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Isaiah 25:1-3    O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvellous things, things planned long ago.  You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin, the foreigners’ stronghold a city no more; it will never be rebuilt.  Therefore strong peoples will honour you; cities of ruthless nations will revere you.
It is sad to reflect on these verses; especially the last one: “Therefore strong peoples will honour you; cities of ruthless nations will revere you.”

The Prophet’s logical syllogism is impeccable:

Major Premise: God’s Personhood is matchless.  His proven attributes of ‘perfect faithfulness’, ‘worker of miracles’ (‘marvellous things’ – cf Psalm 77:11, 14, where the same Hebrew word, ‘pele’, is translated ‘miracle’), and Planner/Controller of all history;
Minor Premise: God’s demonstrated power over the wicked schemes of sinful mankind and the evidence of his track record of justice in his judgement on man’s rebellion;
Conclusion: “Therefore strong peoples will honour you; cities of ruthless nations will revere you.”

But throughout Scripture we see the effect of sin in man, making us blind to this logic.

(We see it in John 9 in Jesus’ healing of the man born blind:
Major Premise: only God can give sight;
Minor Premise: Jesus gave sight to the man born blind;
Conclusion: Jesus is God – but the Jewish leaders were determined to reject the conclusion, so they had to get rid of the evidence of the Minor Premise by kicking the man out of their sight.  This is the basis of Jesus’ condemnation of them in verse 41 – “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see [and therefore are stuck with the clear evidence before you], your guilt remains.”

The sad thing for me is that we see this same scenario working itself out in the path secular humanism is leading us along today.  Instead of taking a clear, honest look at where we are heading with increasing speed, and bowing before our marvellous, faithful Creator in repentance-and-faith and exalting him in his due reverence and praise, we are bent on ‘getting rid of the evidence’ by taking every opportunity to silence the proclamation of his Word of Truth.

But the ‘saddest’ thing of all is that he will have the final word, and on the Day of Judgement, when “at the name of Jesus every knee WILL bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ IS Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11), and the conclusion of Isaiah’ syllogism will be seen by everyone to be correct, for too many it will be too late.
– Bruce Christian