I AM THE LORD WHO (PART 3)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb:

“I am the Lord, who says of Jerusalem, ‘It shall be inhabited,’ of the towns of Judah, ‘They shall be rebuilt,’ and of their ruins, ‘I will restore them’. He will say of Jerusalem, ‘Let it be rebuilt,’ and of the temple, ‘Let its foundations be laid.’”

Isaiah 44:24a, 26b, 28b

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

We serve a Lord who is the Great Maker of all things and a Lord who gives us perfect truth every time we seek it from Him. We know this because His word tells us so as we have seen in the first two devotions of this five devotion series on proclamations made by the Lord as to who He is at the end of Isaiah 44.

Today, we see that we serve a Lord who sets sure foundations and ordains building things up upon those foundations, constructing structures to be inhabited and populated. He declares this in the following verses from our passage:

This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: “I am the Lord, who says of Jerusalem, ‘It shall be inhabited,’ of the towns of Judah, ‘They shall be rebuilt,’ and of their ruins, ‘I will restore them’. He will say of Jerusalem, ‘Let it be rebuilt,’ and of the temple, ‘Let its foundations be laid.’” Isaiah 44:24a, 26b, 28b

Israel was on the cusp of experiencing the Lord’s judgment, a judgment that would last 70 years as they would soon be defeated by the invading Babylonians, the holy city of Jerusalem destined to be plundered and laid to waste; it’s people hauled away to a distant, foreign land. Their punishment for turning from God to worship other gods would not go unpunished.

But the Lord is more than a just Judge who rules and reigns over His people with almighty power. He is also a loving, caring, compassionate, merciful God who always keeps His promises and so these verses had to serve as a great comfort to the Israelites. Yes, judgment was coming but there would be a day when they would be permitted to return and rebuild Jerusalem and the Holy Temple where the glory of God resided to be worshipped in spirit and truth by His people. The Lord promised that Judah would be rebuilt and as we look further down the road in biblical history, we know that this promise came true. Ditto for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple. The Lord said it and it happened for it is the Lord who ordains all things.

It is the Lord who tears down and the Lord who builds back up in accordance with His will and way.

Now, think about this from a more personal spiritual perspective. For if we are going to ever come close to being the people that the Lord longs for us to be, that is people who are like Jesus and people who were created in His own image, then we have to allow Him to tear us down and build us back up again. It should be a constant prayer for all of us to ask the Lord to break us down where we need broken, to find those places where sin still finds its way into our lives and takes us away from the righteousness the Lord expects us to display. We should allow Him to build us up while standing on His firm foundation where nothing can sway us or move us from placing our full attention on Him and what He wills for us to do in life.

We can either do this willingly or we may find the Lord taking action to break us down Himself through His judgment. The people of Israel had to learn the hard way. None of us should want to repeat the mistakes of the past. It’s far easier to come to the Lord willingly on our knees, prayerfully asking for His hands to mold and shape us to be who He wants us to be, than it is for Him to send His consequences on us, consequences that often bring us to our knees. How many times has that happened in someone’s life, circumstances of their own sinful doing bringing them to their knees when it would have been so much easier to just have been on their knees, seeking the Lord’s way, and avoiding those sins in the first place.

The first steps to being edified come when we willfully submit ourselves and allow the Lord to shape us to be who he wants us to be.

For He is the Master Builder and everything built on His firm foundation holds steady and cannot be moved, a mighty fortress held together by His Spirit and His strength.

That’s the kind of disciple I want to be, the kind of disciple I seek to be every day. I’m a work in progress, clay in the hands of the Potter, and every day the Lord does a little more to make me the man He wants me to be. For that, I am grateful.  

I pray you feel the same way.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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