Category: QuietTimes

“You shall establish yourself in righteousness (rightness, in conformity with God’s will and order): you shall be far from even the thought of oppression or destruction, for you shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near you.” Isaiah 54:14 ->me: What a wonderful picture of God keeping His people safe in His dwelling, keeping them hidden in His sacred tent, and setting them high on a rock for all to see (Psalms 27:5). These things happen when we establish ourselves in righteousness. Yesterday, in church, Pastor Steve outlined what establishing ourselves in righteousness looks like. Here are a couple – Love what God loves, Hate what God hates, mourn over sin, fear God more than man, and worship Jesus with our life not just our singing. There are several more but these ones spoke out to me. I will lean into these this week; searching God’s word to find His clear stance in these topics.

“For though the mountains should depart and the hills be shaken or removed, yet My love and kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall My covenant of peace and completeness be removed, says the Lord, Who has compassion on you.” Isaiah 54:10 ->me: Just on the heels of yesterday’s quiet-time where it is understood that we are the ones who hide from God – Isaiah reinforces that the Father’s malice and anger are gone through a sworn oath just like His oath to never cover the earth with the waters of Noah. The verse here says “My love and kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall my covenant of peace and completeness be removed”. This is proof that when I sin, He is there facing me in love, arms open with compassion. It is I who move away from Him when I follow my flesh and in my guilt and shame continue to walk away from Him. STOP!!! SWALLOW YOUR STINKING PRIDE AND GO TO HIM!! He is waiting for you with expectation and with only love and kindness in His heart and peace and completeness in His hand to give.

“For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion and mercy I will gather you [to Me] again. In a little burst of wrath I hid My face from you for a moment, but with age-enduring love and kindness I will have compassion and mercy on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer.” Isaiah 54:7-8 ->me: Reading this makes me ponder on how thankful I am of the price Jesus paid on the cross for me. My God never turns His face from me because the ultimate sacrifice has been made. However, my sin still separates me from Him. This is the reason why sin is like bereavement and desertion, because it alienates the Holy One and there is a sense of loss. I usually pray in my car on my way home from work; on days where I know I went against the nudging of the Holy Spirit, I will sit in my car silent and not engage My Father, because of my shame and guilt; feeling unworthy. But because of the work of Jesus, My God does not see my sin, He sees His Son, and it is only me at that point hiding my face from His. He patiently waits until I spring from my place of hiding into His cloak like a little child sorry for disappointing their parent…and He is there ready to pull me in as I blurt out my true repentance.

“SING, O barren one, you who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who did not travail with child! For the [spiritual] children of the desolate one will be more than the children of the married wife, says the Lord. Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; spare not; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes,” Isaiah 54:1-2 ->me: There is so much here! The barren one is Israel under Babylonian exile and its current dispersion. Isaiah is speaking of the adopted ones (Gentiles) into the family through the saving work of the Servant (Jesus) [Paul even quotes this verse in Gal 4:27]. Then verse 2 in regards to tent life which pictures the ideal relationship between the Lord and His people. (Jer 2:1-3) Isaiah paints a picture of vigorous growth. The work of the Servant fulfills both the Abrahamic and Davidic promises. I need to respond to this call on the church to expand. Am I putting all of my God given resources to expanding the tent to accommodate the new arrivals? Am I doing my part to witness effectively to bring more souls in? Am I reinforcing the tent stakes of the existing church by strengthening the faith of those already in the body so that they can support the impact of the new believers?

“Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great [kings and rulers], and He shall divide the spoil with the mighty, because He poured out His life unto death, and [He let Himself] be regarded as a criminal and be numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore [and took away] the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors (the rebellious).” Isaiah 53:12 ->me: Christ’s victory rests on 4 facts: 1) He poured His own life out: Voluntary self-offering even to the point of death. 2) He let Himself be numbered with the transgressors: His identification with those in need of Salvation. 3) He bore our consequences and thus removed the sin of many: All those He designed to save. His effectiveness as substitute. 4) Made intercession: Jesus represents His justified to the Father. He mediates for us because He understands our condition. (Hebrews 7:25) I did some study on …divide Him a portion…divide the spoil… part of this verse. The direct Hebrew translation helps -> “Therefore, I will apportion to Him the many, I will apportion the strong to Him as spoil” – so when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are given to Him by the Father. Because He paid the debt of our sin He essentially owns our lives. This may sound negative (that is just your secular filter) but I find great relief in knowing I am treasured reward Jesus has won…and what do we do with treasured rewards? We set them in high places and show them off. Jesus is proud of me and when I speak proudly of Him, He speaks proudly of me to His Father.

“Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick. When You and He make His life an offering for sin [and He has risen from the dead, in time to come], He shall see His [spiritual] offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the will and pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.” Isaiah 53:10 ->me: This verse begins and ends with God’s will. God’s will to heap our punishment on Him and God’s will for Jesus to wield prosperity in His hand. Said another way – Jesus’s suffering achieved Salvation; Jesus is now the Executor of the Salvation He achieved. Offering for sin – literal is GUILT-OFFERING (Lev 5:1 – 6:7) – The heart of the guilt-offering’s distinctiveness is its insistence on minute exactness between sin and remedy. It is used here not so much to affirm that the Servant bore and discharged the guiltiness of our sin, but that what He did is exactly equivalent to what needed to be done. This goes to the understanding that God knew ahead of time exactly the consequences that would be needed to purify those that would come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Through my reading – this reinforces the understanding that the credit of what Jesus did on the cross is not applied until you accept Him as your personal Savior.

“By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living [stricken to His death] for the transgression of my [Isaiah’s] people, to whom the stroke was due?” Isaiah 53:8 ->me: Reading the beginning of this verse I can’t help but that judgement was used oppressively to take Jesus into custody; not sure if that is what it means or not but seems prudent to be used that why since Jesus didn’t do anything wrong. The next part about His generation is about the extra pain that Jesus endured through the suffering with a lack of sympathetic understanding from those around Him; He was alone in His purpose. ‘Cut off’ – is a violent verb in Hebrew meaning to ‘Hack off’, like you would with a machete. ‘From the land of the living’ – if the verb ‘cut off’ wasn’t enough to indicate the Servant was done to death, these additional words demand it. Once again, this verse ends with the idea of submission being fundamental. The aloneness is the part of this passage that grips my heart. Jesus was so alone in what He was doing – the plan, will, and purpose of the Father would be done through Christ but He did it alone and very few people grasped the eternal ramifications of what was happening.

“All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has made to light upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, [yet when] He was afflicted, He was submissive and opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.” Isaiah 53:6-7 ->me: Sheep without a shepherd are directionless and will wander aimlessly into danger and ultimately their own demise by getting caught in a thicket or falling prey to other animals. Without God we won’t find the way or be protected. ‘we have [each] turned…to his own way’ This phrase emphasizes deliberateness. ‘Have turned’ – Self-sufficiency and the purposeful rejection of the Lord’s way and following Him. Even with all of the deliberate choices made by His children to go their own way and chose self-sufficiency, He still lays all of the guilt, iniquity, and sin on His Servant, His Son. I can’t fathom why He would do this; His love for us is difficult if not impossible to comprehend (Ephesians 3:18-19). Verse 7 talks to Jesus’ silence as a lamb to slaughter or sheep being sheared but it is not because of ignorance; it is because of a resolute commitment to follow through in submission for His part in God’s divine plan and ultimately His love for us (again Hebrews 12:2).

“Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].” Isaiah 53:4 ->me: As many times as I have either read or listened to these verses in Isaiah 53, it is something else to sit down with the expectation that the Lord will reveal Himself while you pour over His word. What Jesus did, He did alone. He was the agent, we were the beneficiaries. Carried…a Hebrew word taken from Lev 16:22 meaning to shoulder or accept that burden as one’s own. Just as the person of the Servant (a genuine man Who was also the Arm of the Lord) could be grasped only by revelation, so also the TRUE understanding of His sufferings: THAT THEY WERE DELIBERATELY TAKEN BY HIM AND THAT THEY WERE IN REALITY OURS. The healing work of Jesus is for our TOTAL redemption, body as well as soul, and it comes from Him and from His work on the cross – Matthew 8:17. Our transgressions were the cause, His suffering to death was the effect. He took on Himself (stepping forward) the chastisement whereby our reconciliation with the Father was to be mended/fixed.

“He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.” Isaiah 53:3 ->me: I have made it to Isaiah 53! I have been looking forward to this day since I started my Quiet Times in Isaiah on May 24, 2017. Today – this God/Man sits at the right hand of God the Father in heaven as my advocate. He understands my pain, He understands my sadness, and He knows what makes me happy. He has walked this world and been the target of scorn, humbling, disappointment, and betrayal. He can and does sympathize with my situation and circumstances – He knows my struggle intimately (Hebrews 2:17 & 18). When I pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I am calling on those understandings of My Savior, my representative Who intercedes between a Holy and Almighty Creator in heaven and myself. Jesus bore my sin on the cross; why would He stop now at giving me what is best for me and my path to achieving His righteousness. When I am following my Savior by learning about Him and doing my best to emulate Him, I can rest assured that He will prepare the path before me….that is so comforting!