“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; ” (Isaiah 51:1, NIV)

In order to pursue righteousness and seek God’s face, one has to have one eye on the past.  God is not to be redefined by every new generation but is to be defined the same through all generations.  In the verse above, the children of Israel were told to “look to the rock from which you were cut and the quarry from which you were hewn.”  He was telling them to look back to their ancestors: to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  There was much to be learned about God by studying how He related to their forefathers.  Since God does not change, we can expect that He will deal with us the same way.

Given this fact, the verse above is also important for us.  There is a huge surge in Christian circles today to make everything new and fresh.  We seem to feel the need to redefine who God is and how He relates to humanity.  But the truth of the matter is that none of that has changed since Adam and Eve.  God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.  He relates to us the same way He related to the saints of old.  We can learn much if we  look to the rock from which we were cut.  The Lord has provided us His Word so we can study the way in which God dealt with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, Matthew, Peter, Paul, and so many others.  We can look at the lives of the saints over the last 20 centuries and can see that God remains faithful in the way that He deals with His children.

Today, find strength in the fact that you have been hewn from a solid and stable rock. That rock is a faith that relies on the grace and favor of a redemptive God. Be certain that the faith you have in God today is the same faith that Adam and Eve had in the very beginning. The only difference was that theirs was in a promise to be fulfilled; yours is in a promise that has been fulfilled.

Peace!

Pastor Tom

www.firmlyrooted.church