March 4, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53.6)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

The 53rd chapter of Isaiah depicts the close of Jesus’ earthly ministry as a man of God. The description from the first verse to the last summarizes the sixty hours of Jesus’ obedience to God’s call and purpose for His life and the glorious consequence of it. In the heart of those verses, using the literary tool called chiastic or chiasmus, we see the heart of God revealed for all the people of the world. Because of our desire to pursue our own goals, objectives and ambitions which lead us away from God, God decided to “atone with His own.” We know on this side of the cross, that Jesus died for our sins. That is just the half of it. Jesus died for our sins so that we might receive the righteousness of God. (Romans 3.22) Jesus didn’t just die for our sins so that the slate of our lives up to that point would be wiped clean. If He did only that then the practice of Jubilee might come to mind or the sacrificial system practiced in the Temple. What I mean by that is there was no “one and done” principle at work. Because the people did not take in the true meaning of the acts of forgiveness prescribed by God, they simple repeated the ritual of Jubilee (if Israel ever really practiced it at all) or remembered the meaning in the system of sacrifice. In fact they may have actually “gotten it wrong.” God’s forgiveness of debts and sins (we pray this in the Lord’s Prayer) was intended to be a remembrance of what He had done. Because of God’s expression of mercy and grace, the people of God were spared eternal death or earthly abandonment.

What is the problem here? The people of God continued to sin and live in sin. Their ways did not change much after from what they were before. It wasn’t a time of remembrance but a confession of forgetfulness. It wasn’t a celebration, which is the heart of Passover, but a profession of …. I don’t have the word for it and it is not coming to my spirit. What the description of it is is that the people kept and keep coming to admit they are unable to live forgiven lives. They need “do overs” and “sacrifices of others” to make do in their own lives from day to day. It is an admission of failure to grasp the truth and the call of God in, through and over their lives. It almost is an enablement to “keep on sinning.” What if we took that verse (Ecclesiastes 2.17f and 1 Corinthians 15.32f) which says “eat, drink and make merry for tomorrow we die” and changed it into what it seems to have become “eat, drink and make merry for tomorrow someone else will die for it.” Is the desire to validate our sin so great that we ignore the tremendous gift of love which God has offered to that we would not face the penalty of sin? Do we treat it so casually that its rote remembrance just becomes a thing we do? Are we willing to see what Jesus did so that those who would believe in Him would know eternal life and freedom from sin?

This is where communion, the Lord’s Supper, is so vital to our Christian walk. The power of those hours Jesus spent with His disciples and friends in the Upper Room should empower us to walk by faith and not by sight. Hear the words again: the Lord’s Supper. It was the theological and eschatological meal which Jesus prepared and was the host of. Yes, it was a borrow house and a meal prepared by others for the purpose of celebrating the pivotal night in Egypt when God’s Spirit of Death would “pass over” the houses of God’s people. Those houses were designated by the “blood of the lamb which was slain” and painted over the doorways. It was a type of anointing and consecration. It did not relieve them from the terror they heard that night as death visited the first born of all of Egypt as Pharoah unwittingly commanded. God did not choose the death of anyone. He would have rather had the nation of Egypt to accept His Word as Moses presented it and believed in Him. At least to believe in Him enough to let the descendants of Jacob Israel go free to return to their own homeland. The word so convincing that the Hebrews would act more like God’s people than
Egypt’s slaves. It was a remembrance enacted yearly with the same intentional call to righteousness right up to the days of Isaiah. The call then was for the Exiles (foreign and domestic) to be freed from their oppressors who did not know the name of Jacob Israel. It was a call for the people of God to live under their own anointing and no longer be slaves of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt or those rulers among their own people who practiced abominations. Does it continue to this day? Are we seeing the continued violation of the call of God over us and the anointing of our lives, homes and communities by “the blood of the Lamb”? Further, it was the “Lord’s” supper because Jesus realigned their thinking to take in the understanding that it was His body and His blood which was now being given for their sake. He was the Lamb, the freedom and the hope for all who desired to live in righteousness before God and all the world. It was a life and death decision to be a true follower of God, as Jesus was, and a true follower of Christ, as we are all supposed to be. But, as in Isaiah 53, do we recognize Him? Do we follow Him? Do we remember Him? Do we honor Him? Do we understand Him and all that His life, death and resurrection means for us? Are we ready to enter into Lent tomorrow with a sense of recapturing the full meaning and the total impact of what the life of Christ had been intended to be and to do? Let us see Him and see ourselves as children of God who have been redeemed by grace. Let us live faithfully this “once and for all” life which has been given to us and not continue to fall back into our sin.

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.