{"id":9014,"date":"2024-08-23T00:01:25","date_gmt":"2024-08-23T07:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/?p=9014"},"modified":"2024-07-31T16:34:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T23:34:23","slug":"isaiah-291-2-woe-to-ariel-to-ariel-the-city-where-david-dwelt-add-year-to-year-let-feasts-come-around-yet-i-will-distress-ariel-there-shall-be-heaviness-and-sorrow-and-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/?p=9014","title":{"rendered":"Isaiah 29:1\u20132: “Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! \/ Add year to year; \/ Let feasts come around. \/ Yet I will distress Ariel; \/ There shall be heaviness and sorrow, \/ And it shall be to Me as Ariel.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hebrew word Ariel<\/em> literally means the lion of God<\/em>, and refers to the capital city of Jerusalem. It can also mean God’s altar hearth<\/em>, suggesting the place where a burnt offering was consumed by fire. This verse foretold that Jerusalem, the City of David, was going to be besieged by a foreign nation. It would be the place where God would consume them by fire<\/em>, where His people would be disciplined for their continued sin. At the time Isaiah wrote this, the Jew\u2019s faith had deteriorated to a level of almost purely external ceremony and ritual. God was saying, “Year after year, you bring all these sacrifices, but because of your lack of true repentance, it won\u2019t change My mind about the coming discipline.”<\/p>\n

In the New Testament Book of Hebrews, the discipline of God is promised to every believer who fails to repent: “For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child” (12:6, NLT). The American evangelist D. L. Moody liked to tell this story about discipline:<\/p>\n

\nWhen I was a boy my mother used to send me out doors to get a birch stick to whip me with; and at first I used to stand off from the rod as far as I could. But I soon found that the whipping hurt me more that way than any other; and so I went as near to my mother as I could, and found the punishment lighter. And so when God chastens us let us kiss the rod and draw as near to Him as we can.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“LORD, we want to stay as close to You as possible today because we’ve found that place to be the safest, most loving place available.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hebrew word Ariel literally means the lion of God, and refers to the capital city of Jerusalem. It can also mean God’s altar hearth, suggesting the place where a burnt offering was consumed by fire. This verse foretold that Jerusalem, the City of David, was going to be besieged by a foreign nation. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9014"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9014"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9017,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9014\/revisions\/9017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/packinghouseredlands.org\/devotional\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}