I wouldn’t usually kick off a blog post with a lengthy quote from Isaiah, but let’s remember where we were with the last post (which you can read here).

“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
    in quietness and trust is your strength,
    but you would have none of it.
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!
…

 Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
    therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
…

^… you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. (30:15-19, NIV)

The passage explains that salvation is found in repentance and rest, and strength is found in quietness and trust. But, like us, the original audience didn’t want that; they wanted to provide their own solutions.

I want to look in more detail at this passage, because I think it reveals four very important truths that are part of the healing that God offers us.

1.He Gives Us A Guide, Not A Map

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. (30:21)

When I was a kid, I liked maps. I liked to open up a good old atlas and plot my imaginary trip across the country, following the freeways and imagining my journey through exotic locales such as Council Bluffs, Iowa.  There is something about a map that speaks of adventure and possibility.

What about a guide?

Back in the olden days before GPS, my mom was queen of the maps. When she and dad planned a trip, she was the navigator. She had a map, and she would guide, turn by turn when needed. Dad kept his eyes on the road; mom provided the guidance.

Sometimes I want God to give me a map and let me Get. There. Myself. (On my speeding horse from the last post. Sigh.) But here is the miraculous deliverance: the Lord has not given us a map. He has given us a guide. And that guide is himself.

He isn’t giving me 5 Steps to a Fulfilled Life, or A Complete Plan for the Rest of Your Life. He’s saying, “Take this step. Now right. Now left.” He has established a path in which we might walk.

It requires sensitivity to the Word and attention to his way. It will involve missteps and picking yourself back up and listening again. You can’t run ahead when you don’t have a map. You have to wait for your guide.

2. The Guide Enables Us to Reject Idolatry

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!” (30:22)

 

We walk step-by-step with our Guide. And as we learn to follow up, he becomes more and more precious and real to us than or idols have been.

Why do our idols hold sway over us? Why do we turn to a long-established habit or method of coping? It is real. It is so real to us, and we have turned to it so many times before.  And it does appear precious to us–these idols are overlaid with silver and gold plating. We find some measure of comfort or control or solace in our idols. But when we start walking step-by-step with Jesus, honestly and consciously rejecting our idols and listening instead to his voice, the idols start to show themselves for what they are: worthless, deceptive, impotent. We are angry with them, angry with ourselves for turning to them, and it fuels our repentance. They are bright and shiny, but we are no longer seduced by their false promises. We see them for what they are, and was “scatter” them and say, “Be gone!”

But notice–this is only after we see our Teacher (30:20) and start to listen to him. We don’t cast aside our idols and THEN follow the teacher. It is only once we start listening to our Guide that the idols are exposed for what they really are.

My takeaway? Jesus doesn’t expect me to figure this out on my own. He is jealous for my attention, yes, and he hates my idols. But it is only after I repent and rest in him and start listening to him, that I will begin to hate my idols like he does.

 

3. The Lord Brings Restoration and Healing

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. (30:23-26)

Let’s start with the final thought “…in the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.”For what purpose would the Lord bring wounds?  He cuts away the deep infection of sin, leaving deep wounds. But it is he himself who binds our wounds, serving not only as our surgeon but as the Great Physician as well.

This healing takes place in a greater context: one of total restoration.

Rain. Bread. Rich. Plenteous. Large Pastures. Brooks running with water–not infertile valleys, but even on mountain tops.

The earlier passages were of defeat and war. But now they experience overwhelming fruitfulness. In a desert culture, large pastures and running brooks were lavish, above and beyond any expectation. And indeed, abiding in the Vine himself, we begin to overflow with good fruit. We cast aside our idols, and we reap what is real and good. We are freed to experience the goodness that the Lord prepared in advance for us.  It is a picture of Shalom.

 

4. We Were Made for Worship

We might think that the Shalom wholeness of God would be the end of the story. And, in a sense, it is, but it has one more dimension: Worship.

When God freed the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt, it was for a specific purpose: that they might worship him. “Let my people go,” God said through Moses, “that they may serve me.” We were made to worship.

This worship is in the context of a festival that starts when the sun goes down: “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.” (30:29)  That doesn’t seem so surprising; walking with Christ, the destruction of our idols, deep restoration, Shalom, festival, celebration!

But the context might make us wonder:

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. (30:29-33)

A festival with…total destruction? Devouring fires and storms and hailstones and the slaying hand of God accompanied by “the sound of tambourines and lyres?”

We are more comfortable with passages about praise and worship than about vengeance and destruction. But here we see them pictured alongside each other: his people celebrating his abundant grace, and also his justice in defeating their enemies. It is a celebration of the justice of God as well as the mercy of God.

The Lord says repeatedly to his people that they need to be still. He will fight for them.

Would you trust someone if you were unsure whether he could win?

God lays every fear to rest. There will be justice. We are right to rest in and trust of God, because he will right every wrong, vindicate the oppressed, secure justice, and conquer evil. His people are shown in joyful celebration of his victory over sin, sorrow, pain and death–over the enemy. Shalom is complete–wholeness includes every aspect of creation. And, as fellow people of God, we are invited to celebrate, too.

In repentance and rest you shall be saved;
    in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.