April 30, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“For as the earth brings forth its growth, and as a garden enables seed to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.” (Isaiah 61.11)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD TO US:

In studying upon this verse and its companion, verse 10, I am led back to Isaiah 55. There in verses 8 and 9, God declared the absolute truth that His ways were and will always be higher than our ways. He says further that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. What He thinks, purposes and sets in motion are absolutes, not random and incomplete. Jesus most likely had these verses in mind when He spoke about the depth of sin. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addressed the issue of lust saying that even the thought of it in one’s heart makes one guilty of adultery. (Matthew 5.28) By application, the consideration of any sin would thereby make one guilty of sin. In this light, it would be easy to understand the basis by which Paul declared “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3.23.) And what more glorious event on earth could there be than a wedding. In Jewish tradition, a wedding would be held under a tabernacle-like structure. The meaning and purpose of that could not be more clear. That connection of man and woman to be husband and wife married in “the temple,” even a transitional one like the tabernacle, spoke of the consecration of the purpose which God designed for us. The image of marriage is incorporated in a physical, social, political and, of course at the highest level, spiritual sense. We would miss the impact of Jesus’ teaching that day on the mountainside overlooking the Sea of Galilee near Capernaum, if we did not hear the call of righteousness in all the relationships between people. Jesus wasn’t just speaking about marriages but covenant relationships, especially those manifested by the religious-political leaders of Israel. Those relationships established by them between nations for their purposes of securing safety, industry, trade and alliance against other nations betrayed the trust and faith they were to have in God as their “soul” provider. That message was clear throughout the works of the Old Testament prophets. The reality of such “sin of political and spiritual adultery” was evident in the days of Jesus. John the Baptist was clearly the Old Testament prophet voice in this manner calling Herod into accountability having married his brother’s wife. The word of conviction would reach even in the temple as the tolerance of such a behavior existed. There is little doubt that the “woman caught in adultery” was a woman known, in the biblical sense, by many of those who were of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees. She may have even been a temple prostitute. The depth of their depravity seemed to know no bounds.

In Isaiah, the marriage image is revisited several times. In chapter 61 the bridegroom as priest and the bride as minister is enhanced by the expectation of God’s real promise. What is that promise? Whatever is purposed will come to pass. The earth will produce. The garden will cause the seed to spring into life and bear its fruit. From those tangible realities which are visible to everyone, it can be trusted that God’s righteousness will spring up from the Garden He has planted and tilled called Israel. They are to be faithful to one another as they are to be faithful to God. They are to be faithful to God as they are to one another. It is a cyclical reality as we saw in Isaiah 55. 10-11, “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” It does us well to understand what God has seen, planned, implemented and filled with expectation. He will also judge His response according to the expectation. As we say in the school business, “Inspect what you expect.” Even with grace, we are not excused from the expectation of God’s will and plan for us. We are filled with His purpose and empowered by His Holy Spirit. We are united in a spiritual union married in spirit and in flesh, in spirit and in truth, to one another as we are to God. May it be so!

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.