Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 116th episode. In this episode I want to return to our study of the book of Isaiah. We are in chapter 48. This chapter shifts the focus away from Babylon and back onto Israel. You’ll remember that in the previous chapter God reckoned with Babylon and laid bare their sins. He also warned them of the consequences of their rebellion. Now He’s going to do the same for Israel. The Israelites were God’s people but God doesn’t play favorites when it comes to judging sin. It’s important to note that not all of the Israelites were wicked, some of them truly followed God but many just pretended to. If the Babylonians had listened to God’s warning through Isaiah, perhaps they would not have faced desolation. In the same way, if the Israelites would listen to God’s warning by repenting and reforming then they would be prepared for God’s mercy. God is merciful and He greatly desires to treat you with grace. It’s far better to embrace Him and accept His mercy than it is to continue in prideful rebellion against Him.
Israel had a chronic problem with idolatry. The severity of this problem was all the worse considering God had given them many proofs of His sovereignty. Their worship of false gods resulted in arrogant hypocrisy when it came to good works. So it was common for idolatrous Israelites to place a heavy burden on others to do good while they themselves failed to live up to it. They were also notoriously stubborn when it came to rebellion against God. But despite their inclination toward idolatry, God was gracious in delivering them from their trials. He made it clear that deliverance was for the sake of His own glory and not because they deserved it. God knows that humanity is desperately fragile, vastly ignorant, and prone to mistakes so He encouraged Israel to depend solely on His power and His promise instead of trying to save themselves. Israel’s insistence to depart from God and strike out on their own simply led to sin, idolatry, and destruction. If they had any hope of recovering they would need to do it by the grace of God. The chapter concludes with Isaiah’s prediction of God’s redemption of Israel and their release from Babylon. But there’s also a caveat that says there will be no rest for the wicked. Let’s open with verses 1-8:
Isa 48:1 Hear this, O house of Jacob, who are called by the name of Israel, and who came from the waters of Judah, who swear by the name of the LORD and confess the God of Israel, but not in truth or right.
Isa 48:2 For they call themselves after the holy city, and stay themselves on the God of Israel; the LORD of hosts is his name.
Isa 48:3 “The former things I declared of old; they went out from my mouth, and I announced them; then suddenly I did them, and they came to pass.
Isa 48:4 Because I know that you are obstinate, and your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brass,
Isa 48:5 I declared them to you from of old, before they came to pass I announced them to you, lest you should say, ‘My idol did them, my carved image and my metal image commanded them.’
Isa 48:6 “You have heard; now see all this; and will you not declare it? From this time forth I announce to you new things, hidden things that you have not known.
Isa 48:7 They are created now, not long ago; before today you have never heard of them, lest you should say, ‘Behold, I knew them.’
Isa 48:8 You have never heard, you have never known, from of old your ear has not been opened. For I knew that you would surely deal treacherously, and that from before birth you were called a rebel.
When Israel strayed from God they became particularly hypocritical. They made elaborate professions of faith and image-crafted themselves to be followers of God. But the truth was that their hearts were wicked and wanted nothing to do with Him. Isaiah addressed them directly in an effort to convict them into humility so they might open their eyes and see God’s justice. Theirs was a classic case of putting a righteous face on a wicked heart. Virtue signaling abounded as they labored to show everyone how wonderful and religious they were.
They took great pride in the fact that they were the house of Jacob. It was the same elitist attitude that you often find associated with individuals who think they are important members of the congregation. Our family has been coming here for three generations – that sort of thing. It wasn’t uncommon for the Jewish elite to use their heritage as grounds for arrogance and disobedience. They even tried that in their confrontations with Jesus. Jesus pointed out that vacuous claims to Abraham meant nothing if in truth they followed Satan. When they questioned how Jesus could even know Abraham, Jesus told them that before Abraham was, I AM.
There may have even been a bit of racism among the ancient Israelites. They considered it a place of great honor to belong to Israel. It meant you were among the people whom God chose to deliver His law and His promises. Israel was like the princely people of God – a royal tribe who despite their stubborn idolatry also had a history of great victories in their allegiance to God. But the allegiance of their forebears didn’t justify their current rebellion. Instead of turning their hearts to God they bragged to others about how much they worshiped Him. They used the name of God in their prayers, they observed all the proper ceremonies, they praised Him publicly, and they spoke about Him to everyone. But it was all pretense.
In the midst of their captivity many of the Israelites derived their sense of self-worth not from God but from their belonging to the holy city. This is analogous to the person whose self-worth is rooted in their membership at the local church rather than their relationship with Christ. Some of the Israelites also used their claimed closeness with God as an excuse to be wicked. You’ve probably met religious people who use their claims about God as justifications for their own malfeasance. These deceptive actors are why we hear so many secular-types saying that Christians are hypocrites who hide behind their religion. Listen to Micah’s warning against crooked church leaders abusing their office for ill-gotten gains:
Mic 3:9 Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight,
Mic 3:10 who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity.
Mic 3:11 Its heads give judgment for a bribe; its priests teach for a price; its prophets practice divination for money; yet they lean on the LORD and say, “Is not the LORD in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us.”
Mic 3:12 Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.
All of us humans are broken and depraved without God. But it’s important that you remember not all sinners are alike. There are the sinners whom Christ condemned and the sinners whom He called to save. The difference is repentant sinners aim up and try to be like Christ – even if they struggle with a particular sin. They pray to God for guidance and for sanctification. They remain humble and it is their heart’s greatest desire to be with God and to be like God – even if their flesh is hostile to that end.
Unrepentant sinners declare that their own conduct is true, optimal, and they attack anyone who disagrees with them. They believe they are the embodiment of perfection and that the world must be shaped into their own image. They identify with their sin and create communities centered around it. They readily sacrifice their uniquely divine individuality on the altar of sinful identity – becoming an empty face in the mob that worships the sin as an idol. When two such groups come into contact tribal warfare commences. The more powerful group dominates and establishes the new norms of the culture. Babylon’s military might convinced them that Marduk was the truth. These secular culture wars are no different. Whoever has the biggest stick gets to declare what’s true. Such is the nature of humanity. When we depart from God tribal violence is the only possible outcome.
Those who were pretentious among the Israelites were sinners of the unrepentant variety. Their hearts were wicked and pursued evil things while their mouths declared fidelity to God. Their professions of faith were not made in truth and righteousness. It was more like a joke to them or a clever deception. They took the Lord’s name in vain. If you’re in a situation where you have no faith but you say you do for the sake of your image – I have some advice for you. First is to understand that all of us go through seasons in life where our faith is lacking. God knows this. It’s a mistake to think you need to make up for that with loud praises and declarations of love for God. Just take some time to search your heart and find out what’s bothering you. Then search the Scriptures to see what they say about it. Try to locate a good teacher who can help you do this. If you don’t know the Scriptures then it’s entirely possible that you’ve been smacking your head against the wall trying to drum up faith for a version of God that’s not biblical. As we saw in Micah, just because it came from a pastor or a priest doesn’t mean that it was correct.
The Israelites were prone to idolatry. This particular sin came so easily to them that God gave them a variety of reasons to repent of it. They were given laws and sanctions designed to function as a protective barrier between themselves and the pagan world around them. When that wasn’t enough, God proved His supernatural sovereignty by way of prophecies and predicting the future. And then Israel had a front row seat in watching God bring those predictions into reality. All of these miraculous interventions were designed to show Israel that their God is the only God. If they could be convinced of that then their eyes would be opened to see their duty and their interest in sticking by Him.
Ancient Israel was privileged to watch one prophecy after another take place for them. Every major event in their nation’s history was previously predicted by God. From their slavery in Egypt to the Exodus to the conquest of Canaan – all of these events were called into being by the mouth of God. So Israel was blessed with the honor of having their future revealed to them by the Creator. And it wasn’t just a couple of cryptic messages that coincidentally came true, no, these were explicitly clear predictions that anyone who was paying attention could have relied upon. God even fulfilled these prophecies at the least expected times to rule out any possibility of humanity suggesting random chance.
I think of Christ when I think of God fulfilling prophecies this way. Christ walked the earth 2,000 years ago and His public ministry only lasted 3 years. He was executed in very dehumanizing fashion. Information didn’t travel very well back then. There were hundreds of false messiahs and religious movements that faded out shortly after their leaders died. Yet somehow, some way, Christ impacted the world so dramatically that we use His life to tell our time. Not only did His movement resist fading away, but His name is recognized and worshiped all over the world thousands of years later.
See if I asked you right now what someone would have to do to be remembered and worshiped for the next 2,000 years – an incomprehensibly powerful dictator would probably come into your mind. Or maybe someone who valiantly defeated a great enemy of mankind. But God made it happen as a Jewish carpenter who voluntarily subjected Himself to torture and death. He made it happen in a part of the world that is arguably undesirable. He made it happen with twelve disciples who were all very average men – some of them likely illiterate. If there was ever a movement that should have faded away it was Christianity. It’s survival and prevalence today is no mere accident of history – it is divine declaration. God shows His true power when He is able to fulfill prophecies in ways least expected by humanity. And He does it like that so we will open our eyes and see that He is the only true and living God.
Even Israel’s exile in Babylon was predicted by God through Moses. He also told them He would rescue them from that exile. If Israel had considered the prophecies and paid attention to them they would have clearly seen the hand of God on their fate. But faith and divine revelation was the only way. Their release from Babylon was so incredibly unlikely that no instrument of human power could have predicted it. God wanted them to look at the prophecy and look at what was unfolding around them. He wanted them to see it all happening exactly as He said it would. He wanted them to proclaim that He is the true God and there is nothing more powerful and prescient than Him. That was God’s method of restoring Israel from the emptiness of idolatry.
God used prophecies to show Israel what He would do because He knew they would try to credit their own idols. He told them ahead of time about their deliverance from Babylon because if He hadn’t they would have just said their idols did it. This was an effective method for many Israelites, although there were still some who chose their idolatry anyway. These were people who refused to look at the evidence because their minds were already made up and they didn’t want to change. But even these people would’ve had to admit that the prophets of God foretold the future and that was something their idols couldn’t do. And then there was the danger of Israel taking the credit for themselves. Those among Israel who weren’t painfully confused idolaters may have been proud enough to say their own intellect predicted the future. This is one of the reasons why God selected prophets to deliver His message – because He knew humanity would try to take the credit for it. The classic case of this in today’s world is called secular humanism. Secular humanists attempt to construct a moral system without God. But the story they end up telling in order to derive their values is essentially a recapitulation of Christianity with the language changed.
The people in Israel who fancied themselves as wise would see the surprising fulfillment of prophecy as a blow to their own egos. You’ve all encountered someone who’s like this. Imagine telling a person unexpected news and they say: Oh yeah, I knew that would happen – or – I always figured that was the case. They don’t want to admit that they were caught by surprise because admitting such means there was something they didn’t know. This is why the people who are truly wise are also very humble – it takes humility to learn wisdom and the arrogant shut themselves off from learning anything. God has structured His prophecies so that humanity’s boasting will be excluded from His presence. No one will walk into the presence of God claiming that they deserve to be there. Those whose pride is insufferable will become bitter and resentful of God’s glory. But sooner or later every mouth shall be stopped and all flesh shall fall silent before God.
Another reason God chose to predict Israel’s future and then bring it into being was an effort to get past their stubbornness. He said their necks were as stiff as iron and their heads were as hard as brass. If God hadn’t taken each step to show them it was Him who authored prophecy and Him who made it happen He knew they would fall down and worship idols instead. Here’s how much God loves us: He knows that without Him our hearts are hardened and our will is bent on evil. He knows that even if He provides for us we will likely push on in our own direction anyway. It’s not in human nature to be humble enough to question our own declarations – humility is a quality imparted to us by the Holy Spirit.
Human beings are born contaminated with original sin. We are transgressors from the womb. I used to feel quite offended when I heard people say that. But then I started thinking: you don’t have to teach a child to lie, bite, and steal. It’s never the case that individuals become saintly members of society simply because they lack instruction. If that were true then the best thing you could do for newborns is abandon them to raise themselves. But where original sin is left to fester worse sins will surely follow. The base mode of behavior for humanity is not godly obedience. It’s more like pathological idolatry – which is precisely what Israel struggled with.
God knows this about us and He knew it about Israel. God gave His people prophecies and precepts that were specially designed to accommodate their hardness of heart and gently lead them toward Himself. And being perfectly aware that we suffer insufficiency God sacrificed Himself in order to carry us the rest of the way. That’s how much God loves us. Let’s read verses 9-15:
Isa 48:9 “For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off.
Isa 48:10 Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
Isa 48:11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.
The Lord’s Call to Israel
Isa 48:12 “Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last.
Isa 48:13 My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together.
Isa 48:14 “Assemble, all of you, and listen! Who among them has declared these things? The LORD loves him; he shall perform his purpose on Babylon, and his arm shall be against the Chaldeans.
Isa 48:15 I, even I, have spoken and called him; I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.
There were two major reasons why Israel considered deliverance from Babylon so incredibly unlikely. The first was that they didn’t believe they were worthy enough for God to take such special action for them. How does this low self-worth align with the reported arrogance of many of the Israelites? It’s often the most insecure people who puff themselves up as arrogant. But remember, not all of the Israelites were prideful idolaters either. Some simply felt like God had abandoned them. The second reason was that deliverance from Babylon was a very tall order. For much of their captivity the Israelites were largely unaware of Cyrus’s conquests. Of course, they had Isaiah’s prophecies regarding Cyrus but when all they saw day-in and day-out was Babylonian dominance it would have taken a lot of faith to trust Isaiah’s predictions. They were given line-upon-line of encouragement to prop them up and give them hope.
The truth was that Israel was not worthy of God. None of us are. So God makes clear that Israel’s deliverance is not for their own sake – but for His name’s sake. Many of the Israelites were starkly aware of the sins they committed against God. They viewed wasting away in captivity as something they probably deserved. And in fact a holy and perfect God would have been justly righteous in utterly destroying all of them. But God is slow to anger and He is measured in His wrath. Not only does He refrain from pouring upon us the punishment we deserve, but He actually takes the wrath upon Himself. In Israel’s case God didn’t destroy them because they were His covenant people and they called upon His name. If they had been completely wiped out then the enemies of God would have blasphemed Him as impotent or malevolent.
In contrast, delivering Israel out of the grip of Babylon was a show of both infinite power and everlasting mercy. The very continued existence of Israel would be a testament to God’s grace and His unlimited wisdom. His aim was to take a corrupt population and refine them until they were ready for His mercy. This was the underlying motivation for allowing them to go into exile. It wasn’t something God did simply to assuage His anger – He needed to teach them hard lessons that would shape them into who He meant for them to be. The best version of yourself is the version God intended you to be. It’s astonishing how many people in our culture would receive that statement as wonderfully relativistic. But it’s actually the opposite of relativism – there is no such thing as your truth. The optimal version of yourself is you refined into the image of Jesus Christ. The more Christlike you are the closer you are to who God intends for you to be. It’s possible that God will put you through your own Babylonian exile if that’s what it takes to bring you home to Him. You should never view these afflictions as barriers between yourself and God. Your suffering is not emblematic of God being rid of you – rather it’s something difficult that you are called to walk through in as Christlike a way as you can manage.
God knew that Israel’s exile would not fully and perfectly refine them. It would only partially purify them of their iniquity. If He had wanted perfection He would have had to leave them in that furnace forever. The same is true of you today. If you were required to become the perfect image of God at this moment all hope would be lost for you. God understands this – He remembers your frame, He knows that you are dust. But if you put your faith in Christ then after you pass away you will be glorified which means you will be free of corruption and sin forever.
There’s a couple of reasons why God declared Israel’s deliverance to be for His own sake. One is that if it had been for their own sake, you can bet the Israelites would have taken such an honor and boasted about it. If you believe that God saves you because you deserve it then not only are you wrong – but you’ll react to the very idea of God’s salvation with immense pride blinding you to the truth. You’ll spurn people who aren’t like you and cast them off as hell-bound. The Pharisees were like this, they believed they were holy in their own right and Jesus condemned them for it. But when you understand who you really are and who God really is, only then will you see the immeasurable grace and love He must have to redeem such broken beings as us.
Another reason God declared Israel’s deliverance to be for His own sake was that doing so guaranteed it would happen. When God wills something it happens exactly as He wills it. He expressed concern that if Israel perished the enemies of God would boast against His name. Babylon’s Belshazzar did this when He profaned the holy vessels taken from God’s temple while praising his own idols. The Babylonians would mock their Israelite captives by forcing them to sing songs of Zion that were meant for worshiping God. These kinds of things were an affront to God’s glory and He would not permit them to get away with it.
Many people think about Soli Deo Gloria (for the glory of God alone) as God being an immature power-seeker but that’s totally backwards. If it is objective fact that God is the center of being itself – then everything outside of God has an interest in glorifying God and seeking Him. To go in any other direction is to deny your own existence and undermine your own well-being. When viewing God’s preservation of His own name from this perspective, we see that He’s actually being incredibly merciful on His enemies. If He allowed His enemies to be deceived into believing themselves or their idols were more real than Him – they would march confidently into their own condemnation. God doesn’t want this fate even for His enemies.
The Israelites were God’s people. They called on His name and they were called according to His purpose for them. Since they belonged to God, God would look after them. Since God intended to deliver them for His own name’s sake, God would deliver them using His own strength. Their situation looked bleak because of how powerful Babylon was, but even the might of Babylon measured as nothing compared to the strength of God. This is how you should think of your own situation. If you’ve given your life to Jesus Christ, then you need not fear being overcome by the challenges in front of you. Consider the fact that your God is God alone and is eternal. He is the first and the last. Nothing can get ahead of Him or happen too fast for Him because He was here before anything else was. There is no pain, there is no enemy which can outlast Him. Even when all of us and everything we own is turned to dust with time God will still be God. So if it is God’s intention to deliver you out of your trials you can be certain that He will execute His plan perfectly.
In addition to the eternal nature of God, He is also the Creator of everything. If you look up at the night sky you get a sense of the grandeur of outer space. It’s impossibly vast. When we look at the earth around us and see the delicate ecological balance required to sustain life we get a sense of God’s wisdom. The creation itself is under God’s command and I believe it yearns for the day when its Creator will finish His redemptive work. When you see all of the things that He has made and understand that all of it responds to His will then you know that God will never run out of instruments to accomplish His purpose.
So you have big challenges in life. But your challenges are nothing to fear if you belong to God who is the eternal Creator. He’s even foretold much of your life in the Scriptures. They answer questions about what happens when we die. They give us insight into how the world will end. Babylon had diviners and oracles who claimed to be able to tell the future. But these con artists never predicted a negative future for Babylon. They pictured Babylon’s sovereignty extending far into the future and Israel’s slavery doing the same. But God, by His prophets, accurately gave notice of His people’s captivity and the fall of Jerusalem. If these prophets were speaking on their own human power, they probably would have told the Jews what they wanted to hear similar to Babylon’s oracles. But God is the truth and He tells the truth even if we don’t want to hear it. Many things that make sense to God cannot make sense to us because He exists outside of time and we are bound by it. The Israelites should have taken great hope in the fact that God was giving them the favorable prediction of their release.
Sometimes knowing an event will happen in the future isn’t enough. We want to know how it will happen and who will do it. God even gave the Israelites answers to these details. He would deliver them by the hand of Cyrus. Cyrus must do it because God designed him to do it. God was well pleased with Cyrus as His instrument so He guided his ascent to power. Cyrus was given the honor of being a type of redeemer – like a foreshadowing of the Great Redeemer Jesus Christ. Cyrus was called of God and given sufficient control to execute God’s will. God brought Cyrus out of obscurity and made him greater and more powerful than he could have dreamed of. The same thing happens when you are called to the service of God. He draws you in and He empowers you for the work He wants you to do. You would imagine that with all God did for Cyrus the Persian king must have been thankful to Him. But this was not so. Cyrus had his own aim and his own ambitions. Cyrus thought he was walking his own path and achieving his own purposes. God wanted Cyrus to crush Babylon as judgment for the abuse of Israel. Cyrus wanted to crush Babylon for their wealth and their influence. Cyrus was either blind to or paid no regard to the will of God and his own favorable position in it. Let’s read verses 16-22:
Isa 48:16 Draw near to me, hear this: from the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there.” And now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit.
Isa 48:17 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go.
Isa 48:18 Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;
Isa 48:19 your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.”
Isa 48:20 Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it out to the end of the earth; say, “The LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob!”
Isa 48:21 They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock; he split the rock and the water gushed out.
Isa 48:22 “There is no peace,” says the LORD, “for the wicked.”
It’s interesting how God speaks through Isaiah and calls His listeners to come near so they can hear. The idea is that if you are far from God you won’t be able to hear Him. Maybe an even better way to put it is you won’t listen. Every person alive has the freedom to choose whose word they are going to trust. All of us operate on faith at many levels of existence. If you choose to invest your trust in something other than God – or if you have no faith in God – then you won’t be able to understand His word. It’ll all sound foolish to you. But once you make the free will decision to seek God through your faith in Jesus Christ, then you’ll find yourself being confirmed in your resolution to serve God. You’ll start to see His word manifesting itself in reality around you and you’ll become increasingly at ease because of your trust in Him.
Israel needed to draw near to God so they could hear Him. God called on Israel to remember things He’d told them in the past and the work He did for them. He wasn’t secretive or cryptic when He spoke to Moses. He did it from atop a mountain and in such a way that they could understand. Contrast the plain nature of the truth of God with the secretive deceptions of false religions. Cults normally rely on the secret revelation of one person who claims to have received communication from God while no one else was around to confirm it. That’s not the case with the true God. He declares the gospel plainly and sufficiently. Scripture goes so far as to say that if Christ wasn’t resurrected then your faith is in vain. So all you have to do is find the body of Jesus to disprove the entire religion. No other worldview is so openly available to falsifiability.
Not only was God plain in His communications with Israel, but He also blessed them with His presence throughout their history. He rescued them from Egypt. He gave them the Law to structure their government. He raised up judges and prophets for them. God has always been interested in His people and He will always be involved right up to the end. Today we get to benefit from all of God’s prophets in the Scriptures as well as leaders He raises up to help us in our faith. I don’t believe God is speaking prophecy through anyone anymore – we have a closed canon of Scripture – but He’s still anointing great leaders to help us in our walk with Him.
God made it clear to His people that He is the Holy One of Israel and that He will never deceive them. The truth cuts like a knife and can be very painful sometimes. The bad news is that we serve a God whose perfection is unsearchable and impossible for us to replicate. But the good news is that God sacrificed Himself so that we might be reconciled to Him despite our sinful nature. The good news is that God through His Spirit will give us what we need to be sanctified and made holy. God is our Redeemer but He is also our Teacher. He doesn’t want us to live miserable lives making the same foolish mistakes over and over again. Through the Scriptures God gives us wisdom that is profitable to our well-being. And even in distress God purifies us so that we may partake further in His holiness.
If we seek God in the Scriptures then what we will find is a light to show us the right path. God, by His Spirit, will not only light the way but He will guide each of our footsteps in the journey of life. The same was true of the Israelites held captive in Babylon. God never wanted to see that happen to them. Long ago He issued warnings through Moses of what would take place should the Israelites turn from Him. If they had chosen faith and obedience then their peace would have flowed like a river and their righteousness like waves of the sea. God takes no pleasure in the death of sinners. You probably love fire when it’s keeping you warm and cooking your food. But just because you love fire when it’s helping you doesn’t mean you blame fire when it burns you. You understand that fire just is the way it is and you must respect it if you don’t want to get burned. God’s Holy nature is something like that. God just is and if we transgress against what just is we get punished.
God assured Israel that if they had obeyed His voice they would have prevented their own exile. They also would have extended their own prosperity. God had many blessings and good gifts that He wanted to pour out on Israel but they allowed their sin to turn them away from Him. The analogy to a river was meant to show Israel that God’s blessings would have flowed one from another without end. The righteous nature that attends obedience to God would have made Israel unstoppable. But their disobedience undermined their own prosperity until they were nothing but captives.
Just think about Israel. God gave them the promised land and their disobedience resulted in civil war, conquest by outside nations, and now captivity. If they had obeyed God’s word then at this point in history they would have been a mighty and prosperous nation. But instead Israel had become a weak, disheveled, small number of survivors about to return from exile. Israel’s honor should have remained unsullied and intact – but they messed it up. Such is the story for all of us who follow God. We mess things up and we show ourselves to be sinners who fall short of the glory of God.
These mistakes do not go unpunished in this life – if you make enough of them you’ll have a really hard time of it. Disobeying God in this life causes you to forfeit many of the good things you experience. But it gets worse than that. Your disobedience also prevents God from giving you the good things He has stored up for you. Israel could have been a prosperous nation but their choices resulted in exile. Possibly the main driver of cultural Marxism is the fear of accepting that your own choices may have more to do with your situation than your perceived status as a victim of oppression. It is a viciously painful exercise to sit and reflect on how your choices have held you back from all that you could have been. But the best thing is that God remains here for us despite our stupid mistakes and despite our ignorant disobedience. There’s also quite a bit of solace in the fact that you’re not alone in making bad choices. Every single one of us is saddled with these mistakes because all of us are sinners.
So God told the Israelites to flee Babylon. This proclamation was predicted by Isaiah long before Cyrus was born. And they weren’t supposed to just sneak out either – no – God wanted them to leave with shouts of praise and great joy. They were finally free. God instructed them to send news of it to all parts of the world. This is like foreshadowing of the gospel. The gospel declares that we are free from our sins in the same way Israel was free from Babylon. All who had the opportunity to hear of Israel’s salvation would have the invitation to turn from their idols and follow the God of Israel. God redeemed Israel because Israel was His servant and all the faithful of the world had the opportunity to claim this distinction as well.
Being God’s servant means that He takes care of you and provides for you. The Israelites left Egypt to wander in the wilderness but they thirsted not because God brought water from the rock. Now they would leave Babylon and once again God would provide for them in their journey home. In the same way, if you choose to serve God He will provide what you need for that service. It might come in the least expected way but it will come. Make sure you keep your eyes open and pay attention or you might miss it. Many miracles go unnoticed. Even the goodness and love that you feel toward your neighbor is a miraculous grace that flows into your heart from the eternal Rock that is Christ Jesus. It is peace for your soul.
But this chapter ends with a warning. Those who do not heed God’s word and who continue on in their wickedness will have no share in the benefits of God. There are wicked people who clothe themselves as followers of God but inwardly are malevolent deceivers. God knows the heart. Wicked people will have no peace with God. The good things that are done by those whose hearts are given over to evil is pretense. The Pharisees and many false teachers tried to declare peace and righteousness to enemies of God while condemning their neighbors. But God reveals the truth that evil souls will have no peace. For them is a war with the Source of life that if not surrendered in time will last on into eternity. There is no peace for those who reject God and turn their hearts over to evil, but separation from Him forever.
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