Exhortation

In today’s sermon text, Isaiah delivers a cryptic oracle to Edom, the sons of Esau and inhabitants of Mount Seir. But Edom is not called Edom. It is called “Dumah,” a pun on Edom that means “silence.”

That pun summarizes the oracle. A voice asks a night watchman the hour of night. He says only that morning will come but also the night, but that’s hardly new information. Everyone knows that. Yahweh warns Edom that He will fall silent. When they inquire about the future, they get no answer.

We think that inquiry into the future is the province of horoscopes and palm-readers and mediums. But we all live by forecasts of the future because our actions today depend on what we expect tomorrow . We all have our crystal balls, though they may toss around statistics and sound scientific. We all depend on night watchman to tell us when night will end.

The God who is Beginning and End is the only reliable guide to the future. We don’t know what might happen tomorrow, but we know the overall trajectory of everything: Jesus Christ reigns to sum up all things in Himself and the Spirit fills the earth with the knowledge of God, until the day when God is all in all. We have enough light for our next step and to keep us from tripping.

Confusion about the future is one of the ways God judges people and nations. When Saul turned from Yahweh, he could not get direction from dreams or visions or priestly oracles. He went to a witch. If we want dawn instead of endless night, we must walk in the Spirit and regularly confess the sins that blind us.