“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. 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;” Isaiah 48:17-18 ESV
Reflection: how can we have peace with the escalating tensions in the Middle East?
As I was about to board a plane for Europe last week, i was shocked to see a number of people wearing a mask, completely self imposed. No one told them they had to. They chose to. Some of them were healthy, young adults in their twenties and thirties. They clearly believed in what they had been told only a few years ago, that this act would help them, possibly save their lives. Now, these individuals are easy to pick on, ridicule perhaps, but it is amazing to observe this residual effect of what authorities said during the pandemic only a few years ago. A present, visual sign of the effectiveness of their message. But the question is, what authority are we following?
As Christians, we often pray to God for wisdom and understanding of His will, to better understand His thoughts so that we can follow Him. Although He says “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9 ESV, the book of Isaiah gives us some insights into His thoughts. And in chapter 48, we see this very interesting monologue of the Lord of hosts, sharing His frustrations about His people, and about what He is doing in their midst and around them, to usher in His plans. And perhaps the pinnacle of His frustrations is found in our focus verses today, where we read,
“Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments!”
Because, by following them, the people would have found “peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;” Isaiah 48:18b ESV. He had given them everything they needed to have peace, prosperity, righteousness, and joy. But they chose to ignore God, and follow their own ways. They even started worshipping other gods (although there is no other god than the God of Creation, Lord of hosts). They paid more attention to what they had made themselves, than what God had made and commanded. So while the Lord God wanted to “partner” with His people, to do His will, we see God still fulfilling His plans; His decrees. One example is what we have looked at already, His use of this Persian king Cyrus, whom the Lord loved,
““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. I, even I, have spoken and called him; I have brought him, and he will prosper in his way.” Isaiah 48:14-15 ESV.
Although God’s people had been faithless to Him, we read that ““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. Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. 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.” Isaiah 48:9-11 ESV. He is fulfilling His plans, even despite His unwilling and unfaithful people. And although He first chastised them in Babylon, and used a Persian to free them, in the end of the chapter, we see the Lord once again calling to His people to do His will. “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!”” Isaiah 48:20 ESV
It is a lot easier to see in hindsight that we were lied to during the pandemic, on a massive scale. But, I can’t but feel sorry for those poor people on the plane, how they in a way are displaying their “worship” of a lie. But we also see parallels in the Bible, of God’s people not following His ways but their own, even if His ways were right there, right in front of them. But they chose not to listen. So, if we take a more current situation such as the Iran war, how can we have “peace like a river” in the escalating world tensions? Question is, who are we listening to? God’s plans, His desire for us, is right there before us to see.
