The Scapegoat

He laid his heavy hands on you,
and so you went
alone, outside the camp.

I wonder if you stumbled down
a cloudy mount,
for this day's full of clouds,

Cloaks for things we cannot see,
we cannot see.
I wonder, do you live?

And as you roamed that wasted land
or cloudy mount,
did your heart burn for home?

And did you bear my sins away?
My heart recoils
as I smell still crackling fat.

Azazel.

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. [...]
 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

“This is the covenant that I will make with them

after those days, declares the Lord:

I will put my laws on their hearts,

and write them on their minds,”

then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:1-4, 11-23)

**picture from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Holman_Hunt_-_The_Scapegoat.jpg

On a River in a Valley

Morn after morn

the sun comes blood red
over the mount

to the Valley of Trouble,

Muddy and turbid.

Lamb after lamb -

You break its neck, and it breaks your knees

to stand in the land with your hands

Covered in blood of the innocent dead.

The acid stains eat at your peace,

Feast at your peace with God,

and burn up your skin

into festering sores.

What hope is there

for the leprous soul,

the adulterous soul,

the traitor of God?

“Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

The blood of the Son flows in rivers of red,

as He drowns in the wrath of God.

His heart is spilling,

Dousing the sinning in

Cleansing blood.

“I AM WILLING!”

He rises and

the Valley of Achor

is a door of Hope.

Zephaniah and an Unexpected Song

     We grow up performing, and we want to be safe and shameless. Though we don't trust Him or seek Him, we, like tired virgins, lie to ourselves, ignoring the judgment we know we deserve, the judgment that is coming upon all men (3:1-2, 1:12). Because of the very nature of performance, a fake, outward layer of “goodness” keeps us from the joy of being fully known and totally loved. He weeps and wants us to come close to Him, but so often we reject an offer so precious. His jealousy burns and will bring a just holocaust, a fiery jealousy and flaming wrath that will consume the whole earth (1:17-18, 2:1-2). Like self-righteous Judah, we may think we'll escape His wrath and that our false hopes will give us good, but such people will stand with the Pharisees, estranged and outside of His sacred camp forever, unclean.

      Our idols cannot save us. He will “famish all the gods of the earth” and they will bow before Him (2:11). Will those whom He will famish satiate our hunger? In a delusive security, we have shamelessly exulted in ourselves and the gods we have made and said in our hearts, “I am, and there is no one else.” How dare I. How dare you. How dare we.

      The I Am who is Everything will not let us mock Him with a crown of thorns forever. He will pour out His indignation, all His burning anger, and consume the whole earth in the fire of His jealousy (3:8).

      And then He will sing, over me, over you, over us. He will save, drawing the lame to Himself, humbling the “proudly exultant ones,” and putting a song of joy in the souls of the needy, for while we were still sinners Christ died for us (3:11-20, Rom. 5:8). What we truly need is safety from His wrath and whole nearness to Him. Sinners who come to Christ are safe, secure, cared for, known and unashamed. The LORD, the I Am, takes away all of the judgment against us by placing it on the back of His precious Son, and in Jesus our Hope is secure. So much more than our defeated gods, our Jesus can save and He does save. He is with us, knowing yet loving, knowing and loving, singing an unexpected song of pleasure in His children. His voice must be so strong and so tender, so fierce and so pure, so full and so golden. In open Calvaried arms of immovable love, we are quiet and at peace. His "heart is a song that our Jesus sings."*

*from Showbread's "Sing Me to Sleep"

The Righteousness of God in Isaiah

    God has given us a treasure of unexpected righteousness. It’s a righteousness that will break your heart with joy, like a sunrise after a moonless night, like a crocus at winter’s end. It blossoms so beautiful that it seems untrue, but it’s utterly true. He has told us in Isaiah (and in all His Scriptures) and He cannot lie.
    This righteousness doesn’t come from us and it never could. He looks for righteousness in us, the people He’s made and has ever only shown good, but He finds none (Isaiah 5:7). Isaiah paints a bleak picture of us. So lost are we in our unrighteousness that “all (absolutely all) our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (64:6). We make ourselves our own gods, thinking we can decide what is good, we who are “wise in [our] own eyes” (5:21). Like the king of Babylon, our pomp will bring us to Hell (14:11). God taunts the Jews, who are just as wicked at heart as the nations around them, and we are no better than they are, wearing our proud crowns atop our kingly heads, decking ourselves in fading flowers that are nothing to Him and His beauty (28:1, 5). Isaiah exposes us as not only wicked, but foolishly wicked, irrational in our idolatry. The things we choose to worship are “less than nothing” and make us an “abomination” just like them (42:24). Worshiping things that are not gods, things we make into gods, as if such things could ever be above us and bless us, we “feed on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?’” (44:20). But “there is no other god besides [Him], a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides [Him]” (45:21).
    And a righteous God He is indeed. He is not like our idols and not like us. The Holy God “shows Himself holy in righteousness” (5:16). Isaiah reveals a zealous God who punishes the prideful and unrighteous nations, laying low the lofty idols and counselors of Egypt (19:1), defiling the “pompous pride of all glory” of Tyre (23:9). Against the fallen glory of the nations, the judgment of even the entire earth, the world hears “of glory to the Righteous One” (24:16). Such a glory is darkness for the unrighteous ones against whom the LORD sets Himself.
    And somehow the Sun of Righteousness rises with healing in His wings.* It seems contradictory that a righteous God could rule and that such a rule could be good for us. How can Isaiah write of the result of righteousness as peace, quietness, and trust (32:17-18) in a world where “no one does good, not even one?”** Christ sits on the throne of David with a scepter of righteousness in His hand (9:7), justice and righteousness, which go hand in hand, and yet this King with righteousness about His waist brings good to the poor of the earth, as if the poor were not unrighteous (11:4-5). But it is not that the poor are more righteous than any other. It is that Jesus comes for the poor, to save those who come to Him with no righteousness of their own and who know that God is the only savior, the only one who can bear the burden of our sin (43:11, 46:4).*** In Isaiah, righteousness and salvation are meaningfully linked; the author sets the two against one another as parallels. When His righteousness draws near, His salvation also goes out (46:12-13, 54:5-8). He “speaks in righteousness, mighty to save” (63:1). The climactic consolation of Isaiah (or at the very least one of them) is that, when there was no hope for us in ourselves, “the righteous one, my servant, [makes] many to be accounted righteous, and He shall bear their iniquities” (53:11). How beautiful is Jesus! God in His righteousness does not only judge us in our lack; He brings His righteousness near to us, decking us out in a robe of righteousness and garments of salvation, the imputed righteousness of our Savior, “as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels” (61:10). To His glory (60:21), we wear this radiant righteousness and burning salvation, no more cast off, polluted and poor as we are in ourselves, and we are delighted in by God, our God who justifies the ungodly (62:1-5).**** “I will greatly rejoice in LORD; my soul shall exult in my God” (61:10).
   
*Malachi 4:2 and Charles Wesley’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” ESV
**Romans 3:12, ESV
***Matthew 11:28, ESV
****Romans 3:26, ESV