I Will Bear

Isaiah 46:4

Even to your old age I am He. And even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.

This is my favorite verse in the Bible. It has been for the last nine years. I “happened” to come across it as a verse of the day on a website and it immediately spoke to me where I was and exactly how I needed. It took no effort to memorize. I basically saw it, knew it, and remembered where it was. This never, ever happens to me. I am probably the single worst memorizer I have ever known. But this stuck and has stuck with me ever since.

In an age where we are told to carry ourselves, fill our needs, and do what we want, this verse is important for us to remember. If we forget the principles it speaks to, we will quickly find ourselves walking away from God and the faith that saves us. It is, I believe, a vital verse, and one that remains relevant, especially in our current age.

In this chapter of Isaiah, God is warning His people Israel about the powerlessness of idols compared to His ability to save. In fact God begins by saying “Bel bows down, Nebo stoop; their idols were on the beasts and on the cattle. Your carriages were heavily loaded, a burden to the weary beast. They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but have themselves gone into captivity.”

Bel and Nebo were both ancient idols: false gods people worshipped without any power to aid. God go on to state that despite paying for an idol to be made, prostrating before them, and crying out, it could not move, save, or even answer the one in trouble. It had not power to do anything.

I wonder how often we do this in our own lives. We may not bow down to a statue, but often we look to everything except God to save us. We turn to our family, or finances, or job, or doctors, or hobbies, hoping they will take away the pain or give us what we think we need, when what we really need is to turn our faces to the One who can truly save us from it all. This is not to say that any of these things are bad – not at all! in fact God gives them for our good and to help us through life! But as another preacher once said, “when a good thing becomes a god thing it becomes a bad thing.”

God reminds us that He is just as strong to save today as He always has been. He will not leave us, forsake us, or fail us. He can and will carry us to the end, and bear us to His side. He says “even I will carry, and will deliver you.”

Let us be those who use the blessings and helps God has given us, and who also remember where those blessings and helps have come from. Let us turn our faces toward Him knowing He cares for us. Let us be those who remember the words of God through Isaiah: “Even to your old age I am He. And even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.”

Experience

“Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under His feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And He did not lay His hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.” (Exodus 24:9-11)

“So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” (Exodus 32:3-5)

One of the great things about reading Scripture is that you occasionally notice things you have not made the connection between before. Having recently gone through Exodus, it clicked with me just how absurd the passages above look when placed next to each other. In one you have the only instance in Scripture where a group of people see God, and it specifically lays out that God did not destroy them in the process. In the latter we see Israel, some of whom have seen and had a meal with God, construct an idol in the shape of a calf and say “These are your gods!”

Like I said. Absurd.

The men of Israel, Aaron included, have seen something no other earthling has seen, and experienced something no other earthling has experienced. Yet at maximum 40 days later, they have lost sight of the amazing things and experiences God granted them. If this wasn’t enough, in Leviticus 10 Nadab and Abihu, during what basically amounts to the opening ceremonies of the Tabernacle, offer fire they were not authorized to offer and are killed by God. Like Aaron and the elders of Israel, they too are listed as participants in the feast on the mountain with God.

How quickly experiences fade from memory. This is not to say they are bad, only that we cannot rely on an incredible experience to keep us faithful. If we build our faith and lives around an experience, rather than the One who gives them to us, it becomes very easy for that faith to fade quickly over time with the impact of the memory.

God granted those men what they needed (possibly far more than they needed), to know Him and be faithful to Him. He does the same for us as well. All we need in order to know Him and be faithful is granted to us, whether that be His Word or and experience we need to have. But while we can (and should!) rejoice in and make use of that experience, we must also take care we do not build are faith on it, but on our Lord and Savior who it all revolves around.

Take joy in what you are given by God! Whether it be knowledge, wisdom, faith, experience, or something else to keep you faithful, He has given it to you for His glory and your good. Rejoice in it, and let it cause you to hold to Him ever more closely as you walk through life.

Knowing God

It is imperative for a Christian, above all else, to know God. Not just about Him, or His laws, or His works, but to actually know God. We realize the difference in our personal lives, how we may know about someone without knowing the person themselves. We know about the President, celebrities, coworkers, etc., but we understand that we do not know them personally. In the same way a person can have knowledge of God without actually knowing Him; just ask any atheist on the street.

How do we know someone? It starts with some base level of knowledge about the person. These are usually based on shallow first impressions which may or may not be accurate. As time goes on these impression become modified and rewritten the more we spend time with the person. Eventually we get to the point where we come to know the person – we understand them, empathize with them, and can even predict some of their thoughts and actions with a reasonable amount of accuracy. This is most common in close friendships and strong marriage relationships.

One humorous thing I have noticed with certain married couples (myself and Danielle included) and close friendships is that in certain conversations one person speaks, and during a pause the other person picks up mid-sentence to speak, then during another pause the first person once more picks up the conversation mid-stream and continues as if they had been speaking the entire time. This happens because they know each other and can largely predict the other’s movements. It is something that only comes with time, and springs from a natural, intimate knowledge about the other.

I find it interesting that God speaks of His people as His bride. I also find it interesting that Jesus calls His disciples His friends. These terms speak to a relationship where each party is known by the other in a deep, significant way. It goes beyond mere intellectual knowledge about the other (as important as that is), to actually knowing the other themselves. If God speaks about us in these terms, then He must have an expectation that we will know Him, and He will know us.

I also do not believe that this is only something that will happen one day when we leave this earth to be with Him. God called Abraham His friend while Abraham was still alive! Jesus called the disciples His friends while they were alive! The church is called the bride of Christ now! Our knowing God will surely be perfected when we are free from the corruption of this world, but that is another stage of growth, just as we continually grow in other close relationship. The fact is we are called into a relationship where we know God now, not just someday.

Over the next several weeks we are going to be talking about what it means to know God. I hope and pray you will take this time to delve into His Word, go to Him in prayer, and seek to truly know Him just as He knows you. The opportunity is given to us now. Why not take such an offer? J