January 26, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“You have never heard. You have never understood. For a long time your ears have not been open. I knew how deceitful you are. You have been called a rebel from birth. For the sake of My Name, I will delay My wrath. For the sake of My Praise, I will restrain my wrath so that you will not be cut off.” (Isaiah 48.8-9)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

I believe in you! Mighty ones of God, I believe in you. It is important that we remember to encourage one another in the body of Christ. It is important because no matter how faith-filled we may be, our faithfulness is sorely tested in this world by this world. We must remember that temptation comes against us because we have faith. If we had no faith, no reason to believe then what is temptation? This is why we must be faithful to one another and with one another. It is so that the world will see there is a “way, truth and life” which is not of this world. There is a life which can dwell on earth that is not of this world. That “possible” which we thought impossible exists as a part of that “new thing” which God promised He would do. We heard it in chapter 43 and again in chapter 48. It is for this reason I believe Jesus proclaimed a new commandment. As I have said previously, this new commandment does not silence the two Great Commandments. This new commandment does not exceed the two Great Commandments. The new commandment which Jesus gave to the disciples and they to us as apostles of God’s Word was to complete the full understanding of what God always intended for us to believe and to be. That commandment we know says “Love one another.“

Because of Isaiah 48. 8-9, we are able to understand that commandment which Jesus gave with this addendum, “Love one another as I have loved you.” How Israel needed to hear this word which God declared over them. We know the truth of those words in and for our own lives. We are not dissimilar from the exiled children of God called Israel. Their plight is our plight. Their despair is our despair. But… their hope is our hope and their joy is our joy. As we embrace more fully and completely the new commandment which Christ has given to us as members of His spiritual body, the Church, we may well see the reciprocation of these commandments with these consequences and blessings: as our plight was their plight and our despair their despair; so is our hope their hope and our joy their joy. What is it that God declared to them through Isaiah? “For the sake of My Name and My Praise, I AM delaying My wrath.” Let us hear God’s word in this way: I have not stopped believing in You because I have not stopped believing in Me. What would be the corollary of this? Would it not sound something like this: Because I refuse to stop believing in me, I will stop refusing to believe in You. Because I restart believing in You, I am able to start believing in me again. What is it that Jesus said to His disciples but “Yes, I have done great things, things which My Father has given to Me to do. I tell you this: greater things will you do than I have done because I am going to the Father!” (John 14.12) He went on to say, “I have told you this so that My joy may be in you in order that your joy may be complete.” (John 15.11) Imagine that! We may wonder why our joy, our happiness and satisfaction, never seems to last and always seems to be more empty than full. Is this not the very reason for it? We have a limited and finite and incomplete joy because we derive it from ourselves instead of receiving it from Christ Jesus our Lord. He believed so much in us that He literally laid down His life for us. Not to be profane as if I am promoting gambling, but Jesus laid all His chips on the table and went “all in” for us. He believed in God His Father and He believed in us God’s children. He believed that we would grasp the truth and seek the way and embrace the life. It is because of that believe that God’s wrath is still withheld. We have not seen the end when His full wrath shall come upon the earth. We have seen trials, tribulations and tragedies in small and great ways. We have lamented, rued and been made sick by the very thought of them. We may have even stood against God in bitterness for the very fact that these things could happen. For some, they are the cause for doubting the very suggestion that God is a loving God. There is no doubt to the intensity of these events, their consequences and our responses to them. Yet, God has not expended His fullest wrath, the fullest extent of His justice because of His Name and His Praise. He still believes in us. We must still believe in Him.

The truth is that not all will. The sadness is many won’t. The reality is that we all can, but we cannot if there is no sense of authentic love. We have what Israel in the days of Isaiah, did not. We have the revelation of Jesus the Christ. They had the prophecy of it. We have life after the cross. They had life only before it. But many in this world are like Israel in those days because they have not in these days yet heard the word concerning Christ who has come and is coming again. Mighty ones this is why God withheld His wrath. It is so we might live in these days as those to whom mercy has been given because it has. We can live in these days because of the deliverance from evil, whose end is death, and set into a right place with the promise of the Holy Spirit. Have you not seen? Have you not heard? If you have not, then watch and listen. If you have, then walk and talk! Why? Because the day is coming and draws nearer day by day when the fullest measure of God’s wrath will be expended upon the world, the people on earth. His justice will be done. The final word will be given from which there will be no return. Until that day, relish and take full advantage of what God said He was doing so that we might have hope and life and a future where joy shall never cease.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness which we know is folly but righteous works which declare Your glory and further witness the truth that can set all who believe free from death. So may we live by the name of Jesus our Christ. AMEN.