Isaiah 30: Sin, Repent, Repeat

Isaiah 30 has a lot of content. It makes its way from condemnation to mercy and then back to condemnation again. Tonight as we study this chapter, please take note of how the themes within correlate. Also, the applications from each section are timeless truths about our relationship with God.

Let us look at the divisions of the chapter and their contents:

Part 1 – verses 1-7: Children of Israel are condemned for putting their trust in Egypt. In these verses, God makes it apparent that Egypt does not have the answers. The Israelites that go down to Egypt to seek advice and make plans from this developed civilization had not sought God’s guidance. For this, they would experience shame and humiliation. The Egyptians would “help in vain and to no purpose.”

Part 2 – verses 8-18: The people are described as rebellious, ignorant liars. The path they have chosen is foolishness. Just as these rebellious ones flee from God, they will ultimately be forced to flee at even the smallest threat. Despite this, God still will leave the door open for those who will still seek him: “Therefore the LORD will wait, that He may be gracious to you; And therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; Blessed are all those who wait for Him.”

Part 3 – verses 19-26: Once the people return to God, He will receive and comfort them. They will not escape the consequences of having left God (vs. 20a), but they will hear and obey God again, forsaking their idols and receiving blessing (vs. 23-26).

Part 4 – verses 27-33: This section mentions the Assyrians specifically as receivers of God’s punishment, but they do not appear to be the sole recipients. The language is harsh and suggestive of eternal punishment. Verses 29 & 30 hint at those who would be hypocrites. Even when participating in a holy festival, they would still experience God’s wrath. God shows his dominance and absolute power to destroy and make those suffer that deserve it.

Ominous Tophet is mentioned in verse 33. This was a valley full of fire to burn waste but was also used to sacrifice Israelite children to a fake pagan god, a practice referred to as “passing through the fire to Molech” (Leviticus 18:21, 20:2-3). God uses this ill place as a reference when describing how He can carry out His judgments.

Understanding this reference in light of the final verse is chilling: “For Tophet was established of old, Yes, for the king it is prepared. He has made it deep and large; Its pyre is fire with much wood; The breath of the LORD, like a stream of brimstone, Kindles it.”

Conveniently, each section of Isaiah 30 contains a tidy application for our study tonight:

Part 1: Seek guidance from the one true source: God. He will lead us through prayer, patience and faith.

Part 2: God can and will exert judgment and consequence when we trust in an unworthy source. When in doubt about the direction of our life, the answers are found through reading the Bible and prayer.

Part 3: Hearing and obeying God does not always mean escape from the consequences of our actions, but it does always mean enlightenment.

Part 4: Make no mistake, eternal punishment is your fate if you do not believe and obey God.

This chapter presents a cycle of the sort we as spiritual beings are familiar with: live right, get tempted and sin, seek forgiveness, find grace, live right, get tempted and sin….and so on.

I encourage you to meditate on the four applications above. Let us all endeavor to make our “live right” episodes longer and our “get tempted and sin” occurrences less frequent.