OUR LORD WHO RESTORES HIS PEOPLE

Continuing with the Feb 10th 2022 study on Isaiah 49, let's look at verses 13 to 21 which speak of a poignant moment where Zion, the church, the bride of Christ, converses with the Lord and tells Him that He has forgotten and forsaken her as she lies in ruin and desolation.

 But the Lord responds to her by comforting her and assuring her that he will never leave her nor forsake her and that what she thought was lost, he preserved for her so that her house needed to be enlarged to accommodate all the children who returned to her. The passage reads this way;

Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?

Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. Your children hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you. Lift up your eyes and look around; all your children gather and come to you.

As surely as I live,” declares the Lord, “you will wear them all as ornaments; you will put them on, like a bride.

“Though you were ruined and made desolate and your land laid waste, now you will be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away. The children born during your bereavement will yet say in your hearing,

‘This place is too small for us; give us more space to live in.’

Then you will say in your heart, ‘Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up?

I was left all alone, but these—where have they come from?’”

The bride is astonished. She thought she had been abandoned but the whole time she believed she was finished, those who came from her were being raised quietly from afar and to her surprise, her enemies were pushed away and her children brought back and she is at a loss as to where they came from.

This moment of revelation to the bride mirrors the moment of revelation to the Lord Jesus in this chapter when He says "I have laboured in vain; I have spent my strength on nothing at all".

Bless the Lord who restores what seemed lost.

Amen.