Woe to the Obstinate Nation
1 “Woe to the obstinate children,”
declares the LORD,
“to those who carry out plans that are not mine,
forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit,
heaping sin upon sin;
2 who go down to Egypt
without consulting me;
who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection,
to Egypt’s shade for refuge.
3 But Pharaoh’s protection will be to your shame,
Egypt’s shade will bring you disgrace.
4 Though they have officials in Zoan
and their envoys have arrived in Hanes,
5 everyone will be put to shame
because of a people useless to them,
who bring neither help nor advantage,
but only shame and disgrace.”
6 An oracle concerning the animals of the Negev:
Through a land of hardship and distress,
of lions and lionesses,
of adders and darting snakes,
the envoys carry their riches on donkeys’ backs,
their treasures on the humps of camels,
to that unprofitable nation,
7 to Egypt, whose help is utterly useless.
Therefore I call her
Rahab the Do-Nothing.
8 Go now, write it on a tablet for them,
inscribe it on a scroll,
that for the days to come
it may be an everlasting witness.
9 These are rebellious people, deceitful children,
children unwilling to listen to the LORD’s instruction.
10 They say to the seers,
“See no more visions!”
and to the prophets,
“Give us no more visions of what is right!
Tell us pleasant things,
prophesy illusions.
11 Leave this way,
get off this path,
and stop confronting us
with the Holy One of Israel!”
12 Therefore, this is what the Holy One of Israel says:
“Because you have rejected this message,
relied on oppression
and depended on deceit,
13 this sin will become for you
like a high wall, cracked and bulging,
that collapses suddenly, in an instant.
14 It will break in pieces like pottery,
shattered so mercilessly
that among its pieces not a fragment will be found
for taking coals from a hearth
or scooping water out of a cistern.”
15 This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.
16 You said, ‘No, we will flee on horses.’
Therefore you will flee!
You said, ‘We will ride off on swift horses.’
Therefore your pursuers will be swift!
17 A thousand will flee
at the threat of one;
at the threat of five
you will all flee away,
till you are left
like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
like a banner on a hill.”
18 Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
he rises to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!
19 O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. 20 Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. 21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” 22 Then you will defile your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, “Away with you!”
23 He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day your cattle will graze in broad meadows. 24 The oxen and donkeys that work the soil will eat fodder and mash, spread out with fork and shovel. 25 In the day of great slaughter, when the towers fall, streams of water will flow on every high mountain and every lofty hill. 26 The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.
27 See, the Name of the LORD comes from afar,
with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke;
his lips are full of wrath,
and his tongue is a consuming fire.
28 His breath is like a rushing torrent,
rising up to the neck.
He shakes the nations in the sieve of destruction;
he places in the jaws of the peoples
a bit that leads them astray.
29 And you will sing
as on the night you celebrate a holy festival;
your hearts will rejoice
as when people go up with flutes
to the mountain of the LORD,
to the Rock of Israel.
30 The LORD will cause men to hear his majestic voice
and will make them see his arm coming down
with raging anger and consuming fire,
with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail.
31 The voice of the LORD will shatter Assyria;
with his scepter he will strike them down.
32 Every stroke the LORD lays on them
with his punishing rod
will be to the music of tambourines and harps,
as he fights them in battle with the blows of his arm.
33 Topheth has long been prepared;
it has been made ready for the king.
Its fire pit has been made deep and wide,
with an abundance of fire and wood;
the breath of the LORD,
like a stream of burning sulfur,
sets it ablaze.
My Understanding: Lately I have noticed how what the Lord teaches me through his word each day builds one message upon another upon another. In other words, this message from Isaiah 30 today is just a continuance of what he has been teaching me in the days and weeks, months or even years previously. I believe the “obstinate nation” the Lord is addressing today is the United States of America, at least the one to which he is speaking to me about, since that is where I live. Yet, the nation he spoke of in Isaiah 30 was not just a physical nation of people but it was a spiritual nation, i.e. these were the people of God, so, although I believe these truths are being applied today to America as a whole, the primary recipients of the message are those who call themselves Christians, i.e. believers in Christ.
The Lord is rebuking his church corporately today, I believe, for their reliance upon man, the counsel of man, the wisdom of man, and the teachings of man, instead of relying upon their Lord for guidance, counsel and wise and just decisions. They take each other to public court instead of taking their grievances before the church. They rely on books written by men and marketing schemes for how to build big businesses, and they bring the church, as a whole, willingly under the authority of the U.S. government, which stipulates what a pastor can and cannot say from the pulpit.
They use man’s methods to draw in large crowds of people, thinking this is how God would want them to grow the church, but what they are growing are incorporations designed by and carried out by men, for it is Christ who builds his church through spiritual understanding, through genuine confessions of faith in Christ, through the sanctification process of the believer, through the witness of the church as a light to the world which walks in darkness, and through the body of Christ’s church functioning as God intended it to function with each part doing its work.
In these forming of alliances with men and placing trust in man and man’s methods over those of God, the church heaps sin upon sin against Almighty God, especially since many of these alliances with men water down the gospel of Jesus Christ with “all grace” messages that teach that repentance and obedience to Christ are not necessary for salvation and that God is pleased with you no matter what you do. This opens the door wide to give those within the church a sense that they can continue in sin and yet still have their ticket to heaven. It gives them a false sense of eternal security based upon a lie; a false teaching; a false hope, which is no hope at all and which sends its adherents straight to the pit of hell if they buy into the lie and think they can continue in willful sin and God will still be pleased with them.
This reliance upon the wisdom of man over the wisdom of God will bring disgrace and shame to the church, for when the judgments of God come, man and whatever methods of man we may have placed our reliance upon – possessions, power, wealth, influence, etc. – will be of no use to us, but will only bring us shame and disgrace.
Write It on A Tablet
Isaiah was told to “write it on a tablet,” i.e. he was to inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it would serve as an everlasting witness. What was he to write? These are a rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to those who have visions of God, “See no more visions!” And, to God’s messengers of his gospel they say, “Give us no more visions of what is right!” Tell us pleasant things, even prophecy illusions (delusions; deception; fantasy) because it makes us feel better and does not confront us with our sin. They say, “Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!” They told Jesus the same thing, and they hung him on a cross after they had mocked him, presented false testimony against him, and beaten him beyond recognition. They did this to our Lord (we did this with our sins) because they did not want their sins to be exposed or told that they had to repent.
So, the Lord’s indictment against them is this: Since they relied on oppression (cruelty; persecution; harassment of those telling them the truth), and since they depended upon deceit, which they also used against God’s messengers who were telling the truth, this sin for them would bring the judgment of God down upon their heads. Yet, God is still loving them and he is still calling out to them to not continue in their stubborn rebellion. He is telling his church that in repentance and rest in the Lord (not in man) is their salvation, but they would have none of it. They are bent on following their own paths to destruction. And, they tell God, “No!” They will continue on their path, fooling themselves into thinking that God will not judge them, yet God is assuring them that he takes their sin seriously and he will indeed judge them for their sin of open rebellion against Almighty God and their sin of oppression and unjust treatment of those who are listening to and are obeying God’s voice.
Yet, even in all of this we see God’s loving grace. The Lord longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. That is why he keeps giving message after message after message all throughout the New Testament on the seriousness of sin and the need to repent and to persevere and to prove our faith as genuine by how we live. He doesn’t want to have to punish us any more than a loving parent enjoys spanking his disobedient child, and yet what loving parent would allow his or her child to continue in willful and unchecked rebellion and not bring a hand of correction to the matter when necessary? God is love. In him is no darkness at all. He is a God of justice and mercy. Blessed are all who wait for him.
God is not a scoundrel. He gets no pleasure out of judging us (divine discipline), yet he knows there are times when that is all that will get our attention and it is the only way his church will be made ready for her husband and their wedding. So, although he will bring adversity (hardship; difficulty; danger; harsh conditions) upon us, such as in the time of tribulation, he promises us that the end result of this will be that we will weep no more. He will be gracious to us when we cry to him for help. As soon as he hears, he will answer us. And, he will bring revival to our hearts and will open our eyes so that we can see the truths of his word, and we will know the way of the Lord and will walk in his ways. We, as a people of God, through repentance and obedience to Christ, will be restored back to a right relationship with our Lord. We, as his church, will throw away our idols as though we are throwing away a menstrual cloth and will say, “Away with you!” We won’t want them anymore.
Then God will bless his people with spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus. Through this time of divine judgment, the Holy Spirit of God will be poured out on his church in revival and the Lord will bind up the bruises of his people and will heal the wounds he inflicted, i.e. he will take them in his arms and will comfort them once again with his love and grace.
I Will Uphold You / An Original Work / November 4, 2011
Based off of Isaiah 41:8-20; Ephesians 6:10-18
You are My servant; I’ve chosen you.
I’ve not rejected you; I’ve been true.
Do not be fearful; I am with you.
Don’t be alarmed, for I am your God.
I will give you strength, and will help you.
I will uphold you with My right hand.
All who’re against you will be disgraced.
Those who oppose you, they will perish.
Enemies you search, but will not find.
They war against you; nothing will be.
I am your Lord God, who takes your hand;
Says, “Do not fear, for I will help you.”
The poor and needy, water they need.
Their tongues are thirsty; no drop to drink.
I will give answer; not forsake them.
I will make rivers flow from within.
My living water I will outpour
On those who seek Me; and Me adore.
Jesus provided the sacrifice;
For our sins blood bought; He paid the price,
So we’re forgiven all of our sins,
When we invite Him to come within.
He cleanses us from our impure hearts.
His life within us gives a new start.
http://youtu.be/i0LFPI-isSU
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