WHO DO YOU BELONG TO?

Isaiah. 1:2-20

There are times you can ask a child, Whose child are you and you usually get the answer, My daddy is or I am the son of so and so. I asked a lady, Who do you belong to, and she quickly said, "to God." On and on you can ask questions like this and you get many answers.

Isaiah said the ox instinctively knows his owner, and the donkey his masters crib, but Israel does not recognize me as Lord, my people does not consider or understand.

What a terrible indictment to be brought against a people. We try to teach family loyalty to our children and rightly we should, It is a sad day when you have a child that says I no longer want to live by your rules and you are no longer to tell me what to do.

A brother pastor once told me of his sixteen-year-old daughter simply telling him you are too strict on me and I am  no longer going to abide by your teachings. She left home and within the first week she was picked up and put in jail in a large cold city jail. Shortly after she called her dad and said, "I'm sorry for the pain I have caused you and mom." She said later, "I never knew there was such a place and such people in the world as I met while I was in jail."

Have we sheltered our children so much because we love them so much? Should we use the tough love method and let them feel what sin will do to them? Most of us would give our lives for our children.

Does God sound like a loving and caring Father when we read what He inspired Isaiah to write Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with iniquity (sin), offspring of evil doers, sons who deal corruptly. They have forsaken the Lord.

Recently a person said, I just don't know what is going on in the world. There are many taking their lives using drugs and alcohol, people taking the lives of their own children by tying them into cars and turning the car loose into the lake, one man cut the head of his son off, a stepfather admits to incest with his stepdaughter. What causes people to do the things they are doing today?

Does the Bible really have an answer to this troubled world today? Again Isaiah tells us , They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised and shown contempt and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger, they have become utterly estranged-alienated.

He tells us something that should shake all of us, Why should you be stricken and punished any longer, since it brings no correction. You will revolt more and more. The whole head is  sick, and the whole heart is faint (feeble, sick and nauseated)) from the sole of the feet even to the head there is no soundness or health in the nation.

Our heavenly Father loves us very much but continue to sin and after a while chastisement will cease and look what happens when a people had not the loving care and protection of the Father who cares.