Mighty Waters of the River

August 5, 2018

Isaiah 8:5-10
The LORD spoke to me again: (6) "Because this people has refused the
waters of Shiloah that flow gently, and rejoice over Rezin and the son of
Remaliah, (7) therefore, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them
the waters of the River, mighty and many, the king of Assyria and all his
glory. And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks, (8)
and it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass on, reaching
even to the neck, and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your
land, O Immanuel." (9) Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered; give
ear, all you far countries; strap on your armor and be shattered; strap on
your armor and be shattered. (10) Take counsel together, but it will
come to nothing; speak a word, but it will not stand, for God is with us.

Introduction
Many years ago, I faced a very serious fork in the road, career-wise. I was
in my 30’s, married with young kids. And at that time, I sensed God
nudging me in a certain direction that was a bit scary to me. He was
nudging me to do fulltime in the ministry. I was doing consultancy at
that time, and I did consultancy work for a Christian non profit, and I
sense that God was leading me to work there. The pay was not very good,
and I really could not figure our how I could provide adequately for the
needs of my family with such a low pay. But the inner compulsion was
strong and I decided to go for it.
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Six months into that work, and I was already struggling financially. Then
one day, a former client of mine, one of the retail giants in the country
offered me a job with a six-figure salary. It was, in a manner of speaking,
a dream come true. I was torn. I needed the money, and I knew the offer
was just too good to pass up. But I could not ignore how God led me to
work in that organization in the first place.
Eventually I decided to pass on the offer, and stayed on with the
Christian non profit. And while I grieved for a while for the corporate
career that I’ve always aspired for, that I had to let go, I knew then that
it was what God willed for me. And I am at peace with that decision.

Two choices
Many choices in life come in twos. Most choices are much more
complicated than that of course. But many life choices come in twos. Do
I get married or not? Is he the one or not. Do I take this job or not? Should
I quit or not? Do I tell my parents or not? You either take one course or
the other.
And sometimes, these choices have so much at stake, that it can be very
difficult to make wise decisions.
In the passage we read, we find out that the kingdom of Judah and its
king, Ahaz had a big choice to make. And the choices were framed as a
choice between rivers. The Prophet Isaiah talked about two rivers here.
The first is the waters of Shiloah. It was described as a river that flows
gently.

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The waters of Shiloah was a metaphor for the gentle rule of God
administered through King David.
In contrast to the gentle waters of Shiloah is the mighty waters of the
“the River”, and by this Isaiah was referring to the violent river
Euphrates. It is the river that characterizes the empire of Assyria.
So the choice was between the gentle river of Shiloah or the mighty
waters of the Euphrates. In other words, are you going to trust in God or
not? Are you going to put your faith in the power of Yahweh, or in the
mighty army of Assyria?
You see during the time of Isaiah was a violent time of shifting geo-
political alignments. There were two super-powers during their time,
the powerful empire of the south, Egypt, and the dangerously savage
super-power from the east, the Assyrian Empire. Egypt had no interest
in expanding its empire to the north, because it was busy fending off the
Ethiopian kingdom further in the south. So Jerusalem and Samaria were
quite safe from the southern power. The Assyrian empire was a different
thing altogether. It was ascendant, and it aspired to ‘world domination.’
Now prior to the prophesy of Isaiah, the king of the southern kingdom
Judah, Ahaz made a big political decision. The super-power Assyria was
threatening to invade the smaller kingdoms of Damascus, Samaria and
Judah. The kings of Damascus and Samaria wanted to join their forces
with that of Judah, and perhaps even draw in the other super-power
Egypt to fend off the Assyrian advance.
But because of the longstanding mistrust between the kingdoms of Judah
and Samaria, Ahaz decided not to join the alliance. In retaliation,
Samaria plotted to topple the rule of King Ahaz. Fearing that he will be
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defeated and his kingdom will fall into the hands of Samaria, he decided
to ally himself with Assyria. Ahaz saved himself and his kingdom by
getting into the good graces of a superior geo-political power.
So what the prophet Isaiah was saying, was that king Ahaz, rather than
trusting in the gentle power of God as sovereign ruler of Judah, trusted
instead the violent power of the Assyrian empire. He trusted men, rather
than God.
And that choice had consequences. Because of that choice, Isaiah said
that the mighty waters of the River—Assyria—will overwhelm Judah. It
will “will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks, and it will
sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass on, reaching even to the
neck, and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land.”
Jerusalem became safe from its neighboring kingdoms, Samaria and
Damascus. But by allying with Assyria, he opened the whole region to
the rampaging hordes of Assyria. The Jerusalem will be a vassal to
Assyria for many years, and the land of Judah will be wasted and
unproductive as a result.

Power of Choice
Freedom of choice is such a precious gift from God. God gave us the
power of choice in how we live our lives, in the directions we take,
among the options available for us in everyday life. But because we do
not have perfect knowledge about our choices, making decisions can be
a frightening thing. Some choices have very high stakes, and a choice of
one means giving up the others. It means we are forced to live with our
choices, whether they are wrong or right.
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Some people cope by not making decisions on their own, and just let
others choose for them. To not make a choice, is a choice itself. And
every choice has its consequences.
Now, the way King Ahaz made his decision is very similar to how we
make decision today. We make our calculations of probability, and we
weigh our options based on who has more power and more influence.
And most often than not, we go for who we think is the winner—mahilig
tayong tumayo sa llamado. Ayaw natin sa dehado.
We are too enamored with power. We like to be in the good graces of
the rich and powerful. We want to be backed-up by the big guys, the
bullies. We want to be associated with powerful politicians, with
influential people, with rich and powerful elites. We are thrilled when
they call our names. We feel special when we are hobnobbing with these
special people.
The problem is, what seems to be the logical choice may turn out to have
some serious unintended consequences. Get help from a bully and you
end up living under the shadow of that bully. Being associated with
powerful people means your name will be stained by whatever negative
issues will be attached to the people you associate with.
When we are in tight financial crisis, we fall to the temptation of
borrowing easy money from people, who end up holding us by the neck.
Being financially dependent on a devious person means you are trapped
in that indebted relationship. Hulog tayo sa utang na loob, na hindi
kayang bayaran ng ilang henerasyon ng ating mga anak. We become
practically slaves to people we owe money from. You are at their beck
and call until your debt is fully paid off.

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Very often, we only find out about these consequences when we’ve made
the choice and we are way too deep to back out. You are trapped. Laging
nasa huli ang pagsisisi.

Our National Situation

How we make decisions in our personal lives are quite similar to how we
make decisions in the political realm. Many Filipinos are backing up the
strongman approach of President Duterte. Perhaps they have given up
on the country’s democratic institutions that seem to grind too slow, if
ever they work at all. They want someone with determined political will
to make things happen. And things happened indeed. 30,000+ drug
suspects are dead. Drug dealers are scared out of their wits, that they
have gone underground. On the surface, our communities that used to
be infested with drug addicts are now relatively safe. But at what cost?
The crazy thing is that there are many in the church that celebrate this
deadly policy. They say this policy has allowed communities to become
drug free. Are they really? Are we really drug free?
Our country is flirting with the ascendant super-power China. Our
president has been going out of his way to give concessions after
concessions to this devious superpower that we may end up giving up
much of our territory and even our sovereignty to China.
And many Filipinos do not even care that our sovereignty is being
violated, and even praise the President for standing up against the US
and the EU that are too concerned about human rights. And all the
while, you have an immoral superpower violating our sovereignty in the
West Philippine Seas, and forcing high interest loans for big ticket
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infrastructure projects that Filipinos up to the next generation would
have to pay for.
We have forgotten about who God is and what He wills for country.
Either that, or we never really understood what He wanted at all.
We are no different from King Ahaz and the kingdom of Judah, allying
itself with the big bully of an empire Assyria, thinking the alliance will
make Jerusalem safe. It chose the safety of being under the protection of
a bully, rather than the protection of being under the sovereign will of
God.
We are in exactly the same situation, I think.
And Lord have mercy on us, that the judgment Isaiah proclaimed on the
kingdom of Judah, that Assyria would bring poverty on the kingdom,
where the Assyrian army laid much of the land of Judah to waste, and
the Jewish people were forced to feed on curds and honey, because there
was no more food grown in the land. Will that happen to us as well? The
combined impact of the TRAIN Law, Peso devaluation and increased oil
prices have already brought so much hardship on the poorest sectors of
our society. And even we in the middle class are also feeling the effects
of the increase in the prices of goods. Our money cannot but as much
stuff are we used to be able to do.

The Mercy of God

In spite of the lack of faith of King Ahaz, the truth is, God was still very
merciful on Judah. Even though the Assyrian empire would bring the
kingdom of Judah to its knees, it would not be fully captured by the
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Assyrians. Not even the military might and superior force of the Assyrian
army could destroy the kingdom of Judah. Why not? Because God was
still with them.
God did not allow the Assyrian empire to full destroy the kingdom of
Judah because Judah was under the protection of the Lord of Host. God
will never allow anything to happen to his people outside of His will.
God was still merciful. A time would come when the presence of God
would leave the kingdom of Judah altogether. But this was not yet that
time. Judah was still under the mercy of God. Although not for very long.
In the same way, I think for as long as God is not finished with us as a
nation, for as long as we as a nation is still fulfilling God’s purposes for
our time, any judgment on our country will still be under His sovereign
will. Destruction will not come to us if that is not his will. We will be
preserved even if evil politicians make a mess of our government affairs.
We will be preserved even if foreign nations will try to exert its influence
over us. There will be suffering. There will be serious consequences to
bad decisions of our leaders. But God is in control. Because God is
merciful.
But we need to understand, God does not want a nation to suffer
unnecessarily. That is why during the time of Isaiah, we would be sent
by God to give ample warning to the kings of the nations. And during
our time, God is also speaking to various people, giving them wisdom
and discernment to know if our nation is losing its way or not. People
need to have wisdom and discernment as well to heed what God is telling
us in our time.

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Takeaways
What can we learn from this? First of all, our choices are not what they
seem. We are often limited to the choices that we see. Sometimes when
we look at the options available to us, we are left with choosing the lesser
of the evils. Every choice is bad. But we calculate our probabilities and
place our bet on the least damaging options, or the one that makes the
strongest promises, that of course very often end up as false promises.
Secondly, we need to understand that God allows us to go through such
forks in the road, allow the confusion on what choice to take, so that we
can call on Him for guidance and wisdom. We have become too
accustomed to making choices in the flesh, that we very rarely bring God
in our decision making process.
Like, when was the last time you asked of God on a major decision you
had to take? When was the last time you only made a choice when you
were certain it was the option God wanted you to take?
Or aren’t we, most often than not, impressed by appearances? Or bullied
into submission? Or become too scared to even make a choice? Or were
just relieved to allow someone else to make the difficult choices for us?
Where is God in our midst?
No wonder we get into all kinds of tight sports. No wonder our lives are
often embroiled in so many messy complications that we have to idea
how to sort out or to get out of.
Thirdly, even when we do make wrong choices, if we are humble
enough to admit our mistakes before Him, he will not allow the
consequences of your actions to destroy you. Some bad choices can be
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irreversible. Committing a crime will land you in jail. Stealing from your
company may get your fired. Doing drugs may have serious
consequences on your health. Hurting your spouse may cause a serious
rift in your relationship. But they can be restored, They can be redeemed
by God. God is merciful to those who humble themselves before Him
So why not try God? Why not ask him to show you which choice to
make? Why not allow yourself to be swept into the gentle waters of the
Shiloah, and so that you may end up in the place where God wants you
to be?
Put your trust in God. And He will make sure that his plans for you are
fulfilled according to His will.

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