Todays readings.. 1 Samuel 9, Isaiah 53, Revelation 15&16

            Today we meditated at length on Isaiah Ch. 53, one of the best known and most meaningful chapters in the Bible.  It is the message Isaiah received about the suffering saviour of mankind that God so wondrously brought into being..

            How challenging for us, who have absorbed God’s scripture into our hearts, to see God at work – working in ways that cause humans to think and search their hearts as to the meaning of life: – to see it from God’s perspective and, in the process, to see the part God is seeking for them, for us, to take in the greater picture which he sees – and which we can only dimly see most of the time.

            Jesus saw this ‘picture’ perfectly – and we have his example to try to follow.  We have been, and maybe some still are, among those who “like sheep have gone astray … have turned everyone to his own way” [v.6]  He alone was “like a lamb” that “was led to the slaughter” for “it was the will of the LORD to crush him” [v.10]! 

            Then we come to the contrast: “he shall see his offspring … the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.”  The whole sequence of events was mapped out in the farseeing mind of God and then put into effect through the willing co-operation of His only Son.

            We particularly noted v.11!  “By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”   Think about the word “knowledge.”  Think of the “knowledge” of Jesus of God’s will and his commitment to do it. The same challenge is made to us – to gain a true knowledge of “the will of the LORD” through reading his word and then putting that knowledge into action in our lives.

            This made us think of Job and his struggle to understand the ways of God – and the challenge God made to him, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” [Ch. 38 v.2]  This leads to Job’s final confession, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” [Ch. 42 v.2]  

            The more we learn of “the will of the LORD” the more we will say the same as we wait to see “the will of the LORD” for this present evil world!  But even more, as we look to see God’s will for us in the ways we can be more fully among those “working together with him”  [2 Cor. 6 v.1]