The Heart Of A Father

God spoke through Isaiah,

“Children have I reared and brought up,

but they have rebelled against me.
Isaiah 1:2b

Any parent who has loved and raised a child who wandered knows the heartache. “They have revolted” is the Hebrew pâshaʻ meaning to break away from just authority. A revolt is an attempt to put an end to the authority of another through rebellion. The absurdity of rebelling against God is made clear in Isaiah 1:3,

“The ox knows its owner,

and the donkey its master’s crib,

but Israel does not know,

my people do not understand.”

Even animals don’t make this hard. Yet human hearts are prone to wander from what is good, or exalt our own wisdom above God’s. Rather than submit, Jeremiah 17:9 warns that the human heart is deceitful and sick.

We need the Lord. This proclamation in Isaiah was not good news, but it was true. This book will declare that God counters this bad news with the best news ever told. Israel’s only hope and ours is in Christ, so He came to save us through the cross; to give us a new heart. He loved us while we were still sinners and made a way for us to return to His indescribable Lordship; a way to come home.

It’s so simple. Those who have come to God, cleansed from sin and rebellion through the blood of Christ, are His children in right standing. All outside of Christ are still in rebellion.

“But to all who did receive him,

who believed in his name,

he gave the right to become children of God,

who were born,

not of blood nor of the will of the flesh

nor of the will of man,

but of God.”

John 1:12-13