Tonight I read Isaiah 18-20 and Exodus 33-34:9.
Isaiah 18-20 continue God’s foretelling of judgment on different nations, Cush and Egypt for these chapters. However, in the midst of this he also says that he will have mercy on those who cry out to him. Isaiah 19:20 (ESV) says…
…When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and deliver them.
A couple verses later, in Isaiah 19:22 (ESV), he then says…
And the Lord will strike Egypt, striking AND healing, and they will return to the Lord, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them.
The fact that striking and healing are spoken of as if they are both results of a single action stuck out to me. It basically reiterated the “spiritual epiphany” I talked about a few days ago, so I won’t rehash all that. Sometimes God has to tear down our pride (striking) in order to turn our focus back to him (healing). The most reassuring part is that even though the troubles we find ourselves in are usually God giving us up to our selfish pride, he still listens to our cries of despair and comes to our aid. How many times in our lives do we ignore another person’s plea for help because they “already had their chance” to receive it? Instead of helping them, we just tell them “I told you so”. How awesome it is that God isn’t anything like us.
I don’t mean to disrespect God’s word in Isaiah 20:3 because I know it has spiritual significance, but it is fairly humorous that Isaiah strolled around butt naked for three years because God told him to. Just imagine trying to explain that one to someone. Look man I know this is awkward, but God told me to.
Exodus 33-34:10 continue to tell the story of the aftermath of the golden calf. God is understandably frustrated with the Israelites. These are the same people that God saved from the Egyptians by parting the Red Sea, which has an average depth of 1,608 feet – that’s a whole bunch of water! Despite this they still turned to worshiping a piece of gold shaped like a future hamburger. Even so, he still remains steadfast to his promise to deliver them into the Land of Canaan. Exodus 33:2-3 (ESV) says…
I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.
For their sake, God has to send an angel in his place, lest he might let a few lightning bolts loose on some Israelites. You can almost picture God pacing back and forth in his throne room, smite…or not to smite? We can read these words thousands of years later and wonder how the Israelites could be so stupid after the amazing miracles that God had performed in their sight, but the reality is that God performs miracles in our lives every day. We take a breath. We stick to the earth by a mysterious force we call gravity. We orbit the Sun at just the right distance. We look at the stars. We read stories of incidents that defy all scientific explanation. And with the vastly superior understanding of the intricacies of nature and the cosmos that we have versus the Israelites, these miracles should be at least as awe inspiring to us as making dry land in the middle of a body of water. It is conceivable that I could do the same thing with a giant leaf blower. Replicating the human body is a little different story. We too turn our backs on God and worship the stuff of this world instead. We too frustrate God. Our sins separate us from God just as the sins of the Israelites separated them from God. Thousands of years later we still haven’t learned our lesson. God gives us the solution to the problem. Exodus 33:4-5 (ESV) says…
When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’”
God says to stop seeking the stuff of this world (ornaments) and turn to him. Until we stop glorifying ourselves instead of him, he isn’t going to do anything good with us. Exodus 33:13 (ESV) says…
“…show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.”
This is Moses asking God to show his will to the Israelites. It is only when we are in God’s will, instead of our own, that he is able to use us for good. It is only when we actively seek his will, just as Moses did, that he will show it to us. This is a good time for Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV)…
“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
Until we learn to actively seek his will in all things, then we are no different from the rest of the world. Moses confirms this by the question he asks God in Exodus 33:18 (ESV)…
“Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”