Month: February 2019

This chapter should bring praise upon your lips and make you feel like God loves you in so many indescribable ways.  We have a promise in vs.10 and following that the word of the Lord shall never come back empty.  That which God proclaims will happen and does happen.  The promises  that we have from God will always be fulfilled, whether we believe it or not, they simply will be fulfilled.  These verses remind us that we are the messengers of the Word of God.  So while the Word will not come back empty, God uses us to make sure that His purposes are accomplished.   God doesn’t perform a miracle for every single situation in life which we face.  God’s purposes are accomplished, but often they are accomplished in very mundane ways.

If you look at vs.8 you will see other verses that are very familiar.  We hear the prophet Isaiah say to God: Your ways are not my ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.  That is surely the case.  God’s thoughts are higher than ours, higher than the heavens are above the earth, as an example.  

To close things out we see in vs.12 that we will go out in joy and come back in peace.  The very creation will burst forth in song and praise.  The trees of the field will clap their hands.  Oh man, for some reason the scene below comes to my mind.  

If you look at vs.10 you will see a verse that should sound familiar.  The mountains may fall and the hills be moved, but the steadfast love of the Lord will not depart from me and his covenant of peace will not be removed.  For the Lord has compassion on us.  Breathe that in.  

This chapter is quite a change from a promise of destruction and wrath from the Lord at the hand of foreign nations which we have seen in other chapters leading up to this.  I like the image in vs.5 where we see that God is our husband, or our wife, and He is the one to whom we owe all of our devotion and our very life.  I guess this is where those who go into the celibate orders are able to say that they are married to God.  But we also see that God considers himself a wife who has been cast off, because we have cast him off quite a few times.  

This chapter is the epitome of the suffering servant.  As you read through this chapter you need to think of our Savior Jesus as the one that it is describing.  As you read through it you can almost  check the boxes that describe who he was when he walked upon the earth.  “He was despised and rejected by others.”  “He has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases.”  “He was wounded for our transgressions…and by his bruises we are healed.”  “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  “He was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he did not open his mouth.”  “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter…so he did not open his mouth.” “They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich.”  “When you make his life an offering for sin.”  “The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”  “Because he poured out himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.”

Our God is amazing, simply amazing.  

This begins a very powerful next few chapters that speak about the man of sorrows, and the suffering servant that we have already touched upon in the past.  If you look at vs.13 we read that the servant of the Lord shall prosper.  That prosperity shall be revealed by him being exalted and lifted up.  Now, we know that the ultimate servant, Jesus Christ, was lifted up and exalted high on a cross.  This may not be what you had in mind when you think that we would prosper.  But is there any greater prosperity than to die so that all could live?   That is the fate of our Savior, that is the task that Jesus came upon this earth to fulfill so that we could have eternal life.  

If you back up to vs.7 you will see a harbinger of John the Baptist as he is called a beautiful messenger who announces peace.  We see these verses referenced in later Gospels and it is directly tied in to John the Baptist.  There is some confluence of ideas in these verses.  You have Israel who is told to wake up after a very traumatic experience where they had the uncircumcised and the unclean invade their land and lay them waste.   There is a promise that this will happen no longer.  But as they are recovering from that experience they are encouraged to stand up and shake off their dust, even as they have been traumatized by what has happened.  

This then moves us to a celebration because God is sending his servant who will be the read guard sent directly from the Lord.  We all need a read guard who watches our back.