“Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” Isaiah 49:16 ESV
Reflection: if God was to write you a greeting card, what do you think it would say?
You might have found yourself, like I have so many times, standing in the greeting card isle for what seems like hours, trying to find the right card for someone you care about. Can be very frustrating. While there are typically hundreds of cards to choose from, none say exactly what you want to say. Worse than that, I often shake my head at these cards, thinking “how in the world can they sell this?” So instead of actually writing something ourselves, we keep looking, reading card after card. While every once in a while we can be lucky finding something close, I do often end up with a blank card, then writing my own greeting. Having done this search so many times, I often just look for the blank card section right away, as I know I will probably end up there anyway.
In today’s focus verse, we have yet again come across one of those favorite bible verse many Christians know by heart, words that that could belong on a Christian greeting card. Because these words are so very comforting, to hear the Lord saying “Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” Isaiah 49:16 ESV. But, should we not first understand the context, if it even applies to us? Who is the Lord talking to here? Who is the “you” in His sentence, keeping in mind that this is Old Testament scripture and writings. Let’s expand our viewpoint here, to try to better understand the context.
This favorite verse is actually a response by the Lord to a statement made previously in v14, “But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.”” Isaiah 49:14 ESV, to which the Lord provides a rather lengthy response in v15-26. Let’s read the first three verses, again to get a better context, “But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” Isaiah 49:14-16 ESV. If you have time, read through v26, which is the end of the chapter.
So we se here clearly the Lord is responding to a statement made by “Zion”, so we could therefore read our focus verse “Behold, I have engraved [Zion] on the palms of my hands; [Zion’s] walls are continually before me.” Isaiah 49:14-16 ESV. So, naturally the question then is, well, who is “Zion”? This is another one of those words, or names, like Israel, which has layers of complexity, symbolism and meanings in biblical context. So we have to be very careful here not thinking too narrowly, nor too broadly, as that could lead us down some roads which will misinterpret and misapply the meaning.
While many use Zion to mean a physical location, or even a political movement, Zion in biblical context is generally spiritual; the “mountain” of the Lord, where the Lord is, We read for instance “The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.”Psalm 50:1-2 ESV. And, “For the Lord builds up Zion; he appears in his glory;” Psalm 102:16 ESV. Now, we also see the city of the Lord, Jerusalem, sometimes being used interchangeably with Zion, but typically being built on this mountain. So, Zion and Jerusalem has a reference to spiritual structures of God and God’s people. And therefore, in New Testament context, God’s people mean “the church”, the body of believers in Christ, where Christ is the cornerstone. “as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”” Romans 9:33 ESV.
We also read for the believers, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” Hebrews 12:22-24 ESV. Ok, there is a lot to take in and contemplate here, so let’s circle back where we started, how the Lord responded to a statement made by Zion, “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.”Isaiah 49:14b ESV.
The church, the believers in and followers of Christ Jesus, the persecuted church in the world, can certainly associate with this statement. And, even us as individual believers in and followers of Christ can feel this at times, wondering where God is when we are attacked, when our work seems in vain, to the wind. It is to those who the Lord is speaking, to His people as a people, and as individuals, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” Isaiah 49:14-16 ESV
This is God’s greeting card to you and I today. Read it. Take it in. We are not forgotten by the Lord.
