Biblical Character Series
Isaiah 30:18–33
By Pastor Gary A. Furr
Vestavia Hills Baptist Church
Usually when we think of the prophets of the Old Testament we think of them as “outsiders” or troublemakers who were against the kings. And that is usually true. Isaiah of Jerusalem, on the other hand, was the ultimate insider. His name means “the salvation of Yahweh.”
He had a long ministry during the reigns of Uzziah (or Azariah), Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah (Isa. 1:1). He lived until the 14th year of Hezekiah and may have outlived him. Thus Isaiah may have prophesied for 64 years.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Economically the stock market was up and people were prospering. The kingdom was expanding and the military was at its height.
Growing gap
But there also were cracks in the dam. In the greatest prosperity they had known, there was still so much poverty. The gap between “haves” and “have nots” kept growing. The wealthy were greedy and there were double standards in justice. Religion flourished but largely reinforced the status quo. Many pagan practices within Israel’s religion remained. It was a time of great turmoil. From the inside, Isaiah’s life and ministry came in a chaotic time.
Isaiah 38 took place about a year before the Assyrians invaded Judah and surrounded Jerusalem to besiege it. God would mysteriously deliver the city. But that still lay ahead. In Chapter 38, as the clouds of war gathered, Isaiah counseled the nation and the king to trust in God alone.
Some put their faith in politics as the solution to all the nation’s woes. Isaiah scoffed at that idea. He knew that prosperity, political peace and anything less than God’s righteousness was only a temporary fix. The problem, he said, was not political. It was spiritual and religious.
‘National temper’
In “The Book of Isaiah, In Two Volumes,” George Adam Smith wrote: “To Isaiah a nation’s politics are not arbitrary; they are not dependent on the will of kings or the management of parties. They are the natural outcome of the nation’s character. What the people are, that will their politics be. If you wish to reform the politics, you must first regenerate the people; and it is no use to inveigh against a senseless policy … unless you go farther and expose the national temper which has made it possible.”
Something better
We live in a time of great division in which we are tempted on the one hand to descend into pessimism about current events or, on the other, to substitute politics for faith. If we are frustrated with a broken political system, we ought to ask, “If our system is ‘we the people,’then what is it in us that does not ask for something better?”
Hope comes by trusting God
Isaiah says, in the midst of this gloominess, that the answer is: “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore He will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him” (18:30). Wait on God. Don’t get anxious. Keep on trusting.
That sounds a lot like resignation, doesn’t it? It isn’t really resignation at all. It’s perspective. God is a God of justice, Isaiah said. Don’t forget that. There is a law in the universe and a judge. No matter how it looks, there is a larger wisdom that you can trust in.
While world events and elections occupy the Internet and television, do our small faithful acts of teaching the next generation and keeping the gospel story alive matter?
To embrace God is to let God’s voice into our hearts, to listen to God’s Word with more than nominal interest. God doesn’t need our tithes and offerings but we do. We desperately need to learn how to be sacrificial. We need to learn what it means to bury ourselves in our cause and die so God can raise us up again.
What God can do
We need to learn how to give our time in more than dribs and drabs so God’s power can be unleashed in us. We need to learn more about this Christian life than a few glib practical helps to let us go back to our same old lives, unchanged.
Isaiah had a radical vision of who God is and what God can do. The foundation of what we are looking for as a nation has less to do with what we think our leaders or even our neighbors need to do as it does with what you and I need to do — to give ourselves wholly to this wisdom of the wise One. Even in the worst of times, “You shall have a song as in the night when a holy festival is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord” (Isa. 30:29).
The real work is teaching the kids, mending the broken, leading others to Christ and ministering to those who are hurting.
The biggest battle isn’t in Washington or what’s wrong with our culture or world. It’s the battle I have fought with the one person I can do the most about — me.
It begins with each of us
It is the same truth that moved Jesus to say in Luke 17:21, “Do not pay attention when someone says, ‘The kingdom is here or it is there,’ for the kingdom is within you.” It begins with each of us — our time, our energies, our money, our priorities, our stubborn wills and hearts.
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness,” Jesus said, “and all these other things shall be added unto you” (Matt. 6:33).
If you believe in God’s sovereign purposes, you will plant and it will grow. You will find blessing and a song in the night.
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