Let him return to the LORD,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:7b-9
Jesus, You are the great Almighty I AM,
Led to the slaughter like a silent Lamb.
Earthly kings will stand speechless in Your Presence,
While saints and angels crown You High King of Heaven.
It was my sins You bore upon that tree;
Carrying all my sorrows, far too heavy.
Jesus, pierced through, afflicted and smitten,
That my name upon Your heart might be written.
chorus:
I’ve been long afflicted and tossed with tempests,
My drifting soul stranded in the wilderness.
Bring me back to Eden when I walked in nearness,
Let me find my song again, hymns of pure gladness.
You poured Your soul out as a guilt offering,
Cut off from the land of the living.
My heart’s now at peace, knowing I’m forgiven—
No longer hiding, no longer forsaken.
What words can I sing that describe such grace?
A love that sacrificed life for this fallen race?
But sing on I will, exalting Your goodness,
My Lord and King, my Redeemer from darkness!
Bring Me Back to Eden
C.A. TAYLOR
“He will abundantly pardon.” There is nothing of cold, distant harshness in God’s mercy-giving. He does not say, “Take thy pardon and go thy way. It is what thou dost not deserve. Thou hast been a wicked rebel; take care of thyself in time to come.” God is ever like Himself. Behold Him in creation; in these myriads of mighty worlds He has hung above us in the heavens. How like the greatness of the Great One is that fulness of immensity. Behold Him in the gifts with which He blesses our earth; with what a lavish hand He scatters beauties and glories. And here, too, as the God of Pardon, God again is like Himself; He pardons like Himself, with Divine generosity.
It is God’s good pleasure to pardon abundantly. He [Isaiah] has a claim to speak of God with an authority which few can rival. And this is what he has to say to us of God—that God’s mercy is as much higher than our thoughts of it, as much broader, as much more pure and tender, as the heavens are higher and broader and sweeter than the earth; that it transcends all our conceptions of mercy, that it seems incredible to us only because it is so large and rich and free, that we can hardly even bring ourselves to believe in it. He affirms that even here our great poet’s [Shakespeare] description holds good, that we may lift a reverent eye to the very Throne of Heaven and say: “Mercy is twice blessed,” blessing “him that gives,” as well as “him that takes,” since God delights in mercy, and is —if we may speak of so great a mystery in words so homely—at least as pleased to forgive our sins as we are to have them forgiven.
He shows His desire for our salvation, and His readiness to accept us, in doing what none could have imagined possible, in sending His Son to take our nature upon Him, and to become man for our sakes. Here is the pledge of His faithfulness. Here is the assurance which none can doubt, that He loves the souls of men with the love with which He loves His only-begotten Son. When we will not come to Him, He comes to us. When we refuse to seek Him, He comes Himself to seek and to save us. He does not send, He does not call merely. He comes down from heaven, and lays aside His glory, and speaks to us face to face, with the words of man, with the fellow-feeling of man, with the affectionate love and tender earnestness of man. He who made the light, and rules beyond the stars, comes and calls on us, and speaks to us with the simple plainness with which a father speaks to his little children or a little child appeals to grown men.
JAMES HASTINGS
Great Texts of the Bible -Isaiah
My God, my God, have mercy on my sin,
For it is great; and if I should begin
To tell it all,
The day would be too small
To tell it in.
My God, Thou wilt have mercy on my sin
For Thy Love’s sake: yea, if I should begin
To tell This all,
The day would be too small
To tell it in.
CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI
