Passage Read: Isaiah 27-30
Meditation Verse: 27:11
Thought
The whole of God's Word has been given to us not just to teach us the bare core of the Gospel, in hope that we might be saved. The whole counsel of God has been given to us to teach us truth and justice and righteousness, so that believing the Gospel can bring us back into a right relationship with God, where He teaches and guides and we follow and learn and obey. His whole Word has been revealed to us so that we might learn His wisdom and counsel, and grow wise and discerning. But if we refuse to listen and learn from the whole counsel of God, if as recorded in a later chapter, we only listen to pleasant words and illusion, then we fail to learn the discernment God desires to give us. And if we fail to learn His discernment, He will not have compassion on us or be gracious to us. We will continue to do and believe all kinds of foolish things, and fall into all kinds of foolish traps, and the Lord will cease to rescue us. The Gospel does not remove from us a need to learn God's wisdom and ways; it enables us to learn them, so that we can recognize godliness from foolishness, and choose the right and reject the wrong. But if we think we're safe just by believing the Gospel, so that we don't bother--or even refuse--to learn what is good and right so as to do it, then the Lord will not bother to rescue us when we continually plunge headlong into folly. If we keep repeating the same mistakes with no effort to learn from them, then the Lord will give us over to our ignorance and leave us to suffer the consequences.
Application
The Lord did not take pains over a thousand years to record all His thoughts and deeds, only to have me turn a blind eye to them in favor of a few chapters in the New Testament. From the beginning of time, His intention was to train a people to think and act and live like Him. The Gospel was necessary not just to clear the slate of my sin, but to transform my heart from a heart of dead, intractable stone to a heart of living, teachable flesh. I need to hear and learn from all God's counsel, so I can discern right from wrong, and choose the right and reject the wrong. I cannot be foolish and assume my Father will continually rescue me from all the stupid things I do, if I am not willing to learn from Him and learn from the mistakes I make, so as to gain a heart of wisdom. God wants me to grow in discernment and exercise discernment; otherwise, He'll leave me to my own devices and let me destroy myself.