Hurting God’s heart!

Much of the book of Isaiah is a call for the nation of Israel to come back from its sin and idolatry to worship the One True God.  There are many words of impending judgment and imminent disaster.  Here in the very beginning of the book we see that it is not all about doom and destruction.  The book of Isaiah is a call to repentance and here in our text for today there is a promise.

That promise says the repentant people of Jerusalem would be redeemed.  This means that God is going to buy them back from their sins and unfaithfulness.  In that period and culture, if someone had to sell themselves into slavery or servitude, a kinsman redeemer could come and pay for them to be released.

God is telling the people of Israel that if they will just repent that He will redeem; He will buy them out of the bondage of their sin and rebellion.  It is a part of His character.  Because of that character, He can’t help but redeem the repentant.

God’s great complaint against Israel was that they knew God and felt no shame in their sins.  They sinned and knew that what they were doing was against God and did it anyway.  Theirs was deliberate sin and in their rebellion, God still reached out to them to warn them of the impending disaster in the hopes that they might still be saved from it.

As humans, we all sin.  The sin nature within us guarantees that.  We are going to sin, no matter how good we are and how hard we try not to.  God knows that!  He knows that eventually all His children are going to make a mistake.  God will not judge us for our mistakes; He is going to judge us for our hearts.  Judgment comes to those whose hearts are hardened to their sin and don’t care that God is angry about their sin.

The heart of a repentant person hurts when God’s heart is hurt by our sin.  Child of God, your Father in heaven wants your heart to hurt so much at your sin that it keeps you from sin in the first place.  That is the kind of person to which this verse refers.

God’s great plan is to redeem everyone from the bondage of sin and rebellion.  However, in His great love for us, He has given us the choice.  We must choose to be redeemed.  To be redeemed we must allow God to develop a repentant heart within us.  We must learn what hurts God’s heart and we must allow the Holy Spirit to conform our heart so that it hurts in the same way.  We must deliberately seek out the sin in our lives and completely and utterly destroy it from our lives.  Jesus, soften our hearts to be like yours.

Daily Bible Reading: Isaiah 1:1-2:22; 2 Corinthians 10:1-18; Psalm 52:1-9; Proverbs 22:26-27