Isaiah 7:1-8:15
Dear RTB’ers,
Hopefully everyone reading these posts and comments has a copy of our companion book, Search the Scriptures. The authors there provide a setting for today’s reading – Syria (Aram) and the Northern Kingdom (Israel, aka Ephraim) have conspired to invade and overtake the Southern Kingdom, Judah. So the Lord sends Isaiah to King Ahaz with a suggestion that God has everything taken care of. But Ahaz resists Isaiah’s counsel, even refusing to ask God for a sign when it has been offered! Then Isaiah delivers the bottom line from the Lord: The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house … the king of Assyria! (v. 7:17) Isaiah follows with four “In that day…” consequences of Ahaz’s refusal to trust God, verses 7:18-25, and continuing into chapter 8.
God’s word to Isaiah to be delivered to King Ahaz: And say to him, ‘Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands…’ (v. 7:4a). Here we have a word of encouragement from God to the king of Judah, spoken in a four-set, Be careful, be quiet, do not fear… [nor] be faint. Now, suppose we terminate this sentence early and imagine it spoken to us: Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of … Because of WHATEVER!! The same four-set applied to us and to any situation that we may be facing. The apostle Paul said it best: What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-35, 37-39)
Be careful, be quiet, do not fear… [nor] be faint.
Blessings!
Fred