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 39-42.

    My first thought when I read where this passage talks about Clearing the way for the Lord and how transient people are was about how so often we set aside God’s directions for human ideas. Time and again I have heard people in the Church say that a particular passage, which they do not like, was written in a “different time”. They will say that life was different then, or the culture was different. Those passages no longer apply because people have changed. However, God knows how people change over time and His commands and instructions cut through the mountains and valleys of culture. God’s word will straighten the curves and fill in the rough places of human culture. If we follow the Scripture we will see that they clear a path through the wilderness of the culture around us.

    What I wrote in that previous paragraph is a bit of a stretch from the message I think the writer meant to convey, but it is consistent with what he wrote later in this passage. He tells us that the words of Scripture go back to before the world began. I do not think he means that literally. What it means to me is that the commands given in Scripture, the instructions in those passages which some of us dislike, are expressions of God’s intent from before He made the first human. The author addresses the idea that people have changed, that culture has changed, so that those passages no longer apply in chapter 41 verses 21-24. Those “changes” that supposedly invalidate the words of God are no more than idols. They are unable to tell us what is going to happen in the future. In fact, their very premise is that they cannot tell us what is going to happen in the future. Worse than that, those “new” ideas are unable to make things better now. They fail to show us a path into the future, and they fail to aid us today.