Isaiah (2)

What Do We See?

Isaiah 1:1

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

What do we see when we look around us? When we read, listen, or watch the news? What do we see in the workplace, in community, in school, in government? The fact that we “see” different things is demonstrated in any number of ways; some “see” gun control, others don’t. Some see universal medical coverage, others don’t. Some see liberal immigration policies, others don’t. Some Christians see the Great Commission, others don’t. Over and over again we “see” that we don’t all “see” things the same way.

In some instances whether or not we see things the same way doesn’t matter; some of us just can’t see having anchovies on pizza , many of us would probably take a pass on liver and onions; if you are not a fan of the New York Yankees you probably can’t see how anyone can root for them and if you are a fan you can’t understand why everyone doesn’t see the light and support the greatest baseball franchise in history.

However, there are times when not seeing things the same way really does matter. If you are approaching a traffic signal and you have a green light and the driver on an intersecting street doesn’t “see” his red light and runs the light and hits you - then how we see things will matter very much. When the driver at fault stands before a judge and says, “Your honor I didn’t see the red light,” he will find himself accountable for not seeing what he should have seen.

When motorcyclists are hit by cars it is often because the driver of the car didn’t see the motorcycle; so a smart motorcyclist learns to ride as if no automobile driver sees him; he has to ride based on what he sees while also riding with the assumption that no one sees him.

When we are focused on ourselves we are less likely to “see” the pain of others, less likely to see their needs. Perhaps one reason the church in the West does not share Jesus is that it is self-centered, we don’t see the need in others, we don’t see that people need the Lord. It is as if we have a cure for cancer but refuse to share it - we value our comfort too highly. People with full stomachs tend not to think about those starving; people who are healthy often aren’t concerned about the sick; people in nice houses aren’t often thinking about people living under an overpass. This is the nature of who we are outside of Christ, it is the human condition. We ought not to trust our vision, our way of seeing things. If we are honest with ourselves we can hopefully say that we’ve been wrong more than once, that we’ve not always seen things clearly. The Bible tells us that the heart is deceitful above all things, the same is true for our vision, our way of seeing.

Isaiah “saw” a vision in Isaiah 1:1, and as we read Isaiah Chapter One we can note that what he “saw” was the true condition of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. In ancient Israel prophets were once known as “seers”, they were called seers because they saw things that others didn’t see, they saw things as God saw them. God gives us His Word so that by and through the Word and the Holy Spirit we can learn to see as God sees, but when we abandon His Word we consign ourselves to blurred vision, even blindness; we might call it hallucinogenic blindness because we think we see things as they are but we don’t - to see things as they are is to see them (in a measure at least) as God sees them, anything else is blurred vision, a hallucination, smoke and mirrors.

Isaiah saw a sick people because God saw a sick people. They were a religious people (see verses 14 & 15), but they were not a godly people. We can allow our religious practices to blind us, we can go through the motions with our bodies and words but our hearts can be far from God. We have the amazing capacity to deceive ourselves in order to justify our sin and we can arrogantly claim that God is blessing us and will bless us and that He will protect us - this is what the people of Judah and Jerusalem were doing, singing “God bless Judah, land that I love,” at every baseball game. They did not “see” that they had departed from the true and living God, and consequently they did not see the judgment of God that was happening to them, even as Isaiah spoke and wrote the vision that he saw.

We see this phenomenon in the Major and Minor prophets. God’s prophets see what others don’t see, including what the rulers and religious leaders don’t see; many of the kings and religious leaders and other “prophets”  attacked and persecuted God’s prophets; killing some, ostracizing others, and even viewing the Word of God through the prophets as treasonous - after all, prophesying God’s judgment can be demoralizing to a nation - at least a nation that refuses to repent.

When the writer of the NT book of Hebrews talks about the men and women of faith in Hebrews Chapter 11, he points out that these women and men saw life differently than their contemporaries; an essential element of faith is seeing the invisible, having a different kind of sight; it is wearing corrective vision and not looking at what is apparent but at what is not apparent - to the point where what is not apparent to others becomes apparent to the men and women who are pursuing God and His ways and His Word. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians Chapter 4, we are looking not at the visible but the invisible, for the visible is temporal while the invisible is eternal.

God through Isaiah paints a bleak picture of Judah and Jerusalem, He paints a picture that few people saw, a picture that most people rejected when they heard it. Isaiah was in the minority but he was not afraid to speak God’s Word and live according to that Word.

What do we see today? As we read Isaiah Chapter One, are there similarities between what Isaiah saw and what we see in our nation, in the world?

Oh God, help us to see as You see, and to live according to Your Word in Jesus Christ.