“Preserve the teaching of God; entrust his instructions to those who follow me. I will wait for the Lord, who has turned away from the descendants of Jacob. I will put my hope in him.”
Isaiah 8:16-17 NLT
“Preserve”, “entrust”, “follow”, “wait”, and “hope”. All words that define our relationship with God, or should do. There is something in these words and in today’s verses that provides a picture of God: dependable, unmoving, reliable, alive, active, and the One who should determine our course of life. And yet, in today’s secular societies, there seems to be great efforts to do the opposite. The “teaching of God” is eroded and distorted by some people and even denominations, so that it aligns with a worldview considered more acceptable to the people of our day. “His instructions” are largely ignored because people think they know better, and anyway, they want to live their lives following their own agenda, free of external influence. Such people certainly don’t want to follow God, because they have a distorted, or even downright wrong, view of who He is. The next verse is equally ignored because the concepts of waiting on and hoping in God are foreign to most of the people we live among today.
Jesus taught about the ways of the world compared to God’s Kingdom in His Sermon on the Mount. He said, “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). Pictorial language that was picked up by John Bunyan many years ago in his book, The Pilgrim’s Progress. John Bunyan used the broad and narrow ways to represent two opposing paths in life: destruction and eternal salvation. The narrow way represents faith in Christ, which is straight but difficult, whereas the many broad ways represent the easy, tempting roads of the world. Early in the story, the character Goodwill introduced Christian to the narrow path. He explains that this road was laid out by the patriarchs, prophets, Christ, and the Apostles. Goodwill warned that many wide, crooked paths intersect with the narrow way, making it very easy to get lost. The broad paths represent the various worldly philosophies, sins, and distractions that lead to ruin. It’s a fascinating book to read, and can even be found brought up to date with more modern language. John Bunyan wrote the book from a jail cell in Bedford after the monarchy cracked down on religious separatists, but it had a marked effect in furthering the Protestant faith in the 17th Century and became the second-best-selling book of his age.
The “teaching of God” we find in the Bible is expounded by Godly men and, through the Holy Spirit, supported and implemented in the lives of faithful pilgrims everywhere. The Bible is, as someone once said, God’s only written work, and it has survived many generations and the tests of time to bring Godly counsel to Christians today. The problem for many today, including people in some denominations, is that Biblical teaching contradicts what they want to believe, presenting truths that are countercultural and opposed to the beliefs in the society around us. But Isaiah wrote that such teaching is to be preserved, and it is, both on paper and in the hearts and minds of God’s followers. Intuitively, someone who follows God will know what is true and what is false, because the Holy Spirit lives within them.
In the lives of us pilgrims, the “teaching of God” leads us in His paths day by day, and the Holy Spirit is constantly at work helping us to do what we should, veer away from what we shouldn’t, and keep us close to Him. Isaiah said he would continue to wait for God to keep His promises to those who are faithful to Him. And that is where we pilgrims are today. Waiting. The Bible is full of His promises, and they will be worth waiting for, even if some are not realised until we are in His presence. In Isaiah’s day, God had turned away from “the descendants of Jacob” because of their sin and idolatry, but Isaiah would wait for Him by placing his hope in God.
Dear Heavenly Father. We, too, put our hope and trust in You and Your Word. Please guide us along the narrow way so that we do not get lost in our journey to the Heavenly Promised Land. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 