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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
Therefore this is what the Holy One of Israel says:
“Because you have rejected this message, relied on oppression and
depended on deceit, this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and
bulging, that collapses suddenly, in an instant. It will break in pieces like
pottery, shattered so mercilessly that among its pieces not a fragment will be
found for taking coals from a hearth or scooping water out of a cistern.”
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your
strength, but you would have none of it. You said, ‘No, we will flee on
horses.’ Therefore you will flee! You said, ‘We will ride off on swift horses.’
Therefore your pursuers will be swift! A thousand will flee at the threat of
one; at the threat of five you will all flee away, till you are left like a
flagstaff on a mountaintop, like a banner on a hill.”
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore He will rise up to
show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait
for him!
People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How
gracious He will be when you cry for help! As soon as He hears, He will answer
you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of
affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will
see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a
voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Then you will
desecrate your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold;
you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, “Away with
you!”
He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the
food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day your
cattle will graze in broad meadows. The oxen and donkeys that work the soil
will eat fodder and mash, spread out with fork and shovel. In the day of great
slaughter, when the towers fall, streams of water will flow on every high
mountain and every lofty hill. The moon will shine like the sun, and the
sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when
the Lord binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds He inflicted.
See, the Name of the Lord comes from afar, with burning anger and dense
clouds of smoke; His lips are full of wrath, and His tongue is a consuming
fire. His breath is like a rushing torrent, rising up to the neck.
He shakes the nations in the sieve of destruction; He places in the jaws of the peoples a bit that leads them astray.
He shakes the nations in the sieve of destruction; He places in the jaws of the peoples a bit that leads them astray.
And you will sing as on the night you celebrate a holy festival; your hearts will rejoice as when people playing pipes go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel. The Lord will cause people to hear His majestic voice and will make them see His arm coming down with raging anger and consuming fire, with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail.
The voice of the Lord will shatter Assyria; with His rod He will strike
them down. Every stroke the Lord lays on them with His punishing club will be
to the music of timbrels and harps, as He fights them in battle with the blows
of His arm. Topheth has long been prepared; it has been made ready for the
king. Its fire pit has been made deep and wide, with an abundance of fire and
wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze.
Isaiah
30:12-33
This ends this
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
As we have seen through 30 chapter
of the Book of Isaiah, God is a God of judgment, a God who despises sin and
will take corrective, punitive action on those who choose it over the
righteousness He offers, those who choose the world and its ways over His will
and way.
But this isn’t all we learn about
God in this book. For as much as God is God of judgment and correction, He is
also a God of great grace and mercy and compassion and justice and guidance.
This is what we see within the concluding verses of Isaiah, Chapter 30, words
of encouragement from a God who does discipline His children when they become
rebellious, disrespectful, and obstinate but always yearns for them to return
to Him, always offering a path for return and restoration when His children
stray.
As we turn to our verses for today,
let’s look at each of these awesome characteristics we find in the Lord God
Almighty, our Creator and Maker:
1. He is a gracious Lord.
Yet the Lord longs to be
gracious to you.
The people of Israel had fallen out
of the Lord’s favor but this didn’t mean the Lord loved them any less. He hated
their sin but loved them unconditionally and longed for the time to come when
He could show them His deep forgiveness and graciousness. The Lord always longs
for the day when the lost become found, the day when He will not condemn but
rather rejoice when one of His children come home just as He did in Jesus’
parable on the Lost Son (Luke 15:11-24, 32).
2. He is a compassionate Lord.
The Lord longs to be gracious
to you; therefore He will rise up to show you compassion.
Note here that we don’t have to beg
for the Lord to show us compassion. Rather, He is the One who takes the
initiative, rising up to show how deeply He cares for His children when they
turn from their wickedness in repentance and recommit themselves to His
righteousness. No one has the kind of concern for us than the Lord who made us
and ever keeps us in His sight and interest, our Heavenly Father who loves and
nurtures us with a parent’s tender care.
3. He is a just Lord.
For the Lord is a God of
justice.
In the Lord, we find the only
perfectly just Judge in our lives. He is unmovable and incorruptible. There is
no trace of unfairness within Him. Thus, when He levies a penalty on His
children, it is always because we deserve it. The people of Israel who He cared
so dearly for deserved the judgment they received. We will deserve every
consequence we receive as well if we choose to live in transgression instead of
holiness. Ultimately, we find the greatest sense of justice in God through how
He offered a way for any of His children to be pardoned from their sinfulness
through His Son Jesus. The way to the Father thus is only through the Son (John
14:6), the One who was willingly sacrificed to pay the price for sin, the
sacrifice we deserved. If you believe and trust in Jesus, you are rescued from
death to life, found not guilty by God, the just Judge, because you have been
justified by the Son.
Do you read this today with the
confidence that you have been pardoned, washed clean from your sins by the
precious blood of Jesus?
4. He is a God who gives us
guidance.
People of Zion, who live in
Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious He will be when you cry for
help! As soon as He hears, He will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the
bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no
more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to
the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way;
walk in it.”
How do we always stay in God’s good
graces, never finding ourselves out of His favor through falling into
sinfulness?
The answer is very simple.
We do it by following His guidance
and direction, guidance and direction we should always be crying out for. The
world offers us many ways to go but there is really only one path that we
should be taking and that is the narrow path of righteousness illuminated by
the light of the Lord (Matthew 7:14). The only way we can remain on this narrow
way, navigating the right course through life is if we seek and receive the
Lord’s word, will, and Holy Spirit that always speaks to saying, “This is the
way; walk in it.” All we need to do is comply with these orders in glad
obedience, rejoicing that we serve a Lord who wants to make sure we are walking
in righteousness and in His favor.
Friends, we were made and are
sustained by a Lord who is immeasurably gracious and compassionate, a Lord who
will always fairly judge us and correct when necessary, a Lord who never ceases
to provide us with direction as we walk each day through this thing called
life.
I’m so grateful to know this truth
and thankful the Lord has laid it on my heart today to share it with you.
Blessings to you always.
Amen.
In
Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
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