Sunday, November 11, 2018

Isaiah 10:20 -- On Fear and Love

"And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth."
Isaiah 10:20


Reading this today, I made a connection for the first time between this verse and one in the preceding chapter: Isaiah 9:13, which reads "For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of hosts."

So, of course the verses could be unrelated and the first one is talking about accepting God's correction, and the second is talking about turning from your abusers to the Lord in more of an all-world sense, since theses chapters are talking about countries and peoples rather than individuals, and are a look forward to the coming of Christ, both the first and second times.

Because of my mental connection between the verses though, this verse kind of transformed its meaning into something else.  Along with the verse from the previous chapter, perhaps this is still talking about the Lord, and so the interpretation would be that instead of following God because we are afraid of punishment, we learn to follow him for better, truer reasons, or because he offers us truth instead of falsehood.

I really like that idea, because although God is all-powerful and super strong, and he certainly can be scary... that isn't the point of any of this.  God corrects us because he loves us, but focusing on the correction and not the love throws us way out of line with who he really is.  *Everything* that he does is about saving us, making us better, helping us, and about our eventual joy.  His entire work is about us--helping us, loving us, supporting us, finding us and helping us find our back when we get lost, teaching us how to be better and happier people, and how to take care of each other.  Everything good we have is from him, and when we follow him he leads us to all good.

Today, let's work on transitioning from obeying God because he will correct us to seeing him as he really is... laboring always to teach us and help us to make better choices--wanting us to learn to grow up and choose the good freely because it leads to brighter and happier things, rather than because we are afraid of the consequences.

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