ISAIAH 20<\/b><\/p>\n
At that time the Lord spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, \u201cTake off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.\u201d And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot<\/i><\/p>\n
(Isaiah 20:2)<\/i>.<\/p>\n
It was bad enough that Isaiah, son of one of the leading families in Israel, had become a radically zealous preacher of the law of God. The \u201cchurch\u201d of his day did not want to hear all this talk about law and judgment; they wanted to hear about grace and love, and to feel \u201cjoy, joy, joy\u201d down in their hearts. Then Isaiah started going around wearing sackcloth, as if he were in poverty and mourning. Finally, in the people\u2019s opinion, he went too far: He roamed the streets barefoot and naked\u2014for three years (Isaiah 20:4.)<\/p>\n
The liberals of his day laughed at Isaiah; after all, they said, Isaiah was representative of all Bible-believing fanatics. Those who were the most offended by Isaiah were the respectable conservatives who felt that his weird behavior compromised their witness. But in fact, it was God who had told Isaiah to do these things.<\/p>\n
Isaiah\u2019s action was an example of \u201cprophetic theater,\u201d a symbolic action designed to drive home a point. The prophets sometimes did bizarre things to dramatize the fact that God meant business. Ezekiel refused to speak for several years, except to shake his fist and yell denunciations at a picture he had drawn of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 3:24\u20134:8). John, the Forerunner, publicly denounced Herod and lost his head. Jesus Christ made a whip and drove thieves out of God\u2019s House.<\/p>\n
In addition to prophetic theater, the prophets communicated God\u2019s Word in three other major ways. One was the sermon, an address to the faithful designed to teach God\u2019s Word, to encourage them in godliness, and to reprove their sin. Another was the prophetic oracle. An oracle is a prophecy of coming events, of which there are two kinds. The oracle of woe prophesies that disaster is coming because of the sins of the people, while the oracle of weal predicts that after the disaster, God will again restore and bless His people. Finally, the prophets communicated God\u2019s Word by describing visions that God gave them. Much of the books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah feature such visions.<\/p>\n
CORAM DEO<\/b><\/p>\n
Psalms 139\u2013141<\/p>\n
1 Corinthians 10:1\u201313<\/p>\n
Are you embarrassed by the fact that some Christians today feel called to take visible public stands against abortion, even picketing and sitting outside abortion chambers? Is it possible that these people, by engaging in \u201cprophetic theater,\u201d are helping wake up our society to the holocaust around us? Don\u2019t be too quick to condemn.<\/p>\n
For further study: Mark 8:38 \u2022 Romans 1:16 \u2022 Philippians 1:20 \u2022 2 Timothy 1:8<\/i><\/p>\n
friday<\/p>\n
august<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISAIAH 20 At that time the Lord spoke through Isaiah son of Amoz. He said to him, \u201cTake off the sackcloth from your body and the sandals from your feet.\u201d And he did so, going around stripped and barefoot (Isaiah 20:2). It was bad enough that Isaiah, son of one of the leading families in … Continue reading “THE METHODS OF THE PROPHET”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}