Written by Paul J Bucknell on August, 22, 2020

Isaiah 51:1-2 The Journey of Blessing with Bible Study Questions

How far have you traveled along God’s journey for your life? We have our own goals and aspirations, but none are as important as identifying and following His planned steps. As for my wife and I, we just sold our home and are moving on in another stage of this journey of blessing.

The prophet tells us to look at two things to prepare ourselves for our onward journey with Him. Without these two preparations, you cannot go far.

1. Look Back to Our Design (Isaiah 51:1-2)

“Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who gave birth to you in pain; when he was but one I called him.” (Isaiah 51:1-2)

The Lord calls us first to remember our beginning, how we started out. “Look to the rock from which you were hewn.” In other words, we are to go back and remember how we began, “to the quarry from which you were dug.” As part of a huge rock, they were yet insignificant, unidentifiable, and unusable. The Lord calls Israel to remember her founding days before she was formed.

God birthed the nation Israel through Abraham’s faith. God had carried out His intention to work with Abraham over the years patiently—we see it the nation of Israel. Abraham didn’t know the future. It looked rather bleak for him, not having his son through Sarah till a hundred years old (Genesis 21). Israel’s existence is due to God’s choice to form and keep her as He recounts in the Law.

7 “The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers…” (Deut 7:7-8).

God’s work in our lives as believers in the New Covenant experiences the same marvelous touch of God in our lives as Israel. God brings spiritual birth to us with a design and purpose in mind (Eph 2:4-5). This truth forms the bedrock of our earthly journey, which carves a path into eternity.

Our Beginnings

None of us begin this journey on our own, nor do we travel it alone. God gave us life; He’s our Father. Wherein our earthly fathers could only pass their DNA onto their children, God with His vast wisdom designs and fashions us for His grand purposes. For this reason, we need to observe this marvelous design for our lives. Our opinion of what we would want our lives to look like is a moot point. We weren’t even existent at that time. Whether an Israelite or a believer today, God similarly formed us from uncut quarry rock.
By reconsidering our beginnings, we can more clearly recognize God’s good design and purpose. Our lives did not begin on their own; God carefully initiated and crafted them. By daring to explore our early beginnings, we will better appreciate God’s purposes for our lives. (Some of us are too insecure to think about our beginnings.)

• We started as nothing.
• We possessed nothing.
• We had no will to exercise.
• We had no mind to reason.

Design and Purpose

Design and purpose vitally go together. Modern evolutionary theory has ripped apart this connection by denying a Designer. Without intelligent design, there is left no purpose for one’s life. And so, the world swirls about in ignorance, trying to bring some measure of meaning to their lives. As they get swept down the fast-flowing river of time, they try to grab hold of a branch to obtain some sense of significance.

God’s design, however, is evident from these verses—He carved us from the block of rock. Each stone becomes specially fashioned for his valuable God-given assignment on earth. The Scriptures bind design and purpose inseparably together, providing great confidence for our lives. For a believer, he or she can trust God that one’s person is capable of rightly handling all the challenges that come one’s way. No matter what we face, we can still valiantly believe that He will faithfully lead us.

My wife and I are just beginning, more than likely, the last leg of our life journey on earth. We not only feel older, with eczema on our hands, painful backs, etc. but are much older. We largely lost the youthful expectation that we will be better the next day when pain can be forgotten. Sure, the Lord can heal and intervene in the undesirable process of aging. At times, he has done that (He healed Linda’s heart) and, through increased knowledge, enabled us to use medications wisely. But the Lord doesn’t always help us the way we want. No matter what, we need to come back and trust Him for the adventure that He has set us on. That adventure, if properly looked at, begins with trusting Him with our lives. God designed and made us in His image—not accidental blobs even if we were an almost aborted baby.

A Little Application

So what does it practically mean to “Look to the rock from which you were hewn”? When things get difficult, even overwhelming, I first return with the Psalmist’s cry, “I don’t involve myself in complicated affairs!”

O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty;

Nor do I involve myself in great matters,

Or in things too difficult for me. (Psalm 131:1)

That approach at least protects us from wild ambition, youthful or not, but it doesn’t remove us from God’s demanding tasks. Remember how God started Joshua off? Joshua needed to lead others to fight Jericho with its doubled-walled city. Though God anointed him as king, David was a fugitive running for his life from his father-in-law, King Saul. David wrote Psalm 131 but was involved in many very complicated matters.

In the end, we are to trust God for the way He made us, including our looks and situation. Our joy comes from seeking and fulfilling His will. We must return to the truth that He is our Maker and has hewn us for His purposes. Life is not accidental but quite deliberate. When we trust Him, then we can, in faith, take the next step—no matter where it lead us.

It doesn’t even matter if we do not know where the next step leads. Abraham “went out, not knowing where he was going” (Heb 11:8). The Apostle Paul frankly stated that he didn’t know what he was going to face in a very tumultuous time.

“And now, behold, bound by the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there” (Acts 20:22).

The Lord has fashioned us to withstand all the pressures and difficulties we face in life—if we trust Him. We can trust Him for what lies ahead and beyond. Although we might think we are unprepared, we are wrong and can trust Him to face life’s challenges. It is through these times that our faith grows the most.

2. God’s Blessings (Isaiah 51:2)

“When he was but one I called him, then I blessed him and multiplied him” (Isaiah 51:2).

Blessings do not come all at once. Yes, there is a surge of blessings that come upon a new believer of Jesus. They are all hidden in Christ (Eph 1:3; 3:19-20). But in practice, we learn slowly and are exceedingly slow to apply them to our present circumstances. (This is where mentors are beneficial.)

It’s all rather marvelous. God is great and good; He is marvelous and wonderful. As our Father, He is all that we need. We don’t need to be concerned about anything as His children. It doesn’t mean we have sudden access to all His treasures, but we can be assured that we can seek, ask, and even plead for what we presently need (Mat 7:7-8). How extraordinary! This confidence comes from what was earlier stated; He designed us for this journey. We need not fear!

My premise here is that God fitly prepares us for each next step. We don’t need tomorrow’s faith today; each day’s grace is sufficient (Mat 6:34). But nor are we naive. We must be intolerant of any arrogance that assumes today’s faith is all that is needed for tomorrow. Just as we physically grow, we also spiritually develop in our faith. There are no plateaus. Just as we don’t want our children to be infants all their lives, our God wants us to rightly grow into the full blessings of a mature faith (Col 1:28-29). We will not venture into a description of that here but only to say that faith is spiritual eyesight, giving us insight into God’s truths from which we gain security and strength to move ahead.

At times, when driving into a storm, I need to prepare myself for what might come. I expect puddles, so I need two hands on the driving wheel. The intensity of rain will increase and make my vision sketchy—so I make my wipers go quicker. It will become darker, so I turn my lights on. I go forward in confidence that all will work out. I take extra precautions, but onward I must go, being confident that God will lead and keep us.

God’s blessings are similar. Abraham was one person when he started out on his journey from Ur. God instructed him not to take his family members along (Gen 12:1). God shapes our circumstances so that our view of His blessings broadens out. Now, many years later, a whole nation is said to look back on how the Lord has wonderfully blessed him. They are all his descendants, just as God promised.

This is the way God integrates His blessings into our lives. They sneak up on you, until, at a certain time, you look back and say to another, “Look, how God has extremely blessed you!” This is what God is telling Israel to build up their faith with and trust Him for what is coming. It all started when he had nothing. So I suppose the first lesson is to look back to when you and I had nothing. We all had these times, but few dare to look back, being preoccupied with where we ought to be or how others think of us. However, God wants us to get a full picture of the magnitude of God’s grace in our lives. We started when we were physically and spiritually born. Even life itself is from God. Though we started with nothing, we gain many a blessing from Him on our journey.

My journey started like everyone else. What a sinner I was! And yet, God reached out to me, making my heart sensitive to my sin and open to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Later, I married my wife. Who would ever think that we would have eight children (five of whom are now married)? But it’s not just having eight children, each with their own lives, but the way God provided and guided each of them all the way through the time of raising children.

Who could foresee the money, time, energy, and love needed to care for them? And it doesn’t stop; grandchildren have come along. I started as one, and yet are ending up with many. If Jesus doesn’t return, truly, our descendants will grow in great numbers. The Lord mentions numbers because this is part of the blessing. An abundance assures us and others that God’s blessings have been with us. But there is much, much more blessings hidden behind the scenes. Each time someone alludes to the blessing of so many children, my wife and I think about how God marvelously brought us through those years. We would have looked so poor to others, and yet it did not make a difference to God. He provided for us all, even giving us the knack and wherewithal to homeschool for almost 30 years. Now we are seeing our lessons replicated in our own children’s lives.

Part of having enough faith to take the next daring step comes from recognizing how far God has already taken you. My wife and I are increasingly amazed at the many ways God has dealt with our lives. Like Abraham, we are stepping out, not knowing where we are going. People are stunned that we are selling our home but do not know where we are going. But when we look back in our lives, we build up our faith by observing how God already did this at other times in our lives. We laugh as we tell each other how after we got married, we took a tiny trailer to Florida, not knowing where we were going. Then as a missionary in Taiwan, we could not have any clue where we would live to start a church. We stepped forward in faith, always gaining enough faith for the transition. Looking back enables us to see how God has previously and marvelously provided for us.

And so God says, “Then I blessed him and multiplied him.” Part of our hope is that we see how we are linked with someone that God has promised to richly bless. Blessings don’t come out of thin air. The “I” is full of blessings to distribute as He wishes. God teaches the Israelites that as Abraham’s seed, they are part of that number and blessing (Rom 4:13). You can expect those blessings because you are His descendants, but blessings don’t stop there with Jews. All blessings are stored in Christ (Eph 1:3). Those who believe in Him gain the blessings secured by Christ. We can’t help but be blessed because we are connected through faith in Jesus Christ. We are not to get prideful when we find ourselves surrounded by the blessings because they are His blessings. We receive them only because of Jesus. God blessed us by sending His only Son into the world to suffer for us.

But we can also be eager to share the gospel so that others can join in these blessings. Our joy doesn’t stop with our lives. One of the greatest joys is to see others to come know the love of God in Christ Jesus (2 Cor 4:15).

Summary

The Lord continues in the following verses to depict how those who discover themselves in unproductive places, those places others escape from, will become places of blessings. “And her wilderness He will make like Eden” (Isaiah 51:3). We will go through difficult times, but again, it’s not necessarily because God is chastising us (though He might be), but because the Lord is building the foundations for a deeper and richer faith.

The same principles above work in any situation, because we are in Christ. We can fully trust God for the faith needed in the trials ahead. We also need to look back at how God has blessed us to be adequately prepared for the days ahead.

• Our faith is sufficient for our present challenges.
• Our faith is bolstered by looking to how God has formerly blessed us.

Study Questions for Isaiah 51:1-2

1. What does the journey of blessing refer to?
2. What two things found in these verses are necessary if we are to experience these blessings?
3. Name the first and explain how it helps experience God’s blessings.
4. Do you or others around you battle with the sense of purposelessness? Where does it come from?
5. Name the second and explain how it helps experience God’s blessings.
6. Name some blessings that you have experienced.
7. How do you look back at these to remember them?
8. Do you sense your faith is strong enough to take the next step of your life journey? Explain.
9. How can parents strengthen their children’s faith by retelling the past blessings?