Isaiah 31

The people of Judah had a choice. The Assyrian Empire was conquering every country in its path. They were next. 

Isaiah wanted them to repent and trust in God for protection. They put their faith in an alliance with Egypt instead: 

Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord. 

 -- Isaiah 31:1 

But Egypt couldn’t actually help. They were an aging empire living on past glory. Their armies had little chance against the Assyrians. This is how the Assyrian general who led the invasion of Judah described them: 

Look, I know you are depending on Egypt, the splintered reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it! Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who depend on him. 

-- Isaiah 36:6 

But help from the Egyptians was at least something. They had horsemen and chariots. It was tangible. Isaiah, on the other hand, was telling them to hope in an unseen God. 

His advice was in line with the rest of the Old Testament. God prohibited His people from having chariots after the exodus from Egypt. (Deuteronomy 17:16) It’s hard to overemphasize how crazy that would have seemed. It would be like a modern army not having tanks. 

It was the ultimate test of faith. Did they have the courage of their convictions? If they really believed they were following the all-knowing and all-powerful Creator of the universe, they should have no trouble believing they could win wars without the latest and greatest military technology. But, of course, all that stuff is easier to believe in theory than practice. 

Anyone can say they believe anything. Talk is cheap. It only means something when it is backed up by actions. 

That's why God often told His people to fight with one hand tied behind their back. Before a crucial battle in the initial conquest of the Promised Land, He had a general named Gideon repeatedly shrink the size of his army, from roughly 32,000 men all the way to 300: 

The Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’” 

-- Judges 7:2 

A few hundred years after Gideon, a prophet named Elijah was battling a Jewish king who worshipped a god named Baal. He set up a challenge between himself and the prophets of Baal. Both sides would build an altar on a mountain and pray to see which would light on fire. But instead of trying to make the process easier, Elijah poured gallons of water on his altar. 

Photo: Fs999

The point was that God didn’t need help from human beings to accomplish His ends on the earth. He could do it on His own. When lightning struck and lit Elijah’s logs on fire, it was all the proof that he needed. 

Imagine being Elijah in that moment. Better yet, imagine watching him. Maybe you would have believed what he was saying or maybe you wouldn’t. But you couldn’t question whether or not he did. He was all-in. 

Isaiah was telling his people to do the same in their moment of crisis. The size of their military (and their military alliance) would not save them against Assyria. Only God could.

The military is a tool that believers have turned into an idol since the beginning of time. The greatest misunderstanding that people had about the coming of Jesus Christ was that he would lead an army against the enemies of God. The Jewish people were like Luke Skywalker heading to Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back, looking for a mighty warrior named Yoda to lead them. But he found a tiny hermit who spoke in riddles instead. 

  

Yoda: Help you I can. 

Luke: I don’t think so. I’m looking for a great warrior. 

Yoda: Great warrior? Wars not make one great. 

Jesus, like Yoda in the original Star Wars movies, never fought in any wars. He had no interest in armies. He came to Earth as a penniless carpenter and told people to submit to the Roman authorities and love their neighbors. He listened to God and trusted Him with the outcome. 

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 

Who, being in very nature, God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death -- even death on a cross! 

-- Philippians 2:5-8 

That is the relationship all believers should have with God. The people of Judah weren’t supposed to put their faith in military might like the Assyrians. They had the strongest army in human history at the time. They thought they would be safe if they crushed everyone around them. 

But it didn’t turn out that way. Assyria fell almost as quickly as it rose, taken down by an even bigger and more vicious empire in Babylon. They, in turn, fell to the Persians, who fell to the Greeks, who fell to the Romans. Empires come and go. Militaries crumble under their own weight. Chariots rust. So do tanks and aircraft carriers. 

The American military certainly seems invincible. We spend more money on our armed forces than every other country combined. We control more of the planet than any country ever has. Every politician, regardless of party, tells us our military is the greatest force for good the world has ever seen. The "defense" budget always goes up, no matter what else is happening in the world. 

The answer is always the same. Give more money to the military. Put more hope in the military. Listen to the leaders of the military. They have the answers. They will keep us safe. 

But that's not a Biblical response. No army is invincible, no matter its size and power. No soldier is, either. David killed Goliath with a slingshot. Gideon killed thousands of men with a few hundred because God was helping him. The other stuff didn’t matter. 

Isaiah told his people not to trust in Egypt. Only God could stop the Assyrian army. And that is exactly what happened. Almost 200,000 Assyrian troops marched to the gates of Jerusalem, only to be decimated in one night by a mysterious plague. 

"As a lion growls, a great lion over its prey -- and though a whole band of shepherds is called together against it, it is not frightened by their shouts or disturbed by their clamor -- so the Lord Almighty will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and on its heights.

Like birds hovering overhead, the Lord Almighty will shield Jerusalem; he will shield it and deliver it, he will 'pass over' it and will rescue it."

 -- Isaiah 31:4-5

Miracles happen all the time. The hand of God is everywhere in history, once you know where to look for it. There is never any reason to be afraid. Just believe what God has told us. 

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all -- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 

Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died -- more than that, who was raised to life -- is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 

-- Romans 8:31-35

Isaiah 30

Isaiah was an early warning system. God gave him glimpses of the future and told him to warn his people about what was coming. But they didn’t want to listen: 

For these are rebellions people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the seers, “See no more visions!” and to the prophets, “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!” 

-- Isaiah 30:9-11 

The problem was that shutting your eyes and closing your ears to a problem doesn’t make it go away. Asssyria was going to invade Judah, and there was nothing that could be done about it. It would be like a tiny Caribbean island going up against the U.S. Army. Isaiah wanted his people to admit their helplessness and turn to God. They turned to Egypt instead: 

“Woe to the obstinate children,” declares the Lord, “to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin; who go down to Egypt without consulting me; who look to help for Pharoah’s protection, to Egypt’s shade for refuge.” 

-- Isaiah 30:1-2 

Modern people would agree that the people of Isaiah’s days were children, but for very different reasons. Isaiah is saying they are children in comparison to God. We think they were children in comparison to us.

That is certainly true in some respects. A Jewish peasant in 700 BC would have no idea what to make of modern technology. We have learned a lot in the last 3,000 years. The modern worldview looks at history as the story of progress and enlightenment. Life has never been better, and it will keep on getting better as long as we believe in science. We don’t need to worship an imaginary man in the sky. We have become masters of our own lives. Worshipping the same God as Stone Age people seems needlessly primitive, if not barbaric. 

Modern man is the Imperial general in the first Star Wars movie, thumbing our nose at the idea that there is any limitation to our power: 

General: Any attack by the rebels against this station would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they have obtained. This station is now the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it. 

Vader: Don’t be too proud of this technological terror that you have constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force. 

General: Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerous ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebel’s hidden fortress. 

Vader: I find your lack of faith disturbing. 

The religious worldview says that modern man is still a child, no matter how advanced our technology. And that our notion of progress is a myth because there are certain aspects of the human condition that cannot be overcome. 

Has science and technology made us happier? Or do we struggle with the same things that plagued our ancestors thousands of years ago? One of the interesting things about reading ancient history like the Book of Isaiah is that it gives you a better appreciation for how similar life was back then. They weren’t all living in huts. There were massive cities filled with people from all over the world by 700 BC. Their societies had been around for thousands of years. There were people who thought society was progressing to a better place, and those who thought things were going the wrong way. There were plagues and viruses that emerged out of nowhere. People were born, they got old, got sick, and they died. They looked for meaning in their lives, and wondered why they were here. 

I’m in a Slack channel at work for parents of small children. Two weeks ago, as the results of the presidential election came in, one of them asked what people told their kids about all the problems in society. How do you explain the existence of racism and evil and injustice in the world? 

There are three possible answers to that question: Believe in Man, believe in God, or believe in nothing. Modern man chooses the first. We say that things have gotten better from the past and will keep getting better from here. To quote Barack Obama, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. 

The hardest part of 2020 for most people (and really the last four years) is that it has shaken their faith in progress. Maybe things won’t get better. Maybe people will be as ignorant and selfish a century from now as they were three thousand years ago. One meme that popped up a lot during the election was what we would tell our grandkids about how we voted in 2020. But the reality is that our grandkids probably won’t care. You think they won’t have problems of their own in 2080? 

The religious worldview says the hearts of men do not change. We will never figure things out on our own. Our societies will always be riven with strife and conflict. People have been oppressing and killing each other since the beginning of time, and will keep on doing it until the end of time. Jesus said the poor will always be with us. (Mark 14:7). God has provided more than enough resources in this world. But we are incapable of splitting them up evenly. Politics will never give us all the answers. It only replaces old problems with new ones: 

“A conservative is one enamored of existing evils; a liberal wants to replace them with new ones.” -- Ambrose Bierce 

The skeptic who sees the human condition for what it really is but refuses to accept God will end up embracing nihilism and despair. Religion is the only way to maintain hope in a world without any. 

There's no real reason to believe in mankind. We are mortal beings trapped in a cold and uncaring universe far bigger and older than we can ever imagine. 

The Bible calls us children because we don’t know what’s good for us. A child wants to eat candy all day because it tastes good in the moment. They don’t understand the long-term consequences of their decisions. Adults are no different. We have limited lifespans that prevent us from seeing the full consequences of our decisions. Go back through history and you can see that it often takes hundreds of years for that process to play out. 

We try to build statistical models to predict what will happen 50 years from now and we don’t even know what will happen tomorrow. The last two presidential elections have shown that scientific polling is no more reliable a guide than consulting oracles or gutting animals and looking at the shape of their intestines. It’s all guessing. The future is inherently unknowable. Who was talking about the coronavirus a year ago? 

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

-- James 4:13-14

There are only a couple of predictions that have stood the test of time. A society that turns its back on God will fall apart, and people that walk with God will be happier and more fulfilled. The stuff Isaiah was saying thousands of years ago still holds true today. So you can either listen to him or you can believe what you are told on TV and tell yourself that this time things will be different.