Debt and Redemption

Have you ever read Isaiah and the other prophets and thought that the paragraphs don’t seem related? Perhaps you have studied these books of the Bible to find the context in which they were written, and yet, the verses still seem unrelated to each other.  As human beings, we understand things better if we know what topic they are about and why they are written.  But if we think that the Lord speaks arbitrarily, circularly, or without a plan, we are stopped in our efforts to understand what is written by these prophets.

God’s mind is greater than our mind and He speaks with a plan.  Not only is He a great source of inspiration for our thought-life, but we actually get to know God through what He has said.    Today I will write about Isaiah 40, God’s offer to help Mankind.

In verses 1 – 2 the Lord is comforting a people who have been lost in sin.  He states that her (the people’s) time has been completed and her sin has been paid for by the Babylonian exile. Then the Lord speaks about a new and better plan of redemption.  The voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord is a prophecy about John the Baptist.  God not only will send John, but he is going to prepare the way for the great answer to His nation's unbelief: their Messiah, Jesus the Christ.   This will be a new and different way to atone for their sins.  The requirements of the law never completely satisfied the debt of personal sin that men owed to God.

To accomplish the redemption through Jesus, the Lord levels the playing field.  Isaiah writes that the hills will be brought low and the valleys become level. God brings all men to a level status by consigning all men to sin so that all have the possibility to be forgiven.  Though some men may have thought of themselves as good, the Lord points out that their “glory” withers and falls like the flowers of the grass.  He not only leveled the playing field of Man, but now proceeds to tell us how His excellence is far superior to Man, for even His words are “forever.” God is able to give men a reward, whereas none of Man’s works are lasting, hence the reference to withering flowers.  We may be showy for a while, but our lives are soon over and our works forgotten.  In God’s eyes, a thousand years can be as a blink of the eye.

In verses 9 –14 the Lord tells us about His power, and yet being a gentle shepherd, as well as His omniscience and that He was and is the Creator.  This may seem unrelated to His topics of sin and redemption, however, the Lord has just shown that Man’s glory is inferior, and He now contrasts Man’s glory with His own.  Man cannot save himself by putting in time for the sins he has done, neither can he impress God by his own glory.  Even the great works of nations fall short of God’s glory.  The Lord is showing the contrast between Himself and Man in order to show that the creations of men’s hands, their idols, are not Gods.  He is reasoning with His people about the error of their thinking, petitioning them to consider that the Creator of the universe is better than the creations of their hands.  He asks “To Whom will you compare to Me. Or who is My equal?” (vs 25-26). By inviting us to use the mental function of comparing, God is beginning the process by which men will come to discernment, and then truth and wisdom.

God does not despise Man’s inferiority nor despise his cause (vs 27).  Though He acknowledges His glory is superior to Man’s, God also does not get weary of us (verse 28).  In fact, He offers help to those who prefer to have God take the credit for the goodness in their lives; He will give His strength to those who seek Him, (“those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint; vs 31).” And this help, my friend, is far superior to the redemption accomplished by paying a debt for one’s own sin.  Amen.