'The LORD of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand: that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him underfoot: then shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from off their shoulders.
This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth: and this is the hand that is stretched out upon all the nations. For the LORD of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?'
(Isaiah 14:24-27)
- Recap
In our March blogpost we started looking at these verses in Isaiah 14:24-27. My attention had been particularly snagged by reference to God's 'purpose' which occurs four times within these four verses.
After referring to Strong's Concordance we found that this word 'purpose' combined with the meaning of 'thought' conveys a real depth to us.
We got the sense of God having made decisions after great consideration and pondering.
Decisions made from 'thinking and sharing counsel' within the Godhead. Plans that have been devised with all alternatives and options pondered, plans thought out and with much preparation.
Of course, God is far above the reasoning and intellect of humans in His 'planning' and 'pondering', but it does convey to us an understanding that we can grasp and relate to.
And what a depth of comfort this is!
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We thought about this in relation to the context of the verses when God was promising deliverance to the Jews of Judea from their enemies, but then how it speaks of God's promise for an eternal work of salvation for His chosen people then, now and until the end of the world - a work which He is continually bringing about in those individuals who He has loved from before time began.
But today we return to one other thought:
- the mystery of God having so meticulously planned and purposed all things, and yet how this is intertwined with our prayers and His promises.
This is one of the many mysterious things about God and his ways - ways which we cannot fully understand or fathom. I am reminded of Cowper's hymn:
'God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform'
But although a mystery, it is a wonderful comfort to us when we are worrying or anxious.
Perhaps you are worried today - maybe worrying about the political scene, wars and rumours of wars, the economy or the weather. Perhaps you feel like these all occur due to people and events out of our control - or what feels little minimal control.
You feel helpless. Vulnerable. Unprotected.
Maybe you have wondered if there really is a God. Or, whether God really has an overriding plan for it all.
Or, maybe you are worrying today about more personal concerns such as, whether to change job and what to, whether you will ever get married, whether your current boyfriend is the right one, whether you should be moving house and where to.
Really, all these worries are stemming from deeper concerns, such as:
- What if I get it wrong?
- What if I make a mistake?
- Is it all 'luck' or fate?
- Should I carve the path of my own destiny?
- Should I just be brave and do the thing that scares me?
- Does it matter what I do?
- Does anybody care?
- Does God have a plan for MY life?' And...how do I know what it is?
If you are a follower of Jesus may these verses in Isaiah speak to you today. May you be encouraged and comforted that God does have purposes and plans, He does knows what will happen and what He will do. May He enable you to trust Him more with all these worries and concerns and commit them into His kind hands.
(But, if you do not know God and your deeper question, is one of doubt over His existence, I encourage you to start praying - asking - whenever you remember - when you are silently sitting on the tube, driving your car, laying in bed, staring at a screen, walking the dog, switching off during a meeting, feeding your baby - ask for God to reveal Himself to you, to teach you of His realness, to teach you more of why you need Him, and give you the faith to come to Him as your Saviour, your Heavenly Father, and your Best Friend.)
Well, today let us consider this a little more on a personal level.
I have thought of one particular couple in the Bible who were married which seems a lovely example of God having a plan for individual lives as well as the bigger picture, and how He hears our prayers which bring about His promises.
Isaac and Rebecca
Isaac was the only child of elderly parents, Abraham and Sarah. Although he had an elder step-brother from his father's relationship with Sarah's maidservant, Isaac was the principal heir.
He was inheriting great wealth and prestige, but Isaac did not have a wife. And yet, he undoubtedly knew of God's repeated promise to his father Abraham, that his descendants would be as countless as the dust of the earth and the stars in the sky.
On this particular evening Isaac was alone in the fields, meditating.
Perhaps he looked at the stars that were beginning to sparkle in the darkening sky and wondered - would God really provide him with a wife?
Or had they misunderstood and Abraham's descendants would come through his step-brother?
But how could they have misunderstood?
God was so clear in His promises to his father, Abraham, that he would have an heir, a son, born to him and Sarah, and his descendants would multiply from him - and look at the trouble it had brought when they had tried to speed up God's delayed promise of a son!
Perhaps he cast his mind back to the unforgettable day when his father, who loved him so very much, had (in obedience to God) tied him up and laid him on an alter for sacrifice.
We don't know if Isaac heard God's voice call to Abraham to stop as he took his knife and was poised to plunge it into his beloved son. We can only imagine how Isaac's own heart pounded as he looked into the perhaps harrowed and sweat beaded face of his anguished and yet trusting father.
But whether he heard the voice of God or not, no doubt his father would have shared with him what God had said and he would have seen the ram caught by its horns in a nearby thicket - a perfect suitable substitute sacrifice provided by God Himself. Isaac had witnessed first hand what God could do, as well as being a 'miracle baby' himself.
And now, as the night air drew in he was 'pensively musing' (Strong's Concordance), alone, maybe the responsibilities of his future perhaps pressing upon him, perhaps missing his late mother, and perhaps wondering how God's promises to his father would come about.
Would his father's mission for securing him a wife be successful?
Some weeks earlier Abraham had sent off his elderly and much trusted godly servant to their relatives many miles away to find him a wife - but how would he know which woman was the right one? And what if the woman wasn't willing to come? Abraham had given strict instructions to his servant to return if that was the case, but then what would they do? And what if he did bring him a bride but he didn't love her?
But then, what was this - a cloud of dust on the horizon in the lingering evening light maybe, or perhaps the sound of laden camels and their drivers catching Isaac's ear in the night air.
Isaac turned his steps to meet the oncoming camels, which as they come along side him stop, and a veiled figure dismounts and stands before him.
Rebekah.
Abraham's beautiful and chaste great-niece who had been willing to leave her family and come and marry a man she had probably never met.
Rebekah - God's evidence that He answers prayer, that He keeps promises and doesn't forget, and God's provision of a wife for Isaac.
What a story Isaac's father's servant has to tell him of how wonderfully the LORD has gone before him and made it clear that this was the woman he was to bring Isaac for his wife.
And we read, 'Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death' (Genesis 24:67).
*****
Now whilst we have speculated to some degree of what Isaac may have been thinking as he meditated, perhaps you are or have been in a similar position of wanting a husband or wife, and you toss and turn in your mind about the situation.
Really, underneath all these thoughts and questions is our distrust of God's care of us, of His ability to provide for us, and that God has a plan for the events of our lives. But let us unpick Isaac's situation a little and pray that it might strengthen our faith and trust.
What can we learn from Isaac's situation?
1. Firstly, that Isaac and Abraham were leaning on a promise from God
God had promised countless descendants to Abraham, and no doubt he and Isaac prayed to see the outworking of this.
You might not have had a direct spoken promise from God that He will give you a spouse or children, but we have encouragement in His word.
For example:
When God created Adam He saw that he was alone and God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an helpmeet for him' (Genesis 2:18). God then went on to create animals, but none were found suitable helpmeets for Adam - it is not enough that a man has a pet dog or some other loyal animal. He needs a helper comparable to himself. God created woman - Eve - that she might be that helpmeet to him.
God, who created us knows not only that we need each other, but a marriage is a beautiful type of the love of Jesus Christ, our Spiritual Husband, to His church, His bride.
We are encouraged further that 'Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD (Proverbs 18:22), and Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 speaks of the support one can be to the other.
But then we have Jesus speaking of some who stay single for 'the kingdom of heaven's sake' (Matthew 19:12), and Paul recommending a single life so that we can serve God without distraction (1 Corinthians 7).
Perhaps you wonder if you are meant to stay single so that you can devote your life more fully to the Lord.
But yet, your longing for a spouse overwhelms you, your loneliness is so hard to bear, your longing for children so strong. All around you, you seem to see other people who are happily married, or in loving relationships, and having families. Has God forgotten you?
Some people are single but don't have that intense desire, and perhaps don't pray for it.
What are we to do?
We need to lay our request before Him in prayer. Tell Him what we have read in His word. Ask Him, as Rebekah later asks the Lord about her pregnancy, '...Why am I thus?' (Genesis 25:22). 'Why am I plagued by this unquenchable desire for a spouse - one to love and be loved in return if it is not to be fulfilled?'
The important lesson here I believe is to learn submission and patience. To learn to trust that God has a plan for our lives and for our faith to be tested.
As we lay our requests before the Lord, may you be helped to give your heartache and longings for a spouse to Him, and ask to be helped to say, 'Thy will be done'. And then thank Him that He hears our prayers, praise Him that He keeps promises and cares intimately for each of His children.
(I was not blessed with a husband until in my 40s - and used to find Elisabeth Elliot's books on 'Loneliness', and 'Passion and Purity' very helpful on this subject).
2. Let us take godly steps to 'try the door'.
By this I mean, that unless the Lord clearly shows us in some way that He does not have a spouse for us, let us follow the example of Abraham.
He took a godly step in trying to find Isaac his promised wife by sending his servant to look for a suitable bride in a place most likely to provide a suitable helpmeet for Isaac.
He wasn't looking amongst the heathen of the land (it would have been much easier to stay local and hope that the girl would submit to his religious beliefs), no, he was sending his servant a long way to those who were of the same background and faith.
We too can 'take godly steps to try the door' by prayerfully going to places where there is likely to be somebody suitable, and trying to develop friendships with other Christians.
3. Prayerfully
Prayer is all though this - and now we start to see the wonderful mysterious working of how this is God's plan.
When Abraham's servant arrived at the city where Abraham's relatives lived, it was evening. He stopped at a well outside the city, got off his camel, and then knelt down and prayed.
He knew it was the time when the women would come out to get water from the well, so he prayed that God would bless and give success to his mission and that the woman who he would ask for water for a drink and who would then without him asking offer to draw water for his camels too, that she would be the woman God had planned (appointed) for Isaac.
Before he had even finished praying, Rebekah came out from the city and did exactly as the servant had prayed when he asked for water.
Think of how this shows God's mysterious and powerful working:
- God had ordered events so that the servant would arrive at the well at evening when women would be coming to get water.
- God had - without the servant realising- directed him to that particular well.
- Before the servant had even prayed Rebekah would have left home to get to the well at just the right time.
- Rebekah, out of all those women in the city was Abraham's great niece, beautiful and pure.
- God directed Rebekah - without her realising - to say the very words which answered the request the servant made, and confirmed to him that she was God's choice.
The servant didn't have to spend days searching to try and find Abraham's relatives.
He wasn't helped to find them to then only discover that all the women were married or unsuitable.
No, God was answering - had answered - his prayers even before he had prayed them! Which brings to mind what Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:8, '...your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him'.
4. Willingness
After recounting to Rebekah and her family of the wonderful way that God had answered his prayer, the servant wasn't met with any resistance. The family fully recognised God's hand and will and said that they would ask Rebekah if she would go back with him and marry Isaac.
When the question was put to Rebekah she then said she was willing to travel back with the servant and without delays.
It reminds me of the verse, 'Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power' (Psalm 110:3). God can move people's hearts to feel certain ways.
On the other hand we may be very willing to have a relationship with somebody, but the other person doesn't feel the same way - and we cannot force their affection.
I remember feeling this myself and trying to push the friendship - all the time so conscious of the verse, 'Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thy own understanding'. I couldn't make that person interested in me - despite trying to convince myself that this was the one, and yet I couldn't acknowledge the truth in my heart until the Lord firmly closed the door.
Well, as we come to the end of these thoughts, I just return to an earlier comment, that God is answering our individual prayers, has an individual plan for each of His children, which at the same time fits into His bigger plans for the world.
Abraham was to be the ancestor of Jesus. As we read in Matthew 1:1-16, 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac... ... Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ'.
God had a bigger picture that Abraham was to be the ancestor of the Saviour of the world and God had planned out exactly how that would happen. And yet, at the same time, God was answering those individual prayers and fulfilling those promises he had made in individual lives, so that Isaac and Rebekah were brought together.
Although we have only looked at one personal area that may be causing you much anxiety, or has been one you have worried over a lot in the past, we can be encouraged that in all our concerns God has a plan, a purpose, an overriding knowledge of what will happen, and Almighty power to bring about what He will for the outcome of the world.
So much more could be said on this in a wider context, but for today, let us summarise it with one verse:
'In all thy ways acknowledge him (God), and he (God) shall direct thy paths' (Proverbs 3:6).
If we are asking God to show us His way for us, studying His Word and leaning on His promises, taking godly steps to try the options, doing all with prayer, and looking for tokens of willingness in all aspects, we will see Him leading us and going before us in our lives, showing us His way for us.
I pray these thoughts may be of some help to us, or remind us of what we have to thank the Lord for in how He has led us through life so far.
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