Nougat 9

Firstly, I apologize for the mistakes and typos that sometimes creep into the Nougats, including the double up yesterday. Please bear with my humanity and pray me into spotting the errors when I pause to edit.

For Today’s Holy Nougat, I invite us to consider the background to CLURT.

“Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” ‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭1‬:‭9‬, ‭18‬ ‭KJV‬‬

We should have been as Sodom

The nations – rather – the kingdoms of Israel and Judah seemed to be living the best life. They were doing as they wished in the kingdoms, as though they weren’t accountable to God. God was not amused.

The chapter therefore opened with God’s case against both nations. And the comparison is made to the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. I was taken a bit further in the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative to Abraham’s intervention and intercession – the remnant wasn’t there. The nation faced what we would probably refer today as a devastating volcanic eruption (of God’s wrath). Nothing and no one escaped, save for Lot and his two daughters – and they weren’t natives.

The destruction of Israel and Judah however, was not as total or ‘violent’. The prophet said there was a remnant. This remnant were worshippers of YHWH, and their commitment and adherence to God’s laws and precepts. God was in the midst of sharing God’s disgust, yet God offered a way out.

CLURT was the way out, and it was God’s way of keeping faith with the promise to David and to the remnant. Otherwise, they might have met the fate of Sodom.

Siblings, the current age in which we live also features heights of blasphemy, evil deeds and sin. We have failed to keep God as Sovereign over our lives; we do what pleases us and often are not readily distinct from the rest of the world.

If we were to follow even the basic manifestations of global warming and the climate crisis; it is easy to see that, once again, we’re at peril’s point. There’s talk about 2030, and between tsunamis, flood, droughts, and other disasters, we could see ourselves moving toward our own replication of Sodom and Gomorrah. But God invites us to CLURT.

We’re invited, mess and all, by God to intercede for our nations. We plead for our nations to be spared until the day of judgement. We pray for the remnant to rise up and live for God as we have been called. We pray that the remnant would be as courageous as Abraham. We reason the matter with God, recognizing that it is possible that God will have mercy.

We should be as Sodom, but for God’s grace. Come as we are; Come let us reason with our God.

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May all we seek be found in Christ