Living Grace

“Listen carefully, the Lord God will come with might, And His arm will rule for Him. Most certainly His reward is with Him, And His restitution accompanies Him. He will protect His flock like a shepherd, He will gather the lambs in His arm, He will carry them in His bosom; He will gently and carefully lead those nursing their young. – Isaiah 40 : 10-11.

The heart of what the gospel is can be summed up with the revelation that he is our shepherd.  God’s unconditional love showered upon us is manifested to us in his protection.  For his embrace of us is his commitment to us and peace is the fruit of his embrace.

Isaiah beautifully paints this wonderful picture, each word is a brush stroke of God communicating his intention to shower us with his goodness. Here the measurelessness of God’s grace, given to us in Christ, is communicated with the beautiful image of a shepherd caring and nurturing his lambs.

The shepherd looks for his sheep; he provides for them, cares, protects, holds and keeps them safe. He understands his sheep, he knows each one of them, he knows what to expect and he is prepared to risk everything for them.

And his total value and acceptance of us, gives us the freedom to be ourselves, to be the unique person we were created to be. Free to be human, free to be weak, free to be wrong, free to not understand everything, free even to have erroneous beliefs or doctrines. For no matter what we do, where our thoughts and acts take us, what lies or traps we fall into, what confusion we have, Jesus is determined to save us, Jesus is able and willing to keep us, because he was willing to lay everything down to find us, bring us home and keep us safe forevermore.

This shepherd embraces us with the fullness of heaven. This shepherd has planted his glory inside our hearts. This shepherd has united his life into our lives and now we to have the heart of the shepherd alive inside us.

In Christ Jesus we lack nothing, for the Good Shepherd is the embrace, delight and life of our hearts.

“And the glory and majesty and splendour of the Lord will be revealed, and all humanity shall see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” – Isaiah 40:5

The magnitude of the Glory of God is something we desperately need to understand and experience.

We need it because it was the desire of God for every one of us to be filled with the majesty and splendour of God. We were created by the Glory of God, in the Glory of God, for the Glory of God to be a shinning reflection of all the wonder, brilliance and colour of who God is.

The promise of the New Covenant is that God will restore each one of his creation to be who they were created to be, sons of the living God. And the promise of God that everything we lost in the Garden of Eden will be restored by Jesus Christ.

The Old Covenant was a fleeting shadow of the glory of God. Moses was not permitted to look upon the face of God, he had to hide his face as God’s glory passed next to him. But here in Isaiah is the promise of the New Covenant we have in Christ, that to us the glory and majesty and splendour of the Lord will be revealed.

And it was revealed to us in Christ, it was revealed in us by the Holy Spirit and it will be revealed through us as we delight ourselves in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

It was never God’s desire for you to live a single moment without enjoying the presence and glory of God. Christ’s promise to you is his abundant life overflowing in your life and for you to experience the glory, majesty and splendour of God radiating through your life.

“Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.” – Isaiah 40:1

The coming of Christ into a lost world is good news. It is the news all creation has waited to hear. It is the news that healing is here, captivity is broken, oppression will cease, peace will be restored and the glory of God will be revealed to all mankind.

It is good news because God full of goodness, mercy and compassion demonstrates to us, the ungodly and the helpless his love. His love is greater, more self-sacrificing, more amazing and abundant than any other love.

It is given to us, the way it was proclaimed to God’s people through the prophet Isaiah. It is poured out to us when we were rebellious, when we had resistant thoughts and when we had a disobedient attitude towards God. For just like Israel and Judah we were not running towards God trying to find him, we like them were running away from God, hiding from Him, not wanting to be embraced and found.

Jesus Christ died for us when we were lost. He died and at that moment every past, present and future sin was eternally forgiven. It was a once and eternal sacrifice reconciling a loving, good God to a lost, shameful, rebellious creation.

The light of the Good News of Christ is that he has transferred our darkness into his abundant, radiant brightness.  In our rebellion there is comfort, there is hope because God has given us a confident expectation of His goodness, and that is in Christ we now have abundant life.

We have passed from the shadows of despair into his glorious, bright light.