In vv.5-6 we see the absolute sovereignty of God, His supreme power and authority over His creation. He touches the earth and it melts, He built heaven and earth, and He commands the waters of the sea with His voice.
Our focus today will be vv.7-8,
“Are you not like the Cushites to me,
O people of Israel?” declares the LORD.
“Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?
Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom,
and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground,
except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,”
declares the LORD.
Cushites were those people from Ethiopia, and Israel had a false and misguided thought that they were a small and insignificant nation, therefore of lesser value. So, when we read
“Are you not like the Cushites to me,
O people of Israel?” declares the LORD.,
this is God showing them that, really, we are all small and insignificant in equal measure.
We know His Word to us tells us that there is no Jew, no Greek, no slave, no free, no male, no female, no Cushite, no British, no American, no South African, for we are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3.28).
That is where we find our value, not in the colour of our passport or the colour of our skin.
Those that are God’s people have an eternal security regardless of where they are from, and even though tough times will come, we shall never be shaken free from the grip of the Lord our God (v.9).
James Travis 