“Ah, stubborn children,” declares the Lord, “who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who set out to go down to Egypt, without asking for my direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to your shame, and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation. For though his officials are at Zoan and this envoys reach Hanes, everyone comes to shame through a people that cannot profit them, that brings neither help nor profit, but shame and disgrace.”
Isaiah 30:1-5
So we have the same tenancy when we are in stress or fear to turn back to the methods we used before salvation. Judah was afraid of Assyria so they went for help to Egypt the proved killer and enslaver of God's people. God will discipline us so that we break this habit and start turning to Him first and only in times of need. We need to remember to seek God and His will in our lives.
An oracle on the beasts of the Negeb. Through a land of trouble and anguish, from where come the lioness and the lion, the adder and the flying fiery serpent, they carry their riches on the backs of donkeys, and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people that cannot profit them. Egypt’s help is worthless and empty; therefore I have called her “Rahab who sits still.”
Isaiah 30:6-7
It seems that Isaiah's concern is for the donkeys and camels endangered by the trip since there is no profit is taking treasures to Egypt. The allusion to Rahab is to a mythological chaos monster but in the case of Egypt it is a chaos monster that goes nowhere. When we turn back to our old lives we also turn back to the chaos prior to our salvation and it leads nowhere. One of the key elements of being judged severely for these kinds of actions is a purposeful rejection of what God has revealed.
And now, go, write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book, that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers, “Do not see,” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.” Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel, “Because you despise this word and trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach in a high wall, bulging out, and about to collapse, whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant; and its breaking is like that of a potter’s vessel that is smashed so ruthlessly that among its fragments not a shard is found with which to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern.”
Isaiah 30:8-14
And it is in a book, the Book, and we are reading it about 2700 years after it happened. Our culture has a deep streak of this “speak to us smooth things” alive and well today. The imagery is pretty striking here. The walls during a siege (which they were about to find out) would bulge from the repeated blows of the siege equipment but then fail suddenly and crumble. For Judah and for us, God's word against sin in our life will be a constant pounding and for us a call to repentance. God's correction is still Grace.
For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” But you were unwilling, and you said, “No! We will flee upon horses”; therefore you shall flee away; and, “We will ride upon swift steeds”; therefore your pursuers shall be swift. A thousand shall flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill.
Isaiah 30:15-17
They run and all that is left is a flagstaff and a signal to show that a people were once there. God has to teach us to return and rest and be quiet and to trust. But remember that you want to be a quick learner and not a slow learner. Like my Grandmother always said, “Them that won't listen has to feel.”
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him. For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “Be gone!”
Isaiah 30:18-22
God's objective in our lives, like His objective in Judah, is/was Holiness. He isn't being severe or mean. It is Grace that redeems us. His mercy keeps us from getting what we deserve and our reluctance to cry out to Him only delays His blessing in our lives. He is instructing us and separating us from our idols. We live in a fallen world and we don't want to attribute adversity and affliction in an individual's life as God's response to sin. Jesus told us not to do that. However, for each of us in adversity and affliction the point is how we respond to the adversity and affliction. Sin has to go and idols have to go but we need to display quiet trust in God. He never leaves us alone and we can't always understand why things are the way they are. God will make it possible for our hearts to change in attitude. We often think that we can't change the way we feel. That isn't accurate since God can work in us to change the way we think as we submit to the Holy Spirit. Then we will hear a word behind us saying, “This is the way, walk in it” and we'll be happy to do so because of His work in our hearts.
And he will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and bread, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your livestock will graze in large pastures, and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. And on every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.
Isaiah 30:23-26
This prophecy would be yet to be fulfilled in the “Age to Come”. We may also see partial fulfillment in revivals but it will remain for Christ's return to see this fully completed. It was fulfilled in a “type” as the power of Assyria was broken and the people returned to rebuild the temple. The following Scripture deals with the judgment to come on the Assyrians but also has the apocalyptic language typical of the end of our age.
Behold, the name of the Lord comes from afar, burning with his anger, and in thick rising smoke; his lips are full of fury, and his tongue is like a devouring fire; his breath is like an overflowing stream that reaches up to the neck; to sift the nations with the sieve of destruction, and to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads astray. You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast 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, to the Rock of Israel. And the Lord will cause his majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of his arm to be seen, in furious anger and a flame of devouring fire, with a cloudburst and storm and hailstones. The Assyrians will be terror-stricken at the voice of the Lord, when he strikes with his rod. And every stroke of the appointed staff that the Lord lays on them will be to the sound of tambourines and lyres. Battling with brandished arm, he will fight with them. For a burning place has long been prepared; indeed, for the king it is made ready, its pyre made deep and wide, with fire and wood in abundance; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of sulfur, kindles it.
Isaiah 30:27-33
Hezekiah was the king of Jerusalem after serving as a co-regent with his father Ahaz. Hezekiah wasn't perfect but he was not as bad as his father. The Assyrian King Sennacherib assumed that that he could take Jerusalem just like any other city. But Hezekiah would at least listen to Isaiah part of the time. Listen to Sennacherib and how he sounds like the enemy of your soul.
“Thus says Sennacherib king of Assyria, ‘On what are you trusting, that you endure the siege in Jerusalem? Is not Hezekiah misleading you, that he may give you over to die by famine and by thirst, when he tells you, “The Lord our God will deliver us from the hand of the king of Assyria”? Has not this same Hezekiah taken away his high places and his altars and commanded Judah and Jerusalem, “Before one altar you shall worship, and on it you shall burn your sacrifices”? Do you not know what I and my fathers have done to all the peoples of other lands? Were the gods of the nations of those lands at all able to deliver their lands out of my hand? Who among all the gods of those nations that my fathers devoted to destruction was able to deliver his people from my hand, that your God should be able to deliver you from my hand?
2 Chronicles 32:10-14
Sennacherib attacks faith in God, leadership ordained by God, obedience in worship to God's instruction, and God's omnipotence. Trash talking God is not a wise course of action.
Then Hezekiah the king and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, prayed because of this and cried to heaven. And the Lord sent an angel, who cut off all the mighty warriors and commanders and officers in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he came into the house of his god, some of his own sons struck him down there with the sword. So the Lord saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib king of Assyria and from the hand of all his enemies, and he provided for them on every side. And many brought gifts to the Lord to Jerusalem and precious things to Hezekiah king of Judah, so that he was exalted in the sight of all nations from that time onward.
2 Ch 32:20-23
The book of 2nd Kings puts the number of dead at 185,000. God prepared a funeral for Sennacherib. When he went home and turned again to his idol after seeing the power of God his time was over and his own sons killed him.
It is important for us to realize that there will come an end to this age. I think it is even more important for us to remember that an end will come to us. We will give an answer for what we do and say. God is the one who brings salvation and we bring praise for His works and His perfection.
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