Daily Devotions
Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Note to readers: This is an alternate reading from the Three Year Lectionary, and may not match up with the readings your church uses this Sunday.
Isaiah 1:10-11a, 13b-18 – Hear the Word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! “What to Me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings … I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”
God sounds really frustrated, even grossed out. “Your hands are full of blood,” He says, and He doesn’t mean the blood of sacrifices! These are God’s own people, but they are behaving like the people of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah—harming others, going after them to get what they want when they want it, and never mind how it hurts anybody else. No wonder God doesn’t want them in His temple courts! How can He stand it, when He knows that the person standing there in worship today was evicting widows and orphans from their home a week ago?
You’d expect God to be done with them forever. How can such people ever become clean again?
And then there’s us, with our own hypocrisies and cruelties. What comes out of our mouths on Monday often doesn’t match so well with what we said in church on Sunday. And the way we keep looking out for number one—and that doesn’t mean God! How can we ever become clean again?
Only through Jesus. Because God is not through with us, however much we might think He should be. No, God says to us, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” We can’t cleanse ourselves, we can’t do this miracle—but Jesus can, and He does. It’s the whole reason He came into our world—to take away our sins and give us new, clean hearts.
Trying harder isn’t the answer. We need Jesus, who suffered, died, and rose again for us. It’s Jesus’ blood that can make us whiter than snow, more pure than flawless crystal. His willing self-sacrifice changes us forever. Now, because Jesus has died and risen from the dead for us, we are not the people we once were. No, we are God’s own children, and God’s Holy Spirit is living inside us. And as the days go by, we come to reflect God’s own glory and graciousness—because God’s Spirit is remaking us more and more into the image of Jesus Christ.
WE PRAY: Dear Savior, thank You for making me Yours. Draw me close to You in faith, so that what I do makes You happy and brings You glory. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Kari Vo.
Reflection Questions:
- Why is God so allergic to people who behave vilely and then turn up for worship all unrepentant?
- Do you agree with Him?
- Why does Jesus focus so much on the heart and not on the outward appearance of a person?
Today's Readings:
Jeremiah 49, 13-22Hebrews 3