Isaiah on Tuesday - Wrong Priorities

It's very easy to get going in the wrong direction and once we've started it's hard to make a course correction. We find Israel on just such a trajectory in Isaiah 5:8-30. As if the "Vintner's Lament"(v.1-7) wasn't strong enough, Isaiah feels the need to explain just how off course the nation has become.

Those who have, add to what they have with endless greed. They seek only to expand the boundaries of their hedonism. Great banquets are held and musicians are hired, yet no thanks is given for the bounty, the music is in praise of themselves. Worship is given to wine and the works of their hand and nothing is left for the One who gives it.

The priorities and worldview of this people has become so inverted that Isaiah has them living in a Bizzaro Israel:

20"Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.

²¹ Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
and clever in their own sight.

²² Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine
and champions at mixing drinks,

²³ who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
but deny justice to the innocent.

Everything that should be, isn't and everything that is, shouldn't be. For this reason, Isaiah says they will be overcome by their enemies and overcome.

The lesson for us is not to follow in Israel's path. I have no doubt that it was a gradual decline and inversion that occurred, not a sudden rebellion or upheaval. When going a short distance, a one degree deviation will not take one far from the destination. In a long journey, however, one degree can bring one hundreds of miles off course. In our faith journey, we must be making constant course corrections as the world draws our focus and our priorities in the wrong direction. It is a daily (if not more frequent!) struggle to avoid the fate of Isaiah's Israel.