I listened to the news on the way into the office this morning. It was about 10 minutes, and that was enough. After every election, part of the country wakes up relieved, and part of it wakes up afraid. Give it a few years, and they trade places. Meanwhile wars grind on in places most of us couldn’t have found on a map ten years ago, prices keep climbing, and every screen in the house is telling you whom to blame. It’s an anxious way to live, and Christians feel it as much as anyone.
Isaiah’s first readers knew the feeling. In the thirty years after Jeroboam II died, the northern kingdom of Israel crowned six kings and lost four of them to assassins. Judah’s king, Ahaz, had stripped the temple of its silver and gold and sent it to Assyria with a plea, March up and save me, 2 Kings 16:7. Judges took bribes. The poor couldn’t get a hearing. And the most powerful army on earth was moving south, town by town, until it stood close enough to Jerusalem to shake its fist at the city, Isaiah 10:32.
If anyone ever had reason to believe the world was spinning out of control, it was God’s people. Isaiah 9 and 10 is what He told them.
The ax doesn’t swing itself
The center of the passage is a boast. The king of Assyria looks back over the nations he has flattened and says, I have done this by my own strength and wisdom, for I am clever, Isaiah 10:13. Taking a kingdom, he says, was like reaching into an unguarded nest and gathering the eggs. Nobody flapped a wing.
God’s answer is a question any farmer could follow. Does an ax exalt itself above the one who chops with it? Does a saw magnify itself above the one who saws with it? Isaiah 10:15.
Assyria was real, and its power was real. But God called that empire the rod of my anger, 10:5. The superpower everyone feared was a tool in someone else’s hand, and when the work it had been given was finished, it would answer for its own pride, 10:12.
That doesn’t make every ruler God’s friend or every outcome good. Assyria was cruel, and God judged it for that. What it means is simpler and more comforting. Nothing happening in the world this week has slipped out of God’s reach. The nations make their plans and fight their wars, and over all of it sits a Lord who is never surprised and never outvoted.
Be careful where you lean
Isaiah has a word for trust that I love. The word he uses here in chapter 10 is different than the usual Old Testament word for trust. On that day, he says, God’s people will no longer depend on the one who struck them, but they will faithfully depend on the Lord, 10:20. The Hebrew word, sha’an, means to lean your whole weight on something. It’s used twice in the verse, and the repetition is the point.
Ahaz leaned on Assyria, and Assyria turned around and hit him. Israel leaned on its alliance with Aram, and Isaiah lists Aram among the mouths that devoured Israel, 9:12. Every crutch they reached for broke under them.
We are tempted in the same way. It’s easy to believe that the right leader, the right party, or the right policy will finally make things safe. How many have fallen into that trap over the last 10 years? Christians can vote, serve, speak up and work for good government, and many should. The danger comes when a political cause becomes the thing we lean on. Then we’re crushed when it loses and proud when it wins, and either way our peace rises and falls with the news. Only one place will hold your whole weight.
Start with your own house
For most of Isaiah 9, the prophet is preaching about the northern kingdom. He exposes its pride, its misleading leaders, and its civil war, where brother tore at brother, 9:20–21. You can almost hear his audience in Jerusalem agreeing with him. Those people up north had it coming.
Then he turns. Woe to those enacting crooked statutes and writing oppressive laws to keep the poor from getting a fair trial, 10:1–2. No northern city is named. The questions that follow are addressed to you: What will you do on the day of punishment? Who will you run to for help? 10:3.
In a season of outrage, it’s very easy to see corruption only on the other side. Isaiah won’t let us do that. Before the people of God talk about the nation’s sins, they have to ask where 10:1–4 touches their own dealings with the weak, the widow and the people who can’t push back.
He has a word for the rest of us as well. The leaders of the people mislead them, and those they mislead are swallowed up, 9:16. Isaiah blames the leaders, but he doesn’t excuse the followers. The prophets of his day had become tails wagging at the crowd’s demand, 9:15. Be careful whose voice you let shape your fears. Hold every voice up to Scripture, from whichever direction it comes.
Do not fear
If you’re feeling uneasy this morning, read this: My people who dwell in Zion, do not fear Assyria, though they strike you with a rod and raise their staff over you as the Egyptians did. In just a little while my wrath will be spent, Isaiah 10:24–25.
God doesn’t tell them the blows aren’t real. He tells them the blows are numbered. Then He reminds them of Gideon’s little army routing Midian, and Moses lifting his staff over the sea, 10:26. He has broken rods before.
And He did it again. In 701 BC the Assyrian army camped outside Jerusalem, and that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians, 2 Kings 19:35. Less than a century later Nineveh itself fell, and the empire that had terrified the world was gone. Isaiah had already pictured it: a great forest, chopped to the ground by the Lord God of Armies, 10:33–34.
Empires that look permanent never are.
Look to Jesus
Right before this passage stands one of the best-known promises in the Bible. For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders, Isaiah 9:6. His name is Mighty God. The dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever, 9:7.
Every government in Isaiah 9 and 10 fails. Israel’s kings murder one another. Judah’s courts rob the poor. Assyria rises, boasts, and is cut down. And one government never fails, because it rests on the shoulders of the Child.
When that Child grew up and stood before Pilate, the most powerful official in Judea told Him, in effect, that His life was in Roman hands. Jesus answered, You would have no authority over me at all if it hadn’t been given you from above, John 19:11. It’s the ax and the hand all over again. Pilate had real authority and used it wickedly, and the hand above him was using even that to save the world, Acts 2:23.
That King is reigning now. Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, Hebrews 12:28.
What this asks of you
Fear is a poor counselor, and you will hear a lot from fear over the next few years. Instead of letting it dictate to. you, …
Lean your full weight on the Lord. Take your political responsibilities seriously, and then refuse to let your peace depend on how they turn out.
Pray for the people who govern you, whoever they are. Paul told Timothy to pray for kings and all those who are in authority, 1 Timothy 2:2, and the king in his day was Nero.
Look hard at your own house before you point at someone else’s. Deal honestly, treat the powerless fairly, and let the church be the place where people who disagree about everything else still sit at the same table.
Turn off the noise sometimes and open your Bible instead. For me, I have no plans of listening to the news over the next few days and will probably stay off my social media feeds as much as I can. Maybe we should all do that.
And when you do tune in, and the headlines make you afraid, remember who is holding the ax. The nations still answer to Him. For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. It still is.
From Fear to Faith | fromfearto.faith