Reassurance for God's People....Isaiah 48:14-19, 21-22; Sunday School Lesson for 1-16-11

ATTENTION:  Please note that this lesson, Reassurance for God’s People on Isaiah 48:14-19, 21-22 is for the 1-16-11 ISSL.  You will find the 1-9-11 lesson, Turn to Me and Be Saved, directly beneath this message and on the right side.

Jed

Reassurance for God’s People

Isaiah 48:14-19, 21-22

International Sunday School Lesson

1-16-11

Commentary

By

Jed Greenough

Isaiah 48:14-19 

 ¹⁴ “Come together, all of you, and listen:
   Which of the idols has foretold these things?
The LORD’s chosen ally
   will carry out his purpose against Babylon;
   his arm will be against the Babylonians.
¹⁵ I, even I, have spoken;
   yes, I have called him.
I will bring him,
   and he will succeed in his mission.

 ¹⁶ “Come near me and listen to this:

   “From the first announcement I have not spoken in secret;
   at the time it happens, I am there.”

   And now the Sovereign LORD has sent me,
   with his Spirit.

 ¹⁷ This is what the LORD says—
   your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
“I am the LORD your God,
   who teaches you what is best for you,
   who directs you in the way you should go.
¹⁸ If only you had paid attention to my commands,
   your peace would have been like a river,
   your righteousness like the waves of the sea.
¹⁹ Your descendants would have been like the sand,
   your children like its numberless grains;
their name would never be cut off
   nor destroyed from before me.”

Isaiah 48:21-22 

²¹ They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;
   he made water flow for them from the rock;
he split the rock
   and water gushed out.

 ²² “There is no peace,” says the LORD, “for the wicked.”

If you are not a first time student of the International Sunday School Lessons or Uniform Series, I am sure by now that you are seeing that God must have felt that if He didn’t keep stressing the same thing, Israel would keep missing the point.

Okay, I will just cut to the chase, I personally think, speaking of missing, that the committee for the ISSL really missed the point of this particular scripture when they entitled it “Reassurance for God’s people”.  Yes, God is saying that His plan to free them using Cyrus will happen and it will be successful, but go back and look at the passage because there isn’t much reassurance here for Israel.

God says, “Listen” I am the one that told you about this Cyrus fella, not some idol you have to carry around.

But then in verse 16, Isaiah announces himself by saying, “And now the Sovereign LORD has sent me, with His Spirit.”

And what Isaiah has to pass on are not reassurances but rather “if onlys”.  If only Israel had listened to what God taught, if only they had paid attention.  Then they would have had peace and righteousness and their children would have been blessed as a result.

God provides just as He provided water for them even as they rebelled in their wanderings in the desert but there was no peace for the wicked.

Go back and read the entire chapter of Isaiah 48 and you will see the chastisement even more clearly as opposed to reassurance as a theme.

For us as Christians, though, I think there can be reassurance.  We can see through our studies over the last several weeks that God keeps His word.

We know that if He says a failure to follow what He says is good for us will result in punishment then that is exactly what will happen and the opposite is true as well.

We have reassurance that God can look through the centuries and pronounce that one man yet to be born that won’t even acknowledge Him, will be used by Him for His purposes, in this case Cyrus’ defeating the Babylonians to free the captive Israelites.

We can have reassurance that all of what Isaiah said through God’s gift of His spirit is also true and of course this extends to the rest of scripture as well.

We can have reassurance that if what God taught and directed Israel was good for them then what He would teach us is good for us as well.

And we can be assured that by paying attention to this we will enjoy the peace and righteousness both for ourselves and our children that Israel could have had.

But, just like Israel, if we are stubborn and fail to follow what He teaches and directs or fail to observe Israel’s example then we will not have reassurance of peace but assurance that our wickedness will result in the opposite.

And what is the opposite of peace?

As I am writing this what will not leave my mind is that part of 1 Corinthians 14:33 that says “For God is not a God of disorder but peace…”

So to me the opposite of peace with God is disorder or as Young’s Literal Translation puts it “tumult”.

We can be reassured that if we follow what He directs we will have peace.

For Discussion:

1. Discuss verse 17 with regard to how we tend to be critical of Israel and their failures to follow what God directed was best for them but yet how are we any different?
2. Consider how peace can be like a river as mentioned in verse 18.
3. Consider how righteousness can be like the waves of the sea as mentioned also in verse 18.
4. Discuss how God provided for the Israelites even as they rebelled (verse 21) and compare that with what they could have had.
5. Discuss that there is no peace for the wicked.
6. Pray for Israel.

(Join me next week for the International Sunday School Lesson for January 23, 2011, The Servant’s Mission in the World, on Isaiah 49:1-6)

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.