the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 3 of 5
Isaiah 3:16-26; ; Isaiah 4:1-6
Vv. 18-23 teach the girls amongst us that the refinements of fashion did not begin in our time. Is there not something extremely unbearable – and also extremely ridiculous (see the end of v. 16) – about this excessive obsession with one’s person, this seeking after the attention and admiration of other people? God appears in 4:4 to bring together all these trinkets and toiletries bluntly giving them the same label: "the filth of the daughters of Zion" (Isaiah 4:4). Does that mean that a Christian woman should not be concerned about the way she "adorns" herself? On the contrary! And the Word even instructs her as to the way to do that. The moral adornment which pleases God is that of good works (1 Timothy 2:9-10) and a meek and quiet spirit (1 Peter 3:2-6), without losing sight of the fact that our dress is not unimportant to Him.
The intervention of the LORD on behalf of His people at the close of their history recalls His care at the beginning (cf. v. 5 with Exodus 13:21-22). It is as if He declares to them: "I have never ceased to have My eyes on you!"
Here the preface of the book ends. It has shown us the moral decay of Judah and Jerusalem and the judgments which will overtake them but it concludes with their restoration and the glory of Christ (the Branch of the LORD, the source and power of life – v. 2).
