Well good evening everyone and welcome to my forty seventh episode. Tonight, I want to take a look at Isaiah chapter eight. But before we get into that, I have some housekeeping. Then I have two ideas that I want to tell you about which might be of some utility to you. First the housekeeping: I want to remind you that you can find all of these podcast episodes at michaelhbaun.wordpress.com. I always leave a link in the description of each podcast. This website contains written manuscripts of every podcast, as well as a podcast player containing all of the episodes. There is a link to the YouTube channel on this site, as well as a page to contact me. I’m going to start using this site as the hub of all my work. I will continue to host with SoundCloud, but I will be doing all of the administrative tasks from WordPress. Feel free to check it out and to share it with your friends. Okay, now we’re on to the two ideas:
First, I want to tell you about four different categories when it comes to knowledge and awareness. The first category includes content which you know that you know. You know that you know your birth date, how many people are in your immediate family, what kind of car you drive, etc. The second category includes content which you know that you don’t know. You know that you don’t know the distance between Jupiter and Pluto measured in inches. The third category includes content which you don’t know that you know. A good example is when someone tells you a song title with the artist’s name and you don’t realize you’re familiar with the song until you hear it played. The fourth category includes content which you don’t know that you don’t know. This is the patch of ice you hit with your car leading to an accident. This is the stock market collapsing and robbing you of your retirement. This is the carcinogenic material you’re breathing in that shortens your lifespan. This is the ideology you follow thinking you will perfect a society, all the while bringing on it’s destruction. This fourth category, things you don’t know that you don’t know, is the most dangerous of the four categories. The project all of us should be interested in is moving as much content out of this category and into any of the other three. The more we do this, the better our lives and the lives of those around us will be. The easiest and quickest way to move content out of this fourth category is through humility. Being humble enough to acknowledge your own ignorance is the key to minimizing the damage of this fourth category. This humility is also one of the keys to learning and bettering yourself and others. So that’s the first idea I wanted to tell you about.
The second idea is this: you’ve all heard it said that religion is a fundamental motivation for war. I want to take a moment to dispute that claim. In the mid 1970s, English primatologist Jane Goodall recorded observations of chimpanzees in what is now called Gombe National Park. What she discovered greatly disturbed her. The chimpanzees would organize into troops and lay claim to entire swaths of territory. When the boundaries of these territories bordered each other too closely, the troops would attack each other. The stronger troop would tear the weaker troop into pieces. There was absolutely no inhibition to their brutality. Jane Goodall hesitated to publish her observations because she thought the chimps behavior was somehow modified by her presence and her provision. But when these same clashes would happen in places where she wasn’t, she realized they were endemic to the chimps themselves. This was war being witnessed among primates. So unless you’re willing to extend religious experience to chimpanzees, the hypothesis that the act of war depends upon religion falls apart. I will grant that religion is being used and has been used to justify war. But the motivation for war among human beings is the same as the motivation for war among chimpanzees: the desire for power.
So now that we’ve touched on those two ideas, let’s move on to Isaiah chapter eight. As we work through this study, I’d like you to keep the following three questions in your mind.
- What are some reasons to love our enemies?
- Why should we resist conspiracies?
- How do you wait on the Lord?
Now I’m going to read the chapter to you in its entirety. Please enjoy.
Isaiah 8 – The Coming Assyrian Invasion
8 Then the Lord said to me, “Make a large signboard and clearly write this name on it: Maher-shalal-hash-baz.[a]” 2 I asked Uriah the priest and Zechariah son of Jeberekiah, both known as honest men, to witness my doing this.
3 Then I slept with my wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. And the Lord said, “Call him Maher-shalal-hash-baz. 4 For before this child is old enough to say ‘Papa’ or ‘Mama,’ the king of Assyria will carry away both the abundance of Damascus and the riches of Samaria.”
5 Then the Lord spoke to me again and said, 6 “My care for the people of Judah is like the gently flowing waters of Shiloah, but they have rejected it. They are rejoicing over what will happen to[b] King Rezin and King Pekah.[c] 7 Therefore, the Lord will overwhelm them with a mighty flood from the Euphrates River[d]—the king of Assyria and all his glory. This flood will overflow all its channels 8 and sweep into Judah until it is chin deep. It will spread its wings, submerging your land from one end to the other, O Immanuel.
9 “Huddle together, you nations, and be terrified.
Listen, all you distant lands.
Prepare for battle, but you will be crushed!
Yes, prepare for battle, but you will be crushed!
10 Call your councils of war, but they will be worthless.
Develop your strategies, but they will not succeed.
For God is with us![e]”
A Call to Trust the Lord
11 The Lord has given me a strong warning not to think like everyone else does. He said,
12 “Don’t call everything a conspiracy, like they do,
and don’t live in dread of what frightens them.
13 Make the Lord of Heaven’s Armies holy in your life.
He is the one you should fear.
He is the one who should make you tremble.
14 He will keep you safe.
But to Israel and Judah
he will be a stone that makes people stumble,
a rock that makes them fall.
And for the people of Jerusalem
he will be a trap and a snare.
15 Many will stumble and fall,
never to rise again.
They will be snared and captured.”
16 Preserve the teaching of God;
entrust his instructions to those who follow me.
17 I will wait for the Lord,
who has turned away from the descendants of Jacob.
I will put my hope in him.
18 I and the children the Lord has given me serve as signs and warnings to Israel from the Lord of Heaven’s Armies who dwells in his Temple on Mount Zion.
19 Someone may say to you, “Let’s ask the mediums and those who consult the spirits of the dead. With their whisperings and mutterings, they will tell us what to do.” But shouldn’t people ask God for guidance? Should the living seek guidance from the dead?
20 Look to God’s instructions and teachings! People who contradict his word are completely in the dark. 21 They will go from one place to another, weary and hungry. And because they are hungry, they will rage and curse their king and their God. They will look up to heaven 22 and down at the earth, but wherever they look, there will be trouble and anguish and dark despair. They will be thrown out into the darkness.
This chapter predicts the fall of Israel and Syria, which was also called Aram. Syria fell to Assyria in 732 B.C. and Israel followed in 722 B.C. God instructed Isaiah to put his message on a large scroll in a public place to provide a warning for all his people. The name God gave to Isaiah’s child means “swift to plunder and quick to carry away.”
In verses 6-8, the gently flowing waters of Shiloah refers to God’s gentle and sustaining care. The people of Judah had an opportunity to accept God’s care, but they rejected it in favor of help from other nations. God punished them for this decision. Judah’s example shows us two distinct attributes of God: his love and his wrath. To reject his love and guidance means to sin and invite his wrath. God’s desire is to protect us from bad choices, but he also protects our free will to make them. In verses 7-8 we see a description of a great flood from the Euphrates river, which is an illustration used to represent the armies of Assyria. The heart of the Assyrian Empire was located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In verse 9 we see a repetition of being crushed. In the ESV it says shattered. In both translations the intent is to convey a loss of courage brought on by the pressure of sudden fear. Since Judah was too busy rejoicing over the fall of Rezin and Pekah, they did not accept God’s care. This leads me into my first question: What are some reasons to love our enemies?
The most obvious reason to love our enemies is because Jesus commanded us to do so. But I also think it is for our own benefit that we do not descend into hatred for anyone. Hatred has a way of creating a huge blind spot in your life. It causes you become less capable of realizing your own actions and less capable sympathizing with the position of others. Also, a big part of loving someone is respecting them, and respecting your enemies opens up a bridge to reconciling with them. You can’t sit down with a person you don’t respect and have a productive conversation about your differences. You will simply straw man their arguments and they will do the same to you. You will be talking past each other. The free flow of information involved in good faith, honest conversations leaves both parties better off than before they started.
The people of Judah were constantly afraid of invasions. They had powerful enemies right on their doorstep. This constant worry probably undermined their faith and led to them turning away from God. Isaiah, as well as most of the prophets, was considered a traitor because he didn’t support Judah’s national policies. Isaiah called the people to commit themselves to God first, then the king. God wants us to fear him because a healthy fear of God will drive off unhealthy fears of the world. When I say healthy fear I mean respect and reverence. Fear of worldly things can wreak havoc on your peace of mind as a Christian. It also takes your focus off of God and put it onto that which you fear. Part of our prayers should be to ask God to drive off our inappropriate fears and to show us how to fear only him. This leads me into my second question: Why should we resist conspiracies?
Conspiracies are kind of interesting because they actually take a lot of focus to develop and maintain. And when someone subscribes to a conspiracy theory, they can tend to identify with it. Flat-earthers for example. Once you’ve structured your identity around a conspiracy theory, it becomes a fundamental part of your worldview. This means that you have to adjust your view of God because the Biblical God doesn’t fit with your conspiracy theory. So what starts out as a fun and interesting idea to talk about ends up warping very way you see reality. This type of thing can even put up a barrier between yourself and God. If you suspect something is true, you should resist the temptation to develop a conspiracy theory around it. Instead, dig up as much as you can and try to show evidence for what you believe. Never invest yourself in any set of ideas more than you’ve invested yourself in God.
In verse 16 we read a command to preserve the teaching of God. This meant the words would be written down and passed to future generations. God’s super natural preservation of the Word has allowed us to have access to the Bible today. Imagine what it would be like to live without it. All of us here today are a link in the chain of preservation of the Word of God. We are given this same task: to train others in the Biblical worldview and pass the teachings down to future generations. The effort and the care that we put into this mission will be a determining factor in the quality of life for those who will come after us.
In verse 17 we see that Isaiah has made a decision to wait for the Lord and put his hope in him. Sometimes patient waiting is the most difficult test you will experience as a believer. Whether you’re waiting for an illness to pass, waiting for a loved one to return to God and to the church, or waiting for God to set things right in a particular situation. Many of the prophecies God gave through the prophets would not come true for 700 years; others still haven’t been fulfilled.
After rejecting God’s plan for them, the people of Judah would blame God for their trials. Many, many people do this today. They blame God for self-inflicted problems and suffering. If we blame God for our own iniquities, we lose the ability to do anything to improve our situation. This same effect takes place when we blame other people for our own suffering. Every bad choice and every failure presents a growing opportunity. An opportunity for redemption. If we cast blame on others and refuse to look inward, we dispose of this opportunity for redemption and we do so at our great peril. But sometimes the right answer is simply to wait and be patient. It is very difficult and it takes a lot of faith to make it through situations where God’s timing is different than your own. The people of Judah felt this. They would consult mediums and psychics to seek answers from the dead instead of seeking the living God. God alone knows the future. God alone sits outside of time. We can trust God to guide us. So this leads me into my final question: How do you wait on the Lord?
When many people think about waiting, patience can be difficult because they are operating on the assumption that life is short. That’s the first assumption that needs to be thrown out when it comes to developing the patience to wait on God. Think about it: the worldview that you say you believe in tells you that you are going to live forever somewhere. In light of eternity, the pressure to get things done or to structure your life exactly the way you want it is greatly reduced. Don’t you want to feel that freedom? Freedom from the rigors of an overworked schedule. Freedom from the damage done to your relationships because you are always in a hurry to get to the next place. I can tell you, one day the next place you are in a hurry to arrive at will be your grave. Waiting on God is much easier when you realize that the grand design is in his hands – not yours. Waiting on God is much easier when you allow your faith in Jesus to dispel your fear of death that motivates your frantic work. You should love God and love your neighbor. Those are your responsibilities. Apart from that, take it easy and relax. Wait on God because he is in control and he will never lose sight of you.
If you find this content valuable, feel free to share it and to use it in your own studies. If you’d like to support this podcast, you can do so at www.patreon.com/michaelhbaun. There is a link in the description. Your generosity goes a long way to promoting the growth of this enterprise and the cause of free speech. Thank you all for joining me this evening, and I will see you in the next episode.
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