Yesterday I was discussing Isaiah 44 with someone, going over the questions I had written for Week 18 (2023).
He had latched onto this part, “This is what the Lord says—he who made you, who formed you in the womb” (Isaiah 44:2) and drew out the implication that as the One who created Jacob/Israel, God would know what was best for the Jews, and by implication, we should trust God because he knows what is best for us, being our Creator.
Theologically there is nothing wrong with the truth he drew from the text. Certainly as the One who created us, God knows best what is good for us and what makes us tick. This, however, is rarely the view or response that the bible calls for. It is a very self-centred view of truth.
Most times (I say “most times” but I must confess that this is an assumption even though one that I’m pretty sure is right) when God reveals the truth of who he is, it is for us to respond to him in awe, reverence and obedience.
In other words, not “this is a great truth because of how it benefits me” as much as “this is a great truth and now God is even greater (if that is possible) in my view of him and I should respond to my circumstances and to him in this (new) light.
This is why it is important to let the text speak, rather than pluck out snippets here and there and run with them.
The thing is that when you read Isaiah 44 (we were looking at vv1-23), you should see that at the core of what God wants to say to Jacob/Israel is to tell them “Do not be afraid, Jacob, my servant, Jeshurun, whom I have chosen.”
In other words, the desired response to the truths that God reveals here through Isaiah is to “not be afraid” and (by implication) trust God.
God tells the Jews not to be afraid because they belong to him; he chose them and grew them into a nation and at the end of the day he will restore them. He is not giving them up. He is the Lord Almighty, Redeemer and King, unconstrained by time, peerless. The basis of their confidence is on the nature of God. He is no idol, the product of man. He is the true God and he by nature is true.
This morning, when I thought about it, I felt that what this young man was doing when handling the text was something that has been done by his leaders countless times: taking slivers of truth from the text and forming a whole new message as the preacher chooses.
It is a difficult habit to overcome, I think, as many of us have developed this way of reading Scripture (looking for lessons to learn) rather than looking for the intent of the text and learning from the text how to respond to the truth. With narratives this is more difficult because rarely does a narrative have intent. It does, however, have a context that we can enter, and we should.
You can read Nehemiah 2-6 and put together 4 or more principles that Christians should adopt when faced with hostile opposition, or you can follow the developments as the people went to work on rebuilding the walls, the challenges they faced and how they responded to these challenges. You can ask why they persevered in the face of hostile action when, as the second generation of Jews in exile, they only have stories that the older generation told them about their heritage, their God. And then you can ask yourself where you stand in the task of building the church of our Lord and Saviour.
The bible is not a series of truths and principles that we can take and adapt for our purposes. It is a living story of the Living God’s efforts to deal with man—individuals, groups, families, tribes, nations—and teaches us how to come to grips with this God. We should listen with humility as it speaks to us.