Year 6, Day 38: Isaiah 54

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Forgiveness

• Forgiveness: Forgiveness is when our sins are absolved by God.  We do not deserve this forgiveness, but God grants it to us anyway.  We cannot earn forgiveness, but God gives it to us anyway.  As we are forgiven by God, He also asks us to forgive others.  In fact, Jesus Himself teaches us to pray for our forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer when He says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

This is a wonderful chapter about the cycle of God’s relationship with humanity.  Of course, we know that God creates us.  God desires relationship with us.  Yet, we sin.  We push God away.  We live rebelliously against His ways.  So we bring judgment and condemnation upon us.  But this cycle doesn’t end with wrath.  It ends with forgiveness and a promise of peace.  It ends with a promise of security.  It ends with a promise of God caring for us and our future.

In fact, we hear within this chapter this promise in two different ways.  Of course we hear Isaiah speaking to the present reality of the people around Him.  But we hear about it as Isaiah remembers back to the story of Noah.  In the days of Noah, God brought about judgment.  But then He promised to never do it again.

It should bring us comfort to hear about God’s grace applied to people in our past.  After all, if God can bring judgment but revert to a time of grace after Noah and then bring judgment again in the time of Isaiah but once more revert to a time of grace, then God can do that with us, too.  Yes, we do bring judgment upon ourselves.  But God can get us through the judgment and into a place of grace.

By the way, these aren’t the only such times in history.  Remember Moses in the wilderness?  God judged that generation, yet brought their children into the Promised Land.  Furthermore, every story in the book of Judges is this principle at work.  After David is king, the Hebrew people slide into sinful behavior.  Yet every so often we get a king who repents and we see God forgive and restore the nation of Judah.  The reality is that God is a God of restoration and forgiveness much more than He is a God of wrath and judgment.

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