The World Sends Envoys (Is. 28-40)

As I read through Isaiah again in my quiet time, the reality of friendship with the world being enmity with God hits me hard. The middle section of the book is full of evidence that God is for His people and is working behind the scenes to get them to realize He alone is God, to submit to His authority, to rely on His strength alone, but they continuously slip back into the now comfortable patterns they have known for so long. But first, let me back up just a bit. Chapters 28-30 hold much woe and many cautions about living like the world around us; even if they are directed at Ephraim and Jerusalem, we too can learn from them. God’s Word is faithful and true; hear these warnings:

1. Viewing truth as stupidity: The “worldly” leaders of the time saw God’s words spoken through Isaiah as stupid and rejected God’s attempts to instruct them in the way they should walk, resulting in their coming destruction (Is. 28:9-13).
2. Scoffing truth and delighting in delusion: Not only did they reject God’s attempts to teach them the right path, but in their delusion, they scoffed at His truths, choosing instead to make “a covenant with death,” finding agreement with Sheol even, thinking judgment would pass right over them when it came from God’s hand, saying, “We have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter” (Is. 28:15).
3. Offering lip service only to God: In offering only “lip service” while their hearts were far from God, rotely going through motions instead of worshiping the One true God, they turned everything upside down, thinking they were in control of all things instead of the Creator God of the Universe who fashioned them (Is. 29:16).
4. Failing to hear God’s truth and breaking in rebellion: They stubbornly continued to go their own way and work out their own plans in their rebellion, unwilling to even “hear the instruction of the Lord,” to the end that they would be broken like a clay vessel suddenly smashed to pieces (30:9). They failed to see that in rejecting God’s plans for them, they are rejecting God Himself.
5. Failing to believe leads to open defiance of God: Just as heaven is a place for a prepared people, hell has been prepared for those who act in continued defiance of God, who think they are above the need for the salvation God alone provides (Is. 30:30-33).

As the reader continues through this middle section of the book, a wearying picture begins to emerge of the salvation that is to come through Christ, of a day when He will rule and a full understanding of who He is emerges (Is. 32-33). God truly is the shelter for those who trust in Him, the shade in a weary land, the one who enlightens hearts, creation obeying HIs every command; the One who pours out the Spirit from on high and exposes the self-held truths of the foolish ones, the deeds of the wicked, revealing that “the fear of the LORD is Zion’s treasure” (Is. 32-33:6). God alone is judge, lawgiver, king, savior (33:22). 

The beauty of a world operating the way it was designed begins to emerge even in the futuristic picture God shows Isaiah of a world judged and bound, in the vision of ransomed captives returned and feeble ones strengthened by the power of the LORD who saves, by the Christ that at that time was yet to come but already was, the same LORD who saves today. At the end of chapter 35, the warnings and woes culminate in a beautiful picture of a road clearly marked as THE WAY: 

And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray . . . and the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (v. 8-10, ESV)

Then the world invades. 

Sennacherib, who could have easily been used as God’s tool in carrying out His discipline of His children, grows foolish and boastful and proud and arrogant and Hezekiah humbles himself before God when the destruction he thought he had ransomed himself out of happening shows up at his door anyway. Hezekiah hopes God will hear Sennacherib’s boastful words and rebuke him. Hezekiah hopes in torn clothes covered with sackcloth and seeks the LORD, acknowledging God alone rules the kingdoms of the earth that He has created and asks that all may know He alone is God (Ch. 37:16-20). In love, God delivers the ones who have been faithless, “casting all [their] sins behind” Him (38:17). God is faithful.

But the newly recovered Hezekiah gladly welcomes the nation of Babylon into his kingdom and shows him all his treasures because the king sends “envoys with letters and a present to Him” (39:1-2). He lets down his guard and reveals everything, every treasure held, and God lets him know through Isaiah that friendship with the world is truly enmity with God. God tells him a day is coming when Babylon will carry everything away, and in his deadness he thinks to himself, “But all will be well with me, so why worry?!” 

Babylon represents the world and all the world offers to us that seems inviting and pleasing and impressive, but the reality is that Babylon (and the world) opposes God with everything it has. Make no mistake. There is none like God, and He is mighty. Idolatry offends Him (remember the first commandment?). Chapter 40 is a treatise on God’s tender love of His lambs, His indignation at the idolatry of His ungrateful people, and His ability to bring about His will and His kingdom in spite of them.

So what do we do when we falter or stumble or get distracted by a world that would invade and consume us? We look at the One true God in our exhaustion (because living like the world is wearying) and we wait for the LORD who alone can renew our strength and give victory and help us not to faint (Is. 40:30-31). We trust in Him alone to give us what we need to persevere to the end, and we remember that He is good. He alone is God, and we are not!