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Thoughts on Today’s Verse…
“As a man, you’ve got to learn to take care of Yourself!” My dad’s words were worn into my heart as he gave me jobs and taught me responsibility as a teenager. We do have to be responsible for our actions and taking care of ourselves. But, part of being blessed and taking care of ourselves — at least as God sees it — is caring for others, sticking up for the disadvantaged, and intervening when someone else is being exploited. After all, we are our “brothers’ and sisters’ keepers!” What convicts me most about this passage, however, are the three verbs for me to obey: encourage, defend, and plead. I can’t sit on the sideline and hope someone else takes care of the needs!
My Prayer…
Remove the heart of selfishness, O God, that sometimes keeps me from caring for the oppressed, abused, forgotten, and broken. Give me your eyes of concern and Jesus’ heart of compassion to see the oppressed, fatherless, and widowed. O, Holy Spirit, please stir me to action and help me minister to them. In his name, the Lord, Jesus, the compassionate Christ, I pray. Amen.
Bible References
17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Isaiah 1:17
Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed.
To ‘learn to do right” could well say, “obey God”. In the verse just prior to this God has told the people to take their evil deeds out of His sight and to give up their evil ways. They were living in disobedience to Him.
He is instructing His people to not just have a religion, but a relationship with Him. He is informing them that He despises their rituals without reality behind them. They were sacrificing, but not obeying, their acts were evil and He was not going to hear them, no matter how much they stretched their hands out to Him in prayer, as long as their hearts were still in rebellion to Him.
This still happens today, churches are filled with people who practice rituals but their hearts are far from God! There are many ‘Sunday Christians’ who forget about God completely the rest of their week. Lord help us to never fall into that trap! God wants a relationship with us that is 24/7, 365 days a year in public and behind closed doors.
The “oppressed” referred to are orphans and widows.
Orphans and widows were not taken care of properly in those days, unless they had family that was willing to take them in, they were on their own for the necessities of life such as food, shelter…etc.
So God is instructing His people to get their eyes off of themselves and to take care of the downtrodden in life. To stop being selfish! There are so many oppressed people in our cities today. They are desperately in need of Christ and we have a huge opportunity to share Him with them by simply helping them in their area of need.
God teaches many times in His Word to put others first. I have always found it interesting that one does not need to teach a person to be selfish, it just comes naturally, doesn’t it! In very small children you can see selfishness raise it’s ugly head when two little ones go after the same toy and a tug of war begins, complete with screaming and tantrums until they get their own way! We adults struggle with it as well even though we have learned social graces and may not scream and stomp our feet when we are denied our own way. But it still may linger in our hearts making us bitter towards God in the process.
Yes, selfishness is something that we will deal with in ourselves until we are with the Lord, but we can overcome a lifestyle of selfishness by living in obedience to God’s Word through the indwelling Holy Spirit. We can purpose in our hearts to live our lives for Christ and have victory over satan through Him.
Thank You Jesus for shedding Your blood for the forgiveness of my sins. Thank You for Your finished work on the cross at Calvary. I love You so my Redeemer, help me to live in obedience to You for Your glory, Amen!