God's Amazing Love

Scripture: Isaiah 49:14-18; Psalm 103

Theme: Encouragement

Title: God’s Amazing Love

This sermon deals with God’s Amazing Love – 1. A Love that is Deeper and Richer than that of a Nursing Mother 2. A Love that led God to carve Our Names in His Palms – forever marking Himself because of His Love for Us

INTRO:

Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

I want to talk to you today about a very important subject but before I do let me ask a couple of questions.

Have you ever found yourself wondering if God really loves you?

Have you ever felt at times that God has abandoned you in the midst of your pain, your suffering and/or confusion?

If you have then today the Lord has a wonderful message for you and that is what I want to share with all of us this morning.

As we look at our passage in Isaiah 49 we find the people of God dealing with similar feelings. They are wondering if the Lord loves them. They are wondering if God has abandoned them. Our writer very carefully paints for us a picture of what is going on.

+The nation of Judah has been soundly defeated by the Babylonians.

+The city’s walls have been burned and torn down leaving the city at the mercy of everyone and everything. Wild animals have begun to roam the streets. Everything is eerily void of traffic and noise.

+King Zedekiah (Judah’s 20th king) has been captured and forced to watch his sons put to death. His eyes are gouged out he is led him back to Babylon defeated and devastated shacked hand and foot.

+The Temple has been demolished. The Levites have been killed, taken prisoner or are hiding in a nearby village. Nothing of any value remains. All that’s left are broken hearts and walls, shattered dreams and scattered ashes.

+The king’s palace and all the official buildings have been razed to the ground. Everything of value has been destroyed or carted off to be put into King Nebuchadnezzar’s vaults.

+The majority of Jerusalem’s population has been killed; including the young men and women along with the old and infirmed.

+Most of those who survived are taken back to Babylon where they will spend the rest of their lives as servants of Nebuchadnezzar and his sons.

It may be hard for us today to picture all the devastation that had occurred in and around the city of Jerusalem. It may be hard for us to picture all the death that had occurred in and around the city of Jerusalem. It’s something like we would see in a modern apocalyptic movie where a city has been totally devastated by an enemy.

Everything was gone; the government, the city walls, the Temple along with hope for a better tomorrow. Judah was finished. All was left were a few poor people who were left behind to tend to the remaining vineyards, fields and livestock.

In our passage, the Prophet is addressing those who had survived and were now living in exile in the city of Babylon some 1,700 miles away from the city of Jerusalem. 1,700 miles away from the land that God had given them. 1,700 miles away from their independence, their freedom and everything they had cherished.

Many felt that they were even farther away from God. They understood through the prophets that it was not the Babylonians that had actually destroyed them. They had destroyed themselves. Their sin(s) both personal and corporate had brought about their annihilation. Their sin(s) had brought upon a time of judgment and subsequent desolation.

For years as a people they had chosen to rebel against the LORD. Their ancestors and subsequently themselves had adopted a lifestyle of avarice, self-gratification and debauchery. As a nation they had chosen to forsake worshipping God as the One and Only God. They had instead decided that there were many gods and goddesses to worship, love and serve.

In the natural it looked very much like the LORD the God Almighty had abandoned them.

In the natural it looked very much like the history of God’s people would ultimately disappear in the sands of the Babylonian deserts. The People of God would merely become a historical footnote of a time long lost. They would be absorbed into the culture of the Babylonians while any left behind would become absorbed into the remaining cultures of the Canaanites.

In the natural it looked like the promises given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were gone. It looked like the promises given to King David were gone. It looked like all the teaching and preaching of the prophets would be forgotten as God’s People slowly but surely disappeared.

That is where we find the people of God in verse 14. Their hope was vanishing. They believed that their future was bleak and that everything was finished.