March 12, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55.8-9)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

There are several familiar verses found in Isaiah 55. Perhaps verses 8-9 posted above are the most familiar and most telling. What stands out to me is that God does not put down the ways and thoughts of His people. He does not say they are bad, stupid or useless. By contrast, the ways and thoughts of God are superior, filled with integrity and purposeful for the good of all. Sadly, our ways and thoughts many times pale in comparison and prove to be bad, stupid and useless. God’s word is unchanging and unchangeable. His Word is the first word which calls us into being and the last word we will ever hear. He will never let us down. Knowing this, however, how many people still cling to the olds ways and old thoughts? How many are committed to spend their efforts and resources on proving their way is right and their thoughts are best? This can only happen when our ways and our thoughts reflect that of God alone. Jesus declared to His disciples, “I AM the way, the truth and the life. By no other means is one able to attain to the Father.” Isn’t this because Jesus followed the ways and thoughts of God Himself? Some will shudder at the invitation to “follow Jesus” because they know full well where it led Him in His earthly life.

Isn’t that the point which God was making to Isaiah and thus to Israel and further to the rest of the world? When we consider the things of this world and the consequences they entail as the pinnacle of our experience, we have accepted lower standards of thought and action. If all someone sees of Jesus is temporary fame but no fortune, the cross instead of a palace and poverty instead of riches, then they have missed the true identity of Jesus. I know this will not be a popular consideration, but I will offer it anyway. Christians spend a lot of time focusing on the cross as the evidence of Jesus’ sonship and the true identity of His purpose on earth. We do need to consider it and focus on it because through that experience which Jesus endured, we have been given what we do not deserve: forgiveness and eternal life. We are, and should, be thankful and grateful. Such gratitude should inspire us to pursue Him all the days of our lives and model His ways and His thoughts. We should not, however, make the “grave” error of seeing eternal life as an earthbound promise. When Jesus responded to Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world [and by extension not on earth but in Heaven]” He was directing the focus of all of our lives up. In this regard, it is resurrection which truly defines us. It is impossible without the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. The call to live is the same for us. Jesus said, “No greater love is there than this that a person would lay down their lives for the sake of another.” Our willingness to be sacrificial for the sake of others, not just in this world but beyond it, speaks of the cross. But all these things put into proper perspective point up to a different reality.

What is that reality? Jesus was lifted up on the cross, in public opinion, from the grave and into Heaven. This world is not His home. He dwelt on earth to be with us. He came to be with us that He might lift us up from the world just as He lifted up the Name of God. He lifted us up so that we could be nearer to God. This was the vision which Isaiah had in the Temple as I mentioned yesterday. When Isaiah went through the motions of religious duty to offer sacrifices for a mourning nation upon the death of King Uzziah, he was met by God. God, as it was recorded by Isaiah, was “high and lifted up with His train filling the Temple.” The mistake that had been made before then was that God was hidden, invisible and unobtainable. Such distance made more of the Temple than it should have been. By the time we get to Jesus’ day, we see the effect of such thinking: “You have made My Father’s House a den of thieves when it has always been purposed by God to be a house of prayer for the nations.” Out of the din of chaos and selfishness, Jesus lifted up the vision of true identity. He opened the doors of truth and allowed it to set the people, and sacrificial animals, free. His death on the cross was opening that kind of door, too. Resurrection proved that what Jesus had lifted up before the world, Himself being lifted up, was the truth that would set people free from the slavery of sin. Without such “lifting up” there could be no building up. Even now, we anticipate the return of Jesus. We speak of it in terms of Him coming down from Heaven. I believe the truth is that while He is coming down, He is not coming back into the world as it was but as it will be. He is building that new Heaven, new Earth and new Jerusalem as our dwelling place “high and lifted up where His train shall fill ‘the temple.’” Jesus’ ways and thoughts are higher than ours but not beyond our reach. Neither are God’s because He has made it possible for us to look up into the heavens and see the truth about who we are and what we are to become.

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.