January 26, 2001
Okay.. hold onto your socks.... God's love is ever more amazing...
I like to think if I had lived back then that I would have 'gotten it' but in reality I'm sure I wouldn't have, I am sometimes a bit thickheaded to grasp God's love, patience and balance that out with his righteousness and justice.
Isaiah 27:6-13 is another passage that outlines God's judgement against Israel. It begins with God's vision for who they will be.. that they will become a nation, a kingdom (church) that will fill all the world with its fruit. How God feels about them and the vision he has for them IS NOT affected by their sin their refusal to repent, worship and obey him as God. From They will endure captivity as a result and in verses 7-11 God describes some of what this will be like for them. They are a people without understanding - not that they lack the ability to understand but in their sinfulness they refuse to understand God and so worship him acceptably.
However... nonetheless... in spite of all that...
"In that day the Lord will thresh from the flowing Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you O Israelites will be gathered up one by one."" Isaiah 27:12
Once more they hear God's assurance that from the four corners of their land God will thresh, or literally to go through the grainfield and beat off the grain with a stick.. this is not a punishment but it was the only method to pull the fruit from the grainfield. When their time of captivity is complete God will comb through the land (east to west) and make sure that all of his people are gathered together. Despite where they may have wound up as a result of their captivity God would gather his nation together again. Whatever it takes to do this, God will do it!! If that's not amazing enough - God says that he will gather them ONE BY ONE!! In the same manner that a farmer goes back over his field to carefully collect the fruit and pick up what has fallen. God will go back over the land and gather them individually...
This passage and verse serves a powerful reminder that God cares about the individual, he cares about us individually. I've heard it said, and heard people dismiss the thought, that even if you or I were the only person on the face of the earth that Jesus would still have died for us - Jesus didn't just die for the sins of 'all the world' - it was for me personally! God cares for us individually...
He is the Good Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one!! (Mt 18)
He calls each of his sheep BY NAME!! (Jn 10)
He knows the number of hairs on our heads!! (Mt 6)
He is not willing that even one of his little ones be lost!! (Mt 18:13)