Isaiah 46 – The LORD Will Carry You and Save You

As far as East is to West. The Lord is in the east and idols are in the west; and vice versa. These are the words of the Lord through the ear and pen of Isaiah:

“Family of Jacob, listen to me!

All you people from Israel who are still alive, listen!

I have carried you since you were born;

I have taken care of you from your birth.

Even when you are old, I will be the same.

Even when your hair has turned gray, I will take care of you.

I made you and will take care of you.

I will carry you and save you.”

— Isaiah 46:3-4 (NCV)

All those idols that apparently ‘replace’ God,

They have no power and only weigh you down,

Keep worshipping them and they’ll make for your back a rod,

Only by the living, saving God is there, for you, a crown.

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God carries us from birth to our deaths. We are carried through every struggle. Until the day we meet him face-to-face we are carried.

There is no use in running from God when he has our back. There is no use turning our back on him when he will not stop running after us.

We travel a thousand miles from our Lord with our idols and then we find that God was always right there beside us.

We journey in the bondage of those trappings of our human nature, unable to break clean from those habits, hang-ups, and hurts, and we refuse to look to God. Yet, the paradox is, he was the only One who could save us and relieve us.

Even as we rejected him, he carried us. Even as we disobeyed, God was faithful.

The covenant God is inflexible on his demands that we live a godly life, but only as inflexible as his love for us is commensurate.

When will we take God at his word? If we go our own way we choose slavery, yet if we go God’s way, we choose to obey as our part of the plan of the Lord’s faithfulness.

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The nature and role of God is to carry and to save.

Idols, on the other hand, which are everything and anything that seeks to hold us, holding us to ransom; idols are entirely burdensome and they pull us down.

If we live without the active hand of God fully engaged to protect us, we choose a bad outcome for ourselves.

If we live determined to live after God – loving because we can – trusting and obeying him – we will know what it is like to be carried and not burdened; saved and not pulled down like an anchor into an abyss.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.