Week Eighteen-Day Three: End of Day

I know what most of you are like. You are strange. You are radical and in some ways outlandish. You believe God actually moves in human history. You have had experiences with God that some would suggest merit medication if you were to honestly describe them. You place your whole trust in a source that you have never actually seen or touched; you can’t quantify it and you have no way to control it. Yet you trust!

But you know the old saying … in an insane world, sanity can look insane. So like Isaiah, you can sometimes be a bit off-kilter. In fact, you are at your best when you refuse to be civilized. Oh sometimes you lose sight of your real identity and you begin to look just like everyone else around you. Sometimes you let yourself be civilized. But eventually you find your way back … or actually He finds you and calls you back.

Isaiah had similar “problems”. He trusted God. In the face of extraordinarily difficult circumstances, he trusted God. It made no sense, but Isaiah did not care about making sense. He cared about following God wholeheartedly. He refused to be domesticated. He would not offer pleasant words or easy solutions – to himself or others. He refused to be civilized. He waited on God; got his orders and followed. Who is Sennacherib that he should threaten that?

Sometimes sections of Scripture like the one we’ve been reading are hard to follow. Isaiah is at times looking directly into the face of the trials that Israel is currently facing and at times he’s looking into the future. Even there, it can get confusing. Sometimes he seems to be picturing the future age of Babylon, which is a few years hence from Isaiah’s writing in Chapters 33 and following, and sometimes he seems to be picturing a great future day when a glorious king will come and fully rescue his people. Got any ideas who that future king might be?

Then there are the prophetic images that fill these writings. We simply do not communicate this way today.

But when you read huge chunks of these writings together, you begin to get the rhythm. You start to fall into step with the cadence, don’t you? And then you start to hear the faint echo of the voice of the uncivilized hero rising up within you. “No, do not turn to Egypt,” it says. “Even if things get unpleasant, do not be fooled by that symbol of stability. It offers nothing real. It is an illusion. And the spiritual world which seems so illusory – that’s the only real thing. Go there for your security. Go there for your hope. Trust in God.” This is the cry of the uncivilized hero. This is the sane cry of the God-intoxicated pilgrim who is resolvedly walking the “way of holiness”.

I pray that you hear that cry tonight! I pray that you will grab your war paint and your shield and take up trust as your only option. You will need it because over the next few days we will hear the sound of Sennacherib’s chariots. They are at the gates of Jerusalem. But here’s a hint: they do not gain entrance! The hand of God is stronger than Sennacherib’s chariots.

Imagine that! Trust turned out to be the right option.

Lights out!