Theological Commentary: Click Here
As we
approach the close of the book of Isaiah, we get a great chapter of hope. Here is a great vision of the future. The scattered nation will be rebuilt. The Lord’s people will be returned from
across the globe. In fact, the nations
themselves will rebuilt it. A nation
scattered will be bought together and made whole again by the very people into
whom they were scattered.
As we move
through the promises of restoration, I love how the reason for the restoration
comes out. Why is it that the people
will be regathered? They will be
regathered for the sake of the Lord.
They will be regathered because He is righteous. It is God who scattered; it is God who will
restore. This is done so that the people
– and the whole world, really – shall know that the Lord is the true
Redeemer. He is the only one who can
restore satisfactorily.
Of course,
in all of this glory the warning right in the middle of the passage should not
be lost. The nation and kingdom that
will not serve you will perish; those nations shall be utterly laid to
waste. That is a stark warning
completely. God called Assyria. They failed to serve Him. Therefore, they ended up in judgment
themselves. The same is true for
Babylon.
In the end,
there are places of grace and places of judgment. We will all know them, for we all ebb and
flow between obedience and rebellion.
God desires us to be with Him. In
fact, he desires it so much that He will bring us into judgment when we should
stray from Him. But He doesn’t judge us
permanently if He knows our heart can become contrite. He will judge us so that we can find
ourselves in a place of restoration. He
judges us, like the Hebrew people, so that we can be rebuilt in a better and
stronger relationship with Him.
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