Isaiah 24:2

When I look at the heading for chapter 24 of Isaiah yesterday, I expected it to start with ‘the judgment of…’. I was right. However, this chapter was a little different in that the heading was ‘the judgment of the earth’. It is like Isaiah has spent the last 10 chapters outlining the destruction of various nations in the contemporary world, and then in chapter 24 generalizes and says that really the whole earth is going down, or ‘fading away’.

This is obviously a prophecy of the end of the age. A prophecy of the very last days when the whole earth will be destroyed and we will live in heaven or hell, eternal places.

God goes to great lengths to show the parity with which He judges all men (and women) in that last day.

‘And it shall be:
As with the people, so with the priest;
As with the servant, so with the master;
As with the maid, so with her mistress;
As with the buyer, so with the seller;
As with the lender, so with the borrower;
As with the creditor, so with the debtor.’ (Isaiah 24:2)

It lists many high-low relationships that men have come to recognize. God’s point is that on that last day, everyone is the same. It doesn’t matter if you have status or no status. Any earthly title or label means nothing in that last day. Note however that it doesn’t have ‘heavenly’ titles. It doesn’t say ‘as with the sinner, so with the righteous’ or ‘as with the evil, so with the pure’. All the labels are man-made. External. And in the last day, none of them will help of hinder one iota.

And so for us, the challenge is this: if God does not judge based on man-made labels, why should we? When we see a rich person and a poor person, do we make distinctions? When we see a professor and an illiterate, do we make distinctions? Yes, we do, and sometimes for good reason. For example, if we were to tell them the gospel, we would emphasise different points with the rich person than the poor person, and we would say it much simpler for the illiterate than the professor. But do we judge their importance, or their need for the gospel by their label? Well, I am inclined to believe that we do. But we should not. All men and women need the gospel equally, for all will be judged equally at the end of the age.

So today, let us not get caught up in the power-plays of this world, and the labels that man makes for itself. Let us see everyone as helpless sinners, desperately needing God’s forgiveness.