Fast Horses and Falling Breaches

You know, there are those moments in life that you sit there after praying for a while and get just a little bit of an inkling that God is speaking to you. And then there are those times when God makes Himself so abundantly known that a deaf man would not need a hearing aid to notice His voice. This is kind of one of those times.

I've really had my brain stuck in Isaiah 30 lately. I'll go ahead and throw that out there. Here goes:

"Woe to the rebellious children," says the LORD, "who take counsel, but not of Me, and who devise plans, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who walk to go down to Egypt, and have not asked my advice, to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt! Therefore the strength of Pharaoh Shall be your shame, and trust in the shadow of Egypt shall be your humiliation. For his princes were at Zoan, and his ambassadors came to Hanes. They were all ashamed of a people who could not benefit them, or be a help or benefit, but a shame and also a reproach."

The burden against the beasts of the South.

Through a land of trouble and anguish, from which came the lioness and lion, the viper and fiery flying serpent, they will carry their riches on the backs of young donkeys, and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a people who shall not profit; for the Egyptians shall help in vain and to no purpose. Therefore I have called her Rahab-Hem-Shebeth.

Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and note it on a scroll, that it may be for time to come, forever and ever: that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children who will not hear the law of the LORD; who say to the seers, "Do not see," and to the prophets, "Do not prophesy to us right things; speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits. Get out of the way, turn aside from the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us."

Therefore thus says the Holy One of Israel:

"Because you despise this word, and trust in oppression and perversity, and rely on them, therefore this iniquity shall be to you like a breach ready to fall, a bulge in a high wall, whose breaking comes suddenly, in an instant. And He shall break it like the breaking of the potters vessel, which is broken in pieces; He shall not spare. So there shall not be found among its fragments a shard to take fire from the hearth, or to take water from the cistern."

For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel:

"In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength." But you would not, and you said, "No for we will flee on horses"- Therefore you shall flee! And, "We will ride on swift horses"- therefore those who pursue you will be swift!

One thousand shall flee at the threat of one, at the threat of five you shall flee, till you are left as a pole on top of a mountain and as a banner on a hill.

Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you; And therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; Blessed are all those who wait for Him.

Isaiah 30:1-18

Yeah, I thought that those were a pretty beefy 18 verses. I could've kept going, but I'm just going to cut it off there for now. Let me break down why this has been impacting me so much. Basically what we have here is the children of Israel looking to find their strength in places other than in their God. He wants to take care of them, but they want to take care of themselves. They look for counsel and advice, but they never go to God with it. They make plans without ever paying any attention to the plans that God may have in mind. They have a control complex.

They also have a security complex. The next part of the passage may refer to when they were led out of Egypt and wanted to go back. If it does, think of this: the Hebrews had just seen God unleash the plagues on Egypt. They had seen the sky blotted dark, the death of the firstborn, and other ridiculous things, not to mention the fact that God parted a dang sea for them to walk through on dry land. They got out there and had one day without water and were begging to go back to Egypt. Maybe that's not even referring to the Mosaic period. Maybe it's talking about a more recent time. Either way, Israel isn't trusting God to provide; they're trusting Pharoah and Egypt to provide. They basically want to be proactive and take over the reigns of their lives.

So what is God's response?

Fine. Go ahead. Take your riches, take your wealth, and wander through the wilderness. Go to your Egyptians. You will be no help to them so they will not want you. They also won't be able to help you.

C.S. Lewis said it pretty well. There are two types of people in the world: Those who say "Thy will be done," and those who refuse to obey and to whom God says, "Fine. Have it your way." These Israelites were doing just that. And God let them do exactly what they wanted and took their success from them. Actively.

To make it even worse, God says the Israelites here have told the prophets that He sent not to tell the truth. They didn't want to hear it when God was telling them that they were going the wrong direction. They didn't want to hear that God wasn't pleased with the way they were acting and that He would deal with them if they didn't change. These things that God wanted to tell the Israelites were all for their good, but they still would rather have the lies instead of the truth.

And what was the result? God said that their disobedience and resistance to hear was like a bulge in a high wall or a breach ready to fall. What are breaches? Breaches and walls are both defenses in a time of war. An army or a city builds them in order to keep the enemy out. A breach that is built shoddily is constantly ready to fall. What happens if the breach falls? The army/city gets overrun. Easily. Same with a wall. If the wall is built sturdily, it will be level throughout. A bulge is a sign of shoddy construction and compromises the structural integrity of the wall. A bulging wall is easy to tear down, and we all know (or at least should know) what happens when the wall falls down. Destruction. Total destruction.

What's most interesting to me is who tears the wall/breach down. We live in an age where the Church likes to blame everything on the devil. "The devil messed up my life...things just won't work out! I keep praying for a breakthrough, for God to work this out for me"; I don't know how many times I've said this or heard this from someone else, but it's almost too many times to count. That's not what's happening in this passage. Jesus is actually the one who tears down the Israelites defense and allows them to be defeated. Check it out: "And He shall break it like the breaking of the potter's vessel, which is broken in pieces; He shall not spare. So there shall not be found among its fragments a shard to take fire from the hearth, or to take water from the cistern" (Isaiah 30:14). Isaiah has been called the fifth gospel for a reason; it talks about Jesus almost as much if not more than the four New Testament gospels. The whole Bible is about Jesus from cover to cover, but for the Old Testament Isaiah is extremely explicit. He shows up in this verse and ransacks a people.

So what is the solution? For the people to sit down and shut up. Return to God and rest. If they would return to Him and rest, be quiet and be confident that He is sovereign and in control, then He would fight their battles for them. He would do the footwork for them. But they would rather get on fast horses and ride away. They would rather run away from the danger. That doesn't work when God controls the danger, though...we forget that He does that. His sovereignty has no bounds. So you want to run away on fast horses, huh? Fine. I'll send fast pursuers. And they will catch you. When they do, they will utterly destroy you. You'll be stuck on the top of a hill surrounded and have nowhere to go. You'll be utterly surrounded and utterly defenseless. That's what you will get for running.

But God, who loves us enough to die for us, shows His grace and mercy again. He shows patience and promises to wait so that He can be gracious. Instead of utterly destroying an utterly unfaithful people, He gives them yet another chance. There is pain involved in getting to that point, but if the people will wait for Him, He will give them justice because He is a God of justice.

So all that to say this. I've come to the conclusion that we're just like the Israelites. We have things that concern us and so we seek counsel. Like the Israelites, we're quick to seek counsel that isn't necessarily what God would counsel us to do. If someone comes along who actually warns us that what we're doing or that path that we're going down doesn't necessarily match up with what God has revealed to us in His word, then we either gloss them over or tell them that they've lost their minds. After all, the advice they give us sounds nothing like the counsel that we like, the counsel of people who tell us what we want to hear. It sounds more like the Wisdom with a capital W that God imparts, and that stands in the face of all our fleshly desires.

It's easy to forget that it's not all about us. It's all about Jesus. It's all about His glory. It's all about His name, His fame, His grace. Attempting to take control from Jesus is mutiny. He is a sovereign God who honestly does love us. He wants the best for us. He gives us grace and mercy beyond our wildest dreams.

So why do we always seem to think our plans are better than His?

I have a bad habit of "seeking counsel." Unfortunately when I "seek counsel" without praying, I'm really looking for people to tell me the things that I want to hear. I seem to think that the more people tell me something the more right it is. Then after finding several people who are willing to regurgitate what I feed them by asking loaded questions (which I'm good at, sadly), I assume that, since I've asked a large sample, they must be right. I then ball up all of the answers I get into a little digestible clump and feed them to my soul, convincing myself that they are what God wanted to tell me. Without fail, I end up jacking up my life because of this habit. I'm not really seeking counsel. I'm seeking myself. I'm living a life of idolatry by worshiping myself. I take my words and my desires and esteem them above the words and desires of God. I seek counsel, but not of Him.

What did this do to the Israelites? Ended up being like a bulging wall. Who tore it down? Jesus. Same thing happens to me. I try and take control and overstep my bounds into the realm of God's sovereignty, and for my own good Jesus thwarts my plans. This is an act of mercy. If I, a stupid human, got what I wanted every time, my life would be terrible. If we're honest with ourselves, how many times is what we want really what we need? Not many. Run on fast horses, get fast pursuers. Try and control your life by manipulating others? Be prepared to get manipulated. If that's your method of control, be prepared to meet the bigger fish in the pond. Get ahead by scheming? Better watch your back, because it's coming for you. We reap what we sow; this isn't just Old Testament here. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you (Matthew 7:2). Those are the words of Jesus. Same idea, huh? Makes sense, Him being the same God that spoke Isaiah into being.

So let me ask this: if we claim to be waiting on God, resting in quiet confidence that He goes to battle for us and will provide for us, are we still trying to get our fingers in the mix and control things ourselves? If we are, are we really waiting? If we're doing that, are we really trusting God, or are we trusting ourselves? Maybe we should do what Jesus said and "go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly" (Matthew 6:6). If we would return to our God and rest in the quiet confidence that He is God, then maybe we would stop getting ourselves in the messes that we find ourselves in because we're convinced that the counsel we manufacture is better than the counsel He's graciously willing to give us. He knows what we need. We don't need to doubt that our God realizes we have needs that need to be fulfilled. He made us that way and knows us better than we know ourselves. He alone is able to provide us what we REALLY need.

So are we seeking His will in our lives, or are we looking for the nearest fast horse to jump on?