The last several months we have been doing an in-depth study on the people in the Bible. The lessons they learned in their lives can be lessons for us and still apply to us today. We’ve gone all the way through Genesis, so I thought we would take a bit of a break before moving onward to Exodus.
Isaiah 52: 2 says, “Shake yourself from the dust, arise; Sit down, O Jerusalem! Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion!”
I made a video on Instagram and Tiktok earlier this week about cleaning my glasses. Doesn’t sound like a life lesson, but the more I tried to clean it, the dirtier my glasses became. I wanted to clean them my own way, using techniques I thought would work. But it was only after I grabbed a piece of toilet paper, that they finally came clean.
I talked about how we are sometimes burdened down in life by things ranging from sorrow and losses, to worries and fears, to stresses of every kind, to rejections and failures, to addictions and sins. So many things burden us and weigh heavily on us and sometimes, we try to deal with these things in our own way. Maybe we turn to friends or people who aren’t good influences on us, or maybe we turn to those addictions and sins. Maybe we try to lift the burden in other ways by temporarily making ourselves feel better. Regardless of where we turn, a lot of us don’t turn to God as a first step whenever we feel burdened.
But the only way those burdens are going to be lifted is through Jesus. The only One who can free you from that sin, that addiction, that sorrow, that burden, is Jesus Christ. Even if you’re bothered by something simple like a bad day or your kids are driving you crazy, or you got angry when driving down the road, or whether it’s something more serious like an addiction or divorce or loss of a loved one. Whatever your burden is, God already knows.
There’s a song by For King and Country that goes: “God only knows what you’ve been through. God only knows what they say about you. God only knows the real you. There’s a kind of love that God only knows.”
God hears your cries. He feels your pain. Just like He heard the cries of His people when they were slaves in Egypt. And guess what? He set them free—He loosened them from their burdens.
Back in Isaiah chapter 52, God is freeing Jerusalem from their physical captivity, as well as from their sin when they turned against Him.
“Shake yourself from the dust, arise…”
There comes a time when we have to stop feeling sorry for ourselves, where we have to get up out of the dust of mourning and arise. In Israel, whenever they were mourning, whether a death or something terrible that happened, they would fall onto the ground, wear sackcloth and put ashes on their head. This is God’s way of telling them that their time of mourning is over.
“Sit down, O Jerusalem! Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion!”
Stop trying to go your own way. We seek out all these other ways of trying to free ourselves from our burdens but just like when I was trying to clean my glasses my way, all I did was I made things worse and kept smearing them.
Let God free you from anything that’s bothering you. Talk to Him like you would a friend, even if you feel completely and totally alone. Let Him take your burdens from you.
Isaiah 52:12 says, “For you shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight; for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear God.”
God is watching over you. He’ll keep you safe and be your rear guard. God is with you, so none can stand against you! Find courage and strength in Him.
I challenge you today: write down anything and everything that’s a burden to you today. Then, pray over it and give it all to God!
