{"id":7208,"date":"2020-11-27T22:06:24","date_gmt":"2020-11-28T04:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=5347"},"modified":"2020-11-27T22:06:24","modified_gmt":"2020-11-28T04:06:24","slug":"devotional-on-isaiah-111","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-isaiah-111\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Isaiah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 1280px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-YfS9Yva1LOE\/X8A19FfsmSI\/AAAAAAABHsE\/abYQ1ijkaVAa12C7mHmqSaMIWZe5M4rOgCPcBGAsYHg\/s1280\/Mo%2BRanch%2BHunt%2BTx%2B11-28-2006%2B11-44-11%2BAM.JPG\" width=\"1280\" height=\"960\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Texas Hill Country &#8211; 2006<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nFree will and accountability<br \/>\nIsaiah 8: No, we\u2019re going to study the Scriptures.<br \/>\nWhile telling of future events wasn&#8217;t the major job of most prophets, it\u2019s the one we immediately think of when we think of the work of the prophets.  Actually, these men of God mostly &#8220;forth-told&#8221; rather than &#8220;fore-told.&#8221;  Even when they speak of the future it\u2019s often spoken of in a conditional way: &#8220;If you do this, then that will happen; if you do that, then this will happen.&#8221;  In fact, a major theme of these men of God is to remind the people of their free will.  That doesn&#8217;t mean God is helpless, but it does mean, at least in this context, that the Lord allows people the freedom to decide, and then makes them accountable for their decisions.  As Isaiah goes about proclaiming what\u2019s coming if these people stay on the road they\u2019re on, people say to him, &#8220;When I want to know what&#8217;s coming, I&#8217;ll go to a fortune teller or hold a s\u00e9ance.&#8221;  Isaiah says, &#8220;If you want to know what\u2019s coming, take a look in the Scriptures.&#8221;  He isn\u2019t saying that the Scriptures contain some kind of secret road map to the future.  Instead, he\u2019s saying that there\u2019s plenty of evidence in the Scriptures that God won\u2019t forever put up with their foolishness.  Repeatedly, in the Scriptures, the Lord has warned them and it doesn&#8217;t take some supernatural experience to see what\u2019s coming.  Talk about a timeless truth, this is one!  Today, I don\u2019t need a fortune teller.  There&#8217;s plenty of information already available to me in the Bible about how God responds to sin and rebellion.  If I insist on ignoring God I don&#8217;t need a crystal ball to know what\u2019s coming.<br \/>\nTake Away: The Bible is quite clear as to the intentions of the Lord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Free will and accountability Isaiah 8: No, we\u2019re going to study the Scriptures. While telling of future events wasn&#8217;t the major job of most prophets, it\u2019s the one we immediately think of when we think of the work of the prophets. Actually, these men of God mostly &#8220;forth-told&#8221; rather than &#8220;fore-told.&#8221; Even when they speak [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1502,7],"tags":[21,131,373,381,871],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7208"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7208"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14924,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7208\/revisions\/14924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}