Isaiah 30:3 Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.
It is truly a remarkable day in which we live. The world is more inept than ever before at solving its problems, rearing children, mending homes, and helping people to be healthy and whole. Yet perhaps there has never been a time in this country when believers have been more desperate to have the world’s affirmation, the world’s approval, and the world’s help than right now.
I think specifically, as I have said, about the home. Homes are falling apart and children are not learning what they need to know, including basic life skills. Yet, the very tools that God has given us to rear children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord have been despised, ostracized, and, in some cases, nearly criminalized by the culture at large.
You know, whenever we face difficult times we have a choice. We can double down on our straying from God, we can seek the help, approval, and affirmation of people who don’t know God, or we can turn to God. Sometimes it is God Who has put us in the difficulties in which we find ourselves. This was the case in Isaiah’s day, when he was prophesying to God’s wayward people.
Isaiah 30 is a woe, a trouble. “Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me.” He is speaking specifically of God’s people who were sending ambassadors to Egypt, the very country that had been their slave master, and seeking their help because there was, it seemed to Israel, a bigger problem on the horizon, namely Assyria.
It is amazing how we can turn to that which we know to be wrong. We can even turn to the enemies of God when they seem to offer an answer to some greater problem that we have. Israel was fleeing a bear and running straight toward a cliff. They were seeking help from Egypt instead of asking counsel of God.
Verse 3 states it very succinctly, “Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame.” Seeking affirmation from the enemies of God is shame and confusion. Now I realize those are strong words. Are there such things as “enemies of God”? Of course there are! In Romans 5 the Bible tells us that we were the enemies of God. Romans 5:10 says, “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” All of us are born in opposition to God. That is our natural state.
Romans 8:7 says, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Isaiah spoke for God when he said to Israel, “Ye despise this word, and trust in oppression and perverseness and stay thereon.” Israel wouldn’t see, hear, or respond to God.
Sometimes God sends us trouble in order to help us turn to Him. When that happens either we will turn to the God Who sustains, provides for, and loves us, or we will turn to those who know not God.
God loves the world and we should love people, but make no mistake about it. Not all people love God, and not all people know God. The Bible speaks in Philippians of those “whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame.” We are living in a day when we are literally boasting and bragging about the very things that should make us blush.
We need to remember that seeking affirmation from the enemies of God is shame and confusion. It is confusing to us and it is confusing to the world. It seems to indicate to the world that what we have is empty. Whatever your troubles may be today, realize there is a God Who is greater than our problems, greater than our difficulty, and greater than us.
This chapter ends by saying, “Through the voice of the LORD shall the Assyrians be beaten down.” God was able to take care of the Assyrians, and God was able to take care of Israel without Israel looking to the enemies of God for help.