LifeLink Devotions for Friday, August 1, 2025

Yesterday was tough. It’s hard reviewing all the ways that we personally rebel against God. But having done it, our disgust with ourselves can be turned into rejoicing as we hear about the marvelous grace of God that saves us from it all. After describing our serious condition of rebellion in the first fourteen verses of Isaiah chapter thirty, The Lord God Almighty says this in verse fifteen.

“This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…”

Let’s dig into the grace of God that is now described.

• God longs to be gracious to us even during our worst rebellion. In verses sixteen and seventeen, after God says we can take rest in His salvation, we still reject Him and rebel against Him. But the Lord rises above our stubbornness and responds with grace in verse eighteen. “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.”
• God reveals Himself to us through adversity and trouble.  There’s hope revealed in verses nineteen and twenty. “For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.”
• In verse twenty-one God graciously promises to walk with us constantly and gives us specific direction. “And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.”
• God’s grace brings us to repentance of our rebellion. Verse twenty-two says, “Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “Be gone!” When we experience God’s grace we turn away from all our sin.
• Then in grace God promises to provide for our every need and will bring out the best in everything He gives us. How precious are the words of verses twenty-three and twenty-four. “And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and bread, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your livestock will graze in large pastures, and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork.”
• And His promises continue in the next two verses as God will heal all the wounds of our suffering.  “And on every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.”

You have seen the rebellious nature of man, and the splendor of God’s grace. You can now embrace the promise we read earlier as the Lord showers you with salvation and strength. God’s grace has come, and “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…”

Pastor John