Come Now, Reason

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Isaiah 1:18

I have always enjoyed this passage because it captures the essence of our Lord’s coming to meet with us. First, He bids us to come, but more than that, He bids us to ‘come now.’ Presently. Today. As I wrote yesterday, ‘Today, If We Hear,’ we should answer Him, today; not tomorrow. I pray that some of you did yesterday and entered into His rest, but nevertheless…

Notice too that the Lord is the One who bids us to come, to draw near. It wasn’t the other way around. Although there might have been times in our lives that we cried out to Him, and He drew near, you should know that it was not our prompting that brought Him to us. He came out of His grace and mercy. He might have come knowing the sincerity of your call and cry at the time, or He knew you weren’t sincere, and His coming was only a preparatory visit before He came the final time and presented His plea.

Regardless, do you think that God, who knows our hearts and minds; our motives and intentions, is so easily manipulated? False gods may be that way. They have no eyes to see, no ears to hear and no mouth to speak. The Devil, the great puppet master, has made us all ventriloquists. We convince ourselves but point to others as the authors of our self-deception when it was our own voice of our heart that we followed. We are all victims here; and yes we are, accepting as we should the fall of Adam into sin as the cause of our own knowledge of good and evil, but that does not discharge our accountability before God, especially given the greatness of His offer to declare us, in Christ Jesus, justified through His blood.

Lest I digress, it’s not as if I haven’t had difficult times when I cried out, and I could not find Him. I was left alone, but I later learned it was for my good. He is God and no man shall manipulate Him. As God told Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.’ Romans 9:15 When He does bid us to come; if He does so bid, it is in the fullness of His timing; not ours. Everything under the sun is a matter of His timing: “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,” (Galatians 4:4) and what is it for us to know as to our future? “And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.” Acts 1:7. We are to set our faces on His kingdom, and as his children, answer as Jesus did when approached by his earthly parents, “And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” Luke 2:49

So what do we learn of this? We learn that when God approaches and says, ‘Come now,’ we ought to listen. His timing is His own, but it is for you, out of His compassion if He so chooses, that He draws near. As a gentle and loving heavenly Father, He even extends an olive branch, so to speak, when He says, ‘Come now let us reason together.’ How inviting; how gentlemanly the thought that God, and we can reason together. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we can change God’s mind with regard to His plan; which He determined in the counsel of His own will and set into motion before the foundations of the earth were laid. What we learn is how reasonable and lovely; how sweet His words! Who would not truly want a new life? Who would not want their shame and guilt for their sins, as dark as scarlet and red in stain as they are upon the conscience and the soul, changed to white? Who would not want to be counted among them that John saw? “After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands.” Rev. 7:9 Can you place yourself there?

 “(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succored thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)” 2 Cor. 6:2