Year 9, Day 35: Isaiah 51

Theological Commentary: Click Here

In Isaiah 51, the Lord seeks to comfort His people.  They have been judged.  They have been exiled.  They have known oppression, enslavement, relocation, warfare, hunger, and all kinds of other hardship.  They are tired and beaten down.  Their resolve is failing.  In a word, they are humbled.  They are right where God can use them.

I love the passage in this chapter that says, “Who are you that are afraid of man who dies?”  In that verse, there is an eternal perspective.  What can mankind to one another?  Truthfully, a great many things!  We can inflict all kinds of pain and misery upon one another.  But we cannot do anything eternal to each other.  The worst we can do is to kill, but that only ceases life in this world.  No person who has ever lived, who is alive, or who will live can affect us beyond the grave.  Is there much to fear among mankind?  Of course there is!  Yet there is nothing eternal to fear among mankind.

This is God’s point.  Yes, the Hebrew people have endured a great many hardships.  They are greatly looking forward to the promised end of their exile and the return to their promised land.  In the end, though, all of these things are temporal. 

The reality is that God is still their God.  Forgiveness is still possible.  Redemption is still an offer.  Eternal life with our creator is still something that is unchanged.  No amount of temporal hardship can alter the reality that we know in God.  Yes, life can be tough.  But every hardship, even death, is at most temporal.  God is our God of the eternal.

<><