“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.
Being a Pilgrim 