“Come near, you nations, and listen; pay attention, you peoples! Let the earth hear, and all that is in it, the world, and all that comes out of it!” Isaiah 34:1 NIV
I’ll never forget sitting in grade school, peering out the window and daydreaming of the soon to be coming time of recess. Time to be out of the confines of the classroom, time to be out of the grasp of scholarly authority, and time to run free with my friends. But then it would happen, that voice from somewhere in the near proximity that had spied my mental drifting would call me back to reality with three sharp words…Dan, pay attention! The funny thing about our mental drifting is we only seem to drift in the direction of our true inner desires. We drift towards our personal gratification, we drift towards our selfish satisfaction, we drift towards what we want, when we want it. You see, the daydreaming doesn’t stop after grade school, high school, or even college, it continues on well into adulthood. So, the question then stands…as you are drifting off into your own world today, dreaming of your own personal recess, who calls for you to pay attention to what's really important?
The message Isaiah is delivering for the Lord in chapter 34 is anything but a message of sugar and sunshine. The Lord is observing a world that has forgone Him as Almighty God. He is observing a people that have replaced Him with other gods of their choosing. False gods they have concocted in their own mental drifting, worshipping idols made not just of their own self-serving minds, but of their own self-serving hands. They have even gone so far as to drift off into worshipping themselves, that is, placing sexual desires and physical lust above any other law, drifting off into what pleases their flesh. And as God observes this great sinful drift, He delivers powerful words to the world, words that echo off the walls of today, words that will always be needed to call prideful and arrogant souls back to their God and creator….pay attention!
But just exactly what is God calling us to pay attention to? Well, God in his glorious simplicity makes it oh so easy for us to understand. And He informs us only 15 verses later in the very same chapter...simply pay attention to His Words.
“Seek from the book of the Lord and read.” Isaiah 34:16 NASB
But yet in a curious complexity this raises another question, how can you truly pay attention to something that you know nothing about? Do you know what the Word of God says? Do you truly know its messages? And I don’t mean just being able to rattle off 4 of the 10 commandments and that Jonah was swallowed by a big fish. Do you really know God’s Word? If your honest answer is no, then God’s instruction here in Isaiah 34 applies…pay attention. We live in a nation that is blessed to have easy and legal access to Bibles, something not all nations enjoy. Pick up the nearest one, crack it open, and start reading. After all, how can you pay attention to the Word of God if you don’t even know what it says? And contrary to whatever the modern religious establishment has told you, this is not the job of your pastor, Bible teacher, deacon, church elder, or priest, that is, to spoon feed you the Word of God once a week or once a month whenever you decide to go to church. It is your job to preach the Word of God into your own heart each and every day.
For many new readers of the 5MC (the 5 minute challenge), you might have wondered what it is and how it came about. For just this very reason, a reason that holds a special place on the home page of the entire site, the mission statement of the 5 minute challenge. “A resource encouraging all to grow in God daily through study of His Word.” The 5 minute challenge is simply this, read your Bible for 5 minutes a day every day for 30 days in a row. The 5 minute challenge stands for you today, to create a pattern of daily time reading, studying, understanding, and then doing what the Word of God instructs you to do. And as you ponder this request, this request to seek out and read God’s Word…also ponder it’s origin…directly from the pages of God’s Word…pay attention indeed.
“Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every Word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4
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