OLD TESTAMENT

– A narrative on Isaiah 6:9-13

Isaiah (and other prophets) were given impossible jobs; to deliver a message which God knows will be rejected.

This passage, which was quoted by Jesus in Matthew 13, does not imply that God is vindictively hardening people so that they cannot turn to him. Rather, this is a description of what is inevitable, not what is determined, apart from, or against, people’s own will. The people are so blind and prejudiced that they can’t receive the truth when it is set before them.

Isaiah’s clear message (people even despised it as simplistic, 28:9,10), hardened their hearts further because they had already decided to ignore it or reject it. They were not prepared to listen, so they were unable to “hear”.

That was the fate of many prophets. People despised the message so they shot the messenger; but they could not accuse God of not having warned them of the coming tragedy that the prophets foresaw.

Christians face a similar scenario. Their message is not one which all people want to hear. But the task is to explain it clearly and faithfully and with as much cultural relevance as possible (Ezekiel used visual aids to enforce his message!). Some people will respond. There will be a harvest, and we should look for it. But we should not be surprised if some reject it scornfully and forcefully.

Enlarge your vision and grow

Isaiah 54,55

Pioneer missionary William Carey used 54:2 as the text for a sermon in which his famous dictum was first used. “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” Isaiah’s vision is expansionist, as he sees the exile coming to an end and the Jews getting ready for a restoration to the Promised Land.

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, many had been predicting a period of church expansion if not revival. The growing interest of ordinary people in the broadly spiritual dimension to life, the sense of lostness and purposelessness, which grips many and stimulates an ultimately unsatisfying race for possessions and experiences, fuelled that idea.

The growth movement has devised any number of potential strategies for taking advantage of this situation. Growth was never intended in the New Testament to be a private spiritual matter; it was intended to be numerical as the disciples took the gospel into all the world and many were added to their number.

However, as many of its exponents would admit, this passage from Isaiah provides us with the only starting point for growth. Before anything can happen, even if revival and growth are promised in writing across the sky, God’s people must first turn back to him and continue to depend on him.

In 55:1-7, the prophet describes first a necessary thirst for God himself, not just for what God can do or give. He is the source of all spiritual life (the waters). With that thirst comes an acknowledgement of our own spiritual brokenness in the call to “seek him while he may be found”.

And following that, our dependence on him and not on our techniques and accumulated expertise, is to be absolute, for his ways are beyond our understanding and his strategies will not always follow our neat formulae (55:8,9).

Love and serve the LORD