FBC Morning Light – June 23, 2022

Well, a good Thursday morning to you. How's your week going? I trust the Lord is blessing your labors for him and your endeavors to carry out that which

God has given you to do. Well, we're reading today in Isaiah again, and I want to focus on a couple of verses in Isaiah chapter 49.

I'm wondering if you've ever felt this way. Have you ever felt like, you know, when it comes to God's relationship with me, my relationship with God, I deserve to be forsaken.

I deserve him to just forget me. You know, maybe there's a particular sin that you struggle with, or sins that you struggle with, and you know, you're dealing with them, you repent of them, you turn from them, and then, you know, there you are again, you know, that kind of a thing.

And you go back to your Father in heaven, and you're repentant, but you're feeling like, you know, he ought to just turn his back on me.

I deserve to be forgotten. I deserve to be forsaken. Well, you wouldn't be alone in that feeling, in that emotional response that is due to your sin.

You may feel that way, that you've been forsaken, you've been forgotten. When you've been going through a particularly long period of some kind of difficulty,

I know some folks right now, for example, who are enduring some physical challenges that have been going on for well over a year now, and there's no end in sight for it.

And you know, you could understand how in that challenge, in that difficulty, a person could feel like, you know, has

God forsaken me? Has he forgotten me, leaving me to wallow in this misery and this agony by myself?

But listen to this passage that God gives to his people.

Now, admittedly, this is for Old Testament Israel, but I think we're going to see a connection here before we close.

So this is what God says. He says, Sing, O heavens! Be joyful, O earth! And break out in singing,

O mountains! For the Lord has comforted his people, and he will have mercy on his afflicted.

This is the promise. He will have mercy on the afflicted. But Zion said, that is,

God's people said, The Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me.

Because of what they were going through, they've been enduring the affliction of chastening for sin and suffering greatly.

So he says, the Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me. But then listen to how the

Lord responds to that. He says, Can a woman forget her nursing child? It's a rhetorical question, isn't it?

Well, no, no. Can a woman forget her nursing child and not have compassion on the son of her womb?

No, she really can't. She most certainly cannot. But then

God acknowledges, surely they may forget. There could come an occasion, there could come a set of circumstances where the woman would forget and would not have compassion on the son of her womb.

Surely they may forget. But God says, I will not forget you.

I will not forget you. And then he says this, see, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.

Now, isn't that an interesting imagery? How would the

Old Testament saint understand that? How would he see that?

I have inscribed you on the palms of my hand, the palms of my hands.

Well, I think they could understand the imagery and see that, okay, well, there's an inscribing on the palms, okay, and that's me, all right, it's like maybe you can think of a vision of a tattoo.

I mean, that's not necessarily a great idea, but a great vision. But you get the point that, okay,

God has taken an indelible pen, a Sharpie, that permanent ink

Sharpie, and he's written my name on the palms of his hands. Well, in the

Old Testament era, that might be the way they envisioned that. But we're in the New Testament era.

How do you envision that? Jesus said that his sheep, who know his voice, they are secure in him.

He says, I hold them in my hand, and I will never let them go.

And they are in the Father's hand. They will never be let go.

But then this image of, I've inscribed you in the palms of my hand, I can't help but see the cross.

I can't help but see the nail scars in the palms of the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is where you who are

Christ's, we who are Christ's, there is where our names are inscribed in the hands of our

Savior. And because of that, because as God's children, as God's adopted sons, adopted into the family of God, because of that, he will not forget you.

He will have compassion on you. He will never forsake you.

Isn't that a wonderful truth? And I find that tremendously encouraging in times of difficulty and struggle, in times of sin and repentance, that God doesn't forsake and doesn't forget his own.

We're inscribed on the palms of his hands, the hands of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Our Father and our God, we do thank you today for this wonderful promise that you will not forget, you will not forsake your own.

We thank you and praise you in Jesus' name, amen. All right, have a good rest of your