Passage Read: Isaiah 39-42
Meditation Verses: 40:9-10
Thought
This is only good news to those who have suffered unjustly, or suffered justly and come to recognize their wrong. They have been punished and are ready to do right, but they have not yet been released from prison or from their punishment. To those who think everything is going well, things are not so bad, or who are enjoying what this life and this world has to offer, to them, this is not good news, that the Lord has appeared with reward and recompense. Their world is about to be shattered, especially those who did the oppressing and punishing and do not recognize themselves as instruments of the Lord. This is not good news to those who hate the Lord because of His righteous punishment brought into their lives. The arrival of God is not good news to those who love the ways of this world and the benefits that come from walking in its ways.
Application
If the arrival of the Lord is to be good news to me, then I must love Him and His ways more than my own and more than the world's ways of doing things. I may suffer rightly for doing what God considers wrong; in that case, I need to be repentant and seeking to change my ways and do things according to His Word. Then I can know He is coming to rescue me, to deliver me from a sentence that no longer applies to me. Better yet is to do things His way, which will rile up the world and worldly men against me, who will seek to punish me unjustly; then word that the Lord is coming with recompense and reward will be great news indeed! But if I have learned the ways of this world and how to make my life better and more comfortable by them, then when the Lord comes, this will be bad news for me! Or if I deserved punishment and suffer from it but have only become bitter against those who justly punish me, then the Lord's arrival will again be no good news to me, because I have no desire to acknowledge Him as in the right, but would rather war with Him. And He will not put up with me! I have great news to share with the world, but it will only be received as such by those who are humble and contrite and eager to walk in the Lord's ways. "Here is your God!" is only good news to those who long for His appearing!