October 24th, 2013
Isaiah 30:15-16 — For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: and ye would not. But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee: and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be swift.
How is it that so often we fail to take God at His word?
There are so many places in the Bible where we get the message — Trust in The Lord with all your heart (Proverbs 3), Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart. (Psalms 37) — and the text above is just one of the passages where the word is passed through Isaiah. “Trust me,” God says, “I’ll take care of you.” So what happens when the going gets tough?
“When the going gets tough,”, the saying goes, “the tough get going”. And all too often, that’s exactly what happens. The Israelites flee to Egypt, couples struggling with their marriage flee to divorce, workers struggling with the job jump to the next one …
And how’s that working for us? I think it’s working for us pretty much how it worked out for the Israelites. Here’s what God told Jeremiah to tell them:
And now therefore hear the word of the Lord, ye remnant of Judah; Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; If ye wholly set your faces to enter into Egypt, and go to sojourn there; Then it shall come to pass, that the sword, which ye feared, shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine, whereof ye were afraid, shall follow close after you there in Egypt; and there ye shall die.
The Israelites went to Egypt, and disaster followed them. And that’s the central point of the message. Usually the trouble we’re dealing with is the trouble with us, so wherever we go the trouble goes with us, the disaster follows us.
I think I said, earlier in the week, that I’ve been re-reading Phillip Keller’s book “A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23”. In one passage he describes the shepherd tenderly combing through the fleece of an infested sheep, to take away whatever was causing problems. Of course for that to work, the sheep has to stand still. The picture is of the Father taking away the cause of our troubles. And we have to stand still! Thus sayeth The Lord, “Be still, and know that I am God”!