Isaiah 50:7 shows us a Servant of the Lord who refuses to back down, not because life is easy, but because God is near. He knows the opposition is real and the shame is waiting—but he also knows who fights for him. With his face “like flint,” he leans into God’s help and walks straight into obedience, confident that he will not be ultimately disgraced. This is the kind of steady, holy stubbornness God invites us into today.

Held by the Help of God

Listen to the confidence: “Because the Lord GOD helps Me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore I have set My face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame” (Isaiah 50:7). The Servant does not deny that people will try to shame Him; He simply refuses to let their verdict be the final word. His courage does not come from personality, circumstances, or public approval, but from one unshakable reality: “the Lord GOD helps Me.” That sentence is the steel in His spine.

This same help is promised to us. “What then shall we say in view of these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). The question is not whether enemies exist, but whether they can finally win when God has already declared His favor over you in Christ. When you feel surrounded, preach this to your heart: the God who helped His Servant to endure the cross is the God who stands beside you in your Monday meetings, your late-night anxieties, your hardest conversations.

A Flint Face in a Soft-Heart World

Setting your face like flint is not about becoming hard-hearted; it is about becoming single-hearted. Jesus fulfilled this verse perfectly: “As the day of His ascension drew near, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). He knew the cross waited there, with all its shame and agony, yet He walked toward it with settled resolve. Hebrews points us to Him: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

To follow Him means learning the same holy resolve. Not a brittle, proud defiance—but a quiet, joyful determination to obey God, even when feelings scream and culture mocks. When you face pressure to compromise, remember whose footsteps you are in. You are not inventing a new path; you are simply walking the old, rugged road your Savior walked first, with His Spirit living in you to steady your steps.

Courage for the Battles You Actually Face

Isaiah 50:7 meets us right where we live: in the fear of being misunderstood, rejected, or embarrassed for doing what is right. God does not promise that obedience will always look successful, but He does promise that it will never be wasted. “Have I not commanded you to be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). The presence of God turns ordinary places—offices, classrooms, kitchens—into battlefields where courage matters.

Think about the step of obedience you’re hesitating to take. A hard apology. A bold but gracious witness. A refusal to join in gossip or compromise your integrity. What would it look like, today, to set your face like flint in that one area, trusting that God will not let you be put to shame in the end? “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). Your job is the resolve; His job is the result.

Lord Jesus, thank You for setting Your face like flint to save me. Today, help me trust Your help and step into bold obedience. Give me courage to do the next right thing for Your glory.

Millions who have rejected the Christian gospel have generally been too busy and too involved to ask themselves a simple question: "What really is God's intention toward me?" They could have found the plain and simple answer given by the Apostle John: "For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world: but that the world through him might be saved." This is a gravely significant message from the heart of God Himself! Yet, even in the full light it provides, people are indifferent. Upon our eyes there seems to have fallen a strange dimness; within our ears, a strange dullness. It is a wonder, and a terrible responsibility, that we should have this message in our possession and be so little stirred about it! I confess that it is very hard for me to accept the fact that it is now very rare for anyone to come into the house of God, silently confessing: "Dear Lord, I am ready and willing to hear what you will speak to me today!"

The mercy of the Lord ts from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him. - Psalm 103:17

What is the length of the love of Christ? If we are to think of Him only as a man, however exalted and however perfect, you and I have nothing in the world to do with His love. When He was here on earth it may have been sent down the generations in some vague, pale way, as the shadowy ghost of love may rise in the heart of a great statesman or philanthropist for generations yet unborn, which he dimly sees will be affected by his sacrifice and service. But we do not call that love. Such a poor, pale, shadowy thing has no right to the warm, throbbing name; has no right to demand from us any answering thrill of affection; and unless you think of Jesus Christ as something more and other than the purest and the loftiest benevolence that ever dwelt in human form, I know of no intelligible sense in which the length of His love can be stretched to touch you. And if we content ourselves with that altogether inadequate and lame conception of Him and of His nature, of course there is no present bond between any man upon earth and Him, and it is absurd to talk about His present love as extending in any way to me. But we have to believe, rising to the full height of the Christian conception of the nature and person of Christ, that when He was here on earth the Divine that dwelt in Him so informed and inspired the human as that the love of His man’s heart was able to grasp the whole, and to separate the individuals that should make up the race till the end of time; so as that you and I, looking back over all the centuries, and asking ourselves what is the length of the love of Christ, can say, "It stretches over all the years, and it reached then as it reaches now to touch me, upon whom the ends of the earth have come."

That thought of eternal being, when we refer it to God, towers above us and repels us; and when we turn it to ourselves, and think of our own life as unending, there comes a strangeness and an awe that is almost shrinking over the thoughtful spirit. But when we transmute it into the thought of a love whose length is unending, then, over all the shoreless, misty, melancholy sea of eternity, there gleams a light, and every wavelet flashes up into glory. There is another measure of the length of the love of Christ. " Master! How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?" "I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven." So said the Christ, multiplying perfection into itself twice - two sevens and a ten- in order to express the idea of boundlessness. And the law that He laid down for His servant is the law that binds Himself. The pitying Christ, the eternal Lover of all wandering souls, looks down from Heaven upon every one of us; goes with us in all our wanderings; bears with us in all our sins. His pleadings sound on, like some stop in an organ continuously persistent through all the other notes. And round His throne are written the Divine words which have been spoken about our human love modeled after His. "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; is not easily provoked, is not soon angry, beareth all things." The length of the love of Christ is the length of eternity, and out-measures all human sin.