Isaiah 51:7-10 – Do Not Be Afraid
God says first: ‘Listen to me. This is important. I want you to grasp hold of it.’ To whom is He speaking? He’s speaking to true believers. What does he say about them? First, they know righteousness. Righteousness is being innocent toward God’s law. The only way we can have true righteousness — and we need righteousness to make ourselves right with God — is by having it as a gift from someone else. That Someone else is the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s received by faith. These people have new hearts, and they love and delight in the law of God. Their Saviour exhorts them here not to fear the reproach of men, people who seek to destroy them and tear them down. Man is like grass, like a flower of the field. He grows up, and then he’s cut down. Don’t fear him. For there is One Who loves you and holds you as precious, Who will uphold you, and will come to deliver. These ones that seem so powerful, so mighty, seem as if they’re going to always be there, and they shall prevail, are like a wool sweater eaten by moths. God does this in all sorts of ways where mighty empires and mighty men that people thought would stand forever and perhaps engulf them are gone. Our God has not changed, nor have His ways, His power, His might, His grace, and His kindness to His people. They never change.
Why does Isaiah call on God to awake? We might say it is holy boldness on Isaiah’s part. Sometimes when we are very discouraged, and when we have been waiting long for a blessing from God, it can seem as though God is asleep. It can seem as though He can’t or won’t hear us. Jesus encourages us in the story about the unjust judge, the story about the widow who persisted, to keep on praying with the assurance that God does hear us, and He will act in the proper time. The one who is called upon to awake will do such, and He has done. He heard the cries of His people in Egypt long ago. And at the right time, He acted. Egypt is sometimes called Rahab, the serpent. It is God who cut them to pieces in many ways through the ten plagues that He sent. He dried up the sea, so the people could go through. This God who did all that, delivers us the same. The greatest enemy of all He has defeated, and that is sin. The last enemy is assured of destruction, and that is death. What is man that we should be afraid of him? Our Lord Jesus Christ reigned in Isaiah’s day, and He reigns in ours.
Question
- Why should we not be afraid of men?
Prayer Points
- Give thanks that Christ is reigning over all things.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.