This is what you will accomplish vs 12
The Lord Himself shall do all this for you. You shall no longer have to eke out an existence in the place where you dwell. No longer will you have to war with others to attain favour and goods. No longer under the heel of sickness and infirmities. You shall be raised up to be priests and kings of God. Your works will become great in the land. No longer the tail but the head.
Those from among you
Shall build the old waste places;
Where the light of the kingdom of God has diminished, where the works of God are laid in the dust, you shall take the hand of your fellow labourers and bring life back into the family, the church, the region, the country. Through the work of your hands and the grace of God newness of life will be poured out and the kingdom once more established in strength, power and beauty.
You shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
Your works will go beyond the immediate and will establish a foundation that will span the years and bring blessings to future generations.
And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach,
The divisions that once separated a man from his wife, parents from their children, people of the community from each other, will be healed and a new unity of love will spread from person to person to person and will heal the hearts of the people of the land.
The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.
Safety will be in all the streets where anyone will be able to walk and none will make them afraid. A place where love your neighbour as yourself will be in the hearts of all and none will make afraid.
Respect His Way on His Day: If... Then
Now we are coming to the end of the lesson. Everything covered to this point is a call to us to change our ways and to bring them more in line with the way that the Lord would desire us to go. No other day of the week is this to be more evident than the Sabbath to the Jews and Sunday to the Christians. Yes, I know that many have differing opinions on what day should be accounted as Holy. So choose your day that you will honour the Lord. Or perhaps you are of the same mind that the apostle speaks about in: romans 14.5 One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. What is important is the respect you give the day (or all days) because it is (are) His day(s).
13 “If you turn away your foot from
the Sabbath,
From doing your pleasure on My holy day,
I would like you to note that the Lord is saying "if". The blessing from God comes from you doing the if.
The people this chapter is aimed at are those who believe that they are walking according to the way of God and seeking the Lord's pleasure. Yet this whole chapter shows and emphasizes that they were not actually doing that but were instead walking according to their own desires which were actually carnal in nature and used their religious practices during the day for their own purposes. Perhaps you put the day on hold until after the football game. Perhaps it is the time you do nothing except to rest and sleep and give no thought to God.
And call the Sabbath a delight,
The holy day of the Lord honorable,
That you change your mind in the way that you look at the day. Instead of looking at it as a required element of your faith walk reducing it to works you take it as God's opportunity to bless and be blessed. Come the day that you will honour our Lord do you sometimes moan that you must get up to go because of a sense of duty and not of love? You take this day to be a Christian for the children's sake while in your heart you would rather be doing something else? It is sad how many have come to the point that they can no longer take delight in this special day. That was the true mind set of the Israelites at the time Isaiah wrote the passage. They honour me with their lips but their heart is far from me. God is asking you to honour His holy day and call it a delight from the heart and not just from the lips.
And shall honor Him, not doing your own
ways,
Nor finding your own pleasure,
Nor speaking your own words,
Where is the honouring of our Lord if: 1/ during this day you walk in your own ways and not those of the Lord 2/ Where you are seeking to fulfil your pleasure and not His 3/ Where you are more concerned with getting your own opinion across to someone rather than speaking the truth that comes from the Lord.
It is needful for you to change the direction of how you live this special day so that the focus becomes Him and His will and His acts rather than your own. It is only when you do that which He is asking that it is possible for you to do the next line...
14 Then
you shall delight yourself in the Lord;
Verse 13 does not say that you will have delight but is a list of what the Lord is asking you to do. It is only as you do these things more and more from the heart that then you shall be able to delight yourself in the Lord, in this fresh reality that will give you life.
What God will do
And I will cause you to ride on the high hills
of the earth,
And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.
It is then that the Lord will look upon your efforts to do what He is asking and He will pour out such a blessing that you will not be able to contain it. The tyranny that others have inflicted upon you will vanish as smoke in the wind for He will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth. That all the things that you need He will feed you Himself with the heritage of Jacob. All that you need will be given from the hand of the Father. GOD WILL DO IT.
Who said all this?
The mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
To which I say... Amen
29 November, 1999
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