Isaiah 65:3
A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick; A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick;
The verse describes a rebellious people who walk in a way that is not good, after their own thoughts. They continually provoke God to anger openly to His face, in direct defiance, despite His spreading out His hands to them all the day in persistent appeal. Their worship is corrupt in that they sacrifice in gardens and burn incense upon altars of brick. Remaining among graves also belongs to this same disobedient course.
Eating swine's flesh with its broth of abominable things in their vessels is part of the disobedience that angers God. The condemnation is not confined to the Jewish age but applies to the present age. The swine is by nature and habits unclean unto man and unfit for food, not by arbitrary rule or prejudice but by God's unchanging word. The passage presents Christ speaking of His own work, which brought Him no worldly glory, as One sought by those who did not ask and found by those who did not seek, calling Behold Me to a nation not called by His name while spreading out His hands to the rebellious people. Today Jesus still employs every channel through which He can work, but many by self-exaltation and self-sufficiency show they are not controlled by the Holy Spirit, magnifying self so that God is not revealed and not honored.
The verse does not prove the conversion of the entire world and does not describe this mortal state upon the old sin-cursed earth. It describes the new earth where beasts restored from the effects of the curse are no more out of their proper places than when created before the fall, when the leopard lies down with the kid and the lion eats straw like the ox. At no period of fallen human condition will all men be holy. The words speak in a most decided manner to leaders and workers in religious institutions and to those in high positions carrying great responsibilities who have had great light and disregarded reproofs. They are urged to heed, stop evil working and complaining, put away the evil of their works, come nigh, repent and be converted because their ways are not accepted of God, so that God may bring conviction and conversion and a reformation may go through the congregation. The chapter applies to the church's failure to seek after lost people and bring them into the fold.