My People, My Work

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 225, My People, My Work.

"whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, 'Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.'" Isaiah 19:25.

This verse only makes sense once you know what came before it. Isaiah 19 opens with a heavy judgment against Egypt — idols trembling, the river drying up, confusion spreading across the land. It's a chapter of judgment from start to finish. And then, in the closing verses, comes a turn nobody would have expected: that same Egypt receiving, from the mouth of the Lord himself, a direct and personal blessing.

To feel the weight of this, you need to remember who Egypt was in Israel's story. It was the place of slavery. The symbol of the oppressor. The country God pulled his people out of with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. And now, centuries later, God looks at that same Egypt and says: "my people." The same phrase, the same title, he had used for Israel. That's not a small detail — it's a blessing that shatters every expectation of border.

And it doesn't stop there. Assyria is named too — the empire that historically destroyed Israel's northern kingdom, that carried its people off into captivity, that left deep scars in the national memory. And God calls it "the work of my hands." That's the language of creation, of personal care — the same language you'd use to describe something shaped with tenderness, not something rejected or cast off.

Egypt, Assyria, Israel — three nations named side by side, with no hierarchy of worth between them. The text pictures ancient enemies, peoples with a history of bloodshed between them, united in one shared blessing. This isn't cheap sentiment. It's the revelation of a heart of God far larger than any border we draw.

And what about Israel? Israel still keeps its unique place — "my inheritance," the text says. That doesn't disappear. But now it sits inside a wider circle. And maybe that's the most important point here: Israel's election was never meant to shut other peoples out. It was always meant to reach and bless the nations through it. God's plan always had room for Egypt and for Assyria — the hour just hadn't come yet.

I want to ask you: is there some group, some kind of person, that you unconsciously place outside God's grace? Maybe someone from a different background than yours, a different story, a past you judge too far gone to be reached. This verse invites you to look again — because God was already calling "my people" and "the work of my hands" the very ones we would least expect.

So today, I want to invite you to think of that person or that group — and pray, naming them before God as someone he also calls his own.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.