RESCUED, REDEEMED, AND RESTORED

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In Christ, Mark

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

Can plunder be taken from warriors, or captives be rescued from the fierce?

But this is what the Lord says:

“Yes, captives will be taken from warriors, and plunder retrieved from the fierce; I will contend with those who contend with you, and your children I will save. I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”

Isaiah 49:24-26

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

I think that all of us at one point or another in life will find ourselves in a place where we either need rescue, redemption, restoration, or any combination of them. Life can just be hard sometimes and we end up in situations where we realize we can’t save ourselves from our circumstances.

This certainly had to be the case with the people of Israel. They had a nice cozy life in Judah and Jerusalem, despite the threats that were around them. They always felt they could count on God to take care of them and protect against harm.

But the God they hoped would defend them was not who the people worshipped. Allowing the religious beliefs of surrounding cultures to adversely influence their belief systems, the people of Israel turned their faith, hope, and trust to false entities and idols that were as helpless and worthless as they were lifeless. The people of Israel had turned away from the God who had richly blessed them with so much and as a result, God put them in a situation where they would realize that He was their only hope for rescue, redemption, and restoration.

Indeed, the people of Israel were taken away into exile by the powerful Babylonians who invaded and steamrolled the southern kingdom of Judah, including the holy city of Jerusalem where God’s temple left in ruin. The people were hauled away to a foreign land and oppressed for seventy years. That’s a long time to be in a place of helplessness but the people had to realize that the gods they had chosen over the one and only true God (capital “G”) were not coming to secure their release. Rather, they would find deliverance right at the time God had promised it, after seventy years and not a day sooner.

Once that time was up, the people of Israel were ready to return home and start rebuilding their lives and their faith. God set actions in motion through raising up King Cyrus and his Persian empire to overthrow the Babylonians, a plan that fulfilled the prophecy that we see in today’s final verses from Isaiah 49:

Can plunder be taken from warriors, or captives be rescued from the fierce?

But this is what the Lord says:

“Yes, captives will be taken from warriors, and plunder retrieved from the fierce; I will contend with those who contend with you, and your children I will save. I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh; they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine. Then all mankind will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior, your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”  Isaiah 49:19-23

God’s promise of deliverance from the Babylonian captivity must have seemed improbable by the Israelites. We get a sense that they did not believe anyone or anything could wrestle them away from the grip of their captor. But God’s word, spoken through the prophet Isaiah before the captivity, debunked that doubt. Indeed, captives could be taken from warriors and plunder retrieved, not by the power of the captives rebelling and overthrowing the warriors but by the might of the Lord, a might against no nation or empire could stand. And indeed, God’s might was revealed through the Persian uprising and the subsequent defeat of the Babylonians. Not long thereafter, the first of three groups of Israelites were permitted by Persian rulers to return to Judah and Jerusalem to reconstruct the city and God’s temple.

Friends, are we ready to receive the truth of this message today? Are we willing to understand that God is greater than any problem we’re going through? Are we open to the absolute certainty that God can rescue, redeem, and restore us from our circumstances, no matter how hopeless they might seem?

If you have any ounce of reservation, I want you to simply think of your sinful state, a state we are all in. Without intervention, we are without hope, enslaved and captive by our iniquities, destined for death and destruction. No human action or ingenuity can save us.

It would be a pretty sad state if we didn’t have a God who loved us so much that He made a way so that our story can have the happiest of endings.

For God so loved the world that He chose to offer up His one and only Son, Jesus, as a living sacrifice to atone for the sins of all mankind. Because of this, Jesus would also be known as the Lamb of God who willingly allowed Himself to be crucified so that the penalty for our transgressions would already be paid. In other words, through His Son, God offered all of us rescue, redemption, and restoration through salvation. All we have to do to receive it is believe in Jesus as our Savior. That’s it.

Deliverance from the death sentence of sin into a life everlasting through Jesus Christ or a continued captivity in the sin that drags us down the path of God’s wrath and destruction where death is the end of it all.

The choice is ours to make. I pray you will choose to be rescued, redeemed, and restored.

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