Isaiah 20

We live in a light-hearted age in some ways. There is much that is dark all around us, but our preference is to keep things superficial if possible. We like to fill our minds with the distractions of frequent entertainment. If we think of the image of someone running in public naked, we assume that it must be some joke. If we are witnesses to the event we may avert our eyes, and wait for security to remove the unruly fan, or wonder what that particular college student could be thinking of in acting so foolishly. It does not occur to us that God would ever use such a public display as a sign of judgment or as a warning to His people.

In the world of the ancient near east, public nakedness was not a joke; it was a reminder of the poverty and humiliation that could come upon a people if they were carried away as captives by their enemies. In Isaiah 20, the prophet gives the message of God not through mere words, but through a living parable of the exile to come. Assyria would soon be the instrument of God's judgment upon many nations. Many would look for a better tyrant, hoping that they could be a vassal servant people or perhaps even an ally with some other powerful nation as the lesser of two evils. In the case of God's people, they may have looked to Egypt for support, or even to Cush. Yet neither of these powers would be of any use in preventing the coming Assyrian assault.

Isaiah was to be a living sign of the future exile. The prophet was to walk around naked and barefoot, perhaps even for three years, as a visual warning to the people who witnessed this prophetic oracle. We are told that this display had a very specific meaning. God knew that many would have wanted to look to Egypt or Cush as a possible deliverer for Israel. Yet this prophecy of Isaiah is against them.

The people of Israel may have been looking to Africa for special allies to fend off the Assyrian empire, but this was not to be. The nations that were supposed to be part of some alliance would themselves be carried into humiliation. There would be no real help from Egypt or Cush, because the Lord had plans for their demise by the flood of the Assyrian war power.

We all have a danger coming upon us from God's wrath against sin that is more than any one nation-state conqueror could ever approximate. What is your hope in your time of greatest need? The Lord will return to judge the living and the dead. We are to be watching and working until He comes.

What is your only hope in life and in death? The Heidelberg Catechism moves us rightly and richly in the direction of Jesus Christ. In him we find comfort. To trust in something other than the Lord Jesus Christ is madness. We thank God that He has begun to lead us out of that darkness of self-sufficiency or trust in some powerful-looking entity. It is time for us to remember the God who made the heavens and the earth has granted to us deliverance from our enemies through his mercy extended to us in Jesus Christ.

We must not set ourselves up for failure and debilitating disappointment, by putting God's plan of redemption on the back burner while we fill ourselves with mindless amusements or with the fear of some lesser threat who may be coming against us all one day. We need to recapture again a fear of God; a fear that awakens us to a better life and calls us to the One who is the key object of our affection. He is the Savior who has told us that if we lose our lives we will find them. He has conquered sin and death for us through the love of the cross.

Do not trust in idols. In fact, flee from idolatry. And while you are running away from one place or habit of rebellion, run into the arms of a Redeemer who does truly love you, and who demands that you deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow Him.