Friday, April 17, 2015

The Lord will Fight for your Worship

Just in case you were wondering, you should trust God. Such we see admonished in the earlier verses of Isaiah 26. But as you would expect from a well-crafted biblical book, it doesn't repeat that same phrasing over and over again with no further exposition.

As Isaiah continues onward through his explanation of the topic, he reveals an interesting part of God's character. One that is very unique and very real in our lives to this day.

Specifically, look to verses 12-16,
"Lord, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works in us. O Lord our God, other lords beside thee have had dominion over us: but by thee only will we make mention of thy name. They are dead, they shall not live; they are deceased, they shall not rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish. Thou hast increased the nation, O Lord, thou hast increased the nation: thou art glorified: thou hadst removed it far unto all the ends of the earth. Lord, in trouble have they visited thee, they poured out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them."

So, it would seem from these verses that the Israelites worshiped false gods that were not the LORD. This the Lord responded to by destroying those gods so that even so much of their memory perished.

The Lord does not let His dominion and the worship that he rightfully deserves to head over to another being at any time. Instead, He determines that He will keep the loyalty of His people, even if that means destroying their other gods.

Seeing how the Lord is immutable and all, it seems obvious that He still acts in the same way today though the application may be a little bit different. Sometimes though, when the Lord begins to see our hearts being turned away to other things that are not Him, He will fight for our hearts by destroying our idols to being with.

But just because the Lord will fight for you, doesn't mean that you should make Him. On the contrary, like other elements of God's grace, I believe that this should only encourage you to try harder to live in a way pleasing to the One who would do so much for someone He doesn't need at all.

No comments:

Post a Comment