Who’s got their hand on the tiller of history?
That’s our question for this morning.
Sometimes you look out at the world. You see conflict in the Ukraine, decades of peace seemingly being unpicked. You see violent people taking a hold of parts of Iraq and Syria. You see Christians on the receiving end of the worst atrocities. You see some in Scotland wanting to be independent, and the actual vote going the other way, and at least one half of that makes you scratch your head.
Look at the history of our world, and you ask yourself: Is anybody driving this thing? Is there anyone with their hand on the tiller?
We need to know.
If there is someone behind the course of history who is all powerful, then they really matter. What that person says becomes the thing that matters most. Nothing matters more than discovering what he or she wants. You’d want to get to know this person really well, and make sure you’re on the right side of them.
But if there’s no such person. If history is just different groups of people fighting it out. Well, things look very different. Your best bet in life is to find the strongest group of people, and latch onto them. Let them take you under their wing and look after you. It’s your best chance of survival. It’s life as a big version of the school playground.
Judah’s History: The issue of trust
Time to enter the world of Isaiah’s day.
Isaiah was a prophet in ancient Judah. You may know that there had been a civil war. The once united kingdom of Israel, ruled over by the great kings Saul, David and Solomon, had split in two. Ten tribes formed a kingdom in the northern half of the country, confusingly called Israel. The other two tribes formed a kingdom in the south, called Judah. And Isaiah ministered in the south, in Judah.
Isaiah was a prophet. He brought messages from God to the people of his day. Most of his public ministry was set during the reign of two of the kings of Judah: King Ahaz, and then his son, King Hezekiah.
The first half of Isaiah’s book is framed by two accounts – an event from the reign of Ahaz in chapters 7 and 8, and then two events from the reign of Hezekiah in chapters 36 to 39. Both kings experience a foreign army marching to the gates of Jerusalem. For Ahaz it’s a combined army from the northern kingdom of Israel, and neighbouring Syria. For Hezekiah, it’s the army of Assyria.
The two kings respond very differently. Ahaz refused to trust God to look after him. Instead he set about trying to find the strongest friendly kingdom, in his case Assyria, so they could form an alliance to see off these invaders. There’s no one at the tiller. So find the strongest ally you can.
Some people in Ukraine feel that their country is facing aggression from Russia to the East. So what do you do? You try to find nations to the West and make friends with them, nations that are strong enough to make Russia think twice.
Hezekiah was different. He trusted God, and it paid off.
Those two contrasting events frame the first half of Isaiah’s book. So his public ministry was to set before the people God’s promises and his commands. God’s promises to look after and deliver them. God’s commands, how their trust in him works out in practice. Isaiah called on the people to trust and obey God, to trust his promises, to obey his commands.
Oracles against the nations
That’s what’s going on throughout Isaiah chapters 13 to 35. We’re in the middle of a long section of those chapters that people call the oracles against the nations. A series of prophecies that concern not Judah, but her neighbours. Prophecies about what will happen to the nations around her.
To be honest, these are a bit of a puzzle. Why would Judah need to hear prophecies that are addressed to somebody else. It feels a bit like opening somebody else’s post.
You see Isaiah is not like Jonah. God sent the prophet Jonah to preach to the people of Assyria. Not surprisingly, his message concerned what would happen to Assyria. As far as we know, Isaiah never left the borders of the nation of Judah. So you’d expect his message to concern what will happen to the people of Judah.
It’s a puzzle, until you remember where we are in Isaiah. The two kings either side of us, Ahaz and Hezekiah. The choice they faced: Trust God, or form alliances with foreign powers. And suddenly it all makes sense. We can see exactly why Judah needed to be told what would happen to her neighbours.
It’s a bit like living in a neighbourhood with a serious gang problem. Two rival gangs, fighting it out to be top dog in the housing estate you live on. You live there. You don’t want anything to do with gangs, but you do want to survive.
If you knew for certain that law and order would prevail, and that you couldn’t possibly lose out by siding with the law, that’s what you’d do. You stay out of trouble. Neither of these gangs would win. Good would triumph in the end.
If, on the other hand, you knew that the Old Bill would never get on top of these gangs, you’d pick the strongest gang, get them to look after you.
Judah was being tempted to pick the strongest gang. That was Ahaz’s mistake. So now do you see why Judah needs some glimpses into the future of all the gangs around her? Only when she sees that God is more powerful than any of the gangs, and that none of them will win in the end, will she be able to trust God in the crises of the day.
Which brings us, at last, to chapter 17. Which nation is this one dealing with> On the face of it, it’s talking about Syria. It’s capital city, then as now, is Damascus. Chapter 17, verse 1: A prophecy against Damascus.
But as we read through the chapter, we find that it’s dealing with two nations at once: Syria, and the northern kingdom of Israel. Verse 3: The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim, and royal power from Damascus.
It makes sense to treat them together. After all, these were the two nations that had allied themselves against Judah.
So what will happen to these two nations, Israel and Syria. Let’s pick three things out briefly, and then apply all this to today.
In the past, they turned away from God.
First, in the past, they turned away from God. In the past, they turned away from God.
Before Isaiah says what will happen, he sets out why. And the answer lies in the past. Verse 10: For you have forgotten God your Saviour, you have not remembered the Rock, your fortress.
This sentence makes most sense addressed primarily to Israel. God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. He’d brought them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. He’d brought them into a good and fruitful land. God had shown that he was stronger than the nations that lived there before. That’s what’s referred to in verse 9, the strong cities they left because of the Israelites.
God was their strong rescuer and deliverer. He was their protector and their provider. But they’d forgotten all of that. They lived as if it was not true. They turned to other gods that they’d made for themselves. They lived as though they’d got all this by their own effort.
Syria knew this history, and was in a deep alliance with Israel. Israel should have taught Syria to follow the God who was her Rock and Saviour. Instead, it had worked the other way around.
In the past, they turned away from God. And that explains what would happen next.
In the future, their land would be decimated
Second, then, in the future, their land would be decimated. In the future, their land would be decimated.
So, verses 1 to 3, we get big strong fortified cities, becoming a ruin. Like the ruins you might visit on holiday. Sheep and goats, but not a human in sight.
Verses 4-5, picture a field of wheat or corn. The combine harvester has worked up and down in rows. All that’s left are a few stalks where the rows didn’t quite overlap, or at the edge of the field.
Verse 9: In that day their strong cities … will be like places abandoned to thickets and undergrowth. And all will be desolation.
Not far from here is the National Trust Estate at Toys Hill. It’s free to park and walk around the rich woodland. Toys Hill was partly the inspiration behind the founding of the National Trust.
But as you walk around you come across a surprise – at least, it is if you didn’t know it was there. Once upon a time was a large country house. Toys Hill Mansion. Lord and Lady Stanhope lived there. They had a whole army of servants, several gardeners to manicure the grounds, a French chef, and chauffeurs for their fine cars. After Lord Stanhope’s death, the estate deteriorated. A stray bomb during World War II finished it off.
Now, as you walk through the woods, you suddenly realise you’re standing in an old swimming pool, and this must have been the tennis courts, and maybe this was where the front door once was. But all that’s left is the footprint. Some foundations. Some ground-level masonry. The forest has reclaimed the rest.
That is what would happen to the mighty cities in Syria and Israel.
You get the same picture in verses 12 to 14. These mighty nations, like the sea on a stormy day, powerful and threatening, reduced to a bit of dust and the proverbial tumbleweed. “That was Israel and Syria,” they’ll say. “How embarrassing. Look away now.”
In the future, their land would be decimated.
Those who are left would turn back to God.
That’s not quite the end, however. There’s a further-into-the-future detail here. Third, then: Those who are left would turn back to God. Those who are left would turn back to God.
Verse 6 leaves a little hope. That harvested field wasn’t harvested right to the edge. There’s a bit left. A few apples or olives at the top of the tree, where even a ladder wouldn’t get them.
And the few survivors who are left will see what’s happened, and will learn the lesson. Verse 7: In that day people will look to their Maker and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel. They will not look to the altars, the work of their hands, and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles and the incense alters their fingers have made.
The survivors will realise the futility of the homemade gods they had been following. They’ll get rid of those, and turn back to the one true God. They’ll follow God their Saviour, their Rock, once again.
In the past, they turned away from God. In the future, their land will be decimated. Those who are left will turn back to God.
Lessons for Judah
It’s a prophecy about foreign nations, but the lesson from all this for Judah is obvious, isn’t it?
God is not just interested in what happens within the borders of Judah. The rise and fall of other nations concern him as well. Nations like Syria and Israel. God is at the tiller. He’s in the driving seat. He’s the one they need to trust through all of their crises. Alliances with foreign powers are quite useless. The foreign powers they might turn to are only as much help as the God who determines their destiny.
So they mustn’t make the mistake that northern Israel made. They mustn’t forget that God is their rock and their saviour. They must cling to him, and then they’ll avoid a similar fate. A tiny remnant of Israel and Syria will discover how useless their foreign gods were, and they’ll turn back to God. Judah could short-circuit a whole load of pain and grief by sticking with God now.
Lessons for Us
So much for Judah. What about us? What are the lessons for us?
Well again, the big picture lesson is clear, isn’t it. The main lesson is about the kind of God that God is. He’s much bigger than any of us have realised.
He’s not confined to what goes on in church. He’s not just interested in the lives of Christian people, or in the affairs of nations with a Christian heritage. He’s sovereign over the lives of each man, woman and child. He governs every nation on earth. He’s the one with his hand on the tiller of history.
The New Testament would be more specific than that. It’s not just G-O-D who rules all the nations, it’s the Lord Jesus. After Jesus rose from the dead, he ascended into heaven and sat down on his throne beside God the Father. Just before he did so, he said to his first disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” He’s as much in charge of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Thailand, as he is of the United States and our own country.
Which doesn’t mean we’ll understand what Jesus is doing. We’ll still look out at the news and wonder what the plan is. But we can be sure that he has a plan, and he’s moving all of history to the wonderful climax he has planned. Evil will not triumph. God will win out. And ultimately God’s people will enjoy the protection, the rescue, the future that God is working towards.
But this doesn’t only have a bearing on international relations. This all comes home to roost in our own lives as well.
If the whole of human history really is in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ, then so are we, and so is everyone else we meet and who has an influence on our lives. What he says, what he wants, becomes the most important thing there is.
Those of us with children want our children to get ahead in life. What foreign languages should they learn? What skills do they need to survive and thrive in the modern world? What after-school clubs should they do? What sports should they play? How can we line them up for a successful life?
Those are questions asked by every parent. But if all of life’s ups and downs are in Jesus’ hands, then knowing him, and his plans and purposes, is more important than any of those other things. Knowing him won’t immunise them from trouble, but it will line them up with where the big story is going.
I’ve applied this to the priorities we have for our children, because it’s easier to think through big shifts in direction when we’re planning the lives of other people. Of course we should ask about our own priorities and focus in life as well.
Conclusion
Every person, every church, every nation – must decide what matters most in life, and who to rely on for support.
Ultimately, the answer to both must be the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s the most powerful person there is. He’s the most good person there is. And he holds the nations, he holds our lives, in his hands.
So if we’re wise, we’ll live with our lives in those hands, as the most important thing we ever do.