“And I will restore your judges as at the first, and your counselors as at the beginning. Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city…For you shall be ashamed of the oaks in which you delighted; and you shall blush for the gardens that you have chosen…” (Isaiah 1:26-31 NRSV).

The above prophetic statement, or rather indictment, by the prophet Isaiah virtually sets and encapsulates the pathos of what was to be the longest prophetic literature in the Old Testament. Israel’s departure from the Shema of God – “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4-5) was the onset of spiritual declension and the eventual breakdown both in their personal and national lives.

The loss of the centrality of the knowledge of God bred desires and passions that drove them further and further away from the Presence of God. They planted (“oaks in which you delighted”) and constructed (“gardens that you have chosen”) with no sense or understanding of the Lord’s heart and mind. The “oaks” will be their shame and they will blush (be embarrassed) over the “gardens.” In the loss of the knowledge of God, they took on the knowledge of their doing. They knew the works they were doing at the cost of not knowing what the Lord wanted to do. In their doing, they were becoming something apart from God’s desire and longing.

In their focus of the “oaks” and “gardens,” the city of righteousness, God’s righteousness built into His people, the locus of Israel’s redemption, was in tatters. They got their “oaks” and “gardens” but lost the City.

In the concentration of their doing, Israel forfeited what was to be her destiny – becoming what God was doing in and through them. This is the Righteousness that was to fill, shape, make, structure, arrange, design, and compact them into His City.

As it was in Israel’s great failure before such a seducing temptation, so is it the ominous crisis of the church of our time. The works in which we do, the activities we eagerly perform, and the ministry we passionately pursue have in them the subtle and forbidden power, unknowingly it may seem, that exerts a becoming in us that is unlike the Lord’s nature. We plant the “oaks” till they defines us, hold us, own us, and to the point that our “leaf withers.” The “gardens” we build advertise us, pigeonhole us, classify us, and brand us till we are “without water”. In the blind and deceived state of our sustained becoming, we can no longer participate in the creative adventure of truly becoming what the Lord is doing – becoming the City where God dwells.