Daily Presence预览

Remember the days many years ago when you would finish school and by the time you got home you were starving? I was a growing high school boy who got home and annihilated the pantry every day. The phrase, “You’re going to eat me out of house and home,” Was especially true with me.

On one particular occasion I had arrived home for my afterschool feast and remembered we had some leftover grilled chicken in the fridge. I plated all of it, microwaved it, and then covered it in BBQ sauce. As I was walking down our stairs past the living room I experienced one of those moments that seems to last forever. I slipped on a stair, the chicken flew off the plate, and landed sauce side down on our white carpet.

What remained after hours of scrubbing was a nasty red stain in the middle of white carpet floor. I got in so much trouble! Every time I walked past our living room I was reminded of my bonehead mistake. This feeling is what the prophet Isaiah is describing in Isaiah 1 as he confronts the rebellion and sinful disobedience of the children of Israel. After grounding them and warning they may have to pay to replace the carpet, God weaves into His rebuke one of the most beautifully-redeeming passages of scripture.

He says, “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

Incredible. After all their rebellion, all their disobedience, and all their sin God still desires to settle the matter, and by settling it He prophesies about giving his son Jesus to wash away the sins of his people so their accounts can be clean before Him.

I remember when my mom finally found a product that took the stain out of the carpet. There was something so freeing about knowing that I had made a complete mess, but even that mess wasn’t beyond the ability of something to clean it up and make it look like it never happened. That’s what the blood of Jesus did for the children of Israel, and that’s what the blood of Jesus does for us today.