Isaiah 35

For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning. 

- Psalm 30:4-5 

The relationship between God’s anger and favor is one of the main themes of the Book of Isaiah. The prophet spends a lot of time talking about the coming judgment, both for his country and the entire world. But he also talks about the other side of that judgment. 

All the pain and suffering in this world will be redeemed. God and His people will live together and return creation to the paradise that it was always supposed to be. The judgment of Chapter 34 is followed by the celebration of Chapter 35: 

The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. 

The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. 

— Isaiah 35:1-2 

The key is that God is the one who would make it happen. The people of Judah and Israel couldn’t do it on their own. The story of the Old Testament is them partnering with God and failing. They weren’t able to live by His commands. They started pursuing their goals instead of His. Things then went horribly wrong, like they always do once that happens. 

The judgment they experience in the Book of Isaiah is the direct result. It would be hard. But they would survive. That is the promise that Isaiah makes to them, over and over again. It couldn't have been easy to believe given how hopeless their situation seemed. 

But in the end, God would save them. Not because they are good but because He is. They didn’t have to put their hope in themselves. All they had to do was hold on and wait: 

Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.” 

— Isaiah 35:3-4 

The first step in receiving help is accepting that you need it. It was easy for Isaiah’s people to forget that. Help from an unseen God, especially when it came attached to a bunch of commands, didn’t seem necessary. It was easier for them to believe in chariots and foreign alliances. They could see those. 

The Assyrian invasion was a painful reminder of how powerless they actually were. The Assyrians casually destroyed their armies and laughed at their alliances. Judah was a bug they crushed without giving it a second thought. The only thing left to do at that point was to return to God. 

The same basic principle holds true for us, almost 3,000 years later. We all have feeble hands, knees that give way, and fearful hearts. It just may not be obvious when everything is going well. It’s only when times are tough that we realize how much we can’t control. 

My experience over the last few months has brought that home to me. I’m 33 and I was just diagnosed with cancer. The doctors don’t know why I had the gene mutation that caused it, how I will respond to chemotherapy, or how long I would stay in remission if the chemo does work. 

There's still so much that we don't know about cancer, and that we never can. Doctors don't go "you only have X months to live" when they diagnose you with terminal cancer. That's only in movies. They can't actually predict their future. So they just give you the numbers on likely outcomes and let you figure it out from there. 

In “The Emperor of All Maladies”, Siddhartha Mukherjee finds the earliest recorded case of cancer in human history in a medical document written by Imhotep, the royal physician of one of the Egyptian Pharoahs, around 2,500 B.C. It was about 1,800 years before the events of the Book of Isaiah. Treatment has progressed by leaps and bounds since, but I’m still in the same boat as the unknown cancer victim that he wrote about. I'm at the mercy of a disease that we don't really understand, hoping for a miracle to save me. 

That makes me no different than anyone else. When you have a health crisis in a public position, you get a small taste of the pain in the world. I’ve talked to people with all kinds of cancer, and people who have buried their spouses, or their kids. 
It's a little overwhelming. There’s an ocean of suffering out there that is easy to miss unless you or someone you love is part of it. 

The one person who didn’t miss it was Jesus. It was all brought right to him: 

When they heard about all Jesus was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat from crowding him. For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him. 

— Mark 3:8-10 

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he had and his disciples were not even able to eat. 

— Mark 3:20 

There are so many stories in the Gospels about Jesus going to do something, only to be interrupted by massive crowds of people who needed his help. They had been sick or blind or possessed for years. Or their whole lives. Or their kids were dying. And they heard that this man might be able to cure them. So they dropped whatever they were doing and rushed to see him. 

                                                                        CC: SongSimian 

They weren’t willing to take no for an answer:

Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet.

The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” 

“Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  


Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left you daughter.” 

— Mark 7:25-29 

There were times where Jesus didn’t want to heal. He was a man just as much as he was God. He got worn out. He needed a break sometimes. In this passage, he leaves the Jewish settlements and heads to the Gentile city of Tyre, where he meets a woman who wants him to heal her daughter. He tells her that his mission is to “the children” (i.e. the Jews) and that it wouldn’t be right to give their “bread” (his healing) to the “dogs” (Gentiles). 

But she has no time for that. Her need is too urgent. Pride will not get in the way. She tells him that she will take the children's “crumbs”.

We will all be in her shoes at some point. Life is hard. It humbles all of us. Everyone is going through something, even if it’s not always obvious on the outside. 

The hope isn’t that all the pain and suffering will go away tomorrow. It’s that it will ultimately be redeemed by God.

Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth like a wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, and the thirst ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reads and papyrus will grow. 

 But only the redeemed will walk there, and those the Lord has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. 

— Isaiah 35:6-10