Day: April 20, 2026

Monday, April 20, 2026

“Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Deuteronomy 9:5 KJV).

May we have the proper perspective of wickedness versus righteousness….

Read chapter 64 of Isaiah in its entirety. Israel’s believing remnant, in the ages to come, speaks to the Lord Jesus Christ as they await His glorious return to bring in God’s literal, physical, visible, earthly, Davidic kingdom. In verse 5, they confess: “…behold, thou art wroth; for we have sinned….” Verses 6 and 7 go on with, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.” They have learned the lesson their ancestors had to understand 3,500 years ago in today’s Scripture: the Promised Land will be inherited only because of God’s goodness and faithfulness, not Israel’s goodness or faithfulness.

Verses 8 and 9 continue: “But now, O LORD, thou art our father [Matthew 6:9!]; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O LORD, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people.” Precisely as the believing remnant recognizes, the wrath and judgment sinful national Israel accumulated under the Law of Moses—the Old Covenant—is deserved and therefore must be brought to pass. However, that believing remnant will survive that wrath and judgment, allowed to enter the subsequent earthly kingdom of God. That kingdom is the ultimate fulfillment of the word the LORD sware to patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (cf. today’s Scripture), something God promised long before the Law system was ever given and long before Israel ever disobeyed that Law system.

Let us summarize and conclude this devotionals arc….