Isaiah 56
Salvation is for Everyone!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Wednesday, February 28.
From the beginning, God desired for all the nations to be saved and to know His loving embrace. God expressed His heart to save all the peoples in Isaiah 56:6-7:
Also the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants, every one who keeps from profaning the sabbath and holds fast My covenant; even those I will bring to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar; for My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.
This passage is quoted by Jesus when He cleared the temple in Matthew 21:12-13, and, as if to put an exclamation point on the context of His quote, in verse 14, Matthew highlighted, “And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.” That which was formerly excluded from the people of God has now been invited to come and find salvation in Christ. Jesus’ heart to include the foreigner and the outcast into the fellowship of God, and to heal the blind and the broken as a sign of sabbath rest was one of the reasons they sought to kill Him, as seen in Luke 4:24-30. Jesus took a crowd who was lauding him and stirred them up to the point of trying to kill him, simply by spotlighting that God had always desired to save even those outside of Israel. Furthermore, Paul, who went through a similar experience in Acts 21:21-22, emphasized this truth in 1 Timothy 2:3-4, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”(cf. 2 Peter 3:9).
God bless you!
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YOUTUBE:
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