February 2, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Thus says the LORD your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: ‘I am the LORD your God, who teaches you for your benefit, who directs you in the way you should go. Leave Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! Declare it with a shout of joy, proclaim it, let it go out to the ends of the earth, saying, ‘The LORD has redeemed His servant Jacob! They did not thirst when He led them through the deserts. He made water flow for them from the rock, He split the rock and water gushed out.’ ‘There is no peace,’ says the LORD, ‘for the wicked.’” (Isaiah 48.17,20-22)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

Maybe Abram and his family had no reason at all to leave the Ur of the Chaldees except for the call of God. Remember that it was only one man, Abram, who had been called as the patriarch of the family. His life could have been at peace, prosperous and fulfilling. What of Joshua to whom the leadership of Israel had fallen? More so, the people whom Joshua was called to lead. Two years out of Egypt through the Wilderness of Sin had brought them to the doorstep of Canaan. Yet they chose to believe in the fear of ten over the faith of two. The consequence of their fear was to sojourn in place at Kadesh Barnea for thirty-eight years. A two-year exodus followed by a thirty-eight year exile. Was there a growing sense of complacency for the survivors of that next generation? Had they become comfortable and resigned to shelter in place? Had they forgotten the call and the dream of their forefathers and their fathers before them?

GOD had not forgotten! LEAVE Egypt! LEAVE Kadesh Barnea! LEAVE Babylon! LEAVE Chaldeans! Go to a place where I will take you to live out faith by living in faith! This is the message. It is not a word of debate or negotiation. It is a word of “trust and obey.” It is a word of fulfillment for the longing that is in every person’s soul for that something more which can’t quite be satisfied by anything in this world. Isn’t that the challenge which sin presents? Sin calls us to consider that there is something more we can do to make our lives complete. Better job. More money. Bigger house. Vacations. Cars. Etc. But these are lifestyle choices which cannot satisfy. Momentarily please? Yes. Satisfy? No. The hunger is still there and the desire gnaws away on the inside. It gnaws not on our stomachs but our heart, mind and soul. It is a hungering and thirsting for righteousness. It is righteousness but not that we would have ever named it that unless God had spoken it to us.
Did Abram consider it righteous to claim the call of that “Unknown God”? Did Joshua consider it righteous to live by faith and not by sight? Did Moses actually believe the descriptors of the Decalogue to be righteousness when God gave them to him? Did Adam consider it righteous…? Adam did not know that his life of peace, prosperity and service was righteous. He did not know he was living in the midst of an eternal and spiritual worship. Even when God gave Eve to him having drawn her from his wounded side, Adam had no means by which to consider it righteous. BUT IT WAS! To leave a place and follow God to a place where He will show us is the life of righteousness. Depending fully on Him. Trusting Him in all things. Believing Him in all things. Doing all things for His glory. These are the descriptors of righteousness bounded by the two commands upon which all else hinges: love God and love neighbor.

Mighty ones of God, it is no different today! Consider what God is calling you out of and away from. Consider also what God is calling you to and into. This is the message of God to Israel in Babylonian exile as they had become a complacent people nearly losing sight of who they were and what they were meant to be and to do. They were becoming more “Babylonian” and “Chaldean” than fervent and faithful Jews. Of course, if they were fervent and faithful Jews, then they wouldn’t be in the predicament they then found themselves. Isn’t that what God was saying? Isn’t that what God is saying to us even now? Listen to the tenor of the words of this community and nation. Do you not hear the wandering away from instead of the drawing near? Is there a “preparing a way for the life of righteousness” to come to us and us to it? Do we even speak of righteousness anymore? Or at least not in the terms by which it is best understood. What Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount remains true: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His RIGHTEOUSNESS and all that is needed will be provided!” Well?

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.