Come Unto Jesus
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You will be delivered by returning and resting, in quietness and trust will be your strength. (Isaiah 30:15)
The prophet Isaiah, some 700 years before the birth of Christ, wrote these words to a rebellious and rundown people. Sin and compromise had led God’s people into trouble they could not get themselves out of. In fear, Israel had begun to form alliances with Egypt, their former captor. They sought to find solutions to their hardships without consulting the Lord. But God had promised that Pharaoh’s protection would end up as their shame, and the shade they sought in Egypt from the heat of life’s troubles.
The prophet continues by saying that these rebellious, deceitful children, unwilling to listen to the LORD’s instruction from His word or His prophets, will find themselves collapsing like a cracked wall. They will shatter into a million useless pieces.
Maybe you, like me and like the Israelites, have at one time or another found yourself at the end of your rope. Your best attempts at change or solving your problems have only made things worse. Your wish for things to just be easier for once leads you toward places and people your prior self would be shocked by. This is what it is like to be a sinner. This is what it is like to live life with a sin-sick heart.
And if we are honest, it’s exhausting. Certainly, good behavior can resolve some of our troubles for a little bit, but it doesn’t necessarily change the fact that we still find ourselves looking in every direction but God. And if we are honest, we often think that God is angry to the point of wanting nothing to do with us. And if God is not merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, then we do have reason to be afraid.
Isaiah reminds the Israelites of God’s heart when he tells them that, despite all of their wanderings, ‘The LORD longs to be gracious to you.” And this longing motivates God towards compassion. He promised, out of His good heart, that His people would find their salvation by repenting, returning, and resting, and that they would find their strength when they trust Him.
This promise finds even greater expression and fulfillment in the Gospel of Matthew when we hear Jesus, in seeking to reveal the Father’s heart to His followers, say, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
This gentle, and lowly in heart Christ, is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. If you want to know what God is like, look at this Christ that Matthew writes about. He is, as this song says, the joy of the comfortless, light for the straying, and hope for the penitent. He is the bread of life broken for sinners. His shed blood is that of the new covenant that cleanses us of our sins and forgives us of all unrighteousness. He calls us to follow Him, to lay down our lives by picking up our cross, and to count all else as loss. He calls us to trade all of this world for a kingdom that is unfading. And when we do, we will know more of His heart. We will experience the depths of His love, we will find abundant life, and we will indeed find rest for our souls.
Where do you need salvation?
You will find it in returning and resting.
Come unto Jesus.
Amen
