Wait for Christ
Wait for Christ. Not everyone responds to God's promise of rest. It always surprises me how far unbelievers will stretch reality because they refuse to believe and obey the simple reality of God's Word.
3 It shall come to pass in the
day the LORD gives you rest from your sorrow, and from your fear and the
hard bondage in which you were made to serve, 4 that you will take up
this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say:
“ How the oppressor has ceased,
The golden city ceased!
5 The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked,
The scepter of the rulers.
Isaiah 14:3-5, NKJV
12 To whom He said, “This is the rest with which
You may cause the weary to rest,”
And, “This is the refreshing”;
Yet they would not hear.
Isaiah 28:12, NKJV
15 For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel:
“ In returning and rest you shall be saved;
In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
18 Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you;
And therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you.
For the LORD is a God of justice;
Blessed are all those who wait for Him.
Isaiah 30:15 & 18, NKJV
Wait for Christ
Blessed are all those who wait for Him.
Isaiah
spent almost his entire life prophesying against Israel and other
surrounding nations. Yet, in the midst of his bleak words, he never
ceased to proclaim the promises of spiritual rest to God's true people.
Though
Isaiah prophesied that Babylon would overcome Israel, he tempered it
with the knowledge that the oppression of Babylon will have an end. In
Isaiah 14 he stated that the Israelites would speak this proverb against
Babylon,
“How the oppressor has ceased,
The golden city ceased!
The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked,
The scepter of the rulers."
Notice
that the people went into captivity because they were worshiping other
gods. Not so, however, when the captivity ceased; then they understood
that it was the Lord who broke the staff of the wicked.
Not
everyone responds to God's promise of rest. It always surprises me how
far unbelievers will stretch reality because they refuse to believe and
obey the simple reality of God's Word. Why would anyone not want the
eternal rest that God offers? Apart from the grace of God, their eyes
are forever blinded from the truths of the Bible.
But
to those whose eyes have been opened, to those who have returned to God
through the death of Christ on the cross for their sins, He says:
“In returning and rest you shall be saved;
In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
I can not say it better than Isaiah did in verse 18:
Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you;
And therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you.
For the LORD is a God of justice;
Blessed are all those who wait for Him.
Go
to God today; fall before Him and cry out to Him who, alone, can save
you; through the blood of Christ claim the eternal rest of God. Wait for Christ, for He will, indeed give you rest!
Devotional Reflections Home Page
New! Comments
Have your say about what you just read! Leave me a comment in the box below.