The Heart of A Woman Bible study, based off of the promises found in Isaiah 54, is for every woman who has a place of barrenness, emptiness, lack of faith, or fear keeping her from experiencing fruitfulness in her life. If this is you, won’t you join us as we journey to a deeper more abundant life of faith together? The Heart of a Woman is all about finding the heart of the Father towards the daughters He lovingly calls His own.
©dawnboyer 2014 Journeys In Grace www.journeysingrace.com
Originally published on Soli Deo Gloria Sisterhood www.solideogloriasisterhood.com.
God Redeems us through the Covenant of Peace
This week as we move into the last 2 verses of the second section of Isaiah 54 I am drawn first to the Book of Philippians 4:6-9.
Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which you have both learned, and received and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.
We will be taking some faith steps this week on our journey to breaking out of the barren unfruitful nature that we are accustomed to in our daily living by testing our understanding of what a covenant truly means. In the culture we are currently members of few things appear sacred, and the essence of a covenant is only a momentary agreement which is not binding. Because of that, we sometimes fail to understand the depth, power, and eternal nature of His Word. This makes it easy to forget that we can trust God, with everything. This makes it easy to lose sight of the promises He has made. Rather than look to the author and finisher of our faith, we see the mountains looming ahead of us and our faith crumbles.
We are not meant to live in the shadow of the mountains that imminently appear before our path. We are called to be mountain moving speakers of faith. Jesus told us that if we have faith, the size of a mustard seed, we can move the mountain in our way, casting it into the sea.(Luke 17:6) The Book of Matthew says that nothing will be impossible to us if we speak to the mountains in faith, uprooting and removing their diversion in our pathway. He also says in the next verse that, ultimately, we fail at this because we have unbelief in our hearts.
That brings us back to the concept of covenant. When we know that God stands by His Word and it is eternal, lasting and will not fail.(Matt. 24:35, Luke 21:33, Mark 13:31) When we truly KNOW this, friends, we are changed. We move from ordinary faith to extraordinary faithfulness. You will become mountain movers simply because you know the power behind you.
Zechariah 4:6-7 talks about the power of God to crush mountains:
Not by might, nor by power, but my My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. For who are you, O great mountain [of human obstacles]? Before Zerubbabel [who with Joshua had led the return of the exiles from Babylon and was undertaking the rebuilding of the temple, before him] you shall become a plain [a mere molehill]! And he shall bring forth the finishing gable stone [of the new temple] with loud-shoutings of the people, crying, Grace, grace to it!
Do you see some of the same promises we have been studying up to this point correlating with Zechariah’s words? Yet another reminder that God is consistent through His word. He is the Lord of Hosts. He calls us to sing and shout in rejoicing. Grace is ever present in all of our dealings with Him and human obstacles are of no consequence to the Maker of our souls, our husband-redeemer, who draws us up and pulls us out of the pit to set us on a foundation He alone is building.
His Covenant of Peace reflects the loving-kindness of His heart towards the Heart of a Woman.
Let’s go again to the Word of God to learn from Isaiah:
For this is like the days of Noah to Me; as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I will not be angry with you or rebuke you. For though the mountains should depart and the hills be shaken or removed, yet My love and kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall My covenant of peace and completeness be removed, says the Lord, Who has compassion on you. – Isaiah 54:9-10 (amplified version)
- Verse 9 and 10 are the foundational core to this section, because they undergird the heart of the theme which I mentioned in verses 6-8.
I hope that when you started this second section of Isaiah 54 you were able to see that it focuses on the eternal covenant of God. These last two verses(9-10) highlight it as a covenant of love and peace. The main point we really need to see is that God’s love is so sure that the unmovable physical mountains are like a speck of dust and will crumble and fall long before the covenant of God would ever break.
This is huge, woman of God, HUGE! Those physical mountains are a mere speck of dust in the shadow of the Almighty God who has made an eternal covenant based on his hesed-love and mercy.
Psalm 102:25-28 reminds us of His power and commitment to us (both as a covenant and as a hope answer to barrenness).
At the beginning You existed and laid the foundations of the earth; the heavens are the work of your hands. They shall perish, but You shall remain and endure; yes, all of them will wear out and become old like a garment. Like clothing You shall change them, and they shall be changed and pass away. But you remain the same and your years shall have no end. The children of Your servants shall dwell safely and continue, and their descendants shall be established before You
His peace is even surer than those mountains that seem impossible to move.
I love how God’s Word is consistent, it is one more proof of His trustworthiness. As we look through scriptures and the examples he has set forth, we can’t help but sing praises for the promises that we read. All throughout His Word we find parallel structure revealing hope and life through it all. Here we see the example of the Noahaic Covenant as our plumb-line to define the meaning of covenant.
The story of Noah in Genesis 6-9 reveal the phrase olam hesed that we talked about last week. This binding agreement which God promised to Noah when they descended the ark was the precursor to the Messianic Covenant completed in and through Christ’s sacrifice, suffering, and resurrection. The words we find in Isaiah 54, which speak to a contract of eternal peace and love, runs parallel with this promise we find in the relational story of salvation between God and Noah and Christ and the world; they are both eternal and unbreakable. The covenant, in Isaiah 54, is just as eternal and binding as this one presented in Genesis. It is securely based on this hesed love that is gracious, loyal and never failing. (1 Cor 13:8)
James Oswalt, who wrote a complete commentary on the book of Isaiah, mentions an important concept which sums up this section well.
The Bible, especially the book of Isaiah, presents God as a God of promises, one who commits himself in a future yet unknown for the sake of purpose yet to be achieved, but inherent in the very nature of the world he has created. … There is no discontinuity between the God of Noah and the God of today. Just as his compassion prevented him from destroying the world with a flood, so did his compassion bind him to the same acts in the future.
God’s repetitive promises are assuring us that we are heirs to a promise that will be fulfilled.
{Do you realize that each attempt to draw you in is an appeal to reconcile you to the promise He has for you?}
This is beyond fascinating to me because in many ways, as women, we miss the importance of his wooing us to relationship and reconciliation in our life. We can go all the way back to Eve in the garden and see that her misinterpretation of God’s faithfulness to completely take care of her altered her view of what she saw when the serpent spoke the deceit in her ear. She made a choice to believe something other than the Truth. She had a Heavenly Father whose full delight was in her presence with Him and she still wanted more. If a perfected Eve was able to misjudge truth, how faulty is our own ability to discern His heart towards us?
When we are bombarded on every side with the idea that we must produce on our own without first being cultivated and sown by the only source of life, we can expect to fail. However, when we trust that God is actively working deep within the core of our being, rooting up those false ideas and reminding us over and over of His loving-kindness and tender mercy, then we have the freedom to sing into the barren places and expect bounty.
{Where are you camping in that theology today?}
Do you realize that you are valued beyond measure and you have promise that only He can truly see the end of?(Psalm 139) He is looking at you and singing over you, rejoicing actually,(Zeph 3:17) and is calling you to start that melody of faith on your own(Isaiah 54:1) to remove the barren places that the sin of unbelief has robbed from you.
We are cultivating a field that is meant to produce when we spend time sifting and sorting His Word in our hearts. In the first 4 lessons we talked about preparing our hearts for the promises of hope, and this section follows along by revealing that we are cultivating in order to plant seeds. We have to tear up the lies and the losses that are holding us back from being productive in every area of our lives.
Look at Psalm 46:1-3:
God is a Refuge and Strength [mighty and impenetrable to temptation], a very present and well-proved help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains be shaken into the midst of the seas, Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling and tumult. Selah
It is easy to get caught up in fearing what we do not know and the obstacles that are placed in front of us, but we have to remember that God is the one who is doing the work of redemption. We can’t earn our way there and we can’t work to understand it more. We just have to TRUST and REST in the power and promise of the covenant of peace He provides.
I want to show you a few key words here in our scripture passage to help you connect some dots. All throughout this chapter we find repetition and parallelism as our rhetorical device of persuasion. He is trying to teach us, though at times we are slow to grasp it, that He alone is faithful.
- The word for covenant is berit and it is used as a mirror of the eternal loving-kindness of God which is also a covenant.
- The word for mountain is harar which means to loom or to come into view, appearing in the mind magnified larger than it really is, imminent and impending.
- The word for sworn (used twice in vs 9) is saba, it represents the concept of an unbreakable oath. Literally it means to seven oneself, or to swear a declaration by repetition seven times.
Let’s go a bit deeper with that:
- Saba comes from the primitive masculine root of seba which is the cardinal number seven in Hebrew. It means complete. It is implicative of an indefinite number. This shows us his oath is perfect.
The idea is radically simple. All through His Word He is showing us He is reliable, but not only is He telling us through examples and repetition, He is challenging us to go deeper below the surface and realize that His Words carry such weight and meaning that by their definition He is binding Himself to what He says. He is swearing by Himself here, and that is the most solid definition of promise we can bank on. We cannot put an earthly measure on His oath, but we can trust by the promise of WHO He is that it is viable and binding.(Hebrews 11:6)
A few more revelations here:
John 1:1 says, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was present originally with God. All things were made and came into existence through him and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being.
Looking deeply into the strong affirmation of His promise, from time immemorial God knew what we needed to hear. Before we ever came to be, He knew our purpose and hope hinged only on His ability to rescue and redeem, not our own. This thing that He is doing, it is subject to the divinity of His Word, which is alive and powerful, able to sift and separate joints and marrow, sharp and quick to the soul.(Hebrews 4:12) It is all subject to the omnipotence and sovereignty of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Lord of Hosts who calls to you and makes a compact to save and redeem you in your barren state in order to make you productive.
These verses are the seal of authority that you can hold onto when you are unsure that He is working it out. They are the foundation that gives you freedom to march into the throne of grace in prayer. They are the launch pad for what is to come in the final section of Isaiah 54, where we will see His plan flourish.
Praying that this week you are astounded by the promises of this contract of hope he has given you. He has so much riding upon the glorious fruit that you will be growing as you rest in these truths. There is hope, friends, because He is eternally bound to His oath and we know that not one of His promises have failed. (1 Kings 8:56, Joshua 21:45)
Don’t forget to download this week’s worksheet below.
Blessings In Christ,
Author, writer and speaker, Dawn is passionate about many things: God, Family, Prayer, Food, and the Word. You can find her writing about those hard questions, reasoning and rejoicing in God’s grace and mercy for those who are walking this journey to grace on her website, Journeys In Grace.(www.journeysingrace.com)
Download this week’s worksheet here:
Week 7 God Redeems us through the Covenant of Peace
Originally published on Soli Deo Gloria Sisterhood
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