"DARKNESS FOR LIGHT!"

Isaiah 5:18-23                              (ESV)
"18 Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes,
19 who say: "Let him be quick, let him speed his work that we may see it; let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near, and let it come, that we may know it!"
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 shrewd in their own sight!
22 Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink,
23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!"



When I was growing up, the word  "WOE" was something you said to a horse to get it to STOP moving.  When Isaiah uses the word "WOE", his meaning is to get people to STOP what they were doing, to acknowledge that there is a GOD who will judge us one day, and SOON!  We seem to have a picture in our minds of GOD being an "ALMIGHTY TEDDY BEAR" who might slap us on the wrist for our "shortcomings", when the TRUTH is, GOD is a RIGHTEOUS judge who CANNOT abide sin (Habakkuk 1:13).

We seem to have this mentality that we are TOO WISE to ever make a mistake, that if we choose sin, that GOD must have made us that way?  But Jeremiah 17:9 says "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick (wicked!); who can understand it?"  Isaiah lived about 3,000 years ago, yet he saw plenty of deceit and evilness in his time.  The six verses above say more about the great deceiver's plan to replace GOD's Perfect Plan with his camouflaged actions that many are implementing unknowingly.

The enemy (great deceiver) will cause MANY to be blinded to the truth according to 2 Corinthians 4:4, which says "In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of CHRIST, who is the image of GOD!"  One of his most effective tools is getting us so caught up with moving at the pace of "this world" that we don't allow time to hear from the GOD of Creation about how we need to live our lives.   Psalms 46:10 not only says to "BE STILL", it also says "AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD"!!!  Most of us won't take the time to read our Bible's on a daily basis or even commune with the Creator of the Universes (prayer time) for even 15 minutes a day!  The only thing necessary for total darkness to occur is to remove all light!

Remembering my childhood, we were taught a song called "This Little Light of Mine".  The second verse goes something like this, "Hide it (my light) under a bushel, NO!, I'm gonna let it shine!"  It is becoming more and more acceptable, and maybe even preferred, to consent to "DARKNESS FOR LIGHT"!  Either we don't want to offend, or we are ill-equipped to go to battle with the forces of evil?  While "this world" continues to devolve into the "end-times", I , for one, will do everything I can to not allow "DARKNESS FOR LIGHT" to occur on my watch!  I will not allow my light to be kept under a bushel!!