A very small remnant

Your country is desolate,
your cities are burned with fire:
your land, strangers devour it in your presence,
and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard,
as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,
as a besieged city.
Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant,
we should have been as Sodom,
and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. – Isaiah 1.7-9

It seems like we are in days of overwhelming opposition. The world grows more and more wicked by the day. Christians seem to be shunted more and more to the touchlines and the shadows of our world. There is still plenty of religion, but the question is how much true faith is left? There are pockets where Christians still have some semblance of power in society, like this pocket of North Carolina, but we have to ask ourselves how many dedicated followers of Christ are there left?

In Isaiah’s day Israel found herself in a similar situation. The country was in a shambles and it was all doom and gloom.

But God left hope there. In the midst of all the disaster God had left ‘a very small remnant’ of His own true people who were carrying on faithfully for Him. That remnant gave hope.

Though we are not Israel I think we can learn from this truth of a very small remnant. In our culture, where it is even difficult to find truth in the churches, there still exists a very small remnant who hold true to the word of God and who will not be turned away by the lies and deceptions and the draws of this present age. That remnant is the hope for our churches and the hope of people caught in the horrors of this present.

That is why the remnant cannot give up. We can’t quit because we are tired. We can’t be moved. We must be steadfast. We must remember that our labour is not in vain in time we will reap if we don’t lose heart.

May that remnant be always faithful.