Isaiah 30:18 Therefore the Lord will wait, that He may be gracious to you; and therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him.
19 For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you.
20 And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, but your eyes shall see your teachers.
21 Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.
22 You will also defile the covering of your images of silver, and the ornament of your molded images of gold. You will throw them away as an unclean thing; you will say to them, “Get away!”
23 Then He will give the rain for your seed with which you sow the ground, and bread of the increase of the earth; it will be fat and plentiful. In that day your cattle will feed in large pastures.
24 Likewise the oxen and the young donkeys that work the ground will eat cured fodder, which has been winnowed with the shovel and fan.
25 There will be on every high mountain and on every high hill rivers and streams of waters, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.
26 Moreover the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord binds up the bruise of His people and heals the stroke of their wound.
Therefore the Lord will wait, that He may be gracious to you; and therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him. We always think about the effort we put into waiting for God to act, but how many of us consider that God must wait on us? We want God to do all the heavy lifting doing everything for us without any commitment on our part. Spoiler alert: God doesn’t operate that way!
Deuteronomy 11:13- 17 ‘And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil. And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be filled.’ Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, lest the Lord’s anger be aroused against you, and He shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.
When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they were a ragtag lot with a few true believers and a bunch of idolaters who had mixed the Egyptian pantheon of gods in with memories of Yaweh to create a syncretistic pseudo-religion. In short, these people were a spiritual mess, and God was fully aware of the fact. Throughout the Law of Moses, God continually advised the Israelites that blessings depended on heart attitude and obedience. God was unwilling to settle for the kind of half-hearted attempts at worship the Israelites had made in the past, for He knew full well that many of these people simply viewed him as one more local deity who might hand out blessings if sufficiently propitiated.
The Creator of the Universe, Melech-ha Olam, had never been interested in fake piety and therefore gave the Israelites specific guidelines to help them learn how to live righteously and how to worship Him. Sadly, God’s people had their fingers in their ears and were doing everything they could to ignore His commands.
When Isaiah is giving this prophecy, the situation is worsening in the two kingdoms. The Assyrians conquer the Northern Kingdom in 740-722 B.C. and move on to threaten Judah as well. But when God strikes 185,000 Assyrian soldiers dead overnight and when the Assyrian commander hears rumors of attacks in other places, the Assyrian army leaves. Sadly, there are those in Jerusalem who assume that God will never allow Jerusalem to be conquered, even though they have filled Jerusalem with pagan idols and some civic leaders are burning their own children as live offerings to Molech in the Valley of Tophet. It is against this background of political upheaval that Isaiah sounds his prophecies of warning and hope.
Actions have consequences, and God wants His people to clearly understand that fact. Note that God’s blessings are conditional, depending on citizens of Judah destroying their idols, rejecting false gods. Isaiah does not sugar coat anything. The Judeans have been steadfastly ignoring God’s prophets, and that must stop. The Judeans will suffer for their misdeeds; however, God promises to send true-hearted teachers.
20 And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, but your eyes shall see your teachers.
21 Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.
There is a Latin phrase quid pro quo, meaning that an exchange takes place in which each of two parties gives something to gain something else. God’s quid pro quo has always been simple: obedience. Adam and Eve sinned through disobedience. Noah, Samuel, and many others found grace in God’s eyes through obedience. When we worship God and honor Him in our hearts through obedience, our actions release God’s blessings. God wants to bless us; however, disobedience and rebellion block the way.
Make no mistake! God is just as interested in our obedience and worship of Him today as He has ever been. There’s a Christian song that says, “Guard your heart, guard your heart. Don’t trade it for treasure or give it away.” When we pursue wealth or power or social position, we are trading our hearts away. Proverbs 4:23 advises us, “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”
Today, are we guarding our hearts? Are we careful about the media to which we expose ourselves? Are we careful about videos, online posts, TV shows or anything else that might imprint images onto our brains and hearts?
God is waiting to be gracious to us, but we must wait for Him as well. Why not allow the Lover of your soul to bless you? Wait for God, for God’s quid pro quo is simple: we give Him our whole-hearted devotion and He gives us eternal life.
PRAYER: Father God thank You for loving us and caring for us. Lord, help us to truly wait for You and to worship You. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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