Look To Your Maker (Isaiah 17:7)

 


Tuesday, December 17, 2024


Psalm 86

Isaiah 17:1-11

Mark 10:46-11:11


Look To Your Maker (Isaiah 17:7)


This week we are searching the scriptures to find out how God ensures our success in our attempt to live virtuously. The chivalric knight or dame of the Lord Jesus is not embarking on an easy journey; we should make sure we know that we will reach our destination before we set off (Luke 14:25-33). Today we discover one of the ways in which God brings us to that place.


Damascus sounds like a pretty great place. For Isaiah to pronounce such a terrible woe upon them suggests that there must be something worthwhile being lost in its destruction. And yet, destruction is coming – there is also something terrible that needs to be removed.


In and through this passage there is also the reason why this is all going to happen: “In that day man will look to his Maker.” For too long, the Damascenes have been looking “on what his own fingers have made”. Their virtue has come from within themselves, defined by themselves, and not by what the Lord has laid down in his instructions for living. And so God is coming, to harvest “the ears of grain” and remove those who have defined virtue as whatever they think best for themselves.


Meanwhile, there will be some left. The wave of God’s holy justice will sweep through, and those left behind will be “like the glory of the children of Israel”, a suggestive phrase, bringing back memories of the Exodus from Egypt. Justice sweeps through in order to reveal the people of God’s own flock, his army of knights and dames, of men, women and children.


God allows us to see his justice in action. Indeed, the whole world knows about the cross of Jesus, upon which the punishment which we deserve was borne by Christ. But just because we have a front-row seat doesn’t mean that we are being judged. So often we get confused, and don’t realise that perhaps God is clearing a way for us to move forward, to grow into a higher standard of virtue, to live closer to the way he would have us live.


What struggles in life are you facing at the moment? Are you under God’s judgement, or have you accepted Christ as Lord and are actually watching God clear the way for you?


O Lord of hosts: send your Spirit of cleansing and clearing into my life, so that there may be no hindrance to my growth into the image of Christ.

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