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Isaiah 66:1-2

Heaven Is God's Throne
1 Thus says the LORD,
"Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool
Where then is a house you could build for Me?
And where is a place that I may rest?
2 "For My hand made all these things,
Thus all these things came into being," declares the LORD
"But to this one I will look,
To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.

We loose sight of the fact that God has created all. That God is all knowing, all powerful and all loving. The imagery behind the statement that 'Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool' is absolutely awesome. This verse was intended to point out a major issue in Jewish times, that I feel is still relevant today.

Isaiah writes 'Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest?' We limit God to church and to prayer before a meal or before bed or whatever our schedule really permits. We, as a culture, have build monuments and massive churches where God is to 'live.' If 'Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool,' it should be that we rejoice in God in all areas of our lived: Our homes and our jobs, our mornings and our nights, all of our days. It is only because of Him that we have these anyways...

Verse two in Isaiah 66 is especially great given today's condition of man. God reveals to whom he looks to. '... To him who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at My word.'

How are we to respond to this then? It is quite clear that this is a directive in which believers are called to respond and to act accordingly. We are to keep God's word holy and strive towards this... ...and only realizing the vastness and the greatness of God's love and righteousness will we even come close.

Psalms 137

1 By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down and wept,
When we remembered Zion.
2 Upon the willows in the midst of it
We hung our harps.
3 For there our captors demanded of us songs,
And our tormentors mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
4 How can we sing the LORD’S song
In a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
May my right hand forget her skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
If I do not remember you,
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.
7 Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom
The day of Jerusalem,
Who said, “Raze it, raze it
To its very foundation.”
8 O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one,
How blessed will be the one who repays you
With the recompense with which you have repaid us.
9 How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones
Against the rock.

A while back I heard a song by a band called Sublime. (I know... not a God honoring band at all...) Later, I heard the same thing sung by Sinead O'Conner... It was this Psalm. I looked into it a bit, and apparently quite a few people have used this Psalm in their albums.

Something about this one strikes me. It has a deep meaning in the Jewish culture, but for me, I think its the emotion that the Psalmist uses... It is deep. Verse one delivers the context:

1 By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down and wept,
When we remembered Zion.

The Psalmist is referring to the Jewish people being in captivity. Versus two and three are the story versus.

2 Upon the willows in the midst of it
We hung our harps.
3 For there our captors demanded of us songs,
And our tormentors mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

Their captors mocked them by demanding them to sing of the land they had been taken from. Imagine being taken against your will, and then being asked to sing praises about where you were from in the midst of your longing to return. Versus four through six shows the Jewish peoples steadfast and their deep love for Zion.

4 How can we sing the LORD’S song
In a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
May my right hand forget her skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
If I do not remember you,
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.

I love to see the steadiness that they have in their love. The Psalmist exclaims that nothing is more important, or to be loved more than his home place.

1 Chron 4: 9-10 (A Lesson on Prayer)

⁹Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother named him Jabez saying, "Because I bore him with pain." ¹⁰Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, "Oh that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from harm that it may not pain me!" And God granted him what he requested. (NASB)

Here in the book of Chronicles, amongst all the genealogy of names we will never be able to pronounce if our lived depended on it (i.e. Hazzelelponi... is that like Hazel-el-Poni... sounds like Hazel the pony in Spanish.) we are taught a great lesson on prayer. It is one of the most powerful lessons on prayer I have learned through scripture. Jabez prays:

¹⁰Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, "Oh that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from harm that it may not pain me!" And God granted him what he requested.

I read a small book (about 90 pages in total) about just this one verse... And I'll just summarize it here for you... Jabez asks God directly for what he wants. But he asks for things that are meant to glorify God. Jabez asks for this borders to be expanded, which does not necessarily mean land. He is really asking for his area of influence to broaden. So that he may be a messenger of God to more people. He was a revolutionary to the idea of spreading the Word to the corners of the world.

The second thing that Jabez asks for is for God's hand to be with him. As this man walks with God, he asks to be guided by God. We all know that it is only through God that we are able to accomplish His will... we can never do it on our own accord. We REALLY need to realize that and give God thanks for His constant guidance.

The final thing that Jabez asks for is kind of awkward actually. We always ask for our pains to be eased or relieved, but things usually have to play out before the load is taken off... Not the case here.

The passage ends with a great note... Kind of a simple little "And yeah..." note. it says 'And God granted him what he requested.' So simple but a reminder that if we ask, we will received and that God is faithful in that. We need to take two main things out of this prayer really... and those are that if we truly ask, and mean it, God will deliver. Also, we need to give recognition to the blessings that God gives us... We need to give thanks and praise to the One who delivers! Always!

Deut 6: 4-9

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (NIV)

When I first came on to this verse a few months ago, it popped up in life about six times in a matter of about two weeks. I knew, after the first time hearing it, that it must have had a STRONG significance. I was totally right.

This is a Jewish prayer, recited twice daily, called the Shema. It is described in my notes as 'the Jewish confession of faith.' It has become that for me as well in some ways. I often find myself reciting, or just mulling over, verses four through six.

⁴ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

Verse four deals with the divinity and the profession that there is only One true God and that it is the God of Israel. (the Hebrew translation: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.) I can't get this part out of my head, which I am greatly thankful of. In idle moments, it comes up in my mind and I am left thinking about how great it is that our God is the One... There is no other, and He loves us much! Praise the Lord for that!

⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

This verse is seen many times through out scripture... But this is the origin of the phrase. Laid out in crayon for us is this idea of loving God with all that we are... Easy to say, easy to pretend, impossible feat to accomplish. To TRULY love God with all our heart, soul and strength would mean that we are sinless. In our current state, this fleshly existence, it is impossible. We have many great examples of people who strove with all they were to do this... John, Peter, Moses, David, Abraham... All fell short except the One who was wholly man and wholly God. The phrase "If my right hand knew what my left was doing" comes to mind in reference tot his verse... Take it for what the phrase is worth, but I feel it relates.

⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.

We all knew about the Ten Commandments (should that be capitalizes?!) but I wasn't aware that Moses set eleven of them... Maybe he had more. This is the verse that makes it even more appropriate that God has put this entire passage on my heart so strongly... we are told to have it on our hearts! I am not one to memorize scripture... I try, but it is not something that happens easily for me, but this one... It was easy.

These are the three verses that I have really been meditating on out of the five. Have a great Tuesday.