Saturday, January 17, 2015

OUR GRACIOUS, COMPASSIONATE, JUST, AND GUIDING LORD



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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.

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.

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