THE POWERFUL ARM OF THE LORD

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In Christ, Mark

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

Awake, awake, arm of the Lord, clothe Yourself with strength! Awake, as in days gone by, as in generations of old.

Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced that monster through? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea so that the redeemed might cross over?

Isaiah 51:9-10

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

Have you ever been in a place where you needed help from something or someone more powerful than yourself?

Maybe we all have.

For some, this can be a time of hopelessness because they have nothing or no one who can aid them in the midst of their circumstances. Their position is one that breeds despair, depression, and surrender to their circumstances, a place of utter helplessness.

These are the people who either do not know of or refuse to believe in the Lord.

For everyone else, for those who have placed their fullest faith and trust in the only One who can meet them in their situation, there is never a place where there isn’t promise. For they know that the powerful arm of the Lord is on their side and that there is nothing beyond the work of His infinitely almighty hands.

That is the reminder for us today as we continue looking at the scriptures in Isaiah 51. Look again at these verses:

Awake, awake, arm of the Lord, clothe Yourself with strength! Awake, as in days gone by, as in generations of old.

Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced that monster through? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made a road in the depths of the sea so that the redeemed might cross over?  Isaiah 51:9-10

Note here the crying out for the Lord’s rescue. The people of Israel were in the midst of a seventy-year sentence of exile at the hands of the mighty Babylonians and as you can tell by their words, they are seeking release and restoration from the Lord, the only One who could bring it to them. In fact, He had promised He would do just that.

The Israelites were pleading for the strong arm of the Lord to come alive for them as it had done for their ancestors, specifically the Israelites of old who had also been under captivity but by Egypt, not Babylon.

You may remember it. The people of Israel were under the oppression of the Pharaoh who had enslaved them and used them for cheap labor. It was the Lord’s will to set them free and so He appointed a man named Moses to do just that, to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and to the land that God had promised them. It was a harrowing proposition because of the clout of the Egyptians and their empire. But the people believed and trusted in the powerful arm of the Lord and they were rewarded with their deliverance from their confinement, a deliverance that happened in miraculous fashion.

You’ll recall that as the Israelites were fleeing, Pharaoh and his men pursued. A great sea stood between God’s people and their escape. How would they be able to cross without perishing in the process?

Enter the powerful arm of the Lord.

For as we know, the Lord split the sea so the Israelites could cross on dry land. Imagine that scene for a moment. You are one of the people of Israel and you are walking across where there once was a great body of water. You look to your left and right and literally see a wall of water suspended in air, held there only by the might of God. Your redemption is in process as you and all those with you make it safely over to the other side onto land. And then, just as Pharaoh and his men try to come across, the waters are released and come crashing down, reconstituting the sea as it was. Rahab, a name the scriptures also use to refer to Egypt (Isaiah 30:7) had been cut to pieces by the Lord. Even the strength of that mighty empire paled in comparison to the power found in the arm of the Lord.

The point for us today is that we need not fear anything that might come upon us in life for God is with us and for us. And as His word assures us, if He is with us, who can stand against us? (Romans 8:31).

Let us remember this the next time we become afflicted or deal with any other variation of hardship or difficulty. For there is nothing beyond the work of the hands of the Lord.

Nothing.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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