Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
Isaiah 11:5
The other day, as I loaded the washing machine, I looked out the window and saw an animal behind my house. I thought it was a fox. I grabbed a pair of World War II army surplus binoculars from the shelf and studied the creature more closely. It was a fawn.
Today I saw what I thought was a large rabbit down in the field. I should have known. The binoculars told me it was my little fawn nestled in the grass.
Binoculars make distant things clear.
The prophet Isaiah had a set of divine binoculars that allowed him to see the distant future, and he wrote clearly about the coming Messiah. We call his book the “Fifth Gospel.” Though Isaiah lived seven hundred years before Christ, I could teach every aspect of the birth, life, personality, ministry, death, resurrection, return, and kingdom of Christ without ever leaving Isaiah’s sixty-six chapters.
In Isaiah 11, he foresaw that the Messiah would be anointed by the Holy Spirit, who would give Him wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and godly fear. The Messiah would make perfect judgments, be compassionate toward the needy, destroy evil, and ultimately bring peace to earth.
Faithfulness, said Isaiah, would be like a sash around the Lord’s waist. He would be girded, enclosed, surrounded, and encircled with faithfulness.
Scottish theologian Sinclair B. Ferguson wrote that in Christ’s’ kingdom, those who are faithful in little are also faithful in much (Luke 16:10). He further observed that Jesus practiced what He preached: He was faithful in honoring His father and mother; He was faithful in living by every word proceeding from the mouth of God; He was faithful to speak graciously and to correct gently; He was faithful to care for those with needs.
The Bible itself is like a pair of binoculars that lets us see Jesus up close. As we read it daily, we’re drawn near and we notice that Jesus was Himself faithful to all the Bible taught. He was faithful to meditate on all His Father had written in the Old Testament. He was faithful in biblical meditation and prayer.
Since He is faithful in the details, He can be trusted in the disasters. Since He was faithful in every small thing, He can be trusted with every big issue.
He will be faithful to you in all the concerns of life, whether little or large.
Robert J. Morgan appears this Tuesday on LIFE Today. Taken from Great Is Thy Faithfulness by Robert J. Morgan. Copyright 2021 by Robert J. Morgan. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson.
