Day 24: The Solution to Pollution (Bible Tribe Isaiah 19–24) - Denise Pass

Good morning, friends! Day Twenty-Four! Standards shift in an ever-changing culture formed from man’s ways. Don’t allow yourself to become polluted. Hold to God’s standard even though this world can be so alluring. Pollution happens over time and is hard to heal. The solution to pollution is to saturate your mind with God’s word which will help you to keep yourself pure and to follow God’s ways, not man’s.

Bible Reading: Isaiah 19-24

Verse of the day: Isaiah 24:5, “The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant.”

Word of the day: Polluted. It is the Hebrew word: חָנֵף (khaw-nafe’).

This word means: Profaneness, defiled; to be corrupt; to make godless. It literally means to incline from the right. In Aramaic, according to the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, the root means “to act falsely toward,” “act with hypocrisy”.

The Solution is God’s Word

Isaiah has been delivering the oracles of judgement from God for the sins of the nations and peoples. And in chapter 24, we see this judgment is for the whole earth. Nothing and no one escapes God’s judgement. Let’s read verse 5 with 6 in the ESV translation: “The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few men are left.”

Sometimes people think this is because we pollute the earth with trash, but friends, while littering is really sad and not stewarding our earth is important, that is not the point in this passage. God wants His people to recognize that they bring the pain and sorrow into this world and their own lives because of their deference to sin and lack of submission to God and His word.

Idols pollute us. Immorality pollutes us. The world’s values pollute us. Shall what has been purified become polluted again?

Application

• • • • • Refraining from pollution in our own lives will take intentionality on our part.
        • The music we listen to, the words we read and what we view with our eyes – the senses are the gate to our soul. Guard them wisely.

        Go with God and His precious word, friends! Join us tomorrow in the book of Psalms.