I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a story about a man who was attacked and killed by a dog he had recently adopted from a shelter.
It was a sad story. I wondered what could have gone through that dogs head that it couldn’t accept that a human really cared about it. It may have been though a lot to be so messed up. That poor man was trying to give an animal home and ended up giving his life.
Then I remembered that God did the same for us. The Messiah died trying to save us from our deranged sinful nature. His love was so great it allowed us to hurt him. “Who believes our report? To whom is the arm of Adonai revealed? For before him he grew up like a young plant, like a root out of dry ground. He was not well-formed or especially handsome; we saw him, but his appearance did not attract us. People despised and avoided him, a man of pains, well acquainted with illness.
Like someone from whom people turn their faces, he was despised; we did not value him. In fact, it was our diseases he bore, our pains from which he suffered; yet we regarded him as punished, stricken and afflicted by God. But he was wounded because of our crimes, crushed because of our sins; the disciplining that makes us whole fell on him, and by his bruises* we are healed.” Isaiah 53:1-5
We have been shut out from God’s goodness in the shelter of sin. “Rather, it is your own crimes that separate you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he doesn’t hear.” Isaiah 59:2 God wants to take us home, but we make it difficult. “’Where should I strike you next, as you persist in rebelling? The whole head is sick, the whole heart diseased.’” Isaiah 1:5.
How often have we attacked the very means and people God has used to try to save us because we didn’t accept the love God was trying to offer us? Sin makes us crazy and aggressive to anything that is not like us and turns us against God. That is why we need a new life and must depend on God to change us because it is not something we can do for ourselves. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit inside you; I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Ezekiel 36:26
“’Come now,’ says Adonai, ‘let’s talk this over together. Even if your sins are like scarlet, they will be white as snow; even if they are red as crimson, they will be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you will be eaten by the sword’; for the mouth of Adonai has spoken.” Isaiah 1:18-20
God wants us to be able to safely live with others in the next life where “They will not hurt or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain, for the earth will be as full of the knowledge of Adonai as water covering the sea.” Isaiah 11:9 God doesn’t want to have to put us down like a mad dog. Let’s stop attacking God when he is trying to help us.
Picture originally found here
