#162 – The Lord God of Israel

Yesterday, on The Morning Meditation we look at The Call of Isaiah. What we need to realize is that God is still calling, we need more men, women, boys and girls who are willing to respond. God is doing His part, we need to do ours as well.

Today, let us look at:

THE LORD GOD OF ISRAEL

Isaiah 44:24 “Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;”

The Lord chose Israel for His people. He was constantly speaking to them reminding them that He was the LORD their God. His requirements were to live a holy life and properly represent Him on earth to the nations.

THE FIRST THING THAT WE WILL LOOK AT IS THAT GOD SPEAKS

The first part of our verse says, “Thus saith the LORD.” Let’s put the period there for now. Exodus 6:1 3 says, "Then the LORD said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD: And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them." The word LORD in these verses and the word JEHOVAH are exactly the same in the Hebrew.

God reveals Himself to man by the use of several names. The names basically reveal some particular attribute. But His name Jehovah does not reveal an attribute, it reveals Himself, i.e., His essence in contrast to what He is like.

Tozer says, “A more positive assertion of selfhood could not be imagined then those words of God to Moses: I AM THAT I AM. Everything God is, everything that is God, is set forth in that unqualified declaration of independent being. Yet in God, self is not sin but the quintessence of all possible goodness, holiness and truth. “

“The natural man is a sinner because and only because he challenges God’s selfhood in relation to his own. In all else he may willingly accept the sovereignty of God; in his own life he rejects it. For him, God’s dominion ends where his begins. For him, self becomes Self, and in this he unconsciously imitates Lucifer, that fallen son of the morning who said in his heart, ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God . . . I will be like the Most High.’”

One of the things that amazes me is that when God said, “you tell them that I AM THAT I AM sent you. When God told him that it seemed to completely satisfy him. And what Moses did is exactly what God said and it worked!!! What a relationship Moses had with God. He truly walked with God and Moses was as human as any of us.

I think one of our great problems is that we do not just ask God for His name but we want a fuller explanation and we are unwilling to put our complete trust in a God who will not explain His complete self to us.

The fact is that God is incomprehensible. Psalms 50:21 says, “These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.” God could only explain Himself to an equal and there is no equal.

We have lost our Spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. We have lost the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind.

The next words of our text are—

OUR REDEEMER

It is amazing that God would decree to redeem us with Him as the one who paid the debt of our sins. If God made us, and He did, He could destroy us as quickly as He made us and create a new man without the possibility of sin. But rather than do that He sent His Son to be incarnate in the virgin womb, live on this earth some 33 years without committing a sin, and then died in payment of our redemption. God reminds us that He is our Redeemer. We need never to forget that.