Bear in mind there is a timeless quality here as Isaiah celebrates the Lord. He stands in a position of one who lives in history, but whose heart is taken up into a spiritual place where time and events are symbols of God's nature. Thus, Isaiah rejoices in things yet to be as already accomplished, because in the spirit realm all things are current. The whole span of history is a single event to the Lord, and to stand with God -- to confess His glory -- includes taking His perspective on things.
Thus, the first verse highlights God's revelation as changeless. We don't have the logical framework for something which is eternal but not static, because we don't have terminology and categories for things rooted in Eternity reaching out to touch the world in many places and times at once. Yet, this is the meaning of Isaiah's declaration God's wisdom is the very definition of faithfulness and truth.
The ultimate symbol of defiance against God's revelation on earth was the great city of Babylon. The ancient Tower of Babel never rose again. The Second Babylon was destroyed, and remains a ruin to this day. While Babylon as a name and symbol arose repeatedly throughout history, and may yet again, God will smash it each time, until that final end of all things, when it will not rise again in any sense. Abraham dismissed his old urban lifestyle, adopting the nomadic existence his people despised. In the Hebrew culture, the tent-dwelling shepherd is the symbol of pure living. The only good city was that built by God. While we know Jerusalem was viewed that way, it was merely an earthly symbol of the Eternal City of Heaven. All other cities are the works of man, trying to capture the glory of Heaven without God, but failing. It must ever be so.
God has always been the refuge of those distressed. Under the Law of Moses, it was an obligation to be gracious to such people, to be generous in caring for them. This was God's own nature. Israel as a nation was once a wandering outcast people, so they were not to forget caring for outcasts themselves. Israel was meant to be a nation of refuge in God's mighty shadow, the place no pagan hand could harm. The Temple was meant to be a place of joy and celebration, enjoying the finest this world had to offer. It was a symbol of spiritual bounty, the place where people could come for truth, for substantive revelation of what God required of mankind. Once humans got in touch with God, their sorrows could cease, and they could walk in light and life. Simply letting this nation host such a place and perform such a service would give Israel all the fame any nation could want.
Because it was not to be in Isaiah's day, at least not in the sense Israel would turn to God and actually live the Law, it must be a promise for some other time. It's not as if God had failed, nor would He ever. It is the people who failed. Thus, there must ever be some far off day of redemption, because it had most certainly not yet come. Yet, for the individual who turned to the Lord, "that day" could always be at hand. The eternal principle of God's power to redeem can reach into our mundane reality in many ways, times and places, because that remains the nature of our God.
If Moab is the problem today, Moab could be dead tomorrow. He who made Moab and raised them up can unmake them. So it would be with any nation which opposed the Lord, including His own. Pride and deceit were manifestations of human wisdom, the best man could do. Not to create anything new, but to twist what God had done in some clever fashion. The Lord could bring the whole thing down to dust in a moment. Anything raised in opposition to God's ways can only fail and fall.
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By Ed Hurst
04 December 2008
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