‘I Will’

Even to your old age, I am He, And even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.

Isaiah 46:4

‘Is there anything too hard for the LORD?’ Christ asked Abraham this question. The resounding answer to that Question is…No. Christ does not ever promise anything which He is not able to deliver. For the past several days we have established the foundational bases, upon which this promise rests. Christ is our Creator, and therefore He will preserve us. Christ is the Self-Existent; Immutable God, and therefore He will preserve us. Today, we come to consider that Christ is Able, and therefore He will preserve us. The Scripture abounds with support for this:

Able to make all grace abound toward you that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.
Able to succor them that are tempted.
Able…to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
Able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.
Able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.   

As we bring those assurances from the Scripture to bear upon the current discussion, let us consider what Christ has promised. He says, ‘I will carry you; I will bear; I will carry, and will deliver you.’ As we said earlier, Christ does not promise anything that He cannot deliver. This is the guarantee of this text. Christ is saying, ‘I will preserve you, because I can.’ A promise is only as good as the character and ability of the person who makes the promise. We present to you, The Christ of God, of unimpeachable Character and unlimited Ability. No one else can give us such a guarantee. No one else can carry out such a glorious promise. Christ is Able.

Our Gracious Master and Our most Powerful Saviour,
We praise You for Your Good Will toward us.
We rejoice that all You have promised You will infallibly perform.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

‘I Am He’

Even to your old age, I am He, And even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.

Isaiah 46:4

As we continue our consideration of Christ’s promise to preserve His people, we come today to consider another of the foundational bases of this promise. Within the context of our text, Christ says, ‘Even to your old age, I am He.’ This reference points us in two directions. It points backward to Exodus 3, where Christ tells Moses, ‘tell them that I Am has sent you,’ which is Christ’s proclamation of His Self-Existent, Immutable Character. It also points us forward to Christ’s statement to His enemies in John, when He says, ‘Before Abraham was, I Am.’ This brings us to consider the verse in Hebrews which states ‘Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today, and forever.’ If we ‘connect the dots,’ we arrive at the conclusion that Christ promises to preserve His people on the basis that He is the Immutable, Self-Existent God. This is, for us, a blessed assurance. Our preservation does not rest upon our ability to hold on to Christ. It is Christ Who not merely holds us, but in Whom God has placed us. We are in Christ, just as certainly as Noah and his family were in the ark, which is a picture of Christ. We may rest securely in the knowledge that Christ will be as good as His Word, because of Who and What He is. He is the I Am. As such, He will not fail to keep His Word and preserve His people, every one of them.

Our All-Powerful and All-Wise God,
we praise You that You change not.
We rejoice that You uphold us based upon Your Holy Character.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

 

Christ, Our Hope For All Seasons

“Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been upheld by Me from birth, who have been carried from the womb: Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.

Isaiah 46: 3, 4

Every season of life has its’ challenges. Youth, maturity, and age come upon us by degrees and with them bring the peculiar characteristics unique to each of them. Christ transcends them all. Our text today declares, ‘Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been upheld by Me from birth, who have been carried from the womb: Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; Even I will carry, and will deliver you.’ Although, God addresses this to Israel, in it we find great evangelical truth.

There is no season of life where Christ is not our Hope. Many of us can bear testimony to the fact that the Holy Spirit granted unto us regeneration and repentance while we were very young. Christ was our Hope in childhood. Through what was, for some of us, a very traumatic experience, through which no child should ever have to go, Christ bore us up. He was our Hope when we doubted that we would live to see the age of majority. In the days of our youth, with all of its’ awkwardness of discovering both who we are, and where we fit or did not fit, Christ was the Divine Constant in our variable world. Upon Him we could depend through all the fickle relationships, and tumultuous upheavals of immaturity. As we became adults, married, became members of the workforce, had children, bought houses, made career choices, Christ was our Hope. We have found Him to be Our Never Failing Guide, our all-Wise Counsellor, and Changeless Friend.  For those of us who are watching the sunset of life, Christ is still Our Hope. He bears us up as our physical frame weakens. He remembers, when we no longer can. He gives us spiritual health as physical health fades. Yes, Christ is Our Hope in every season of life, from childhood to old age. Jesus never fails.

Our Gracious, Loving Savior,
We Hope in You for all our days.
From You are all our expectations,
in every season of life.
.

Where the Bush is Burning
Tomm Tice