October 25, Isaiah 48
”For my name’s sake I defer my anger, for the
sake of my praise I restrain it for you; that I may
not cut you off. Behold I have refined you, but
not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of
affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I
do it, for how should my name be profaned? My
glory I will not give to another.” - Isaiah 48:9-11
Cardiologists employ multiple procedures to understand the condition of a patient’s heart. Heart catheterization, advanced internal imaging technology and a good old stethoscope give doctors a good picture (sometimes literally) of a patient’s cardiovascular condition.
The Bible contains many passages that work as diagnostic tools for our spiritual hearts. God sees and knows your heart without any tools. But some other Bible passages give us a glimpse of the great heart of God himself. Isaiah 48 is one such passage.
Chapter 48 has three divisions. Each begins with a call to the people of God to listen to God’s word delivered through Isaiah, the Lord’s faithful prophet. These messages from God contain both promises of future blessing and warnings of impending doom.
It seems there are two related but distinct groups addressed in these announcements. Perhaps “Israel” refers to the true Israel, the faithful remnant to whom God addresses promises of blessing. Much of the remaining chapters of Isaiah deal with the promised Messiah and his kingdom. God assured his faithful ones that his promises to Abraham were still unbroken and intact. Then we might think of the other group he called the “house of Jacob” as the apostate and unrepentant nation as a whole. They are the ones who got the stern warnings and threats. These two groups lived together in the same place before they went to captivity, and during their captivity in Babylon. The “Israel” group is a much smaller subset of the entire nation. That distinction will be very clear when we learn that only 50,000 (at most) Jews returned from Babylon when Cyrus emancipated them and helped them go home.
When God called them to “Go out from Babylon,” the overwhelming majority of Jewish captives in Babylon stayed there and were thoroughly assimilated into the foreign culture. The people in the big national group still talked about God. But they were hypocrites when they professed to be his people. They still called his name, but their lives did not reflect any respect for or allegiance to the covenant God had made with their nation.
It’s sad that the Jews needed to be reminded about the great things God had done for them. God persuaded them to remember great victories he had given them in Canaan. He reminded them how he revealed things to them that they could not know, but had lived to see come true. He told them about blessings yet to come that they had never known before. But their hearts were hardened by idolatry and sinful indulgence. Their faithless, ungodly living showed they had forgotten God and forsaken their covenant with him. These are the people to whom God addressed the stern warnings and strong appeals.
How does that show us anything about God’s heart? Look again at the text verses. Here is a picture of the divine love God has in his heart for his people. There was nothing in Israel’s history that merited God’s favor. There was no great revival of repentance and rededication even when captivity came. There was nothing in Israel to commend them to God. Whatever reason he had for showing them any mercy or favor would have to be from outside the sinful people.
God put up with the sinful nation and deferred his anger for two basic reasons: First, God did it because of those Messianic promises. He had sworn to Abraham that he would bring a Savior through his descendants. But second, God did it for the sake of his glory. He would not allow his name to be profaned. He would not give his glory to anyone else. No conqueror could boast that their god was superior to Israel’s God. The Jews were beneficiaries of God’s restrained anger; they did not deserve to be spared. They deserved destruction.
Are we very different from those ancient Israelites? Do we forget how God has blessed us, and disregard his word when we are distracted by the world? Do we remember that we too are beneficiaries of God’s amazing love and grace, that there was nothing in us to commend us to him? The Messiah he promised in Isaiah has come, and he is our Lord Jesus Christ. The great heart of God with all its love and pity for our broken race was clearly displayed in the death of Jesus for us on the cross. Let’s make sure we are not hypocrites in our professions of faith and devotion to God. Let’s not allow our behavior to expose our professed allegiance to the Lord as hypocrisy.
Copyright © 2023 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—October 2023
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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