Psalm 137

The writer of this psalm was lamenting his captivity in Babylon and his exile from the homeland he loved, the nation of Israel. His captors tormented him by telling him to “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” He responded, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

I imagine there are many people in the United States who’ve been asking themselves that same question over the past six days or so. To them the U.S. Feels like a foreign country compared to the nation they grew up in. They see the results of this presidential election as a confirmation that they’re living in a foreign land and that those who oppose them are now mocking them. My hope is that their outlook on our current situation and our national leaders changes, for their good and for the good of the country.

The ongoing battle in the United States is not really a partisan battle. It’s not a battle between Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. It’s a battle over ideals and core values. These values are represented differently by members of all parties. When people who have values different than mine are put in positions of influence and power, this nation sometimes seems like a foreign land to me as well. But I must remember that I’m not in a foreign land, no matter how I feel. This is my homeland, and although many of our leaders have convictions and values that differ dramatically from mine, they are my fellow countryman. Most of them, with the exception of a few radical nuts, don’t want to see our country go down in flames. They just have very different opinions about how to make our nation prosperous than I do.

One of the great things about the United States is that we don’t settle our disputes by firing weapons at one another, but by presenting persuasive arguments and going to the polls. And for citizens who are followers of Christ, we go to our knees in prayer. That’s our call to arms. And I must also remember that my allegiance is first and foremost to the Kingdom of God, and then to the United States of America.

Isaiah 28

28:16   Therefore thus says the Lord God,
“Behold, I am the one who has laid as a
foundation in Zion,
a stone, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone of a
sure foundation:
Whoever believes will never be dismayed.”

God often used examples from the construction world to illustrate His relationship with Israel and with His Church. In the book of Amos, He tells the nation of Israel like a wall that’s out of plumb, because they veered away from His standards. In the New Testament, Jesus (a carpenter by trade) tells his listeners a wise man builds his house on a foundation of stone as opposed to sand.

In the New Testament, Peter, quoting from this passage in Isaiah, likened individual members of the Body of Christ to stones that make up a spiritual house, with Jesus serving as the cornerstone:

   The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone
and
A stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense.

Last night my wife and I were talking with our children about the persecution that many Christians around the world suffer. The passage we were reading together was from John 16:20: “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” Page and I explained to them that in many places around the world Christians suffer and are persecuted for being followers of Christ and for rejecting other religions and belief systems. Our daughter, Gene’ was particularly puzzled by this. She couldn’t understand why some people hate Christians and Christianity in the world.

That’s a very good question. In her mind, the teachings of Jesus make sense, and if followed would benefit the world. When she thinks of the teachings of Jesus, she thinks of precepts such as, “Do unto others as you would  have them do unto you;” and “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” We explained to her that some people have a negative view of Christianity because they know people who claim to be Christians, but who don’t accurately represent Christ. Others form negative views because their opinions of right and wrong don’t line up with Scripture. They claim they want Christians to be “tolerant” of others, but they don’t show the same tolerance toward followers of Christ and their views.

Ever since the first century people have stumbled over Jesus. God made him to be Cornerstone, the most important stone in the whole building. As long as people resist Jesus as Messiah and King, they will stumble. But whoever believes in him will never be put to shame.

Isaiah 26

26:16   O Lord, in distress they sought you;
they poured out a whispered prayer
when your discipline was upon them.
Like a pregnant woman
who writhes and cries out in her pangs
when she is near to giving birth,
so were we because of you, O Lord;
we were pregnant, we writhed,
but we have given birth to wind.
We have accomplished no deliverance
in the earth.
and the inhabitants of the world have
not fallen.

As I write this on a Monday morning, our nation awaits another day’s opening of the New York Stock Exchange. For almost two weeks now our nation, and for that matter the world, has held it’s breath every day about this time as it waits for the opening numbers. There has been cause for some optimism over the weekend as pundits have speculated that the Dow might be up as much as 300 points at the opening bell. We could use a little good news.

As I read Isaiah 26 this morning, I couldn’t help looking at the passage through the lens of our current financial situation. I’m reminded how fragile the tangible things of this world are. A lot can change even in a 24 hour period. And I know that many people are turning to the Lord for help. That’s what we do. “O Lord, in distress they sought you.” The truth is, we seek God in our distress. Like Peter, as he was sinking in the Sea of Galilee, we call out to Jesus to save us. But Peter’s prayer wasn’t a “whispered prayer.” The Bible says that Peter cried out, “Lord, save me!” A whisper wouldn’t do. Normally people whisper when they don’t want others to hear them. Peter didn’t care who heard him call out for help. He was going down, and Jesus was his only chance.

I hope during this crisis, we’ll be wise enough to cry out to God in humility for help. We shouldn’t expect Him to just bail us out of a mess that we created, but He does want us to call out to Him in our despair. No doubt there will be hearings in the future to determine whether the crisis was a result of greed or ignorance or naiveté or neglect or corruption, or all of the above; but whatever the reasons from a human perspective, we are in distress, and it wouldn’t be a stretch at all to go ahead and assume this is part of the disciplining hand of God on a nation that acts as if we don’t really need Him to survive and prosper. Our desperate need of God’s provision, protection, and blessing have never been more obvious than in the past few years.

So, let’s not whisper any prayers. Let’s cry out for all to hear. We’re not ashamed to call Him Lord. To use Isaiah’s analogy, the writhing in pain may not quickly end. But when the child is finally born and the pain has diminished, I pray we haven’t given birth to the wind. Instead, I hope the lessons we’ve learned will lead us to turn to God and depend upon Him. If we depend upon Wall Street or the Fed or a great housing market, we’ll face similar days ahead. It’s just a matter of time.

For now, God is giving us every chance to humble ourselves and call out to Him. One day, His patience will run out. Then our only option will be to go to Plan B.

PLAN B:
26:20-21       Come, my people, enter your chambers
and shut your doors behind you;
hide yourselves for a little while
until the fury has passed by.
For behold, the Lord is coming out from
His place
To punish the inhabitants of the earth
for their iniquity.

Isaiah 22

22:5    The Lord, the Lord Almighty, has a
day
of tumult and trampling and
terror
in the Valley of Vision,
a day of battering down walls
and of crying out to the
mountains.

There’s no way to sugarcoat that message.

I realize many people believe that the message of the Bible is a negative message, filled with a bunch of rules. They picture God as a malevolent dictator, who takes joy in making people miserable. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is the giver of life. Jesus called Satan the one who came to steal and to kill and to destroy.

God loves us enough to save us from the devastating effects of sin. So He tells us, as He told Isaiah, the truth.

If I were diagnosed with cancer, I would expect my doctor to tell me the truth about my condition. I wouldn’t expect him to tell me what I wanted to hear, or what might make me feel good about myself. I would expect him to say, “Here’s where you are. Here are your options. If this is not treated, you will die. The good news is, effective treatments are available and we’ve caught this early enough to do something about it. But we can’t fool around. Time is critical. We have to get going.”

For me to hear something bad about myself is never pleasant, but I can live with bad news when there’s a solution. And the news about our sinful condition without Christ is very bad; but pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t make the cancer go away on its own. We needed a cure, and God provided healing in Christ.

Even though Isaiah wrote those words before God sent His Son into the world, his message wasn’t only one of judgment and destruction. It’s a message also filled with hope if they’d turn to the Lord Almighty. But in this chapter, before they hear the good news, they must be confronted with the bad.

Isaiah 21

Babylon was a force to be reckoned with in Isaiah’s day. Nations trembled at the thought of being overrun by the Babylonians. That’s sort of hard for us to imagine since ancient Babylon is now modern day Iraq. But to the ancient world, the force of Babylon would be like combining the fire power of the United States with the sheer numbers of China. But no nation is so invulnerable that they can’t fall.

Isaiah describes a watchman on the city wall, watching for messengers to bring news about the state of Babylon. Finally, the watchman sees horsemen in the distance. Then the watchman hears the news:

Isaiah 9b:   “Fallen, fallen is Babylon; and all the carved images of her gods he has shattered to the ground.”

It was a good day for virtually every other nation when Babylon fell.

When I read passages such as this one, I wonder what will be the fate of the United States. We have such potential to do good in the world, and although news agencies emphasize the bad more than the good, I know we’ve made a positive difference in so many places and to so many people.

Today, as we’re in the midst of what experts are calling the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, one of the things that disturbs me most, and is the reason for my disappointment, frustration, and anger, is that those who we assigned and trusted to be watchmen on the wall have failed us. They didn’t warn us an enemy was approaching. Maybe the enemy was within our walls the whole time, we were just to busy to notice them. Maybe one of the major enemies was ourselves.

The jury’s still out on how all this is going to pan out, but at the end of the day, my prayer is that this generation has learned some valuable lessons about credit and debt, and about greed, and about politics. And while many average citizens may feel helpless, we certainly are not. We can work hard to get our own house in order, we can position ourselves to not have to depend on creditors or on the government, and we can make sure that we don’t follow the destructive patterns of Babylon by turning to false gods. Those are things that are within our control.

In the words of Governor Sarah Palin, may we as a nation say, “Never again!”

Psalm 17

I can’t imagine how hard Isaiah’s job must have been. When God called prophets in the Old Testament, their mandate was to be God’s spokesmen and to call God’s people to repentance. The results of their rebellion was judgment. Rarely did they listen to the prophet, repent, and experience God’s blessing and forgiveness. I don’t imagine obedient prophets had many friends.

Isaiah’s message was no different:
Isaiah 16:17    Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city and will become a fallen ruin. . .
Isaiah 16:4-5   Now in that day the glory of Jacob will fade, and the fatness of his flesh will become lean. It will be like the reaper gathering the standing grain, as his are harvests the ears.

But even in stern words such as these, there is a message of hope.

16:6    Yet gleanings will be left in it like the shaking of an olive tree. Two or three olives on the topmost bough, four or five on the branches of a faithful tree, declares the Lord, the God of Israel.

Two to five olives seems to be a small amount compared to the entire tree, but the number of people who follow God is always small compared to those who don’t. Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).

How gracious God is to allow those who turn to Him to be healed and saved. The Old Testament refers to these people as the remnant. In the New Testament, they are referred to as the saved.

Isaiah 13

Passages such as Isaiah 13 confuse some people about the nature of God and the reliability of Scripture. For example, some people see God Almighty as such a compassionate and loving God, they can’t imagine Him handing out the type of graphic judgment described in Isaiah 13:

“Behold, the day of the Lord is coming,
Cruel, with fury and burning anger,
To make the land a desolation;
And He will exterminate its sinners from it.”
–13: 9

Or

“Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces
Before their eyes;
Their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished.”
–13:16

How can this disturbing language be used of a God who is also described as compassionate and long-suffering toward sinners? It all has to do with God’s nature. While it’s true that God is a God of mercy and compassion, He’s also a God of justice and righteousness. And because of His righteousness He won’t indefinitely tolerate pride and arrogance.

“Thus I will punish the world for its evil
And the wicked for their iniquity;
I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud
And abase the haughtiness of the ruthless.”
–13:11

Those verses say as much about the character of the Lord as they do about the wickedness of Babylon, the nation being addressed in this prophecy.

Another important trait about God that could be missed in this chapter is that nowhere in these verses does it imply that God delights in judging even the wicked. On the contrary, the Bible says that God doesn’t take joy in punishing the wicked. That may be a human trait, but not one that God possesses. God said through Ezekiel, “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” declares the sovereign Lord. “Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” (Ezek. 18:23)

Isaiah 13 is a descriptive passage about the nature of God and the future of the wicked, haughty, and proud. As we say in our culture, “It is what it is.”

Isaiah 1

1:3         The ox knows his master,
the donkey, his owner’s manger,
But Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.

1:15       When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I will hide my eyes from you;
Even if you offer many prayers,
I will not listen.

God gave this vision to Isaiah, but as I read it, I can’t help hearing the Lord speak to me as a citizen of the United States. Arguably, Israel is the only nation in history to have been given more opportunity than the United States. Of course, that actually depends on how we measure opportunity and blessing. God blessed Israel by choosing them as His distinct people. Out of all the people in the world, He chose to be their God and to use them as His instrument to reveal Himself to the rest of the world. In that sense, they possess a blessing that is unique and not shared with anyone in the world.

But if God’s blessing on a nation is based on resources, opportunity to have an impact on the world, wealth, and technology, no nation can compare to the United States of America. And while God’s charge to Isaiah is for the nation of Israel, His words apply to the U.S. as well. The words of Isaiah 1 ring true, especially with our upcoming election. Sometimes as I look at the candidates nominated by their respective parties, and even the people that we as a nation have elected in the past, I really wonder what we were thinking.

Now, believe me, I know no one’s perfect. But we’re talking about the leader of the free world; the representative and Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America. Our nation deserves the best we have. And to make it even more personal, we owe it to one another to give the best we have personally. The people we nominate and elect, whether we want to admit it or not, are a reflection on us—all of us.  We are one nation.

Here’s the good news. God is righteous and loves us, so He is straightforward and truthful, as He was to Isaiah. He offers forgiveness and hope.

1:16-17        Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

1:18-20        “Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land; but it you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Is it too late for the United States to turn around? Hardly. Is there still hope for God to place His hand of blessing on our people? Absolutely. But it won’t happen in a voting booth. The righteousness of a nation doesn’t happen from the top down, but from the bottom up. Yes, our leaders affect and reflect life in the United States, but righteousness starts in the homes, and in our churches, and in the streets of a nation. Then that righteousness will make it’s way to the White House.

Yes, we are one nation. May be once again be one nation, Under God.