“Characterized by the Life of the Spirit”
Isaiah 32: 9-20
Today’s Scripture continues to focus on the issues that Isaiah has been focusing on throughout chapters 7-39, and those issues have to do with
“trust and security.”
In verses 9-14 Isaiah condemns the “women” who are “complacent” and “secure” because of a good harvest. He warns them that their security will be short lived, because next year, it will be completely different. In fact, he instructs them to start mourning now, for the next year’s disaster.
In verse 13, Isaiah continues to use symbolic language. The words “thorns and briars” have been used before in chapters 5 and 27, to represent not only the barrenness of the physical land but also the barrenness of the nation’s spiritual condition.
Isaiah prophesies that their “merriment” and “revelry” will cease, and the places where they thought they had strength and rule, will be abandoned. Their trust in other nations will prove to be false.
And then in verse 15, as many times before,
Isaiah reminds the Israelites that God doesn’t fail.
With God, there is hope.
Even if the nation has trusted in all of the wrong things, God has an answer that can turn things around, namely, His “Spirit.”
Isaiah helps the Israelites recognize that the human leaders and counselors have demonstrated a spirit of confusion,
self-service and rebellion, which has resulted in disaster, insecurity and a nation that was very sick.
Yet, Isaiah comes with a prescription for this sickness, it’s a large dose of the Lord’s Spirit, from “on high.”
Just like rain that falls on a barren land and gives it life, so is the Lord’s Spirit, as He falls on the barren spiritual lives of the Israelites able to bring them back to life.
And with this Spirit rain, the produce will be “justice” and “righteousness.”
Verse 17, “The fruit of righteousness will be peace; and the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever.”
The homes of the Israelites will become places of “peace” and feel “secure.” Isaiah was reminding the Israelites should they turn back to the Lord their God for security and relinquish their lives to the hands of the covenant Lord, they could relax and not be in a place of perpetual busyness, that self-dependence requires.
He was reminding them they had a choice.
How often do we need to stop, our chaotic lives and realize “We have a choice.”
The Israelites could put their trust in their physical circumstances and do their best to manipulate them to work, or
they could rest in the Spirit’s ability to provide ultimate peace regardless of what was going on around them.
It may be difficult for us who live in the 21st Century and can purchase enough food at Main Street Grocery, regardless of the season, to comprehend what was going on for the Israelites at this time.
If I can take you back in time, to the land of Canaan, where there were no large rivers that could be used for irrigation. The ability to have a fruitful crop of any kind was solely dependent upon the coming of the, fall and spring rains. Should these rains not show up at the correct time, famine and starvation would be an immediate result.
Having to rely on the weather for your food for the year was at best tenuous and can give us an understanding as to why the Near Eastern religions had such a fixation on matters of fertility and reproduction. In America today, perhaps the best analogy of living in deep insecurity may be from a newspaper article that tells of a man who lived in the inner city and whose apartment had been broken into more than twenty times in the past ten years. He had put up bars and locks to no avail. His comment was, “I don’t know why they keep doing it. I ain’t got nothing left to steal!” Not knowing when it will happen again or what they will take the next time?
That’s the type of insecurity Isaiah was talking about in this chapter. And within this context, Isaiah offers an inner security, found through the Holy Spirit, that allows one to develop a godly character in the most difficult of circumstances.
The idea of the Holy Spirit being connected to the messianic promise has already been presented in
chapter 11. The Messiah is able to rule as he does, with justice, knowledge and the fear of the Lord, because of the Holy Spirit.
And the real blessing is, that not only does the Holy Spirit rest on the Messiah,
He also rests on all the members of His kingdom.
We read about this in the first part of Chapter 32, where
Each one will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm,
like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.
Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed, and the ears of those who hear will listen.
The fearful heart will know and understand, and the stammering tongue will be fluent and clear.
Wow!
Don’t you want to be known as “a shelter from the wind,” “a refuge from the storm?”
Hey, most of us are looking for the shelter and refuge, not thinking of being one.
This is where I think many Christians miss out. Somehow, we get the concept that Jesus died for our sins and if we believe that He did this and receive this act of forgiveness than we have gotten a ticket into heaven.
Then it’s like we put that ticket away in a safe place, so we can use it when the time comes. In the meantime, we muddle through life, allow the circumstances around us determine our attitude and countenance and complain that life isn’t fair, or easy.
We have forgotten what Jesus promised in John 7: 37-39
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
Jesus was letting us know that not only would we experience the flowing “in” of the Holy Spirit, we would also experience the flowing “out” of the Holy Spirit.
Paul explains this same principle in Romans 7 & 8. In chapter 7 Paul explains that to defeat sin in our lives we are not to be like the Jew and live by the law but we are to be identified with Christ.
He then goes on to explain in chapter 8 that God has made a provision for us, that the Holy Spirit would come to us and do what the law could not do.
You see the law could provide us forgiveness,
but it could not enable us to live a righteous life.
That is where the Holy Spirit comes in.
The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to live life as described in chapter 32, verse 8 …………a life of nobility.
A life where generosity, self-giving, justice and righteousness is what others see, regardless of the circumstances around us.
When we allow the Holy Spirit to reside and flow in and out of our lives, not only are these attributes seen by others, they offer us peace. We experience the inner resource to meet everything that comes our way and triumph over them instead of being triumphed by them.
I would like to leave you with an image I was given by Elisabeth Elliot. She was a missionary with her husband Jim Elliot, in Ecuador, to the Auca Indians. Jim Elliot and four other men in their mission were killed by the Auca Indians, leaving Elisabeth and four other women widows. Elisabeth and another widow stayed in Ecuador to minister to the tribe and eventually the tribe became Christians. The image, however, she describes of the peace the Holy Spirit provides us, came from observing a seagull out her window while living in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
One day, during a violent storm, where heavy rain and high winds were producing rough seas, and white caps, she looked out her window and over the water she saw a seagull gracefully gliding through the storm. As she watched the gull she noticed that although its path was interrupted by wind and storm and caused him to dip and sway, the bird didn’t seemed to be phased by it. The gull continued gracefully on its way.
That image has stuck with me, through my years of bombardment of unfair circumstances and obstacles that could have gotten me down.
By resting in the power of the Holy Spirit, we too can glide gracefully through the storms.
We can give generously and seek justice and righteousness above all else because our trust is in God, and the Holy Spirit that is in us is greater than the circumstances around us.
Amen.
