I’ve been thinking, writing, and speaking about God’s favor quite a bit lately. You can check out some thoughts here, here, and here.
This topic isn’t complete without considering God’s grace. After all, grace literally means God’s unmerited favor.
So what do you think disgrace means?
The prefix dis- means separation. When something is disassembled, it’s not whole as it used to be. If someone is feeling discouraged, they are separated from what used to give them courage. So disgrace could mean that we are separated from God’s grace.
But are we really?
Listen carefully to this, and then take a look at this 4-minute video—satan cannot stop God’s grace, but he can stop you from recognizing God’s grace. In other words, disgrace doesn’t mean that God’s grace has been withdrawn from you, but rather disgrace is when you are having difficulty seeing, hearing, or feeling God’s grace.
Elizabeth was feeling disgrace, but then check out what God did for her…
You can read the story for yourself in Luke 1:5-25. This video clip is a small snippet from a longer message. If you would like to listen to the whole message, please click here.
I’m always astounded by the depth of insight that God gave to Oswald Chambers on spiritual matters; especially on concepts that seem confusing to a great many people. His God-given insights are on full display in his Notes On Isaiah.
I’ll share one disappointment right up front: There is not nearly as much information in this book as I would have hoped for. Chambers’ books, with only a couple of minor exceptions, were not initially written as books. Instead, the books are a collection of sermons or lectures that his wife recorded shorthand as he spoke, and then they were transcribed and compiled later. Apparently during this series of lectures on Isaiah, Biddy Chambers had taken on more responsibility at the Bible Training Institute (even teaching a class of her own), and she gave birth to their only child. These things kept her from taking the extensive notes we readers have become accustomed to.
Although limited, the content is still as insightful and mind-expanding as ever! David Lambert, a friend of the Chambers who helped get this book into print, marveled at how masterfully Oswald could make the words of Isaiah accessible to his students. Lambert noted, “The only mind for the author of the Bible is the Mind of God, and the only Interpreter is the Spirit of God.” Clearly, Oswald Chambers was deeply dependent on both the Mind and Spirit of God in all of his work!
In introducing this class to his students, Chambers reminded them what was at stake. He said, “God will never have us follow Him blindly,” unlike satan. He pointed out, “The supernatural power of satan never reasons, it appeals to man’s superstition, not to his conscience.” If ever a book of Scripture appealed to our conscience to open our eyes and hearts to the ways of God, it is the book of Isaiah. And Oswald Chambers is a marvelous companion for our journey through this book!
I have been trumpeting this truth: God is for you! He’s not looking for opportunities to blast you, but to bless you. God wants you to know that you have found His favor.
But what happens if we sin? Do we lose God’s favor? In a word—NO!
Here’s what happens instead: God becomes our Prodigal Father.
Let me show you from both the Old Testament and the New Testament what I mean, but first, let’s define prodigal: it means recklessly extravagant or lavishly abundant. This is always how God treats His children.
In Isaiah 59, the prophet reminds us that nothing about God’s strength or ability to respond to our pleas has been diminished. Instead: your sins have separated you from your God—we can leave God, but He never leaves us!
Isaiah catalogs all our sins that have become a quicksand trap for us. God looks to see who can help us, and finding no one, here’s what He does: so His own arm worked salvation for Him, and His own righteousness sustained Him.
God did what was underserved. God did what no one else could do: HE HIMSELF BECAME OUR SALVATION!
If ever there was a definition of recklessly extravagant, lavishly abundant love… this is it!!
In Luke 15, Jesus tells a story that people often call the story of the prodigal son, but it’s really the father who is prodigal. The son squanders all his father’s blessings on wild living and finds himself bankrupt, starving, and completely disgraced. But the moment the son came to his senses and began to move toward his father by confessing his sin, his prodigal father ran to him!
Jesus tells us this father was overflowing with compassion. There wasn’t anything his son could have done to diminish the father’s love, nor was there anything the son could have done to make his father love him more. The father was all-loving all the time. He was recklessly extravagant and lavishly abundant in his love.
The father RAN to his son and covered his son’s disheveled, stinking rags with his royal robe.
This is exactly what Isaiah said God would do for us…
instead of ashes, we get a crown
instead of rags of mourning, we get an anointing of gladness
instead of a spirit of despair, we get a garment of praise
instead of shame, we get a double portion of God’s riches
instead of disgrace, we get God’s inheritance
How does all this happen? Our Prodigal Father abundantly, lavishly “clothes me with garments of salvation and arrays me in a robe of righteousness”!!
Don’t ever buy into satan’s lies that God loves you less, or that you’ve used up your changes, or that your sins are too many or too big. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from ALL unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
Join me this coming Sunday either in person or on Facebook Live as we learn more about God’s favor toward us.
[Each chapter in the Book of Proverbs contains thoughts that fit into a theme; they are not just random thoughts gathered together. In this “Saturday In The Proverbs” series, I will share a theme that I see in each chapter. But the cool thing about God’s Word is that you may see an entirely different theme. That’s great! If you do, I would love for you to share it in the comments below.]
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Isaiah 42
[These are notes on Oswald Chambers’ lecture on Isaiah 42.]
If you want to know what a servant of God is to be like, read what Isaiah says in this chapter and the following ones about the great Servant, Jesus Christ. The characteristics of the great Servant must be the characteristics of every servant; it is the identification of the servant of God with the immortal characteristics of God Himself.
In service for God we have to be abandoned to Him, let Him put us where He will, whether He blesses us or crushes us with burdens, we have nothing to do with what it costs. … May God make us understand that if we are in His service He will do exactly what He likes with us. We are not saved and sanctified for ourselves, but for God to crush us with burdens if He chooses. … A servant of Jesus Christ is one who is willing to go to martyrdom for the reality of the Gospel of God. …
The servant is absorbed in Jesus as He was in God. The mark of false service is the self-conscious pride of striving after of God’s favor. …
The whole conception of the work of a servant of God is to lift up the despairing and the hopeless. Immediately you start work on God’s line He will bring the weak and infirm round you, the surest sign that God is at work is that that is the class who come—the very class we don’t want, with the pain and the distress and limitation. We want the strong and robust, and God gathers round us the feeble-minded, the afflicted and weak. Pain in God’s service always leads to glory. We want success, God wants glory.
From Notes On Isaiah
God calls His followers to be servus servorum Dei: a servant of the servants of God. We don’t seek glory for ourselves, but we seek glory solely for God. We live our lives just as Jesus demonstrated: “Not My will, but Yours be done.”
“It was because of His grace that God the Father sent His only Son to die in our place. To say it another way, Christ’s death was the result of God’s grace; grace is not the result of Christ’s death.” —Jerry Bridges
God had been showing us His love throughout the Old Testament period, but the Advent of Jesus made it abundantly and unmistakably clear that God is for us!
John (the one who would announce the arrival of Jesus) means Jehovah is a gracious Giver.
Elizabeth (John’s mother) said that God had not only shown His favor to her by making her pregnant, but she also said God had removed her disgrace.
Mary (the mother of Jesus) was greeted by the angel with the phrases “You are highly favored” and “You have found favor with God.”
On the night of Christ’s birth, the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.”
Jesus, in His first public sermon, quoted Isaiah’s words, saying He had come to proclaim God’s favor.
But please notice this truth—We don’t try to find or earn God’s favor. It’s already there; we just need to realize it’s there!
You see, we don’t grow in God’s favor, nor do we get more favor, but we progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with God’s favor that is already there. Check out what Moses said:
If I have found favor in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with You, perceiving and recognizing and understanding more strongly and clearly and that I may find favor in Your sight (Exodus 33:13)
The angel said to Mary, “You are HIGHLY FAVORED” (Luke 1:28). God uses the same word when He says to us: God made us ACCEPTED in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6).
How can this be??Because on the Cross, Jesus switched places with us. He took all our sin and DISgrace, and gave us all of His righteousness. Now when God the Father looks at us, all He sees is the righteousness of His Son. Now all praise to God for His wonderful kindness to us and His favor that He has poured out upon us because we belong to His dearly loved Son(TLB).
God’s grace is undiminished. It is as full today as it ever has been. God could never love you more than He already does. God could never love you less because of anything you do. Keep your eyes on Him and you will find just how much favor He has for you!
Join me this Sunday either in person or on Facebook Live as we continue to learn more about God’s favor.
[Each chapter in the Book of Proverbs contains thoughts that fit into a theme; they are not just random thoughts gathered together. In this “Saturday In The Proverbs” series, I will share a theme that I see in each chapter. But the cool thing about God’s Word is that you may see an entirely different theme. That’s great! If you do, I would love for you to share it in the comments below.]
Get wisdom! Get understanding! … Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding (Proverbs 4:5, 7).
There are many things we can pursue in life—perpetual youth, a perfect mate, financial security, social status, political power. But Solomon says none of those things are worth our pursuit.
Wisdom and understanding from God’s Word are worth the getting! They bring meaning to life along with:
Promotion
Honor
Grace
Freedom from entanglements
Avoidance of evil
A clear path forward
Purity
Diligence
If you are going to get anything, get what God’s got.
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Isaiah 30
[These are the notes on Oswald Chambers’ lecture on Isaiah 30.]
The test of true religion is the knowledge of the character of God. As long as you think of God in the quietness of a religious meeting you will never know God—what kind of God have you got when you are in touch with the wrong, bad, evil things? God’s Book reveals that it is right in the midst of the very opposite of God that His blessings occur. The very things which seem to be making for destruction become the revealers of God. It is an easy business to preach peace when you are in health and have everything you want, but the Bible preaches peace when things are in a howling tumult of passion and sin and iniquity; it is in the midst of anguish and terror that we realize Who God is and the marvel of what He can do. …
God makes His people sing where in the eyes of the world it seems ironical to sing—in a besieged city where things are going to ruin, in the suburbs of hell, in the valley of the shadow of death. When you see lives in the midst of turmoil and anguish full of amazing brightness and uncrushable elasticity of faith in God, if you do not know God you will say, “However can they go through it? how is it that they remain undiscouraged and undismayed?” The explanation is the presence of God made real in His promises.”
From Notes On Isaiah
When you go through a “howling tumult” there are some things to remember:
God is with you
God is in control
God will help you sing through the storm
Others are watching you
God can be glorified in your undismayed faith in His presence through the tumult
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
In the first 39 chapters of Isaiah, there is a lot of doom-and-gloom prophecy about coming judgment. But as the fortieth chapter opens, there is a decidedly more upbeat outlook as prophecies about the Messiah and the coming of God’s Kingdom unfold before us.
Fittingly, there is a recurring phrase that wasn’t heard in the first 39 chapters of Isaiah—FEAR NOT.
Why does Isaiah tell us so many times to banish fear? Here are 15 reasons that God gives:
God says, “I am with you.”
God says, “I will strengthen you.”
God says, “I will uphold you.”
God says, “Those who contended with you shall be as a nonexistent thing.”
God says, “I will hold your hand.”
God says, “I am in control.”
God says, “I will make you into something irresistible.”
God says, “Everyone will see the amazing things I will do for you.”
God says, “Anything apart from Me is worthless.”
God says, “I have redeemed you.”
God says, “You are Mine.”
God says, “I know you by name.”
God says, “I will go through floods and flames with you and you will not be drowned or burned.”
God says, “Nothing ever takes Me by surprise.”
God says, “I alone am God and everyone else is a mere man.”
Bottom line: God’s Word gives us ample reasons to root out fear from our heart.
I’m going to make a statement that might shock some people.
Some of you who have been around Christianity might have heard this before, and you may even mentally agree with it. But even people who mentally agree with it want to add a “Yeah, but…” to it. Or they mentally agree with it but don’t live like it’s true.
Ready? Here it is …
God is for you.
Far too many people mistakenly think God is looking for an opportunity to punish them; He’s trying to catch them doing something wrong; He’s perched on the edge of heaven with lightning bolts of judgment in His hand. God doesn’t want to blast you; He wants to bless you!
Although the word favor appears quite frequently in Scripture, God’s favor is also implied in the word grace, which means God’s unmerited favor.
It’s unmerited because none of us is worthy of God’s favor; it’s not something anyone can earn. We have all sinned, and therefore we’re all worthy of the death penalty. Every single one of us!
I have worshipped idols, I have blasphemed God’s name, I have broken the Sabbath, I have dishonored my parents, I have coveted, I have lied, I have committed adultery, and I have murdered. And so have you (see James 2:10).
Do you understand what Jesus did for us on the Cross? HE SWITCHED PLACES WITH US!
Jesus became my sin, and He made it possible for me to become His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). Check this out:
For God took the sinless Christ and poured into Him our sins. Then, in exchange, He poured God’s goodness into us!
“It was because of His grace that God the Father sent His only Son to die in our place. To say it another way, Christ’s death was the result of God’s grace; grace is not the result of Christ’s death.” —Jerry Bridges
Don’t allow the devil’s lies of your unworthiness keep you from missing out on this truth. All of us are unworthy of God’s favor. But God demonstrated that He was for uswhen Jesus died on the Cross in our place. Now there is no more guilt, no more condemnation, absolutely nothing standing in the way of all of God’s unmerited favor because
I’ve been thinking, writing, and speaking about God’s favor quite a bit lately. You can check out some thoughts here, here, and here. 
Craig T. Owens 