Isaiah 32

Isaiah knew he would be ignored. It was one of the first things God told him after he became a prophet:

He said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing but never understanding, be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” 

- Isaiah 6:9-10 

The people he was talking to wouldn’t understand him. Not because they were deaf or blind, but because they were spiritually blind. Our eyes filter an overwhelming amount of sensory information from the world around us and turn it into something our brains can understand. We only “see” a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s the same thing with our brains and the way they filter our experiences. 

The world is too complicated to understand without a filter. That filter can be religious, societal, or cultural, or some combination of all three. Everyone takes things on faith, even if those things aren’t spiritual claims. The average American is taught to believe that science has all the answers, and that supernatural explanations are relics from our unenlightened past. 

Most people have not actually investigated the nature of the universe for themselves. Where would they even start? They have just been taught how to think about it from a young age, and assume that everyone else thinks similarly, and that the ones who don’t are ignorant. 

In his famous (or at least famous in unbearably pretentious circles) commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005, David Foster Wallace tells a story about a religious person and an atheist: 

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God. And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’” 

And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then you must believe now,” he says,” After all, here you are, alive.” The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was was a couple of Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to the camp.” 

Both interpretations could be right. Maybe it was luck that some Eskimos were there to save the atheist’s life. Or maybe God heard his prayer and sent them. There’s no way to “prove” either answer. 

The same thing is true for the events of the Book of Isaiah. Most historians believe some sort of plague struck the Assyrian army when it was besieging Jerusalem and forced them to withdraw, saving the city. Isaiah believed that it was an angel using a plague to save Jerusalem. 

Each interpret events through their particular worldviews. Christians have to remember that people with a more secular worldview will never “see” the same things as us. So the only way to change their mind is to change their worldview. Everything else is a waste of time. 

God allowed people to make up their own mind when Jesus came to Earth the first time. That will not be the case when he returns. The promise that Isaiah makes in Chapter 32 is quite different from what God tells him in Chapter 6: 

See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice. 

Each one will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land. 

Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, and the ears of those who hear will listen. 

-- Isaiah 32:1-3 

Our job, until that happens, is to help people open their eyes. It’s not to get angry about their blindness. 

Christianity is not about a series of rituals and behaviors that will lead to a better life on Earth. That’s part of it, but it’s not the main thing. Nor is it about “traditional values” or a certain way you have to live your life. None of that stuff will save you. It will not make you a righteous person, or holy before a righteous God. Having a couple of kids, a spouse, a good job, and a white picket fence is not a ticket into the kingdom of heaven. Voting for a particular party or giving all your money to charity or devoting your life to good works isn’t one, either. 

The Jewish religious leaders in Jesus’ day devoted their lives learning the Law that God gave to Moses. They knew it inside and out and made their people follow it down to the letter. They were as righteous and holy as any men who ever lived. But that’s a low bar to clear in comparison to the standard of God: 

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbled at just one point is guilty of adultery. [emphasis added] For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” 

If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker. Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. 

- James 2:10-13 

The good news of Christianity isn’t that there’s a long list of rules that you have to follow to be a good person. The rules by themselves will not save you. They aren’t that important in the big picture. They are the end products, not the cause, of Christian life. 

The good news is that the Creator of the universe took on human flesh and walked among us for a short period of time in ancient Israel 2,000 years ago. Then he was killed and rose from the dead. Now we have the chance to follow him and to spread that good news to the rest of the world. 

If you don’t make that good news the foundation of your life, and your identity, then all of the other stuff doesn’t matter. You might as well not do it all. You are better off doing whatever you want and not following any rules than trying to be a Christian without a relationship to Christ. Both paths are equally fruitless. It’s just more obvious with the former than the latter. 

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” 

-- Matthew 7:21-23 

Pat Riley, who has won titles as a player, coach, and general manager in a more than 50-year career in the NBA, coined a famous saying when talking about the challenges of maintaining success -- "Keep the main thing, the main thing". Winning a title creates opportunities for everyone involved and turns star players into celebrities. But all those opportunities ultimately stem from winning basketball games. So people that lose focus on the main thing will ultimately lose everything else, too. 

 

That's why Isaiah always came back to preaching repentance and belief in God. He had many specific pieces of advice to his people, like telling them not to trust in foreign militaries to save them against the Assyrians, but he knew that it would all be ignored if there wasn't change in their hearts. Their spiritual rebellion against God was the ultimate cause of their problems, as well as their only chance of a solution to them. It does not good to point out all the evil things happening right in front of someone if they can't even see them. 

We are dealing with the same issues almost 3,000 years later. The difference is that Isaiah was pointing his people to the coming of the Messiah. We, on the other hand, are lucky enough to be living on the other side of that. 

The main thing in Christianity is Jesus. The religion is built around his message and what he did in his time on Earth. The rest of it won't make sense unless people learn to follow him. That's the only way that people will ever be able to open their eyes.