The prophet announces the time has come to see the
deliverance of the Lord. He will redeem
His people once again as He redeemed them in Egypt. His people were bought for nothing at all and
they will be redeemed without Him paying anything out to those who have
enslaved them, the Assyrians. In all of
this, His people will know Him and they will celebrate Him. How lovely indeed the feet of the one who
brings the Good News to those in captivity that their redemption and release
has come! Isaiah has the privilege of
being the one to give this good news about the Lord. He was also the one who told them of His
judgments against them, so what a joy to also share the news of their
redemption and His love for them. The
city of God, Jerusalem will be restored, it will indeed be a holy city, nothing
unclean will come into it, John saw this same truth in the Revelation, we await
with the Jews the day of the fulfillment of this prophetic word.
Jesus has compassion on the crowds who have now followed Him
for three days. Whatever they may have
had with them when they started following have now been exhausted, the
disciples are able to scrounge up seven loaves among themselves and these are
enough. It must have seemed silly to
them to begin distribution of such a little bit of bread to such an enormous
crowd, but when they were done they took up the leftovers and found themselves
now with seven baskets full of bread. Do
we trust the Lord with all that we have in this same way. He promised in that Isaiah passage that they
would be redeemed without price, and in the exodus not only was that true, but
they left with lovely parting gifts, the Egyptians gave them gold and silver
just to get them to leave. What would
happen if we literally put all that we have in Jesus' hands, for His purpose?
Paul pleads with the Galatians to return to the Gospel he
had preached to them. Once they had received him just as Isaiah spoke of,
blessed are the feet of him who brings good news. He says they made so much of him that they
would have gouged out their own eyes and given them to him. (We assume his physical ailment that caused
him to be in Galatia was some sort of problem with his eyes based on this
verse.) They received the good news with
such joy that they loved Paul enough to sacrifice everything for him as the
bearer of the good news. He is perplexed
at them as they have abandoned what they received with such joy in favor of a
slavery to the Law. He is pleading with
them not on his account, to love him, but on account of the Gospel he had
preached to them, to return to Jesus, the content of the Gospel. Again, if they were willing to sacrifice even
their eyes for Paul's sake because he preached to them, what then should they
be willing to sacrifice for the One who is the Gospel. Do we still have the same joy we had the hour
we first believed? The same desire to
give everything to Him?
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