Daily Devotional • December 2
A Reading from Isaiah 1:10-20
10 Hear the word of the Lord,
you rulers of Sodom!
Listen to the teaching of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats.
12 When you come to appear before me,
who asked this from your hand?
Trample my courts no more;
13 bringing offerings is futile;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
17 learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.
18 Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
you shall eat the good of the land;
20 but if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured by the sword;
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Meditation
God, in Isaiah, asks the rhetorical question, “What will happen to your sins of scarlet and crimson? Will they be washed clean?” With a sense of almost impossibility, the question is asked, but years later the question finds its response.
There is a “scarlet thread” throughout scripture. From the moment, God killed the first animal to cover over Adam and Eve’s nakedness at the Fall, to the sacrifice of the ram God provided in lieu of Isaac, to the blood on the doorframes at the Exodus, to the many sacrifices in the temple. So much blood, so much sacrifice until, ultimately, at the cross, the God-Man speaks redemption to us through the spilling of His own blood.
Many hymn writers have honed in on the beautiful, ultimate reality of Christ’s blood and our cleansing. Elvina M. Hall proclaims, “I’ll wash my garments white in the blood of Calvary’s lamb … Sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow,” and William Cowper famously writes, “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins; And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.” Astonishingly, the sprinkled blood of Jesus speaks (Hebrews 12:24) its response to Isaiah’s question and our scarlet sins are washed clean by His crimson blood.
If you are all too aware of the scarlet nature of your sins, join me in praising God through the words of this hymn, the “Scarlet Threat”:
Oh, what love poured out across the ages
All of heaven’s kindness running red
Oh, what mercy there upon the pages
All God’s children praise the weaver of the scarlet thread
Melissa Amber Patton is a Pittsburgh native, a writer, and an M.Div. student at Trinity Anglican Seminary. She is currently the music leader at Mosaic Anglican Church in Imperial, Pennsylvania and is pursuing ordination with the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Kitale – The Anglican Church of Kenya
All Saints Church, Chevy Chase, Maryland
