NOVEMBER 8, 2024 – GRACIOUS

READ: Is. 30:18-26: …He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you. And though the LORD gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction … You will say to them, ‘Get away! … It will be fat and plentiful … in the day that the LORD binds up the bruise of His people and heals the stroke of their wound.

This is a wonderfully beautiful passage. The LORD God, who is angry about sin and wickedness, is also the God who longs to be gracious to His people, to show His mercy upon them in His glory.

He is a God of justice: He does not leave sin unpunished, but He is also a God of mercy to all who confess their sins. Blessed are all who wait for Him!

God answers the cry of His people, as He has always done. Think of Egypt, or of the time of the Judges. As often as His people called upon Him in truth, so often the LORD answered. Then He also ensures that the people can walk in His ways.

He provides prophets and teachers who guide them in the right way and reject false doctrine and temptation (Eph. 4:11-16), so that they do not turn to the left or the right (v.21; Deut. 2:27; 5:32; 17:20; 28:14; Josh. 1:7-8; Prov. 4:27; 1 Sam. 6:12).

This also means that they break with the unrighteousness of idolatry: they cast it away like a defiled cloth (v.22).

Then God comes with His blessing: He provides them with all good things, abundantly.

This continues when God brings judgment upon all ungodly powers. It is depicted here in images that look toward the final completion of God’s work in the final judgment (the day of the great slaughter), when the great city of Babylon, the harlot who represents the idolatry of the anti-Christian world (v. 25, Rev. 18), falls.

At that time, the re-creation will be complete: tears will be wiped away, the wound will be healed. The new man will arise in the radiant light of God (v.26; Rev. 21:4,23).

Why are you not afraid of God’s judgment?                      

Sing: Ps. 22:2