“Why, when I came, was there no man?
When I called, why was there no one to answer? Is My hand shortened at
all, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Behold, at My rebuke
I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink because there is
no water, and they die of thirst.” Isaiah 50:2
Your Redeemer lives. It’s the message
throughout Isaiah and I can almost sense God’s frustration at their lack of
belief. Repeatedly He asks why they are afraid of man when God is on their
side.
“[The
Lord God says] And the redeemed of the Lord shall return and come with singing
to Zion; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and
gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. I, even I, am He Who comforts
you. Who are you, that you should be afraid of man, who shall die, and of a son
of man, who shall be made [as destructible] as grass, That you should forget
the Lord your Maker, Who stretched forth the heavens and laid the foundations
of the earth, and fear continually every day because of the fury of the
oppressor, when he makes ready to destroy or even though he did so? And
where is the fury of the oppressor?” Isaiah 51:11-13
When
I read Isaiah I can sense God’s heart grieved and pleading for His children to
turn to Him in obedience and trust, I can feel His passion, His love and
jealousy for them, and the longing He has for them to enter into all He has
provided, His longing for them to accept and return His love.
“Thus says the
Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord your God, Who
teaches you to profit, Who leads you in the way that you should go. Oh,
that you had hearkened to My commandments! Then your peace and
prosperity would have been like a flowing river, and your righteousness [the
holiness and purity of the nation] like the [abundant] waves of the sea.”
Isaiah 48:17-18
I
certainly never have faced anything as terrifying as what Israel faced in those
days and yet still when problems come panic will try to rise in my heart and
mind. Why? Why should God have to remind us that He is much mightier than our
problems? Usually, because we spend so much more time thinking about the
problem than on how mighty God is and oh how much He loves us! “You forget the
Lord your Maker” Isaiah says, and how often have I been guilty of that charge? We can so easily forget how powerful our God
is.
If
I hold on to two truths then panic has no place in my heart, fear has no ground
on which to lay hold. #1. God is all powerful. #2 He passionately loves me.
No
matter what I face or what blunders I may make God’s hand is not shortened that
He can’t redeem. Even when Israel had betrayed God, when they had hardened
their hearts and turned away from Him, His heart still longed to redeem them,
if only they would turn back to Him. He wanted them to know, your Redeemer
lives!
God
is all powerful and He passionately loves me. That is the truth; all the
whispers the enemy whispers to my mind about lack, destruction, or loss are
lies. God is all powerful and He passionately loves me!
My
Redeemer lives!!
And
my challenge is to never forget that. To meditate on it until it becomes a
truth so deeply ingrained into my way of thinking that the next time I face a
problem, the next time the enemy whispers his lies to me, immediately the truth
will rise up, “God is all powerful, He loves me passionately, and His hand is
not shortened that He can’t redeem!” My
Redeemer lives!
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