell us nice things.
    Tell us lies.
11 Forget all this gloom.
    Get off your narrow path.
Stop telling us about your
    ‘Holy One of Israel.’”

It is a human trait to avoid bad news, especially about ourselves. We want to hear compliments and kind things that boost our self-worth and make us feel good. In my working life, as a manager, I can remember two people who were opposites in this respect. With one, I had great difficulty in bringing a different idea or alternative method, even gently, because at the slightest hint that they were not doing things the right way, they would dissolve into floods of tears. The other was so thick-skinned that no amount of correction would change their thinking. A manager can only do so much to change their team members’ thinking. Good news can boost productivity and build the right work environment, but bad news is hard to deliver because people don’t want to hear it.

But there is a world of a difference between a working environment and the relationship of a nation with the God who created them, and who chose them to be His special people. The Lord asked Isaiah to write a book containing some bad news about the behaviour of the Judeans. And this book was to stand as a witness that they had been told the error of their ways, and had ignored it. So in the event that dire consequences followed, they could never say that they had not been warned and knew nothing about their problems. This list of problems was damning in its scope. The Judeans were “stubborn rebels” who refused “to pay attention to the Lord’s instructions”. In a schoolroom, home, office, or factory, instructions are there for a number of purposes. They could be for safety reasons, with children being told not to do something because if they did it then they were endangering themselves and their fellow students. A worker might be required to use goggles to protect their eyes if they were fabricating a metal object that required the use of a grinder. Workers in an abattoir are required to use metal mesh gloves if cutting meat. In the office, fire regulations are instructions that must be followed. To the Judeans, the Lord’s instructions were clear, and they started with a principle that Jesus explained to a Jewish religious lawyer. The lawyer’s question was, “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” (Matthew 22:36). We then read Jesus’ response: “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40). But Jesus didn’t just make up His response; He quoted Scriptures that were available from the Book of Deuteronomy, a Book that was also available to the Judeans. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 reads, “Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength“. And Jesus then quoted Leviticus 19:18, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD”. After Jesus answered the religious lawyer, Mark’s account records that the lawyer said, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth by saying that there is only one God and no other. And I know it is important to love him with all my heart and all my understanding and all my strength, and to love my neighbour as myself. This is more important than to offer all of the burnt offerings and sacrifices required in the law” (Mark 12:32-33). The next verse is interesting. We read, “Realising how much the man understood, Jesus said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” And after that, no one dared to ask him any more questions”. 

Jesus knew what God required of His people, and so did the religious lawyer, but the Judeans in Isaiah’s day apparently didn’t want to know. Whenever the prophets and seers had visions or sayings that were supposed to draw them back to God and His instructions, the people told them “Stop seeing visions!” and “Don’t tell us what is right. Tell us nice things. Tell us lies“. And they concluded, “Forget all this gloom. Get off your narrow path. Stop telling us about your ‘Holy One of Israel’“. Isaiah wrote all this down in his book, and it is still before us today to remind us of a people who were “stubborn rebels”. 

There is a Book today that also records the acts of God towards His created people throughout time. Mankind’s rebellion started in a Garden when sin disrupted and destroyed the relationship between God and His creation. It was a creation that God loved, and we read all about it in Genesis 1:27, 31: “So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. … Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! … ”. Sin developed, destroyed and corrupted mankind, and human wickedness on the earth became so prevalent that everything human beings thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. In response, one of the saddest verses in the Bible can be found in Genesis 6:6, where we read, “So the LORD was sorry he had ever made [human beings] and put them on the earth. It broke his heart“. In relational terms we hear how the bad behaviour of a spouse destroys a relationship, breaking the other party’s heart, meaning that the wronged person has been deeply affected by the other. But how much more was God’s heart broken by the behaviour of “stubborn rebels who refuse to pay attention to the Lord’s instructions”? Instructions, I should add, that were there for the people’s benefit, not God’s. 

The Bible is still with us today, and it has become the best-selling book of all time. But as well as being a handbook of God’s love for His people, and containing the instructions that lead to life for those who read it and obey it, it is also a book that I suspect will be opened at the end of time, as a witness in the final trial in a Heavenly court. I love the Bible, and I will keep on loving it until I can read it no longer, instead being with God in a new and wonderful Heavenly home. But it will still be there I suspect, until what Jesus said in Matthew 5:18 is accomplished, “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s law will disappear until its purpose is achieved“. I deeply regret the time when I have disobeyed the instructions contained therein, and pray for God’s grace to hear my prayers of repentance, bringing my redemption. 

We pilgrims neglect reading God’s Word at our peril. We may squirm in discomfort at the words we read, but they are there for a reason, as Paul reminded Timothy, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realise what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). And so we pray together …

Dear Heavenly Father. Thank You for Your Word and all it contains for our lives. The devil may try and confuse us and introduce doubts into our minds about its authenticity, but we stand firm and praise and worship You today and every day, thanking You for all that You have done for us. Please forgive us for all our sins, and lead us in Your ways forevermore. Amen.

The Burden of Guilt

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“Oh, what a sinful nation they are— loaded down with a burden of guilt. They are evil people, corrupt children who have rejected the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him. Why do you continue to invite punishment? Must you rebel forever? Your head is injured, and your heart is sick. You are battered from head to foot— covered with bruises, welts, and infected wounds— without any soothing ointments or bandages.”
Isaiah 1:4-6 NLT

The burden of guilt. It is a heavy burden to bear, and many are bearing it in our world today. God has created mankind with a conscience, designed to be aligned to Him so that their lives are without guilt. Man was never able to carry the burden of guilt. The psychiatrists may come up with band-aid solutions that might make someone feel better for a short while, but the issues are still there and before long the burden of guilt returns. Some people turn to some form of distraction, such as alcohol or drugs, “retail therapy”, or sexual gratification, but the burden of guilt remains in the cold light of the morning. 

Isaiah, bringing the Word of the Lord in our verses today, called out evil, corruption, God-rejection, sickness, and punishment, all self-inflicted conditions because of one single cause – the people had turned away from God. How had it come to this? As the previous verse in Isaiah 1 recorded, “Israel doesn’t know its Master”. They had become complacent in their land. The crops continued to grow. The rain came at the right time. Children were still being born. Affluence had dulled their spirits, and the effort of keeping a relationship with God had somehow become crowded out by living. 

The root of the problem was, of course, sin. The current generation in Isaiah’s day had been brought up without a knowledge of God, because their parents didn’t know Him either. This was because their parents were Godless as well. But this wasn’t a sudden decision, made one day to forget God and His ways. The sin and evil had come into their lives as God was forced out, getting worse generation by generation. Now, the storm clouds of war, famine, pestilence were starting to emerge on the horizon, and Isaiah brought a warning straight from God Himself. 

There was a remedy to their condition and David wrote about it in Psalm 32:5, “Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone”. 

We pilgrims are not immune to the same problems the Israelites faced. It starts on a Sunday morning, with the thought that we might skip church just once. Then we find ourselves too busy to pray or read the Bible. Then sinfulness creeps in, and we finally find that we are well and truly on the slippery slope that leads to destruction. Yes, there are those who say that you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian. There are even those who claim eternal life from the “once saved, always saved” doctrine, and then proceed to live out the rest of their lives in a world full of sin and depravity. But always in the background is our loving Heavenly Father, calling out our names, warning us of the consequences of sin. We pilgrims know all this, of course, but somehow we can find it easy to rationalise our return to a world that invites the punishments the Lord warned the Israelites about in 740BC. 

Sin is rebellion against God. Pure and simple. And as sin builds, so does guilt. The burden gets heavier and heavier, bringing sickness, mental ill-health, and ultimately death. But today, should we find that we are carrying a burden of guilt, we come before God with a repentant heart, believing as David did, that He will forgive us. In 1 John 1:9, the Apostle John wrote, “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness”. And so, we return to our knees once again, feeling His forgiveness wash away our burden of guilt.

Father God. Please forgive us for all our sins and for trying to hide our guilt. As we roll our burdens off our shoulders before Jesus, Your Son who died so that we can be forgiven for our sins, we experience an inner peace that cannot be found anywhere else. Thank You for saving us. Amen.