February 8-12, 2010

His watchmen are blind,
All of them know nothing.
All of them are dumb dogs unable to bark,
Dreamers lying down, who love to slumber;
Isaiah 56:9



Walking through the book of Isaiah is like hiking the mountain trails here in Phoenix. With each crest of a mountaintop you see the same thing in a distance from a slightly different angle, and yet each peak has a distinct personality. Through Isaiah, God tries every way He can to show Judah and Jerusalem their sin, as well as to show them the benefits of obedience. YHWH continually defines the ways that bring His hand of blessings. Justice and righteousness are a MUST.

I have often heard it said that life isn’t fair. I’ve also heard the retort, “God never said life would be fair!” Reality is that if we all followed God’s laws and walked in His ways, fairness would be the natural order of things. God’s ways are COMPLETELY fair; disobedience has a way of botching up the works like a whirlwind in a paper factory!!! When we don’t know God’s ways, and selfishness blinds the eyes, fairness and right judgments are perverted! God’s directive to “preserve justice, and do righteousness” can only be fulfilled when we know His heart as He has revealed it through His Word!

In oriental culture, it is the father’s responsibility to ensure that the laws that govern them are handed down to his children. God made this expressly clear when He told the people at Mt. Sinai:

You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house on your gates, so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens remain above the earth. Deuteronomy 11:18-20

But, unfortunately, God’s people had become ignorant. Over and over we see that they have been overtaken by their desires to have things their way. Fathers fail to teach their children God’s standard of right and wrong, while the leaders fail to stand up for what is right and just. They close their eyes and enjoy a dream world that is untouched by reality. As a result, they refuse to see the destruction that is looming right before their eyes!!!

This week we also are made aware of God’s plan to bring a legal name change to several places. We are not unfamiliar with this phenomenon. It is interesting to read the Jewish perspective of names. Rather than my retelling of their thoughts, let me give you a quote from A Book of Jewish Concepts by Philip Birnbaum (NAMES, page 616)

The relation of name to thing plays an important part in the story of creation. Name and thing are one. “When the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called any living creature, that was to be its name” (Genesis 2:19). That is, man would establish his dominion over the creatures of the earth by giving them names. To know the name is to know the essence of a thing; to know is to have power over the object. Adam’s utterance of the names of the beasts put those beasts in subjection to him.

The close relationship between man and women is conveyed by Adam’s utterance: “She shall be called woman, for from man she has been take.” This sets forth the social and moral relationship between man and woman. Since the woman is formed out of the man’s rib, she depends upon him; it is her duty to be at hand, ready at all times to be a help to her husband; it is the husband’s natural duty ever to defend and cherish his wife as part of his own self. In Biblical times, the names of persons were not only significant, but their meaning was know to those who spoke Hebrew.

Names are not merely tags; they are identifications of relationships or status. We are familiar with Abraham, Sarah, and Jacob’s encounter with the Almighty. As God brought change to their lives, He also brought change to their names. Naming or changing ones name showed God’s authority and ownership over that individual. Sometimes God named an individual before birth, and at other times He changed their names later on in life. I’m sure you can recall several times in the Bible when God announced a child would be born and He said, “And you shall call his name….” In each instance, God claimed ownership of the one to come before he was even born.

In other instances, names clearly signal a change in character, such as in Jacob’s name being changed to Israel. This week we encounter several name changes.

Zion (“Defence” or “Fortress”) –
Previous names and titles –
Azubah – “Forsaken”
Shemamah – “Desolate”

New names and titles
“City of the Lord” and “Zion of the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 60:13)
Hephzibah (“My delight is in her”) and Beulah (“Married”) (Isaiah 62:4)

Daughters of Zion
New names and titles
“The holy people, the redeemed of the Lord”
“Sought out, a city not forsaken.”

Did you notice that there were multiple changes in Zion’s name; but why? Zion’s new names reveal new relationships not only with God, but also with the nations around her. It is one thing to convince those that love you that you’ve changed, but it’s another to convince those that despise you that you are not the same. The nations will see that Zion’s change was not the result of self-made determination, but because of a right relationship with her God. God has established His dominion over His creation and His Lordship over His bride and the world stands in awe of the love affair.

With all this in mind, we may want to ask ourselves, “By what name would people refer to us if they were open enough to reveal their thoughts?” Would our relationship with God be found in their descriptive title? And if you were to give yourself a name, what would you call yourself? But most of all, do you know how God refers to you? By what name does He identify you? May we be careful as we traverse the word path of Isaiah and look for the signposts that bear our name.