Isaiah 31

After I read this chapter, I thought for a long time about how to sum up all the thoughts that were swirling around in my head. Even after reading about this time and time again in the Old Testament, it is still incredible to me that the Israelites were eager to put their trust in the Egyptians instead of God! I mean, this is the same nation God whooped with the plagues hundreds of years before. He exposed their gods as frauds and all their “strength” as interminable weakness. But it seems the Israelites had forgotten all of that.

So, I began to think about why the Israelites would head back to a defeated nation for security and protection. Isaiah said it had to do with military mathematics: “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen…” (vs 1)

The Israelites were in trouble. They knew they didn’t have the strength to fight the Assyrians. They looked at the enormity of their problem and decided that they needed to find some way to solve it. But, instead of going to God to discuss a solution to their problem, they decided to take matters into their own hands. Instead of trusting God for help, they decided to rely on what was tangible and practical.

In the Bible, this always signals trouble. In fact, isn’t that how we all got into this mess in the first place? When Eve approached the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she met a serpent there who told her some things about God that made her question whether she was living the best life she could be living. The serpent said that God was holding her back from being her best, and instead of going to God to ask Him about what she had heard, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Instead of trusting God for help, she decided to rely on the solution offered by the serpent.

In the same way, when Eve had eaten the fruit and took some to Adam, he immediately knew that she had done the wrong thing. Now, Adam was faced with a huge problem. God had said that the consequence of eating from that tree would be death. Should he do the right thing and not eat the fruit and risk being separated from Eve forever? Or should he do the wrong thing and also eat the fruit and face the music together? Actually, there was a third option. He should have taken Eve by the hand and said, “Let’s go discuss this little problem with God, shall we?” But Adam didn’t do that. Instead, he decided to take matters into his own hands. Instead of trusting God for help, he decided to rely on his own instincts.

It seems to me that the root (and certainly the results!) of sin is deciding that we can best figure out how to solve our own problems. We think we can come up with the best solutions in our own time and in our own way. But the Bible doesn’t say that God helps those who help themselves. The Bible says that God helps those who wait on Him. God doesn’t need your help in order to solve your problem. He needs you to settle down and trust Him to do what’s best for you!

That’s precisely what Isaiah recommended: “Like birds hovering overhead, the Lord Almighty will shield Jerusalem; he will shield it and deliver it, he will ‘pass over’ it and will rescue it… ‘Assyria will fall by no human sword; a sword, not of mortals, will devour them.’” (vs 5,8)

None of this suggests that God needed the Israelites to do anything to help solve their own problem. All they had to do was sit back, relax, and watch God work it out. And God doesn’t need us to help Him solve our problems either. All we need to do is sit back, relax, and watch God work them out.

Stop trying to take control of the situations that are causing you trouble! God is more than able to accomplish anything that needs to be done in your life—in the right way, at the right time, and for the right purpose! Trust!