All this is today is an effort to glorify God for his exceedingly good grace in speaking to his children through his word.
As I am sure you
know, I do not agree with those on the one pendulum-extreme who claim that God
doesn’t speak to his children today, and I don’t agree with those on the
opposite pendulum-extreme who claim that God speaks today with thoughts and
ideas in people’s’ minds that are like new revelations of scripture.
However, God
speaking to his children is all through his word, and it is through his word
that he continues to speak to us today. I picture it like my heavenly Father
taking me on his lap with his word open before me and directing my attention to
what he has already written so he can show me how that will work in my life
today. The more we receive our daily lessons from the word like it is God
speaking to us, the more we will know the Holy Spirit doing exactly what Jesus promised:
“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all
the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he
will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”[1]
So, to the point: I
have been on an incredible journey through Isaiah 54. It has felt slow in some
ways, and hugely and overwhelmingly fast in others. Going one-verse-at-a-time
is like covering chapters of God’s thoughts and knowing we would learn more
every time we returned.
At the same time, I
have gone to my prayer-spot in a gulley just outside of town and prayed through
chapters of Isaiah at a time, pouring out my heart to God about what I am
reading, how it ministers to me, how it convicts me, what I need, what I want
for me, what I want for others, and I am in awe of God’s gift of grace and love
to me.
This morning, I
travelled into this beautiful verse:
All your children shall be taught by the LORD (Yahweh),
and great shall be
the peace of your children.[2]
If you are
following what the world is doing to the children of this generation for their
harm, and the way the world is inventing evil against children just as
scripture prophesied,[3]
doesn’t your heart thrill with the thought of joining God in such a work as
this? Don’t you want this for children in your life (young and old) that would
have “great peace” if only they were taught by God?
It gets even
better!!!
The word “taught”
isn’t a verb, as in emphasizing God’s action of doing the teaching. He does
that, but it isn’t the emphasis here. The word is actually a noun, which means
it is telling us what kind of people these children are; they are “the
learned”.
We know what it is
like to try to teach something to someone and they just don’t get it, or they
refuse to learn it, or they don’t have the capacity to receive it. But God
chose a word here that indicates that the children are learners.
In other words, the
meaning is that the generation of children God is talking about would be active
“learners” of Yahweh-God, and because God’s active teaching would enter
their hearts, and they would learn it for real, God’s peace will rest upon
them, and within them.
It is as God had
already said in Isaiah:
“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.”[4]
This is what God wants,
and his prophecy was that the children following that generation would become
learners of Yahweh-God (contrary to their parents who refused and rebelled
against everything), and they would come into God’s peace as promised.
As I meditated
further on the word “taught” I found this verse a bit earlier:
The Lord GOD (Yahweh) has given me the tongue of those who are taught,
that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning
he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.[5]
Again, being “those
who are taught” means those who have learned. Look at the picture: Isaiah
had a relationship with God in which he woke every morning to hear from his Father
in heaven. His ear was awakened to hear while the majority of his nation
refused to listen. He knew he was one of “those who are taught”.
And because of
this, he knew that God had “given me the tongue” of a learned one. Can’t
you see Jesus’ imagery of the vine and the branches, that if we abide in him as
a branch in the vine, we will bear much fruit?[6]
Isaiah felt that what he had received from God had so filled him that he was “learned-up”,
so to speak, and it was now flowing out of him so his tongue was passing on the
learning whether or not that generation would listen. He was one of those “who
are taught”, and so he had to speak what he knew as one of the ways
Yahweh-God would teach it to others.
There is so much
more, but all of this attached to a verse that stood out to me at my
prayer-spot yesterday, something we shared in home church time:
But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and
contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.[7]
What a gift of
grace! Those who are “learned” of Yahweh-God are not the religious
elite, or those who can understand the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic of the
original Bible manuscripts, or those who can answer the questions on a
catechism without fail, or those who can win a Bible-verse quiz (as good as any
of those things may be). Rather, the ones God looks to as those who will be his
“taught-ones” are humble in their hearts, contrite within their spirits,
and tremble with awe and wonder at the words our God speaks to us.
My encouragement in
sharing this is that any of us can be the people God is talking about. Jesus said:
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”[8]
Don’t be sheepish
(sorry!). When you hear Jesus’ voice, praise him for that! Thank him for
knowing you (because you know you could never have known him if he did not know
you first[9]).
And follow him in whatever he is saying. Don’t be one who is actively taught but
never learns (Jesus warned about that when he was here the first time[10]).
Be the wise man, “who hears these words of mine and does them”.[11]
Because, when we hear and do, we never know
how our words and deeds will be the way God turns someone else into one of
those children who are taught by the Holy Spirit of Yahweh-God and experience his
peace that surpasses understanding.
© 2023
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
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