The Voice You Can’t Afford to Ignore

Isaiah 28:23 – “Give ear, and hear my voice; give attention, and hear my speech.”

The first twenty-two verses of Isaiah chapter 28 is spent confessing the sins of God’s people. In verse five Isaiah prophecies that a day is coming when ‘The Lord of hosts will be a crown of glory, a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of His people’.

That was what was supposed to be happening, but in verses1 through 4 we find that some of God’s ‘chosen people’ had given themselves to worldly pleasures instead of finding their glory and delight in God their Father. Their glory was in how much alcohol they could drink rather than in who God is and what He was saying to them.

Their problem, and maybe ours, is that they aren’t listening to God. And when the word of God is read or spoken it is like hearing babbling that makes no sense. They didn’t want to hear God, so in verses 9-13, we see that God has taken spiritual hearing away from them. That’s a terrifying prospect! The results are obvious. It didn’t work out well for them and it won’t work out well for us.

God’s command to them is the same to us, and it’s found in verse 23 quoted above. LISTEN TO HIM! God loves us and speaks for our benefit. His goal is to make us like Christ. And verses 24-29 make it clear that God will use hardship, trials, and difficulties if he has too in order to teach us what we need to know. BUT our loving Father in heaven actually tailors the disciplines He brings into our lives to teach us specific lessons that are uniquely suited for us and where we are spitiually. THAT’S AMAZING! And as soon as we learn the lesson, He’ll remove the discipline if it won’t harm us to do so. Read the last six verse of that chapter! That’s exactly what He says!

Being like Jesus is the crowning glory of our lives. And our heavenly Father loves us so much that He will even sacrifice our happiness in order to reveal that greatest of all glories in us.

It all starts when we LISTEN TO HIM!