Beyond the visible

In the prophet Isaiah’s time, King Ahaz and his successor King Hezekiah were faced with an international crisis. The Assyrians were conquering neighboring nations and were threatening to destroy Judah as well. Like a good king, King Ahaz made plans to defend his people. He took stock of the situation, the global politics, counted the cost, looked at alliances, and determined his resources. However, there was this pesky prophet Isaiah who was saying that his wisdom was foolishness. The best laid plans of mice and men would come to naught without the Lord.

It is a frightful prospect when we realize that they were reckoning on God. They thought they were worshipping correctly (Is. 28). They thought they were using the reason and resources the Lord gave them when they were forming alliances and asking Egypt for help against the Assyrians. There were prophets that were saying the Lord would bless the nation and deliver them. They were comfortable in their religion and in their status as God’s chosen people. Surely their Lord would help them as they planned and fought.

 “Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils? Of what account is he?” (Is. 2:22). “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Is. 29:13). Isaiah was pulling the rug out from under them, telling them that all they were relying on was false. What made up their security in a world that was falling around them was false.

Yet, Isaiah kept declaring a message that drastically contradicted their religion, their idea of their relationship with God, their mindset, their heritage, what they thought was the covenant of their God YHWH, and the message of the other prophets. It contradicted human wisdom. It contradicted reality.

Isaiah’s message was: You visibly perform the rituals of religion but your invisible heart is far from the Lord. You trust in the visible men rather than the invisible Lord. Trust in the Lord. The reality you see around you is not the real reality. The Lord is more powerful than the nation that is threatening you. Thus, judgment will come—a judgment that shook all they believed about their covenant with God. They thought that God’s covenant would protect them from judgment. However, Isaiah turned their world upside down as he declared that the hope and the promises of the covenant would come—but through the judgment. The judgment was not for judgment’s sake alone, but to refine his people, to work for their good, to bring their hearts back to him.

Confronted with nations falling around them—confronted with a world falling around us. The economy is slowly recovering, but it is not yet stable. World events are crazy. Our personal world may seem to be falling around about us. What do we trust in?

Isaiah is God’s speaker to the people who have closed their eyes and ears. God cries, “All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations…” (Is. 65:2). I have been there—when it is easier to trust in denial, in fantasy, than to look at what is really going on. I create my false world and it can appear pretty convincing. I look to man—to provide affirmation, support, and help. I can trust in my prayers and religious activity—I have spent a lot of time praying, surely God will respond to me. An idea of “deserving” creeps in, after all, I have spent a lot of time in prayer and service. The Lord responds through Isaiah, “You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘He did not make me’? Can the pot say of the potter, ‘He knows nothing’?” (Is. 29:16).

Isaiah reminds me to step back—am I trusting in man, my own knowledge, resources, wisdom, or practices? He makes me ask of the church—are we trusting in the corporate structures, budgeting, the dominant powers and ways of the world? Have we conformed to the world? Or are we trusting in the Lord of Hosts that is like none other, the real, living, uncontainable, uncontrollable God? Will we also cry out, like Israel: “In that day the people who live on this coast will say, ‘See what has happened to those we relied on, those we fled to for help and deliverance from the king of Assyria! How then can we escape?” (Is. 20:6).

It can be frightening to let go of our structures that we have trusted in; to stop trusting in man; to surrender our view of what should be done. It is hard to trust in the invisible, uncontrollable God instead of what is visible and what seems should be done.

Isaiah constantly reminds us—the Lord is bigger than our imaginations, he is bigger than our reality. He is the Creator God, the Lord of history, and he is good and loving. He is the Rock eternal.

To those who find it hard to look beyond our immediate reality to the one who is beyond reality, Isaiah offers this comfort: “You will keep him in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you” (Is. 26:3). In this passage, Isaiah paints a picture of  the hope that will come after judgment; a restoration of the true covenant. The people acknowledge they are not capable of saving themselves—“LORD, YOU establish peace for us; ALL that we have accomplished YOU have done for us” (26:12). They turn to the Lord and—instead of themselves, religion, powerful men—they turn to the Lord and wait on him. “Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal….Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you… your name alone do we honor…” (v. 4, 8-9a, 13).

A few key words from Isaiah 26:3: “You will keep him in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.”

The English word “mind” is Hebrew yester. It carries the idea of imagination or intellectual framework, “purpose, imagination” or “form, framing, purpose, framework.”

“Perfect peace” is shalom shalom, the Hebrew double-construction indicating perfection. It contains more than our word “peace.” It is “completeness, soundness, welfare, peace.” One commentator translates it as “inner integrity.”

“Trusts” is camak, “to lean, lay, rest, support, put….sustain, refresh, revive.”

To those who do the irrational, who take that step of faith and trust in a God who is above the heavens, there is an inner integrity, a peace that pervades our soul. We let our Lord shape our imaginations, our perceptions of reality, the way we perceive and frame the world. We are given a heavenly vision of reality that surpasses the visible. Only in him can we see how frail our own structures our. And only in him can we let go of those. In Christ, we see the ultimate display of his love (Rom. 5:8), and we know we can trust him. So we keep our eyes fixed on him, the author and perfector of our faith, and take a step out in faith. We can look beyond the visible, because our Lord stepped into the visible world.