December 4, 2014

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Isaiah, Chapter 8, verse 5-7:
The Choice: The Lord or Assyria. 5Again the LORD spoke to me: 6Because this people has rejected the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, And melts with fear at the display of Rezin and Remaliah’s son, 7Therefore the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the River, great and mighty, the king of Assyria and all his glory.

Isaiah here is admonishing the people that if they give in to fear and seek the aid of neighboring kings they are making a choice.  The choice is the Lord or Assyria.  Isaiah encouraged them to have courage and trust in God rather than men.  The people repeated the same error as in the time of Moses for they lacked courage failing to trust in God.  Like Moses when he was on Mount Ararat receiving the Ten Commandments the people made a graven image to protect them.  Ultimately King Ahaz and Israel lacked courage and sought the aid of the strong warrior nation of Assyria which resulted in their ultimate failure.

We must learn from this verse to put our trust solely in God and mark our actions and thoughts with total confidence in the power of God.


Isaiah in the previous chapter had strived to get King Ahaz to make an act of faith in God's power: "Ask a sign of the Lord your God."  However, the king refused; for he preferred to seek salvation in human aid, the prophet made this prediction: "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel"[1](Is 7:13-14). Courage requires us to have the vision of Christ for:  “For Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18).


[1] Pope John Paul II's General Audience on January 31, 1996, Vatican Press, February 7, 1996.

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