Here’s an important thing about feeding on the Bible: there are parts where it doesn’t help to go slowly, like half a chapter at a time. Much better to read 3 or 4 chapters at a time, and get the flow. (Actually, this isn’t a bad way to start with any Bible book! Then maybe go back through in smaller chunks, now you know where it’s going.) This, after all, is how we normally read books (or letters)!
The area we’re starting on today is one such – Isaiah 13 through 26 (twelve pages). It’s about God’s sovereignty over the powers of this world; in this case the (apparently) great powers of the world. (I suggest we treat this section as going right through to chs 25 or 26, because, after the diet of God’s judgment up to ch24, we need those chapters’ finale in exuberant joy!)
So what do we get imaginatively from reading those chapters at that pace? Surely the sense of the Lord’s dominance – something we each need right now! God’s dominance over the great political powers: `Although the peoples roar like the roar of surging waters, when He rebukes them they flee far away, driven before the wind like chaff on the hills` (17:13). God’s dominance over (eg) Babylon, Assyria, Moab, Syria, Cush, Egypt, Tyre… and to get the full shock of this, try reading them each as addressed to America, Britain, China, France, Japan, Nigeria, Russia. I’m not at all making any political point here; use them in any order you like. Nor am I suggesting that our nations’ sins, nor God’s judgments, at all match those in Isaiah’s time – although every ungodly culture will in time face the real judgment of God. But recalling the modern `great powers` here can underline for us what we do need to grasp: God isn’t just a God who gets involved in the affairs of a few people who go to church; He is Lord of all! (Including over climate change!) So the apocalyptic vision of these chapters shows up for us the powerlessness of the apparently all-powerful, breaks the illusion of their control, forces the worldly-minded to face reality as to where true strength lies. It’s not that God is happy with the destruction announced in his time by Isaiah here (see eg 15:5,16:9,11); God is the reluctant Judge who went to Calvary to take our punishment, who weeps even as He judges (see Luke 19:41-44). But the destruction is what eventually happened by God’s permissive will when the `great powers` Isaiah describes insisted on going their own way, rejecting His rule. (And one day, Revelation says, the same will happen with the great powers of our era.)
But once we’ve grasped that – and actually what an encouragement it is for us who are first of all the children of God our protective Father, and only secondly citizens of any supposedly `great power`…. there is, running through these chapters, another, very different side to how God relates to the nations. Look at the brief chapter 18.
There aren’t many parts of Isaiah that refer to specific political events, but here’s one. It’s 715 BC; envoys are coming from the new, expansionist Cushite (ie Sudanese) emperor who has taken over Egypt (cf 37:9). He’s inviting Jerusalem into a coalition against Assyria. (Just like Philistia had done when Ahaz died, 14:32.) It’s a highly dangerous temptation (cf 20:5). Isaiah sends them back (`Go to a people`, v2); but it’s not with a political alliance, rather it’s with a prophecy, first of judgment, but also with a missionary, gospel summons: `At that time gifts will be brought to the LORD Almighty… from a people feared far and wide`, that is, the Sudanese themselves (vv2,7). In one sense we’re learning here the same lesson: it’s Isaiah the messenger of God’s Word, not the new and powerful Emperor’s messengers, who will be remembered 2500 years later. But ch18 is saying something else: even though this is a time when nation after nation has come to the point of judgment, yet beyond that God still has a gospel and a loving destiny for one of these nations after another. Spin through these chapters and we see this in 16:5, 17:7, 19:20, 24:14-15, and 25:3. `Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other!` (45:22). So in this too God will be triumphant; this time over all human sin!
It’s an utter tragedy that people, nations, have to come to the point of destruction before they `look to their Maker` (reread 17:1-8 to get the force of this). But while God is the God of Israel, He is also the Saviour of the world! And the most striking example of this comes (to me anyway) as a shock, when we see ch19 coming to a marvellous finish with the revelation of God’s great and loving plans for a repentant Egypt – and not just Egypt, even for unimaginably brutal Assyria too: `The LORD will strike Egypt… and heal them. They will turn to the LORD, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them… The Egyptians and Assyrians` (arch-enemies to each other!) `will worship together!… The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people` [`My people`?! Remember who `Let my people go` was about in Exodus?], `Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”` This is the loving purpose of God for the nations, and one day the contribution of every nation, no matter how much we’ve sinned, must & will be represented in His multi-coloured Bride (Rev 7:9, Matt 24:14)!
So what practically is there for us in these chapters? Well, from that last sentence and ch19 we could simply say – we worship a missionary God, and each one of us has a calling to bring the least-reached nations to God – maybe by going, most surely by serious praying. But before we finish, there’s another practical lesson of a different kind.
There’s another passage here that may come as a big surprise. In ch14 something happens which helps us see why the great powers come into judgment – and offers a big practical challenge for us. We saw back in chapter 7 (`The young woman/virgin will be with child…`) how an old testament prophecy can have both a straightforward contemporary fulfilment then, but also a much broader fulfilment in the supernatural world. So chapter 14: many scholars see this chapter moving from a prophecy of the downfall of Babylon’s proud ruler, into a deeper prophecy against Satan who that ruler has come to resemble (look also at 24:21); so that 14:12ff are the clearest picture Scripture gives us of Satan’s fall and eventual utter defeat. Reread it and see what you think: `How you have fallen from heaven, morning star [ie Lucifer], son of the dawn!… You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God… I will make myself like the Most High.” But you are brought down to… the depths of the pit. Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: “Is this the man who made the world a wilderness?”` Pride is the heart of what’s wrong with Babylon (look at Daniel 4), and pride is the heart of what’s wrong with Satan seeking to `raise his throne above the stars of God`; the two are connected; that’s where the Babylon disease comes from.
So what is there for us in this section? First, and above all at a time of apparent global disaster: God rules!; not Washington, not Moscow, not London, not Beijing. `The LORD Almighty has sworn, “Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen!` (14:24). But also: this God is the God of all nations, and so every nation has a place in His final, loving, glorious purpose, and we are called to advance that with all the resource we can! But is there anything else here, practically for our own lives? Time and again these chapters warn us against self-sufficient `pride… overweening pride and conceit` (16:6; see also 23:9 and 25:11). Perhaps in our own time pride hasn’t been embodied so much in overconfidence in our military power, like Babylon, but in our economic security – a faith that led us into hedonistic pleasure-seeking until, suddenly, there comes a halt – `The gaiety of the tambourines is stilled, the noise of the revellers has stopped… no longer do they drink wine with a song` (24:8) – does that sound like the west when covid hit, for example?
But let’s not read this just as about other people. Pride is what drove Satan; and my, my pride is satanic in its origin (where else does it come from?). And I can so easily respond, yes, yes, of course. But the sensible reaction to these chapters must surely be, Lord, help me see how things really are with me, and clothe me with Your Spirit, whose fruit is humility (Col 3:12)… Humility, not as something weak and wimpy, not just as an absence, but as something glorious, something glowing, something reflecting Jesus who declared (in divine self-knowledge) `I am gentle and humble in heart`. So that, growing like Him in this, we will find, not disaster, but `rest for our souls` (Matt 11:29)…
