Isaiah 1
The name Isaiah means “the Lord is salvation.”This book is the book of Salvation. Written between 740-680 BC the first 39 chapters is a call to God’s people to repent and the last 27 chapters contain a message of forgiveness from God and the hope of the coming Messiah. Isaiah had upwards of a 60 year ministry as a prophet who loved his nation and God’s people passionately. Tradition has it that he was martyred for his beliefs under the reign of King Manasseh.
Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow, v17.
Isaiah today would not just choose the fatherless and the widow. He would choose those who are unpopular, the unemployed and the unemployable, brain-damaged, the parents with wayward children, the broken families, the unrespectables, the HIV victims.
This is the heart of God.
People ask me all the time, where is God in suffering? My answer: where are you?
Last year in a village near Chennai, India, a local official identified as S. Kandaswamy, summoned the courage to rescue the captives in his own community. He organized a raid against a brick kiln where 143 families, a total of 522 people, had been kept as slaves. Police under his direction freed the labourers, commandeered a local high school to provide them with health care, and arrested the owner of the brick kiln. On that day hundreds of men, women, and children who had been robbed of their God-given dignity had been set free.
God was there.
God is where you are. Will you stand up for the outcasts? If you do you will know His presence and the world will see Him.
Missions Paul 