Latest / Marriage Life and More and Bible Study / Isaiah 1:22-26 - Bribes, Broken Justice, and God's Refining Hand - 282

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Isaiah 1:22-26 - Bribes, Broken Justice, and God's Refining Hand - 282 · Marriage Life and More and Bible Study

• 0:06
  Daniel Moore: So what point did Judah look at corruption, bribery, and ignoring justice and say, yep, this seems like a solid life plan?
• 0:13
  Daniel Moore: And did they all collectively miss the memo that God can actually tell when his people go from faithful city to full-on dumpster fire?
• 0:21
  Daniel Moore: And just checking, were they planning to fix this whole leader's love and bribes more than justice thing?
• 0:28
  Daniel Moore: Or were they waiting on a celestial push notification from God?
• 0:31
  Daniel Moore: Well, welcome back to Connecting the Gap where we dive into scripture one passage at a time and occasionally discover that the Israelites found brand new creative ways to miss the point.
• 0:41
  Daniel Moore: Today we're going to be jumping back into Isaiah chapter 1, starting with verse 22, where God gives his people a spiritual performance review.
• 0:50
  Daniel Moore: And let's just say that nobody's getting a bonus.
• 0:53
  Daniel Moore: In this section, God talks about how the once faithful city, Jerusalem, has basically gone from model citizen to crime documentary special.
• 1:01
  Daniel Moore: The leaders are corrupt, bribery is trending, and justice has apparently been put on a permanent coffee break.
• 1:07
  Daniel Moore: If God had Yelp, this would be the one-star review that he leaves with no polite wording.
• 1:13
  Daniel Moore: But here's the good news, God doesn't just point out the mess, he promises to clean it up.
• 1:18
  Daniel Moore: He says he'll turn his hand against the impurities, refine his people, and restore righteousness.
• 1:23
  Daniel Moore: It's kind of like God saying, don't worry, I brought the holy pressure washer.
• 1:28
  Daniel Moore: So grab your Bible, your coffee, and maybe a spiritual seatbelt because we're going to be taking a look at how faithful cities fell apart and how God steps in not to destroy, but to redeem and restore.
• 1:39
  Daniel Moore: Let's get to it.
• 1:41
  Daniel Moore: Welcome back to Connecting the Gap.
• 1:49
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• 1:53
  Daniel Moore: I'm Daniel Moore, your host.
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• 1:56
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  Daniel Moore: Well, thank you guys for joining us.
• 3:00
  Daniel Moore: As I said earlier, we're going to go ahead and get back into our verse-by-verse study in Isaiah this week.
• 3:07
  Daniel Moore: And this week we're going to be starting with Isaiah chapter 1, and we're going to start with verse 22.
• 3:13
  Daniel Moore: As we start off this week with our section of scripture that we're going to attempt to make it through this week, I have it set down here for Isaiah 22 and 23, 24, and 25.
• 3:34
  Daniel Moore: We may get to 26.
• 3:36
  Daniel Moore: We'll see how far we get, but we're going to go ahead and read these four scriptures, and they are out of the ESV version of the Bible.
• 3:43
  Daniel Moore: Isaiah 1, verse 22 says, Your silver has become dross, your best wine mixed with water.
• 3:51
  Daniel Moore: Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves.
• 3:54
  Daniel Moore: Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts.
• 3:58
  Daniel Moore: They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow's cause does not come to them.
• 4:03
  Daniel Moore: Therefore the Lord declares, the Lord of hosts, the mighty one of Israel, Ah, I will get relief from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes.
• 4:14
  Daniel Moore: I will turn my hand against you, and will smelt away your dross as with lie and remove all your alloy.
• 4:22
  Daniel Moore: That's Isaiah chapter one, verse twenty two through twenty-five.
• 4:26
  Daniel Moore: As we start here with verse twenty-two, says your silver has become dross, and your best wine mixed with water.
• 4:35
  Daniel Moore: Well, here Isaiah, as he has been doing so here through this whole first chapter of Isaiah so far, is continuing with metaphors to describe moral corruption.
• 4:46
  Daniel Moore: Silver has become dross, means what once was pure and valuable has now been corrupted and is now worthless.
• 4:55
  Daniel Moore: Your best wine mixed with water signifies dilution, compromise, and degradation.
• 5:03
  Daniel Moore: Wine and silver were symbols of prosperity and purity.
• 5:07
  Daniel Moore: Well now they were both defiled.
• 5:10
  Daniel Moore: This speaks to the degeneration of values and ethics among the leaders and the people of Judah.
• 5:17
  Daniel Moore: What once was honest is now filled with deceit.
• 5:20
  Daniel Moore: From a historical perspective, Isaiah here was prophesying during a time when Judah had outward religious life, but inward decay.
• 5:29
  Daniel Moore: As we've been talking about here in the last several verses, we've been talking about how Judah they were putting out all of these different things to God, the worship and the sacrifice and all the things that they normally were supposed to be doing, but it was all an outward expression.
• 5:45
  Daniel Moore: Their hearts were not really involved and really tuned in to what they were doing.
• 5:50
  Daniel Moore: It was all a big act.
• 5:52
  Daniel Moore: They were putting on a mask and being fake in their worship to God.
• 5:57
  Daniel Moore: And God here was He's been trying to call them out for this.
• 6:00
  Daniel Moore: And as we're talking here with the wine mixed with water and the silver has become dross, we all know that if we take silver, if we would melt that down and mix that with a different kind of a metal where it's not pure silver anymore, and we cast that into a ring or into some kind of a piece of jewelry, we took that to the jeweler and we handed that to him.
• 6:21
  Daniel Moore: And if he was able to look at that piece of jewelry and determine that that was not a hundred percent silver, what happens to the value of that?
• 6:30
  Daniel Moore: It drops.
• 6:31
  Daniel Moore: And why is that?
• 6:32
  Daniel Moore: Because that silver has become tainted, it's not pure anymore.
• 6:37
  Daniel Moore: And the same way with wine.
• 6:39
  Daniel Moore: If you want a good, you know, glass of strong wine and you go and you mix that with water, what does it do?
• 6:47
  Daniel Moore: It dilutes it down.
• 6:48
  Daniel Moore: You're gonna lose a lot of the flavor, you're gonna lose a lot of the purity in that wine.
• 6:54
  Daniel Moore: It's just not gonna be the same drink anymore.
• 6:56
  Daniel Moore: And here, you know, Isaiah is trying to get through to the people of Judah where where God is trying to let them know, hey, you know, you guys, you're you're not the same spiritual people that I've called you to be.
• 7:08
  Daniel Moore: You're allowing Satan to come in and infiltrate your heart, your soul, your spirit, your mind.
• 7:14
  Daniel Moore: And even though you think that you are actually worshiping me, maybe you don't think you are worshiping me, maybe you know that you are doing wrong.
• 7:23
  Daniel Moore: But regardless of whichever way it may be, it's a diluted religion.
• 7:28
  Daniel Moore: It's a diluted belief that they have in God.
• 7:31
  Daniel Moore: They're only bringing half of the gifts to God that He's called them to do.
• 7:36
  Daniel Moore: The public commentary here sees these images as indicating an overall loss of character in the nation, a decline in both material and moral quality.
• 7:46
  Daniel Moore: The religious and civic leaders especially had become impure and ineffective.
• 7:53
  Daniel Moore: And if you ever heard that saying, as the leadership goes, so goes the people.
• 7:57
  Daniel Moore: That's kind of what's happening here because even the leadership within Judah has morally decayed and spiritually decayed to a point where it's now filtrating down into the people, and they've become a nation that's totally rejected God.
• 8:12
  Daniel Moore: And they're more into the self, they're more doing things to make themselves feel happy and to make themselves feel fulfilled.
• 8:20
  Daniel Moore: So using this metaphor here, Isaiah is trying to get through to the people of Judah to help them understand how God looks at their salvation, how God's looking at their heart at this point, that they're not a hundred percent all in.
• 8:34
  Daniel Moore: Verse 23 says, Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves.
• 8:38
  Daniel Moore: Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts.
• 8:42
  Daniel Moore: They do not bring justice to the fatherless, and the widow's cause does not come to them.
• 8:47
  Daniel Moore: So here Isaiah is calling out even more so the corruption, especially of the leadership.
• 8:54
  Daniel Moore: This verse describes Judah's leadership as being completely corrupt.
• 8:58
  Daniel Moore: Where it says princes are rebels, that suggests that not only are they being unfaithful to God, but also to their vocation as just rulers.
• 9:08
  Daniel Moore: So we can probably see here that even maybe if they were going to court of law, or if the leadership was having to, you know, judge cases between different people, they may have been even corrupt in the way that they were judging these cases and not being fair to the people and cheating them out of what was rightfully theirs.
• 9:28
  Daniel Moore: Being companions of thieves in this scripture suggests that they are embracing criminal behavior and they're sharing an unjust gain.
• 9:36
  Daniel Moore: Whatever they can do to make their prosperity rise, if they can make money under the table in a shady way, you know, by being unfaithful to the people and uh by stealing from them basically with the processes that they go through, making it look like that they are good, just people, but there's a a conniving thing behind it.
• 9:59
  Daniel Moore: They're being shady in the way that they're dealing, and they're becoming rich at the expense of the common person.
• 10:05
  Daniel Moore: And so here Isaiah is trying to call them out for that and accusing them of embracing criminal behavior.
• 10:12
  Daniel Moore: You know, they're not any different than the thieves at this point.
• 10:15
  Daniel Moore: The scripture continues, everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts.
• 10:20
  Daniel Moore: Again, this shows some systematic corruption.
• 10:24
  Daniel Moore: Justice is bought, and the powerless, especially the fatherless and widows, are symbolic of the society's most vulnerable, are ignored.
• 10:33
  Daniel Moore: And so here we see some bribery going on.
• 10:36
  Daniel Moore: If, like I said earlier, maybe a court case was coming to court between two different individuals, and whichever one had the most money and had the most power with their possessions and the things that they had, uh, this is insinuating that there might have been some bribing going on, that they were bribing those judges or the leadership to rule in their favor, which then again patted the pockets of the leadership.
• 11:02
  Daniel Moore: And so here Isaiah is calling that out, telling them that you know you're being very sinful in the way that you're carrying yourselves, especially as leadership of the nation of Judah.
• 11:13
  Daniel Moore: And of course, the widows, we talked about that last week and some of the previous verses we've been through.
• 11:18
  Daniel Moore: Uh, we know that by reading the word that God has a special place in his heart for the widows and the fatherless, the orphans, um, all of those that are lower in society, he has a special place in his heart for them.
• 11:32
  Daniel Moore: But here, that I guess, you know, this was such an issue in in Judah, we can tell here uh that Isaiah keeps calling this out.
• 11:39
  Daniel Moore: So there's obviously some very major problems here with what Judah's doing when they're handling these people that are on the lower end of the scale.
• 11:48
  Daniel Moore: So this scripture here it reiterates the earlier themes from Isaiah chapter 1, verse 17.
• 11:55
  Daniel Moore: The Mosaic law repeatedly commanded justice for orphans and widows, as we were just describing.
• 12:01
  Daniel Moore: Uh, Exodus 22, 22 and Deuteronomy 10.18.
• 12:04
  Daniel Moore: We went through those scriptures uh here within this last week or so.
• 12:08
  Daniel Moore: But Isaiah, he condemns the exact opposite practices.
• 12:12
  Daniel Moore: So in Mosaic law, God was telling uh the Israelites, basically, the the kingdom of Israel, you guys take care of all these people, but here Isaiah's having to condemn Judah because the exact opposite was happening.
• 12:25
  Daniel Moore: What God had instructed them to do with the orphans and the widows, uh, they were not doing that.
• 12:31
  Daniel Moore: So Isaiah was condemning that because they were basically sinning to God by putting them to the wayside and not taking care of them.
• 12:40
  Daniel Moore: The ESV study Bible for this scripture describes this as a judicial and administrative decay.
• 12:47
  Daniel Moore: Leaders no longer care for the marginalized, which again is you know the lowercase uh widows, the orphans, and those that fall in that category.
• 12:55
  Daniel Moore: And they are at the same time using their power for personal enrichment, getting rich off of the people.
• 13:01
  Daniel Moore: Alec Mulcher points out that every phrase presents a deliberate inversion of the ideal.
• 13:07
  Daniel Moore: The princes who should uphold righteousness are instead subverting it for greed.
• 13:13
  Daniel Moore: They become a very greedy, distinct group of people in their leadership.
• 13:18
  Daniel Moore: So here we're seeing a prophetic lament over Jerusalem's fall from a righteous, faithful city to one filled with corruption, injustice, and bloodshed.
• 13:29
  Daniel Moore: Through vivid metaphors and direct accusations, God is exposing the more failures of the people.
• 13:36
  Daniel Moore: And here it's especially he's picking on the leadership and calling them out for their the impurity in the way that they are being.
• 13:45
  Daniel Moore: Once pure like silver and fine wine, Judah's virtue is now spoiled.
• 13:50
  Daniel Moore: And as we just discussed here, the city's rulers, they're living off of bribes, they're consorting with criminals, and they're neglecting the defenseless.
• 13:59
  Daniel Moore: You know, commentators like John Oswald, Alec Mulcher, and Killin Delish, they emphasize that this is not just a moral sadness, but it's a covenantal crisis.
• 14:09
  Daniel Moore: Judah has broken faith with God and abandoned the justice.
• 14:14
  Daniel Moore: So these last few scriptures that we've gone through here, they are laying the groundwork for God's impending judgment and the anticipating purification that God is going to try to reveal and push through uh this land of Judah as time goes along.
• 14:30
  Daniel Moore: So as we move on here to Isaiah chapter 1, verse 24, it says, Therefore the Lord declares, the Lord of hosts, the mighty one of Israel, Ah, I will get relief from my enemies and avenge myself on my foes.
• 14:48
  Daniel Moore: So this verse here begins with the word therefore.
• 14:54
  Daniel Moore: And what happens whenever we see that word, therefore, in a scripture?
• 14:59
  Daniel Moore: Well, that links it to the preceding verses, which dealt with Judah's rebellion and corruption.
• 15:05
  Daniel Moore: So here in this verse, we see something a little interesting take place.
• 15:10
  Daniel Moore: We see a threefold title for God.
• 15:13
  Daniel Moore: He calls himself the Lord, he calls himself the Lord of hosts, and he calls himself the mighty one of Israel.
• 15:20
  Daniel Moore: When this happens, God is basically heightening the authority and the power that's behind the coming judgment.
• 15:29
  Daniel Moore: Lord of hosts, when you see that name in the Bible, that refers to God's command over the armies of heaven.
• 15:36
  Daniel Moore: There's a song out about angel armies.
• 15:39
  Daniel Moore: Well, when you hear that song about angel armies, Lord of hosts is the leader of that, and that's referring to God.
• 15:47
  Daniel Moore: Mighty one of Israel emphasizes his strength and his covenant relationship with Israel.
• 15:53
  Daniel Moore: The phrase here in the scripture that says, I will get relief from my enemies, that implies that Israel, although that they are God's chosen people, had become his enemy through their sins.
• 16:05
  Daniel Moore: Several scholars, including those in the Tyndale Old Testament commentary, they interpret this verse as God's righteous indignation where divine justice must be satisfied.
• 16:17
  Daniel Moore: It's an expression of God's passionate resolve to purify his people by removing evil.
• 16:24
  Daniel Moore: So here, God is really just showing how angry he is with Judah at this point.
• 16:33
  Daniel Moore: Israel, you know, they were God's chosen people.
• 16:36
  Daniel Moore: That was God's chosen land.
• 16:38
  Daniel Moore: And the fact that they have went against God's ways and the covenants and the directions that God had given them, in essence, this makes them an enemy of God to a point.
• 16:50
  Daniel Moore: You know, for us, even as we fall away from God and we don't allow him to stay inside of us, you know, as we become Christians and we ask him to come into our heart, then we become a hosting place of God.
• 17:03
  Daniel Moore: He lives in us.
• 17:05
  Daniel Moore: And everywhere that we go, everyone should see Christ radiing radiating out of us.
• 17:10
  Daniel Moore: But if we fall away and we choose not to walk that path anymore and just do the things that we want to do, then that word called a friend of God, and there's a song about that as well.
• 17:22
  Daniel Moore: Uh, for some reason, these songs names keep coming to my mind that as I'm recording this here, but uh we we are not a friend of God anymore at that point, in essence, with the way that we're living, because then we're going down that path that Satan wants us to go down.
• 17:37
  Daniel Moore: So in this scripture here, God's putting this out there under the title of three very strong important titles that he has.
• 17:45
  Daniel Moore: They're high and mighty titles, and he is saying with affirmation that I will have my day.
• 17:52
  Daniel Moore: So Judah, they have a day of coming of judgment that they're going to have to sit through, and God is going to remove the enemies from his way to make sure that Judah comes back to him where they're supposed to be.
• 18:06
  Daniel Moore: So as we move on here to Isaiah chapter 1, verse 25, it says, I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy.
• 18:18
  Daniel Moore: So here the imagery again shifts back to refining metal, which is a common biblical picture of purification.
• 18:26
  Daniel Moore: We see this in the Bible in many places when we talk about God refining and purifying us.
• 18:33
  Daniel Moore: Turning my hand against you in Hebrew has a disciplinary connotation rather than destructive.
• 18:40
  Daniel Moore: God here, he's not saying he's going to annihilate Israel, but he's going to refine them.
• 18:46
  Daniel Moore: Dross refers to impurities in metal as we spoke to earlier, and lie is a strong cleansing agent, emphasizing the extremity of cleansing.
• 18:56
  Daniel Moore: Anybody that's real familiar with soaps, lye soap is one of the strongest soaps that you can actually use when it comes to cleaning very filthy, dirty things.
• 19:06
  Daniel Moore: And so here the imagery is in place that God's going to use uh something, you know, that's in the essence of being like lye soap, and he is going to purify Judah and get all of these impurities out that they've allowed to come inside of them.
• 19:22
  Daniel Moore: So the alloy mixed in represents moral corruption or foreign influence.
• 19:28
  Daniel Moore: Historically, Judah had adopted many of the idolatrous practices of the surrounding nations.
• 19:35
  Daniel Moore: And here in Isaiah, when he comes into the picture and he starts having this vision that he's relaying to Judah, the outside nations that were hedonistic, that were not godly, the Israelites had allowed them to infiltrate their people and to mix with them, and so they were, in essence, in a lot of ways, were taking on the ways of those sinful nations.
• 19:58
  Daniel Moore: Several consequences.
• 19:59
  Daniel Moore: Commentaries, including the expositor's Bible commentary, notes that this was a metaphor for political, religious, and social purification.
• 20:08
  Daniel Moore: Such imagery vividly communicates both severity and hope.
• 20:13
  Daniel Moore: Judgment will come, but the judgment's going to come for the purpose of the restoration, because God had promised, I will restore my people.
• 20:22
  Daniel Moore: And because of that, that was his purpose in doing this cleansing.
• 20:26
  Daniel Moore: And as it said earlier, it wasn't to annihilate or to destroy them.
• 20:29
  Daniel Moore: He actually was going to try to just restore them to where they needed to be.
• 20:34
  Daniel Moore: So as we move on here, we're going to go ahead and move on to another verse.
• 20:38
  Daniel Moore: As we go to Isaiah 1, verse 26, it says, And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning.
• 20:47
  Daniel Moore: Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness or the faithful city.
• 20:52
  Daniel Moore: So here a message of hope follows the warning.
• 20:56
  Daniel Moore: God's goal is to restore the leadership of Jerusalem.
• 21:00
  Daniel Moore: Judges, as at the first, refers to the time under Moses and the early days of settlement in Canaan before the monarchy.
• 21:08
  Daniel Moore: The counselors, those imply wise rulers.
• 21:12
  Daniel Moore: The promise here is that Jerusalem will again be a place marked by justice and faithfulness, like they were at the beginning.
• 21:19
  Daniel Moore: Historically, this verse ties to some of the reforms later undertaken by kings like Hezekiah and Josiah, who attempted to bring back righteous ruling.
• 21:30
  Daniel Moore: So let's take a little bit of a deeper dive here as we get into verse 26 about those judges.
• 21:38
  Daniel Moore: And a lot of you probably have heard about a lot of these.
• 21:42
  Daniel Moore: If you look in the Bible, there's actually a book in the Bible called Judges.
• 21:47
  Daniel Moore: So Isaiah chapter 1, verse 26, it says, And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning.
• 21:55
  Daniel Moore: Afterwards you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.
• 21:59
  Daniel Moore: So this verse here is a part of a broader section in Isaiah 1, where the prophet is rebuking Jerusalem or Judah for its moral and spiritual corruption.
• 22:09
  Daniel Moore: The city, as we know, is once known for justice and faithfulness, and it's become rebellious, filled with injustice, idolatry, and social oppression.
• 22:17
  Daniel Moore: Earlier in verse 21, as you remember, Jerusalem was described as a harlot, once full of justice, but now corrupted.
• 22:25
  Daniel Moore: We went into Hosea a little bit and talked about that.
• 22:28
  Daniel Moore: I believe that was last week.
• 22:30
  Daniel Moore: The verse in verse 26 here, the Lord promises a future restoration.
• 22:35
  Daniel Moore: The statement about restoring judges and counselors refers to a return to the kind of leadership that Israel had in earlier, more faithful times, possibly alluding to the period of the judges before the monarchy, or even the early days of David and Solomon when justice was more faithfully administered.
• 22:53
  Daniel Moore: In biblical terms, judges were not only legal authorities, but they were also leaders who upheld God's covenant and guided the people into righteousness.
• 23:03
  Daniel Moore: The restoration of judges and counselors signifies a renewal of righteous leadership, leaders who fear God, uphold justice, and guide people according to divine law.
• 23:14
  Daniel Moore: This is not merely a political change, but it's a spiritual and a moral renewal.
• 23:20
  Daniel Moore: The quality of leadership is directly tied to the moral health of the nation.
• 23:24
  Daniel Moore: As I said earlier, as the leadership is, so goes the people.
• 23:29
  Daniel Moore: The result of this restoration is that Jerusalem will once again be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city.
• 23:36
  Daniel Moore: This is a reversal of the earlier indictment in verse 21, where we just was talking about where the city had become unfaithful and unjust.
• 23:44
  Daniel Moore: The transformation from corruption to righteousness reflects the redemptive work of God in purifying his people and their institutions.
• 23:52
  Daniel Moore: If we look at Isaiah 1, verse 26 theologically, it points forward to a messianic hope, a time when God's rule will be re-established in justice and peace.
• 24:04
  Daniel Moore: Some interpreters see this as ultimately fulfilled in the reign of the Messiah, when perfect justice and righteousness will be restored among God's people.
• 24:13
  Daniel Moore: Others see it as a call to repentance and reform in Isaiah's own time, with the hope that God would bless the nation if it returned to its covenant faithfulness.
• 24:23
  Daniel Moore: Well, here in this verse, the comment about Judges in Isaiah 1, verse 26 means that God will renew the leadership of his people, bringing back just and wise rulers, who actually reflect his character.
• 24:35
  Daniel Moore: They're not just there for bribery.
• 24:37
  Daniel Moore: This restoration is part of a broader promise to cleanse and redeem Jerusalem, turning it from a city of corruption into a city of righteousness and faithfulness once again.
• 24:47
  Daniel Moore: It emphasizes the importance of godly leadership in the moral and spiritual restoration of a nation.
• 24:54
  Daniel Moore: And if you remember, we'll do a little quick review here of those judges.
• 24:59
  Daniel Moore: Some of the notable ones that were there at one point in time with Israel.
• 25:04
  Daniel Moore: He delivered Israel from the king of Mesopotamia, and that was in Judges three verses seven through eleven.
• 25:14
  Daniel Moore: Ehud, he was a left-handed judge from the tribe of Benjamin who delivered Israel from Moabite oppression in Judges three, twelve through thirty.
• 25:24
  Daniel Moore: Deborah was a prophetess and a judge who led Israel alongside Barak and brought victory over the Canaanites in Judges four and five.
• 25:32
  Daniel Moore: Gideon from the tribe of Manasseh, he defeated the Midianites with a small army and became a significant leader in Judges six through eight.
• 25:40
  Daniel Moore: Jephthal was a warrior judge who led Israel in battle against the Ammonites, though his story is marked by a tragic vow, and that's in Judges chapter eleven and twelve.
• 25:52
  Daniel Moore: Samson, known for his great strength, he fought against the Philistines, but also had personal moral failings.
• 25:59
  Daniel Moore: And that's in Judges chapter thirteen through sixteen.
• 26:03
  Daniel Moore: And then Samuel, he was considered the last judge of Israel, and he was also a prophet.
• 26:08
  Daniel Moore: He anointed the first two kings of Israel, which was Saul and David, and played a key role in transitioning Israel from the period of the judges to the monarchy.
• 26:17
  Daniel Moore: And that's in 1 Samuel.
• 26:19
  Daniel Moore: So here when Isaiah says in Isaiah 126, I'll restore your judges as at the first, he's likely pointing back to the time of these judges that we just spoke of here, leaders who at their best upheld God's justice and guided the people in righteousness.
• 26:34
  Daniel Moore: This phrase is also meant to evoke a longing for godly leadership and a return to the covenant faithful.
• 26:42
  Daniel Moore: In Isaiah's own time, the judges and officials were corrupt, as we just saw in Isaiah 1, verse 23.
• 26:49
  Daniel Moore: So this promise of restoration is both a rebuke and it's also a message of hope.
• 26:55
  Daniel Moore: God is saying that He will purify the leadership and bring back justice through righteous leaders, ultimately fulfilling in the messianic age.
• 27:04
  Daniel Moore: So here as we wrap up verse 26, according to John Oswald's commentary, this verse should be seen as both a short-term promise with partial fulfillment in the post-elisic return, and a long-term prophetic vision of the messianic age.
• 27:21
  Daniel Moore: The transformation from corruption to faithfulness, in essence, underscores God's redemptive plan.
• 27:28
  Daniel Moore: So this week we made it to Isaiah chapter 1, verses 23 through 26.
• 27:51
  Daniel Moore: And as we summarize this week as we close, this is a powerful passage that reflects God's deep disappointment with the moral and spiritual decay of Jerusalem.
• 28:02
  Daniel Moore: In these scriptures, it begins by describing how the city's purity and righteousness have been corrupted.
• 28:08
  Daniel Moore: Distilvers become dross, the wine is diluted, both of these metaphors for moral compromise and the loss of value.
• 28:16
  Daniel Moore: Leaders are described as rebels and companions of thieves showing a breakdown in justice and integrity.
• 28:22
  Daniel Moore: They are corrupt, accepting bribes and neglecting the needs of the vulnerable, especially orphans and widows.
• 28:29
  Daniel Moore: In the final verses there of twenty four through twenty six, God responds to this corruption with the declaration of judgment and purification.
• 28:38
  Daniel Moore: He identifies himself as the Lord of hosts, the mighty one of Israel, which is emphasizing his authority and power.
• 28:46
  Daniel Moore: God says he will take vengeance on his enemies and purify the city by removing its impurities, like dross is removed from metal through refining.
• 28:55
  Daniel Moore: He promises to restore righteous leaders and judges as in the beginning, so that the city might once again be called the city of righteousness, a faithful city.
• 29:05
  Daniel Moore: It's amazing how when you have bad leadership, how it can actually destroy a complete nation.
• 29:12
  Daniel Moore: But here's what God is trying to tell them that this is what's happened, and He's going to do a reforming work in Judah, but he's going to start with the leadership.
• 29:21
  Daniel Moore: That's where he's going to come in and reform first and purify, and then that would move into the people so that they would all come back to him.
• 29:30
  Daniel Moore: So how can we apply this today?
• 29:33
  Daniel Moore: Well, first of all, we can apply it in our moral and spiritual integrity.
• 29:38
  Daniel Moore: You know, just like Jerusalem, individuals and societies today can lose their moral compass.
• 29:45
  Daniel Moore: When justice is neglected and corruption is tolerated, it leads to spiritual decay.
• 29:51
  Daniel Moore: This passage challenges us to examine our own lives and communities for areas where we have compromised truth and righteousness.
• 29:58
  Daniel Moore: And this part here is so true.
• 30:01
  Daniel Moore: If you look at our country, the condition that we're in right now, and you look at some of the major liberal cities that's in the United States, and even some of the cities that are not liberal, they still are not really following God like they should be.
• 30:15
  Daniel Moore: But you will see how that whenever the liberalism comes in and the moral and the spiritual integrity starts to fall, then all of those cities will lose their moral compass.
• 30:26
  Daniel Moore: And that's when you start seeing things like the transgenderism, the the gay uh people that come in, uh the all the unbiblical things that angers God because it goes against his creation and the reason that he created us and the way that he created us, all of that stuff starts coming in and it becomes the norm.
• 30:48
  Daniel Moore: And what happens when we start seeing that all of time all of the time, a lot of people start accepting that stuff because they see it so much and so often that they pretty much get immune to it and it just becomes a new normal.
• 31:02
  Daniel Moore: But God's calling us out of that.
• 31:04
  Daniel Moore: That is not supposed to be the new normal.
• 31:06
  Daniel Moore: This country was built on God from the very beginning, and it needs to stay that way so that we can keep our spiritual integrity in place so that our moral values are protected.
• 31:18
  Daniel Moore: Secondly, we have leadership and justice.
• 31:22
  Daniel Moore: The condemnation of corrupt leaders is a timeless warning.
• 31:25
  Daniel Moore: Leaders in all sapheres, government, business, church, and family are called to act with integrity and care for the vulnerable.
• 31:32
  Daniel Moore: The failure to do so invites judgment and loss of trust.
• 31:36
  Daniel Moore: And we saw that with our last administration and some of the others that we've had in place, where when leadership came into our country, our country really started going down the tubes fast.
• 31:48
  Daniel Moore: A lot of the satanic practices that Satan wants to uh put into place into all the different places in our country to try to wipe out the Christian side of things and the way that our country relies on God, they started allowing all that to happen.
• 32:04
  Daniel Moore: They were pushing it to happen.
• 32:05
  Daniel Moore: And it was getting to be in a very bad state by the time that finally we got to vote that out and get rid of it and get a little bit more of a reprieve.
• 32:14
  Daniel Moore: It's still not perfect by any means, but it's much better than where we were at a year ago at this time.
• 32:20
  Daniel Moore: The third thing we can apply here is God's desire to purify and restore.
• 32:25
  Daniel Moore: You know, even in judgment, God's goal is not destruction, but restoration.
• 32:31
  Daniel Moore: He desires to cleanse and refine his people so they can fulfill their original purpose.
• 32:36
  Daniel Moore: This offers hope that no matter how far we or our communities have strayed, God is willing and able to restore us if we turn back to him.
• 32:43
  Daniel Moore: And we see this in our lives all the time, where if we get away from God and we start straying away, we might start seeing things happen in our life that all of a sudden seems to be out of our control.
• 32:54
  Daniel Moore: And it might make cause bad things to happen to us or cause bad things to happen to our families.
• 33:00
  Daniel Moore: And sometimes, you know, people ask, well, why would a good God allow some of that stuff?
• 33:06
  Daniel Moore: You know, if it's really bad, you'll hear that question asked.
• 33:09
  Daniel Moore: And you know, it's not that God allows it, it's the fact that we allow it to come into our lives, and then God allows that to take place because it becomes a lesson to us.
• 33:18
  Daniel Moore: If we take God out of the equation and we no longer follow Him and we decide to go our own way in our own path, then we are setting our own path at that point and determining that we're going to move on without God and do it on our own, and then that's when those bad things start happening.
• 33:35
  Daniel Moore: So God will allow those things to happen sometimes just to create a type of judgment in our lives, hoping that that will restore us back to Him.
• 33:44
  Daniel Moore: And then the fourth thing here that we can apply is social responsibility.
• 33:48
  Daniel Moore: The neglect of the fatherless and the widow that we've talked about in these scriptures today highlights the importance of social justice.
• 33:55
  Daniel Moore: God cares deeply about how we treat the marginalized.
• 33:59
  Daniel Moore: This calls us to advocate for and support those who are vulnerable in our society.
• 34:05
  Daniel Moore: And today we probably have more than ever of people that do need this kind of help from all of us that are capable of doing it.
• 34:14
  Daniel Moore: And we need to make sure that we keep those on our radar.
• 34:16
  Daniel Moore: Wherever these people are at, we need to ask God to reveal to us the path that he set before us to help these people and be there for them and be Jesus' hands and feet.
• 34:28
  Daniel Moore: You know, Jesus came and he gave us a model when he washed the feet of his disciples.
• 34:34
  Daniel Moore: He came and said, I came not to be served, I came to be a servant.
• 34:39
  Daniel Moore: That's exactly why I'm here and I call you now to go out and to serve people.
• 34:45
  Daniel Moore: So as Christians, that's the best thing that we can do to follow God's plan when we take care of those that are vulnerable in our society.
• 34:53
  Daniel Moore: So these verses that we read today and went through are both a sobering warning and a hopeful promise.
• 35:00
  Daniel Moore: It reminds us that while God does take sin seriously, he is also committed to refining and restoring his people.
• 35:08
  Daniel Moore: This passage encourages us to pursue justice, integrity, and compassion in our lives today.
• 35:15
  Daniel Moore: Well, that's going to do it for this week.
• 35:18
  Daniel Moore: We'll be back next week and we will continue this verse-by-verse study here in Isaiah.
• 35:24
  Daniel Moore: But as we go, we always share this with you guys.
• 35:27
  Daniel Moore: We believe that God's word never fails us.
• 35:29
  Daniel Moore: God's word has stood the test of time, and through Jesus' death on the cross, he has connected the gap.
• 35:36
  Daniel Moore: This is an extension of Connecting the Gap Ministries, and we pray that you have a blessed week.