March 2, 2022 -- Isaiah 48:17-19, 22 -- God's gifts of peace and righteousness in a war torn world

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17 Thus says the Lord,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
“I am the Lord your God,
who teaches you to profit,
who leads you in the way you should go.
18 Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments!
Then your peace would have been like a river,
and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;
19 your offspring would have been like the sand,
and your descendants like its grains;
their name would never be cut off
or destroyed from before me.”
“There is no peace,” says the LORD, “for the wicked.”
Isaiah 48:17-19, 22 ESV

How short the human attention span is! No so long ago a hue and cry was raised about refugees trying to enter Europe. Pictures of devastation as boats overloaded with people, sank and small, floating objects on the sea testified to the horrid loss of life. Then there were the boil water advisories on Indigenous lands—some of which had stretched out over a decade. Into the mix was appropriately raised the urgent concern for missing Indigenous women—even while the number of men who have gone missing and presumed murdered or dead is also a great, unspoken, scandal. Covid hit and all attention focused there. On the side the government of British Columbia took over a private hospice because it refused to euthanize the clients who specifically chose to go there in order to be freed from the government’s administration of death. Even in that once safe haven, the BC government began forcing the practice of murder, all the while, along with the Federal government was saying Covid is terrible and every life matters. In an almost hypocritical manner the whole country was locked up, to save life, and abortions continued through-out those times. Black Lives Matter protests erupted with fires and looting and toppling of historic statues and such abominations were called “relatively peaceful”. By comparison, the truckers’ convoy was peaceful, however it was smashed with the clumsy, sledgehammer weapon of the Emergency Act. All the while, for the last two full years money gushed from government coffers plunging Canada into an impossible, irresponsible fiscal situation. Now, even as the government continues to prosecute trucker convoy ringleaders, and do so behind the scenes and with barely anyone watching, the world is transfixed by the war over the Ukraine.

There is nothing new under the sun. When Isaiah spoke to the people of Israel, they were languishing in refugee camps and striving to make a new life in a foreign land, having been ravaged by war. The traditional boundaries of the Hebrew peoples were torn up by war, ravaged, and the people who remained on the land were the poorest of the poor at the mercy of all. When you read Isaiah, you understand the LORD used the sledgehammer of suffering to bring His people from their rebellion and waywardness to the place where they’d acknowledge they had trusted idols, which are demons, rather than gods. They had trusted their own power, rather than the Living God.

To all who will hear it, then, and now, know the LORD declares He is the Redeemer. No political force can save you. No movement or uprising will bring you relief. He is the One, and He alone, Who rescues His people from the grave, from their deadness in sin, bringing to life in Jesus Christ. Those who trust in Him have peace that passes understanding. Those who trust in Him, see the devastation all around, and even as they weep and cry out to God until their eyes have no more tears, there is a peace which is indescribable. The LORD is accomplishing His work in and through history, tearing down the strongholds of the wicked and bringing HIs people to the New Jerusalem.

How should believers live in these wild days? Listen to God—read the word and obey it. Trust not in your bank account, your skills or your prepper bunkers. Trust that the LORD Who has saved His people in the past, will work His righteousness and His salvation in the present. Walk with God. Pray with fervency. To live is to live for Jesus, to die is gain. So, as long as the Father lends you breath, praise Him, declare the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. There is judgment for the wicked. It is swift and terrible. Pray that God will turn many hearts and minds from their fast-track to ruin, and bring them to a place where there is in Jesus Christ, peace, like a river. Rely on the Spirit of God to guard you in perfect peace until Jesus returns. Encourage the faltering brothers and sisters with these words, looking to Jesus Who intercedes for you even now and brings all your cares and needs to the Father in heaven.

O God, the LORD Who spread out the heavens and spoke the swirling galaxies into existence and sustains them without any effort or loss of power, increase our faith. Let Your people look to You by the power of Your Spirit and see Jesus Christ, Him crucified and now glorified at Your right hand so that Your people will know how to live profitably in these dark days. Seeing by faith, Jesus the Redeemer, may Your people then find in You this promised peace that is as reliable as the course of a river and receive righteousness that is as constant and rhythmic as the waves which reach the shore. Amen.

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