The enduring presence of God
This week's study is on Isaiah 59:20-21:
These verses come after the usual boilerplate of griping about the sins of Israel. The grace of God for those who repent of their sins is a sort of gleaming jewel at the end of so much muck. And here it is embedded in a section on the enduring faithfulness of God. For people in Isaiah's day, who decided not to continue in the horrible choices people were making, his Holy Spirit would stay with them forever, and his words would get passed down through the generations. This isn't the whimsical promise of a person who is different from day to day based on circumstances, hormones, mood, and what they saw on TV. This is the consistent promise of a God who is firmly rooted in all times at once.
I'm not really the sort of person who likes to snip things God says to specific people out of their context and parade them about as promises for everyone. But in this case, the thing he is saying is a testament to his general character as much as it is a specific message to a specific people group at a specific time. Consistently God does endure with us. His presence stays available to us. His grace remains available.
Recently I had a day where I was doing everything wrong. I was disorganised and impulsive and easily distracted. For some unknown reason, I decided to perform maintenance on a machine that ended up breaking halfway through and costing me two hours of tedious labour to fix when I was already hours behind schedule. I remember praying and confessing my bad time management choices that day, when I felt the presence of God. Everything just fell back into place after that.
The God who visited me in the laundry room as I was making empty promises never to trust my own estimates on discretionary work again is the same God who forgave the sins of the Israelites thousands of years ago as they made dubious promises to quit scheming and practising corruption. His record is unblemished and his word is good.
When he promises to always be with us, his word is about the only word that can be trusted in our modern world. People hop around every two years to new jobs, switch friends and relationships like they're changing channels on a TV, get married/divorced and move away, and eventually die. Who but God could promise to be with us forever and not have an asterisk and half a page of terms and conditions describing circumstances beyond their control? He is already with us, now and in the hour of our future need.
Be thankful for the access we have to God's presence, and his grace, and for the trustworthiness of his enduring words and promises.
“The Redeemer will come to Zion,
to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,”
declares the Lord.
“As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord. “My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of your children and on the lips of their descendants—from this time on and forever,” says the Lord.
These verses come after the usual boilerplate of griping about the sins of Israel. The grace of God for those who repent of their sins is a sort of gleaming jewel at the end of so much muck. And here it is embedded in a section on the enduring faithfulness of God. For people in Isaiah's day, who decided not to continue in the horrible choices people were making, his Holy Spirit would stay with them forever, and his words would get passed down through the generations. This isn't the whimsical promise of a person who is different from day to day based on circumstances, hormones, mood, and what they saw on TV. This is the consistent promise of a God who is firmly rooted in all times at once.
I'm not really the sort of person who likes to snip things God says to specific people out of their context and parade them about as promises for everyone. But in this case, the thing he is saying is a testament to his general character as much as it is a specific message to a specific people group at a specific time. Consistently God does endure with us. His presence stays available to us. His grace remains available.
Recently I had a day where I was doing everything wrong. I was disorganised and impulsive and easily distracted. For some unknown reason, I decided to perform maintenance on a machine that ended up breaking halfway through and costing me two hours of tedious labour to fix when I was already hours behind schedule. I remember praying and confessing my bad time management choices that day, when I felt the presence of God. Everything just fell back into place after that.
The God who visited me in the laundry room as I was making empty promises never to trust my own estimates on discretionary work again is the same God who forgave the sins of the Israelites thousands of years ago as they made dubious promises to quit scheming and practising corruption. His record is unblemished and his word is good.
When he promises to always be with us, his word is about the only word that can be trusted in our modern world. People hop around every two years to new jobs, switch friends and relationships like they're changing channels on a TV, get married/divorced and move away, and eventually die. Who but God could promise to be with us forever and not have an asterisk and half a page of terms and conditions describing circumstances beyond their control? He is already with us, now and in the hour of our future need.
Be thankful for the access we have to God's presence, and his grace, and for the trustworthiness of his enduring words and promises.
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