I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Isaiah 57-59.

    The passage begins with a short explanation that sometimes the reason good people suffer an untimely death is to save them from experiencing evil later on. For those who love the Lord, death is not a terrible thing. For those people, death is not the end. They will enter into the presence of God and know peace that we can never experience in this life. It is worth noting that the prophet contrasts the untimely death of the righteous with the lives of wickedness and sin lived in an attempt to avoid what they dread and fear. Yet, in the end they will fail to escape judgment. They will experience that which they fear and dread.

    Chapter 58 contains a great summation about hypocrisy. Fasting does not serve a useful purpose if we do not use the time to examine our lives and see how we can better serve God. God does not want us to fast, or pray, or go to Church, or any of many other things for themselves. Going to Church and worshiping God are good things, but if we do not come out of them inspired to care for those in need our worship is empty. I want to emphasize that this about examining our lives to see how we can feed the hungry, free the oppressed, or clothe the naked, not to condemn others for not doing so. I just realized that most of the time when people go over this passage they stop before they get to the end of this passage, where the prophet says exactly that, “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,…” Notice how he puts blaming others for doing wrong right alongside of oppressing people yourself. The writer actually expands on this in chapter 59. If we do not make our arguments with integrity, if we attempt to win with deception and lies, then God will not give us justice. Yet, God will come, indeed he has come, as a redeemer for those who repent of their sin.