Readings for today: Isaiah 49-51, Psalms 119:65-96
There are some who struggle with a God who feels. A God who expresses deep emotions. A God who suffers with and alongside His people. They are uncomfortable because they want to protect God’s unchanging nature. They want to guard against anything that might threaten God’s immutability. They want to make sure God isn’t driven or influenced by anything or anyone outside of Himself. I get it. I really do. And yet I reject this understanding of God because it simply is not Biblical.
God clearly reveals Himself as a God of compassion. A God who cares deeply for His people like a mother does a child. A God who loves His people dearly and who will never let them go. A God who binds Himself to His people in an unbreakable covenant forever. God freely chose this path. He freely chose to define Himself as the God of Israel. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From beginning to end, God makes it clear that He will be our God and we will be His people. He walks with us in the Garden of Eden and He dwells with us in the New Jerusalem. Along the way, He provides Tabernacle and Temple as places where heaven and earth meet and now, after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, He provides His Spirit to come and live in our hearts. This is who God is. This is who God has revealed Himself to be. He has shown Himself to be this kind of God and no other.
Listen to how Isaiah describes it in our readings for today. “This is what the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, says to one who is despised, to one abhorred by people, to a servant of rulers: “Kings will see, princes will stand up, and they will all bow down because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel — and he has chosen you…This is what the Lord says: I will answer you in a time of favor, and I will help you in the day of salvation. I will keep you, and I will appoint you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land, to make them possess the desolate inheritances…Shout for joy, you heavens! Earth, rejoice! Mountains break into joyful shouts! For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his afflicted ones…Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you. Look, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me…This is what the Lord God says: Look, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my banner to the peoples. They will bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters will be carried on their shoulders. Kings will be your guardians and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down to you with their faces to the ground and lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who put their hope in me will not be put to shame…Then all humanity will know that I, the Lord, am your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.” (Isaiah 49:7-8, 13, 15-16, 22-23, 26 CSB)
I am not sure why we are so afraid to take God at His Word. I am not sure what makes us so uncomfortable with a God who feels so deeply. I get that God is “wholly other” and understand the need to make sure we aren’t remaking God in our own image but God is the only One who gets to define Himself. He is in charge of His own self-revelation. And He clearly makes Himself known as a God of compassion.
Readings for tomorrow: Isaiah 52-54, Psalms 119:97-128