Sing To The Glory Of God
Today our worship begins with the reading of scripture and our first congregational song. We will sing Therefore the Redeemed of the Lord, and in keeping with the theme of this song our scripture reading to start the day is Isaiah 51:1-11. The 11th verse of this chapter inspires our song: “Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.”
The scripture and song at once prophesy the return of Israel from their captivity in Babylon which in Isaiah’s time was still two centuries away. Amazingly, Isaiah looks even further away to assure God’s people that He will meet every adversity and preserve them as His people. As surely as God remembered His promise to Abraham when He brought the descendants of Abraham out of Egypt and made them His own nation at the foot of Mount Sinai, He will always stand and defend Israel until He brings forth the Messiah’s kingdom and firmly entrenches it across the entire world.
The key to this success is faith in God. The key is to keep trusting God even when it seems God has failed or that we have failed too greatly to receive the promised reward. The truth is, this is what will happen, failure will happen if our dependence is upon a faith produced from our own resources. The faith we seek that will sustain is the faith that God gives. It is a type of faith that is as enduring as it needs to be until He glorifies us in His presence.
The object of our salvation is to conform us to Christ so that we may glorify Him in all we do. To the degree we fail in our likeness to Christ, is the same degree of our diminishing His glory. If we would only believe that tarnishing the glory of Christ by disobedience is tantamount to blaspheming Christ, we would be far more adept at recognizing our sin, repenting of it, and pleading with Christ for a pure heart. Our sin does the devil’s work for Him. He also looks to rob Christ of the honor due His name. How sad when Christ’s own people are willing to help Him in this work—and we do so by often replying to the pleas of the Holy Spirit that we cannot help our sin.
I encourage you to consider the first verse of Isaiah 51: “Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.” This refers to the impossibility of outward circumstances. Abraham was past the age to be a father. Sarah’s womb was dry and withered so there was no possibility that God could make good on His promise. Sarah laughed when told she would have a child. The calculation of this entire passage is for us to always trust God and lean on His ability to transform us into the fully glorifying people of Jesus Christ.
We leave most of the meaning of scriptures untouched. Often, we do it by not paying attention to the words of the songs we sing. Each song attaches to biblical truth. Explore beyond the presentation of the musical tunes you like to find the message God has for you in the song.
Pastor V. Mark Smith