For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,”
says The Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the Earth,
so are My ways higher than your ways,
and My thoughts than your thoughts.
(Isaiah 55:8-9)
In the spiritual realm, The Lord released and preserved ‘progressive revelations’ about Himself, us, and His multi-age strategy for humanity. In the secular realm, He has similarly released a steady stream of knowledge, wisdom and understanding in every sector of life. But only in the secular realm have we benefitted most from what He has released. Our biggest mistake may be that we relegated His spiritual insights to ‘religion’. Thus, we packaged and left them on the ‘religious shelf’, rather than integrating them into every aspect of His secular, sectoral insights. Imagine our world if both sets of His wisdom released to us were reasonably integrated! My, my, what a loss we have incurred by doing otherwise! This is the core lesson He tried for centuries to teach ancient Israel and Judah. Consider them as His intended prototypes for all nations. But they refused and rejected His lesson, and completely segregated secular life from its foundational spiritual dimension. Accordingly, the rest of the entire world never learned His intended lesson. But not to worry. He will enforce His lesson during the Millennial Reign age—the pending 5th age of human history, after the apocalypse.
Even within the spiritual realm, we have often failed to integrate His wisdom for our greater benefit. One reason is our failure to understand His ‘progressive revelation’ approach. From Genesis-to-Revelation, He has released spiritual insights ‘…line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little’. (Isaiah 28:10&13). Focusing on His early insights out of context of His total package, warps our comprehension of His aggregate message to us. Reading and studying The Bible as a ‘religious book’, with a ‘religious mindset’, and a ‘chapter and verse’ approach, may be our greatest loss. The above passage may be just one example of this approach.
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself, ‘To whom is The Lord speaking in this passage?’ Rather, we may be conditioned to think and believe it applies to everybody! But who among us stops to ask, ‘Did The Lord intend for verse 8 to apply to Isaiah, and to all of His other prophets across the Old and New Testaments, all of whom faithfully received and preached ‘His thoughts?!’
Moreover, in Revelation 19:10, an angel revealed to Apostle John that, ‘…the testimony of Jesus is The Spirit of Prophecy’, i.e., is the working of The Spirit of Prophecy in and through The Lord’s bona fide saints whose lives, in various ways, SHOULD testify of Him. (See: Are You a Prophet? (Bible Q&A))
This reveals the deceptiveness of reading The Bible with a ‘religious mindset’, rather than as a multi-millennial strategic plan for humanity—from Genesis-to-Revelation!
Studying a Biblical passage in context of its chapter, book, and the core Bible message, enables us to derive its fundamental meaning. This demands diligence in our study—something evil spirits are diligent to block us from ever doing.
Isaiah 55:7 reveals the above passage is squarely directed at the wicked and the unrighteous. The Lord subsequently inspired Apostle Paul to address the topic of His Mind in 1 Corinthians 2, in which he concludes:
But who has known the Mind of The Lord
that he may instruct Him?
But we (The Lord’s saints) have the Mind of Christ.
To us, the Mind of Christ is revealed throughout The Bible, via the effective aid of The Holy Spirit, Who, through our diligent patience and study,
(a) elucidates and illuminates it within our spirit, and
(b) directs our application of its core principles to our lifestyles, as we submit to His leading.
Conclusion
The fourfold repetition of the pronoun, your, in Isaiah 55:8–9, functions as an emphatic, rhetorical pivot that anchors The Lord’s rebuke directly to the wicked and unrighteous who are referenced in verse 7. Under the Old Covenant, the unbridgeable gulf between human corruption and divine sovereignty remained absolute. However, the New Covenant, established with Christ’s sacrifice and the gifts of The Holy Spirit and The Mind of Christ, bridges this gulf for bona fide saints today. Consequently, reading Isaiah 55:8–9 as a permanent, universal limitation on understanding God's revealed thoughts, seriously mis-interprets the progressive, strategic revelations across Scripture.
Thus, our challenge is to develop The Mind of Christ within us. But we are generally inclined to short-circuit that process by off-loading diligent, Holy Spirit-led study of Scripture to ‘religious professionals’. Thus deceived,
…we fall into the camp of those to whom Isaiah 55:8 is directed,
yet we still think we are The Lord’s saints!
Selah~
