What sorrow awaits Ariel, the City of David. Year after year you celebrate your feasts. Yet I will bring disaster upon you, and there will be much weeping and sorrow. For Jerusalem will become what her name Ariel means— an altar covered with blood. I will be your enemy, surrounding Jerusalem and attacking its walls. I will build siege towers and destroy it.”
Isaiah 29:1-3 NLT
An unusual name appears in our reading today. “Ariel”. It is a name more associated with a washing powder in the UK today, but in Isaiah’s day it meant “an altar covered with blood”, a definition usefully supplied in verse 2. But in other translations it means “lion of God” or “altar hearth”, probably referring to the Temple in Jerusalem.
Chapters 28-33 in Isaiah all start with “What sorrow awaits”, or “Woe to”, five “woes” in all. “Woe” is an exclamation of grief for the terrible judgment that is yet to come. In this chapter, the Lord describes judgment coming on Jerusalem. But as we journey through Isaiah, we find that much of his writing is connected with warnings, prophecies or oracles of doom yet to come on a people, nation, or even empire. And he was very accurate in what he wrote, as history has confirmed. So chapter 29 contains “woes” directed against Jerusalem. If I were living in those days and had heard what he said, I would like to think I would take notice and change my ways, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, and at the time the people paid very little attention to him.
The people of Judah had a very strong foundation in God, with religious leaders and a wealth of God-breathed literature underpinning what God desired of them. They knew that if they followed His ways, they would be blessed and protected; if they didn’t, they would be cursed and unprotected. They could read all about this in Deuteronomy, just as we can, although people in Isaiah’s day were largely uneducated and relied on priests and other religious leaders to disseminate God’s Word. But it is a human condition that sin is a preferred way of life, and because God was, and is, slow to anger, they wrongly felt that He didn’t much care about how they behaved. Perhaps their logic ran along the line that it was all very well for their early ancestors, but they were much more sophisticated. And that is perhaps our first thought this morning. I have heard arguments today from people who have rejected God and His Word because they think that it applies to a people, unsophisticated and uneducated, who used to live many years ago. After all, they say, we now have all this knowledge and scientific data, and have no further need for God and His ways. To such a people, we can point to the experiences of God’s people in the 8th Century BC and suggest they take note and seriously consider what happened to them. Hebrews 13:8-9: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas. Your strength comes from God’s grace, not from rules about food, which don’t help those who follow them”.
Here is another thought, based on the judgment coming for the behaviour of God’s people. Perhaps we need to remember that being close to God does not make us immune from correction. Jerusalem had the temple. It had the priesthood. It had the sacrifices and religious festivals. It had a long history of God’s dealings with His people. Yet none of these things could protect the people if their hearts had turned away from God. This offers a significant lesson for Christians. We can be surrounded by Christian things—church attendance, worship, Bible reading, Christian fellowship—and still have hearts spiritually distant from God. We also need to remember that religious activity is not the same as spiritual obedience. Jesus later warned of people who would honour God with their lips while their hearts were far from Him, quoting a later verse in Isaiah 29. We remember the story of Samuel selecting a king to replace Saul, and watching as Jesse’s sons were paraded before him. He took one look at the son called Eliab and thought “Surely this is the Lord’s anointed”, but the next verse reads, “But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart”” (1 Samuel 16:7). The question we must ask ourselves today is “What is the state of our hearts?” Are we devoted to God and His ways, following Jesus wholeheartedly, or are we just paying lip service to our liturgies, while our minds dwell on other things, such as what was on television last night, or our favourite football team’s prowess in yesterday’s match? Through Isaiah, God was very critical of the way the Israelites were behaving. He wrote, “When you come to worship me, who asked you to parade through my courts with all your ceremony? Stop bringing me your meaningless gifts; the incense of your offerings disgusts me! As for your celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath and your special days for fasting— they are all sinful and false. I want no more of your pious meetings” (Isaiah 1:12-13). James too wrote on this theme, and we read, “But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it” (James 1:22-25).
The people in Judea probably thought that if they continued to go through the motions in their religion, then they would be alright. Isaiah wrote, “Year after year you celebrate your feasts” but God added another word “Yet”. We pilgrims have to beware of this word, because it confirms that any assumptions we might like to make about our faith could be followed by a “yet”. Those two verses at the end of Psalm 139 must be on the lips of every pilgrim frequently: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life”. We must remember that God loves us, and because of that, He won’t leave us in a life of complacency or sin without discipline.
But in all the negatives of our verses today, there is hope. Our faith in God is alive and well, I’m sure, and He is quick to respond to a repentant heart. He loves us as a father loves His children and will go to extraordinary lengths to nurture us and educate us in His ways.
Dear Father God. Thank You for Your love and care. We know it is easy to go through spiritual motions and delude ourselves about their reality. We pray David’s prayer, that You would search our hearts and keep us close to You, this day and for all time. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
