The God We Carry and the God Who Carries Us, a weekly reflection by Pastor Lap Dinh on Isaiah 44–46 and Hebrews 10

We are tired. Not only from work. We are tired from carrying. We carry a reputation that must stay polished. We carry a plan that must not fail, an account that must keep growing, a family's expectations, a ministry that must look fruitful. We say these things hold us up. Look closer. We are the ones holding them up.

Isaiah saw this long before us, and he is almost merciless. A man cuts down a tree. Half of it he burns to cook his dinner and warm his hands. The rest he carves into a god, falls down before it, and prays, "Deliver me, for you are my god!" (Isa 44:17). Same log. Firewood and savior. "He feeds on ashes," says the prophet (Isa 44:20).

Then comes the scene in chapter 46. Babylon falls, and its great gods are loaded onto animals like furniture on moving day: "these things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts" (Isa 46:1). "They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there; it cannot move from its place. If one cries to it, it does not answer" (Isa 46:7). Hear it. Every idol ends up as luggage. A god we have to carry is a god that cannot carry us.

Then the Lord speaks, and everything turns over. He says that "even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save" (Isa 46:4).

Two things. Only two. In religion, we carry our god. In truth, God carries us.

Hebrews 10 is where that promise lands, and this is the bridge. Look at the old priest: "every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins" (Heb 10:11). He stands. Because the work is never finished. Even the worship God Himself gave, which was only "a shadow of the good things to come" (Heb 10:1), could not lift that weight: the same load raised every day, and sin still there in the morning.

"But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God" (Heb 10:12). He sat down. The God who said "I will bear" took a body (Heb 10:5), offered it once for all (Heb 10:10), and sat. "For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Heb 10:14).

O Lord, we are worn out, and we have blamed everything except our idols. We have been straining to hold up what was supposed to hold us. Take them off our shoulders. Carry us. We cannot carry ourselves one more day.

So put it down. Whatever we must keep propping up will one day drop us. The priest stood because the work was not done. Christ sat because it is. We do not work toward a finished sacrifice; we work from one. That is why Hebrews does not say "try harder." It says draw near (Heb 10:22). It says, "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful" (Heb 10:23). It says do not stop meeting together (Heb 10:25). Carried people have their hands free for one another. "Do not throw away your confidence" (Heb 10:35). The One who made us will bear us, to gray hairs and beyond.

What are you straining to hold up today that was supposed to be holding you, and what would it look like to set it down and let Him carry you?

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Pastor Lap