Misreading God
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 55:8-9
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
If you have read First Light for any length of time you might have noticed that I have a thing for interpreting Scriptures in their context. I don’t always get it right, but that is a fundamental principle of biblical interpretation I try to always hold to. Today I included two verses from Isaiah without their context. I would encourage you to look them up and read them in context.
Over the decades of my Christian life, I have heard these verses quoted numerous times. Early on I heard them from my pastor a lot. He often used them in a general sense of saying that whatever we thought was probably wrong. I’m not saying that there is no applicable principle about knowledge generally, but I am saying if we don’t read this in context, we miss the point.
What, in context, is the Lord referring to when he makes this distinction between our thoughts and his thoughts? Well, in context, this is about sin, repentance, and salvation. The chapter begins with a great invitation:
Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price…Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts…
In context, what we don’t think like God about is salvation and the forgiveness of sin. The natural human inclination is to believe that we earn our salvation. We are works-oriented. We are not grace-oriented by nature. Every religion outside of biblical Christianity has some sort of work required to gain acceptance by God. That’s how our minds are bent.
In contrast, God’s thoughts are thoughts of grace. God thinks of fountains flowing freely, open to every person who thirsts. God thinks of feeding our hungry souls with truly satisfying spiritual food that we receive without paying anything for it. God thinks of the wicked and unrighteous dropping their ways and thoughts and coming to receive compassion and pardon from him.
So, Come!
AMEN!