Isaiah gives an oracle against the Assyrians. They have thought that their own might has
brought them to this place of preeminence in the region and in doing so they
failed to realize that the Lord Himself has done these things. Although they neither recognize Him nor
worship Him, He has given them the nations they have conquered. The promise, however, is that soon they
themselves will be taken as conquest. The
words, “I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will
turn you back on the way by which you came”, refer to the Assyrians practice of
doing the same, driving the conquered people like animals. So will the Lord do to them. He does not promise that the next season of
time will be easy for the people of Israel, but that there will be a remnant of
David who will take root downward and bear fruit upward. That very night the angel of the Lord
destroyed 185,000 Assyrians and the king chose to vacate the field and go back
home to Nineveh. Wise move.
Having heard His teaching with authority unlike any scribe
and seen the healings of the leper, the centurion’s servant and the diverse
sick and lame in Capernaum, is it any wonder people, even here a scribe, want
to attach themselves to Jesus? He,
however, is not particularly interested in the self-called, especially those
who are called simply because of miracles.
Who He is matters more than what He does. What He does only serves to point to the
greater reality of who He is. His disciples
must have been quite self-satisfied with their good judgment when they got in
the boat after all they had just seen and heard in the last couple of days and
that they were chosen and others sent away.
Their self-satisfaction surely went by the wayside when they panicked in
fear and Jesus rebuked both the wind and waves and them for having little
faith. They were left asking themselves
if even they knew who this was.
The generation in the wilderness saw amazing things. They had seen the plagues in Egypt and experienced
the incredible Passover night and the next day when the Egyptians begged them
to go and gave them lovely parting gifts to boot. They saw the Red Sea parted and passed through
on dry ground while Pharaoh’s army drowned when it closed back up. They experienced God’s provision of manna and
they heard the voice of God in the apocalyptic epiphany on the mountain when He
gave the Commandments. They saw the
pillar of cloud by day and fire by night leading them. They also grumbled about provision and privation
and they made golden calves as their gods when Moses tarried on the
mountain. It was certainly not all
sweetness and light. In the time of
waiting to come into the land there were still expectations of faithfulness, no
matter how difficult the going or how long the journey. Paul warns the church to not make similar
mistakes in their waiting but to persevere in all things. I know I have often been guilty of just this
sin. We are to have faith in all
circumstances that He is sovereign over all things and in all things there is
an opportunity to glorify Him.
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