Chapters of His Heart: Isaiah 1

The book of Isaiah has always been a favorite of mine. It holds some of  my favorite scriptures and passages. So I decided to see if the rest of Isaiah could live up to the reputation of my favorite bits of the book. I dove in right at chapter one, taking the book one chapter at a time, and found that Isaiah was full of little treasures. I started writing down the beautiful glimpses I was getting of God's heart and now I want to share those with you.

I'm not going to post the whole chapter of Isaiah but I do suggest reading it so you can follow along with some of my notes. If you don't own a Bible don't worry there are some great free online Bibles you can use like Bible Hub by Biblos or Bible Gateway. If you are using a mobile device or tablet you can download the You Version Bible app for free as well. If you are following along I will most often be posting out of the New Living Translation.

Here we go!

Just as a little back story, Isaiah was a prophet in the years 740-681 B.C. to the land of Judah. A prophet's job was to be God's spokesperson, to give the people messages from the Lord. Most prophets were not popular because they usually came with messages of conviction to a sinful and rebellious people. Isaiah was no different. Even though some of his messages may seem harsh we have to remember that God breathed those messages through Isaiah out of deep and unrelenting love for His children. If we are open to that love we will find truth and possibly some treasures in all of Isaiah's chapters.

There are a lot of great truths in Isaiah's first chapter but I am going to focus on the message in the first nine verses.

First Isaiah lets us know that God is longing for His rebellious children* to come back to Him. This is an obvious sign of His beautiful, unconditional love. God is craving a relationship, a father child relationship to be exact, with His beloved sons and daughters. He wants them back even though they have acted the part of the rebel teenager. Lets take a look at what this means for us and what this shows us about God's heart.

Think of an ideal father/child relationship. Is the effort and commitment put into that relationship split evenly between the father and child? Not even close! The father has the bulk of the responsibility for the relationship resting on his shoulders. The child is just that....a child. It is the father's job to teach a child how to share the weight of a relationship. The father can't expect to receive much effort from the child in the beginning. The child will be needy, sometimes fully dependent upon the father even to the point of life or death. The child will then grow to love the father. He will recognize the father's voice and learn to obey, show affection and, eventually, balance the give and take of the relationship. The child will not be perfect and, in this world, neither will the father. They will both make mistakes.

This relationship is what the heart of our God craves. To be our loving and nurturing heavenly father. The beautiful and amazing thing is that all He expects out of His children is that we be exactly that.....children, learning, growing, messy children. (Isn't it great that He isn't looking for perfect people.) The only difference between the earthly relationships with our fathers and a heavenly relationship with The Father is that while we will stumble, while we will fall on our faces, while we will mess up...
He. Never. Will.
He is infinitely perfect. God doesn't make mistakes. God is incapable of inflicting the kind of pain that humans are capable of. He will not disappoint you. God's heart is devoted.

What is keeping you from accepting that father's love?


(*Note: God's "children" in this passage specifically means the Israelites, the chosen people of God. But after the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross we are all chosen children by the covering of His blood and can include ourselves in the term "children of God". How awesome is that?)