Isaiah 33:10-24 (Immerse Prophets pp. 112, 113)
“Fire”
September 13, 2020 – Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The news is full of fire. Fire here in Oregon, fire in California, fire in Washington, as well as smaller fires in most other western states, including Alaska. We will probably still be smelling smoke and breathing bad air as you watch and listen to this service. The news has desperate evacuations, pictures of people standing over burned homes they’ve lost, brave accounts of rescues by firefighters and others, as well as heartbreaking counts of the dead.
God’s people in high, dry parts of Israel and Judah were no strangers to the destructiveness of fire, even wildfire. As I contemplated what to preach this week from our Prophets readings in Isaiah, I could not help but be struck by the images of fire and the plaintive lament at the top of page 113, verse 14:
The sinners in Jerusalem shake with fear.
Terror seizes the godless.
“Who can live with this devouring fire?” they cry.
“Who can survive this all-consuming fire?”
To some degree, God Himself is that consuming fire, as you may remember from Hebrews 12:29. That writer warns of the impermanence of earthly things and calls us to seek those things which are permanent and cannot be “shaken,” “for our God is a consuming fire.” He echoed Deuteronomy 9:3, where God is also described as a “consuming fire.” But there God goes before Israel to burn up their enemies. That idea showed up in our reading at the top of page 99, chapter 26 verse 11, where the prophet asks God on Judah’s behalf to destroy their wicked attackers: “Let your fire consume your enemies.”
Then again on pages 108 and 109, the end of Isaiah chapter 30, God is like a fire to consume those who would harm His people. So the Lord comes, “burning with anger… His lips are filled with fury; his words consume like fire.” Specifically, about the Assyrians, “Topheth—the place of burning—has long been prepared for the Assyrian king; the pyre is piled high with wood. The breath of the Lord, like fire from a volcano, will set it ablaze.”
That same fiery judgment for the Assyrians is in sight as our text opened today. On the bottom of page 112, like careless people who accidentally start forest fires in our time, the Assyrians will ignite their own funeral pyre. “You Assyrians produce nothing but dry grass and stubble. Your own breath will turn to fire and consume you.”
We heard the beginning of the historical scene in Isaiah’s time in our reading from Micah last week. The Assyrian empire under Tiglath Pileser III in the 8th century B.C. was on a great program of conquest and expansion. They took and looted all the territory around Judah, including the northern kingdom of Israel, which fell to the next Assyrian king Shalmaneser V in 722 B.C. That very year Shalmaneser was usurped by Sargon II, who claimed to be his brother, but that is unclear. Then in 705 B.C. Sargon’s son Sennacherib became king of Assyria. In 701, Sennacherib showed up in the Bible at Jerusalem’s gates. We will read about it next week starting in chapter 36 of Isaiah. Judah, particularly Jerusalem, had been living with the Assyrian threat for two decades. God was about to bring the worst of that threat to an end.
As we all know, fire along the McKenzie River was pushed along by unusual strong winds from the east that not only spread the fire down the canyon but blew smoke over Eugene and Springfield. What we all prayed for has happened and the wind is again blowing more normally from the west. That’s good, but fire burns both ways. Even as the forecast for a change in the wind was made, firefighters began making plans to move around to the eastern end and protect structures on that side.
Likewise for the fire of God’s anger in Isaiah’s time. It burned both against enemies and against Israel. As we heard, God did not just blaze against the Assyrians. We read, “The sinners in Jerusalem shake with fear.” In that ancient time of national insecurity and war, Judah itself was frightened about His judgment on them. It was God’s own people who asked who could survive that devouring fire of God.
I would be very reluctant to make any claim that the fires currently burning around us are a judgment from God, or that COVID-19 is divine punishment for our sins. Unlike Amos, Hosea, Micah and Isaiah, I cannot say God gave me His exact words to prophesy for this time. And I’m definitely glad He has never directed me to give strange names to my children or walk around town naked like He told Isaiah. Yet I do believe you and I can learn from the fear and trembling the people of Jerusalem experienced. In troubled times, it is good to be concerned about our sins even as people of God.
That question of who can survive the all-consuming fire of God had an answer. Yet again, it zeroed in on matters of justice. Those who would come through the fire were:
Those who are honest and fair,
who refuse to profit by fraud,
who stay far away from bribes,
who refuse to listen to those who plot murder,
who shut their eyes to all enticement to do wrong—
these are the ones who will dwell on high.
The rocks of the mountains will be their fortress.
Food will be supplied to them,
and they will have water in abundance.
Isaiah almost seems to picture the kind of fire that in the past would burn through great redwood and Sequoia forests, consuming undergrowth. It also dried cones hanging on trees so that seeds could fall on cleared ground. New trees could take root and spring up and some giant trees themselves might be scorched but continue to live.
From the list in those verses I just read, you and I might think we are already thick-barked redwood trees like that. We’re honest and fair. We haven’t committing fraud or paid bribes or plotted murder. We do a pretty good job of turning the other way when invited to participate in some dishonest, illegal scheme. We aren’t out looting homes behind the poor people who have been evacuated from the fires! That’s all somebody else, somebody bad, but not us.
Yet both in the Bible and in Christian history, God’s people have found it healthy and good to ponder their own spiritual and moral condition in times of disaster and national upheaval. It’s easy to put all the blame on enemies like the Assyrians or on evil political leaders like the northern kingdom suffered.
When Rome fell to barbarians in the early 5th century, Augustine wrote a book entitled The City of God to address pagan Romans who claimed Christianity was the problem. They said that because people had stopped worshipping the old gods, they no longer protected the city. Augustine put the blame back on the people of Rome, saying it was their moral failure which led to disaster. But his main point was that there are really only two cities in the world, the “City of God” and the “Earthly City.” He asked his fellow Roman citizens to consider to which city they belonged and said the difference was in what and how they loved. Before he wrote The City of God Augustine wrote that:
There are two loves, the one of which is holy, the other unholy; one social, the other individualist; one takes heed of the common good because of the heavenly society, the other reduces even the common good to its own ends because of a proud desire for domination; the one is subject to God, the other sets itself up as a rival to God; the one is serene, the other tempestuous; the one peaceful, the other quarrelsome; the one prefers truthfulness to deceitful praises, the other is utterly enamored with praise; the one is friendly, the other jealous; the one desires for its neighbor what it would for itself, the other is desirous of lording over its neighbor; the one directs its effort to the neighbor’s good, the other to its own.[1]
Ultimately, then, the message of Scripture about natural disasters is not some divine word about who is to blame, whether it’s ourselves or someone else. It’s about our own choice between being people of the City of God and pursuing love for others, seeking the common good, desiring peace and truth, or being part of the Earthly City by seeking our own good, looking out for ourselves, and being quarrelsome and deceitful about it all.
You and I can get very upset about a virus that came from China or about how leadership handled it when it got here. In regard to the fires, there are those already saying some were set deliberately. We like to find someone else to blame. But prophets like Isaiah and Christians like Augustine call us to also consider our own part in things. How have we ourselves made these times better or worse? How have we been part of the problems, as they say, rather than part of the solutions? Have we loved only ourselves or have we, like Jesus our Lord taught us, loved others as He loved us?
A third of the way down page 113, verses 17 and 18, Isaiah invited his people to consider how they were going to look back on that time of terror someday. If they repented and turned to God in honesty and concern for their neighbors, he said, “Your eyes will see the king in all his splendor, and you will see a land that stretches into the distance.” In other words, they would see God’s anointed king ruling over a large and peaceful realm. And “You will think back to this time of terror, asking, “’Where are the Assyrian officers who counted our towers? Where are the bookkeepers who recorded the plunder taken from our fallen city?”
Isaiah was telling them, and telling us, that when we make ourselves part of God’s city by loving Him and loving others as ourselves, then that is where we will finally live. From that beautiful city we will look back. We will live in God’s kingdom and wonder where all those other kingdoms and rulers which seemed so powerful and terrifying have gone.
As one of our men noted Friday morning, after talking about those Assyrians counting Jerusalem’s towers and their bookkeepers counting what they stole, Isaiah says, “You will no longer see these fierce, violent people with their strange, unknown language.” Our group wondered if that “strange, unknown language” was the language of accounting, of keeping financial records, which seems so baffling to many of us.
No, I don’t think Isaiah was slamming accountants here, but he may have been suggesting something that Jesus talked about in our Gospel lesson from Matthew 18 today. God does not deal with us via the sort of bookkeeping that records every wrong and every right and then judges us by whichever side of the ledger has more.
Our relationship with God and our relationships with others are not profit and loss, zero-sum games with winners and losers, like nations that try to conquer each other or companies that vie for market share. Instead, God judges us like Jesus told Peter to judge others around him. Shall I count up the times I forgive and quit when I reach the limit of seven times? No, says Jesus, keep on forgiving clear on up to some ridiculous number like 77 times or even 490 times. The point is that neither God nor we are to count up offenses, but simply extend love toward others as often and as much as needed.
When we live like that, in love for God which believes He can and will supply all we really need, then we enter into the kingdom of God. It looks like the last part of our text, the second half of page 113, verses 20-24. “Zion” is another name for Jerusalem, but when the Bible uses it, there is a sense in which the earthly city is a symbol for something greater, that heavenly city, the City of God about which Augustine wrote. So the prophet promises that we will be there, in God’s city, “a place of holy festivals… a city quiet and secure.”
I like the next picture Isaiah uses for the City of God, “like a tent whose ropes are taught and whose stakes are firmly fixed.” Those of you who camp know how nice it is to have a good tent and a level, dry place to pitch it. It’s a little home-away-from-home in the outdoors to make one feel secure even all alone in the dark. I’ve been using a picture of my tent as I camped on Gold Lake a couple months ago as a background for Zoom calls. Just multiply that homey sense of security by infinity to grasp what it’s like to be in God’s tent, in the safety of God’s city.
Then we come to an image of the security God provides to His city, to His people, which moves my heart even more. Verse 21 says, “The Lord will be our Mighty One. He will be like a wide river of protection that no enemy can cross, that no enemy ship can sail upon.” As fire pushed toward us down the McKenzie Valley this past week, I took a little comfort in the fact that it would have to cross the Willamette River to get to Eugene. I know that sparks can fly across and Bob explained to me that in a dry wind fire can jump a river easier than one might think. But I still felt better thinking about that wide expanse of water between us and the flames.
Fire may be able to jump a river like the Willamette, but the river of God is wider and deeper. My signature verse on e-mail messages for more than twenty years has been Psalm 65:9, “The river of God is full of water.” That is the abundant flow of God’s mercy and grace for those who choose to dwell with Him. As Christian saints have often noted, our own sins are our worst enemies. But our Lord’s gracious lovingkindness runs vast and strong between us and those sins, washing them away and securing us in His mercy.
I noted to others that this fourth week of Immerse reading in Prophets, this section of Isaiah, was a bit of a slog, all those “oracles” against the nations and very few “greatest hits” passages like the messianic prophecies familiar from Advent in the previous 14 chapters. Yet as Marlon noted Friday morning, judgment and mercy come in waves here. The judgment is tempered with promises of restoration and chapters 25-27 and 32 also offer deliverance, peace, justice and even the hope of resurrection for God’s people.
At the bottom of page 97, chapter 25 verses 6 to 9, there was a familiar passage on which I’ve preached before. It’s the promise of a rich feast in God’s City. That same abundance of mercy and grace is pictured as rich food, reminding us of the Lord’s Table which we celebrate together. And there is the promise that “He will swallow up death forever! The Sovereign Lord will wipe away all tears.”
The fire of our enemies, sometimes literally, but more often for you and me, spiritually, scorches across the habitations of God’s people. Yet God’s river of salvation is always flowing. Isaiah says back on page 113 just after the river, “For the Lord is our judge, our lawgiver, our king.” Friday Bryan noted that God there takes up all the branches we look to from government—judicial, legislative, executive—into Himself. As we heard Isaiah say about Jesus the previous week, “the government will be upon his shoulders.” And here he tells us, “He will care for us and save us.” That is our hope. That is the kingdom in which we want to live.
We do have those enemies to deal with. We still need to face our pride, our selfishness, our own anxious bookkeeping in regard to those who have wronged and hurt us. We still need to tremble before that consuming fire and repent of our sins before it is too late. But when we do, Isaiah assures us that “The enemies sails hang loose on broken masts with useless tackle. Their treasure will be divided by the people of God. Even the lame will take their share!”
The smoky air around us has kept fire in our minds and in our nostrils for a week now. It’s made us choke and worry. It’s caused us trouble and sadness. It’s clouded our days and our hearts. But I hope, like God meant fire to do for Israel, that it might make us reflect on our own privileges as others become homeless, that it might make us more generous to those who are hurting, that it might make us more thoughtful about policies which affect the common welfare of our communities.
We are all thankful for brave firefighters who have selflessly placed themselves in front of the flames on behalf of others. There were even a handful who came from Mexico to help us here in Oregon. But if we honor the fighting of literal fire, let us honor and join in the spiritual firefight against the sins of anger and greed and pride and lust which constantly burn up our own hearts and those around us. Let us seek not just to escape into that peaceful and secure City of God, but to be the kind of people who belong there because we have sought to bring that City into our own lives, into our own cities.
So let us see the fire and smell the smoke, and repent of all the burning we have caused in ourselves and for others. Then let us turn in hope to the promise of God for that day when, in the last verse Isaiah says, “The people of God will no longer say, ‘We are sick and helpless,’ for the Lord will forgive their sins.” May He forgive all your and my sins and lead us to the cool, clear water of His love and mercy.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2020 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] De genesi ad litteram 11:15, quoted and translated by Etienne Gilson in a foreward to the Image Books abridged English translation of The City of God.