Sunday, November 10, 2024 PM

The Folly of Trusting in Political Power

So, we're looking at the follies of Judah being rebuked, the different things they trusted in that made them feel secure or successful, and how God takes each element of their trust and shows the folly that they're engaging in.

And right now we're looking at the folly of trusting in power. So, Isaiah 3, beginning in verse 1. For behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stock and the store, the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water, the mighty man and the man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the diviner and the elder.

Chapter 3, verse 3. The captain of fifty and the honorable man, the counselor and the skillful artisan, and the expert enchanter. I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.

The people will be oppressed, every one by another and every one by his neighbor. The child will be insolent toward the elder and the base toward the honorable. When a man takes hold of his brother in the house of his father, saying, You have clothing, you be our ruler, and let these ruins be under your power.

In that day he will protest, saying, I cannot cure your ills, for in my house is neither food nor clothing. Do not make me a ruler of the people. For Jerusalem stumbled, and Judah is fallen, because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of his glory.

The look on their countenance witnesses against them, and they declare their sin as Sodom. They do not hide it. Woe to their soul, for they have brought evil upon themselves. Say to the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.

Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him. As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, those who lead you cause you to err and destroy the way of your paths.

So we were talking about this rebuke of many follies happens in the section of Isaiah where these are sermons for a difficult present. The difficult present is made up of Judah's unfaithfulness and the threat of Assyria.

Assyria was the world power at the time to which everybody looked. Assyria had the most political power, the biggest military power, the most wealth. They were vicious and cruel. They had a standing army of mercenaries that were sadistic.

When Jonah refused to go to Nineveh to preach God's message, it was because he hated the Assyrians, and Nineveh was their capital. He did not want to go and preach God's message to the people of Nineveh because he reckoned on them hearing the word, repenting of their sin, and God sparing them.

He didn't want them to be spared, he wanted them to be absolutely destroyed. That was his hope because he hated them so much. So, the Assyrians are the great threat on the world stage. Is Judah going to survive?

Is the city of Jerusalem going to make it through this difficult present? What will the people put their confidence in? Oh, well, they have a lot of money. Oh, they have a big military. Oh, they have many idols.

They have a rich culture and a proud history. Will any of these things see them through? They do not. They will not. Only the Lord will be their deliverer. Now, you'll find as we go through Isaiah, chapters 1 through 35, Assyria is the big threat on the scene, and God will continually rebuke his people for trusting in idols, or in money, or in military alliances, and so on.

And you'll eventually come to Isaiah, chapters 36 and 37, when the big boogeyman of Assyria shows up. And the armies of Assyria show up at the very gates of Jerusalem. And when they show up, Isaiah and King Hezekiah and the people humble themselves, cry out to the Lord for deliverance.

And it's only the Lord who delivers them and rescues them out of the hand of the Assyrian king. So, that's where the first 35 chapters are leading, is that big historical showdown between Assyria and Judah.

And we get to read about that in chapters 36 and 37. By the time we get there, Assyria has rolled over everything in Judah, taking out their fortified cities, dismantling their economy, dismantling their military to where they have nothing left.

Judah has nothing left. They're all hiding out in Jerusalem. Food is running low, and they're scared that they're going to be destroyed by the Assyrians. That's how bad everything got. But that brought them to the point where they had no one else to turn to and nothing else to do but to turn to the Lord and trust in Him.

So, way back here in Isaiah 3, the prophet is preaching against trusting in these things that will so easily be swept out of the way by the Assyrians and the powers that God will bring against Judah in judgment.

The Politics of Disaster

Now, last time we read verses 1 through 7 and thought about the politics of disaster. The Lord takes away. The Lord gives until nobody wants it anymore. He takes away all the strength, and He gives to the people weakness.

He takes away the stock in the store, the food reserves. He takes away the mighty man and the man of war, the judge and the prophet. He takes away the elder and the captain. He takes away all the people who know how to run the city, how to run the society, the people with intelligence, the people with character, the people with experience, the people who know how to run things.

God takes away all the strength, and He gives to the society weakness. And so, what does He put in? He puts in children where princes ought to be. He puts babies where rulers ought to be. And so that the outcome is that the neighbors, everybody oppresses one another.

And there is an overturning of the natural created order of things, so that the children are insolent to their elders, and the lowly are insolent to the honorable. In this great moment of chaos where weakness presides, then we have this little story to bring it home.

And we envision that everything is in ruins. But there's a man who knows someone ought to be in charge, and so he goes to his brother who's in his father's house. Who better to be in charge? Not me. I don't want to be in charge of this mess.

I'll pick my brother. Because if my brother's in charge, that'll be good for me. And he goes to his brother, and he says, Hey, you're clothed and in your right mind. Why don't you be our ruler? You can be the ruler over this whole ruin.

And so he says, let these ruins be under your power. And then his brother says, in verse 7,. In that day he will protest, and he will say, I cannot cure your ills, for in my house is neither food nor clothing.

Meaning I'm in the same situation that you are. Do not make me a ruler of the people. So when times get tough, we see the temptation to look for yet another political leader. What's going to solve our problems?

You know, we think about our situation in the United States of America, and we sure are blessed, and things aren't as good as they could be. The sense among many is that things are worse than they used to be.

And so if we see the pattern, the pattern is always, Well, if we could just get another political leader in here, then things will get better. That's the temptation. And you know that temptation is so strong that it continues all the way down to a scenario like this, where people don't have any food or clothing in their homes anymore, and it's just a bunch of ruin everywhere.

The temptation is still there when things are in absolute ruin, to look around and say, Oh, if we could just find somebody to be our ruler, then everything will be fixed. But that shows the folly of trusting in political power.

That's not where the salvation is. That's not where the hope is. That's not where the help is. So this man rightly refuses. He's no savior. He can't help. Now we move on to verses 8 through 12. We've seen the politics of disaster.

The Principles of Damnation

But in verses 8 through 12, we see the principles of damnation. Now verses 8 and 9, the prophet Isaiah explains what has happened. For Jerusalem stumbled and Judah is fallen, because their tongue and their doings are against the Lord to provoke the eyes of his glory.

So what was the problem? Did they fail to execute an effective diplomatic strategy? Did they fail to build a robust economy? What was it? Did they not have deep enough, rich enough culture? Did they allow different traditions to slip too far away so that they were impoverished culturally?

What is their problem? Why did this society fail? What is the problem here? Here's the problem. Their tongue and their doings are against the Lord. They oppose God. That's the problem. That's the problem.

As everyone's looking around for really what has been the cause of all of our ails, what has brought us down to this terrible problem, what's the problem? These people have turned against the Lord by their tongue and by their doings.

By what they say and by what they do, they show themselves to be opposed to God. And it says that they are against the Lord to provoke the eyes of his glory. The glory of God, his weightiness, his brightness, his power, his character, they provoke him.

So that when he sees them, he sees them by the full weight and fire of his offended glory. And are they concerned about it? Verse 9, the look on their countenance witnesses against them. You know how it is.

When you're talking to a young person rebuking a child or dealing with somebody who's in trouble, you look at their face. Are they receiving this well? Are they responding correctly? Well, the look on their countenance, the look on their face witnesses against them.

They're not hearing it. They're not believing it. They're not penitent. They're not concerned. They're not sorrowful. It says, they declare their sin as Sodom. They do not hide it. You know, Sodom and Gomorrah, infamous for their sin, so that we have our word Sodomy today.

But you know that Sodom was proud of their sin. Hence, we have pride parades today. It's another way of saying Sodomy. So, Sodom and Gomorrah were proud of their sin. They were proud of their sexual abominations, and they paraded that.

They promoted that. And so, when we have this analogy here, God is saying just like Sodom was proud of their abominations and their sin, so also Judah and Jerusalem are not trying to hide their sin. Their face shows that they don't think that they've done anything wrong.

I'm just being me. I'm just pursuing what makes me happy. And so, the prophet says, woe to their soul. Now, the word woe is a word that involves both lament and warning. When Jesus said woe to the Pharisees, he was also not just warning them, but lamenting over their coming destruction.

Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Woe to their soul, for they have brought evil upon themselves. So, the problem with Judah and Jerusalem is that they are in rebellion against the Lord. They are in rebellion against the one who made covenant with them.

And they provoke the eyes of his glory. Just like Adam and Eve fell short of the glory of God and tasted death in their rebellion, so also Israel, in their covenant with God, suffers curse and separation and death.

They are as bold and shameless as Sodom, and yet, and yet, it's worse. Now, Sodom didn't receive the word of the Lord. Sodom didn't receive the revelation of God. Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim were not brought into covenant with the Lord, where he revealed himself to them.

But, Jerusalem and Judah had all of that advantage, had all of that word of God, had all of that history, and yet they are as defiant against God as Sodom was. If those who live without the law are so judged, how much the more those who have the law and the oracles.

Paul's point in Romans 2 and 3. So, should not Israel have more shame? Shouldn't they be more sensitive to these matters? And yet, they are rebellious. They do not hide it, so woe to their soul. The word soul, in the Hebrew, being nephash, the living, breathing, inner person, the very life.

Their very life is in danger because of their words and their deeds in the rebellion against God. In verses 10 and 11, we find the surefire wisdom of the covenant that God made with them. Verse 10, say to the righteous that it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.

Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for the reward of his hands shall be given him. This is very basic. This is the ABCs for Israel. The basics have to be stated all over again to Judah and Jerusalem.

Because God had set before them blessing and cursing, life and death. He told Israel, keep covenant with me. Do the things I'm telling you to do. Follow my commandments. Walk in my ways. And if you do, you will have blessing.

If you do not, you will have cursing. If you do, you will have life. If you do not, you will have death. In this, the covenant framework reflects the original creation. When God's covenants are responding to what was there in creation.

Now that there was fallenness and sin in the created order, God makes the covenants as a response to that. And does so in a way that anticipates the coming of Messiah. Do you remember that life and death were also set before Adam and Eve?

When he said to, you may freely eat of all these trees in the garden. But of this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. And the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

So life and death were set before Adam and Eve. Long before they were set before Israel. But the basics remain the same. The covenant is an expression of what was original in creation. When we are made in God's image, we are made in God's image, made for his word, made for his glory.

Life is found in communion with God. Death is found in separation from God. Blessing is found in obedience. Cursing is found in disobedience. So in the covenant that God made with Israel, as Israel stands in where Adam was, blessing is found in covenant faithfulness, and cursing is found in covenant breaking.

Which is why we rejoice in our Savior, Jesus Christ, the last Adam and the better Israel, because his covenant faithfulness to God always brings us blessing, and he has borne the curse and taken away the curse, Galatians 3 says.

Because he will never break covenant, and we are in him. Verse 12, we see the symptoms of wrath. As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, those who lead you cause you to err and destroy the way of your paths.

So there's a lamentation here. Look how bad things have gotten. How can you tell that God has taken away strength and given weakness? What are the symptoms that things have gone awry? Well, the children are in charge, and they oppress.

The women are ruling what happened to the men. Are they dead? Are they absent? Something has gone awry. Leaders are intentionally directing the people into destruction. They're intentionally making it worse.

This is a sign that things have gone awry. Now, what's going on here in the chaos of the breakdown of the covenant is applicable to everyone who's made in the image of God. There's a natural order of human society, and we know what that is from Genesis 1 and 2.

We know what that looks like, and the primary human relationship was marriage, husband and wife. Any breakdown of marriage is going to affect the entirety of society because all of human society was encapsulated first in a marriage, in the husband, Adam, and the wife, Eve.

Now we have an overturning of all those types of dynamics and relationships here in Israel, so we can tell that something has gone dreadfully wrong. And we relate to, I think, the symptoms of this passage as we look around as subjects of a late-stage empire, America, as she has flailing attempts to try to retain power and prominence and position, we can relate to the temptation to trust in political power.

Oh, hey, that person's clothed, and I think he's in his right mind. You're going to rescue us. Oh, no, you didn't. Okay. You're going to rescue us, right? And things just keep on crumbling, right? So the hope is not political.

The solution is not political. We would desire there to be righteous rulers because when the wicked rule, the people groan. We would desire there to be the better option, right? If you give me the choice between the lesser of two evils, of course I'll choose the lesser of two evils if I have to choose.

However, the hope is not there. In Christ, we are a kingdom amongst the nations. Jesus, when he talked about his kingdom, he said it's not like a regular kingdom where you can have a border and you say, okay, here's the outline of the kingdom, here's this political border, and if you cross over a step, then you're in a whole other jurisdiction.

He said you're not going to find that. It's not here it is or there it is, but the kingdom is in your midst, he says. In Christ, we are a kingdom among the nations. He also told us that we are a brotherhood among families.

He said that a man's enemies may be members of his own household. When his mother and brothers came to take him home, he pointed to those with him. He said, behold, my mother and my brothers are right here, the ones who are doing the will of God.

So he wasn't denying the fact of the creational family, but he was noting that just like there is a kingdom amongst the nations and we have a higher loyalty to Christ, so also there is a brotherhood amongst families.

And so sometimes within the same creational family, husband and wife and children, some will believe and follow Jesus and some will not. And Jesus said that the loyalty must be to him first. And he talked about those who ended up having to lose family on account of him and how blessed they would be in their sacrifice for him.

So we understand that there's a proper order to the world and we understand that Christ as king, he's the one who has the righteous robes. We understand that he is our elder brother. He is the one who has been selected to rule, and he has taken the reins.

And as he takes the reins of these ruins, he presides over a recreation. He presides over his kingdom, and he will rule and reign from the right hand of the father until all of his enemies are made a footstool for his feet, and then he will return.

So he's our solution. He's our savior. He's the one we turn to and say, we have a leader. We don't need a new leader. We have a leader. And anybody else who comes into power, positions of power, who we're going to pray for, we recognize ultimately they're accountable to the king of kings.

They're accountable to the Lord of lords. And we're going to judge how everything unfolds according to the light of Christ, not by comparison with previous administrations. Does that make sense? So that's where our hope is going to be.

Whether as subjects or rulers or citizens or as civil servants, however we serve Christ, whatever faculty we're in, Christ is Lord and Christ is king. I like it that Jesus tells us that following his instructions is not burdensome.

I find that encouraging. He says that keeping his commandments is not burdensome. That when he says to follow him, he says,. And then he talks about being yoked to him in a field, which sounds like hard work.

But if we're with Christ, there is a resting in him. There is a partnering with him where he's taking the lead and we're following the lamb wherever he goes. Life in him truly is not anxious. We may look around and see imperial ruins in our own world, but we're serving Christ.

So we're busy building kingdom structures in our families, in our churches, and in our societies. We're called to build kingdom structures within the imperial ruins. And that's why Christ's kingdom has no end.

Not like the kingdoms of men that crumble and are shaken, his kingdom has no end. It just keeps growing and growing like that mountain. It just spreads until it fills the entirety of the world. We'll leave it there.

Next time, we'll look at the last section where the follies are being rebuked concerning wealth, the trust in wealth, mind you, in verses 13 through 26. Well, let's close by singing the doxology together.