NOTES for Isa 56:1-12

For God there are no insiders and outsiders. We, on the contrary, become accustomed from childhood to dividing the world into good and bad, into those who are ours and those who are not. This is probably natural for our fallen nature: to cling to those nearby while pushing away those far from us. Israel, too, passed through this stage. Having become aware of being chosen by God, it was compelled to separate itself from other peoples by a wall of ritual prohibitions. All the more unusual for Israel, then, was Isaiah's message that the house of the Lord would be a house of prayer for all nations. But the time comes to grow up, to see that God is above our limitations. He is the God of all, He loves all, and He calls all to faith, so that for Him there is now “neither Greek nor Jew.” Is it not strange that, two and a half thousand years after this prophecy, we still find room in our religious views for nationalism, narrowness, and hostility?