“This message came to me concerning Damascus: “Look, the city of Damascus will disappear! It will become a heap of ruins. The towns of Aroer will be deserted. Flocks will graze in the streets and lie down undisturbed, with no one to chase them away. The fortified towns of Israel will also be destroyed, and the royal power of Damascus will end. All that remains of Syria will share the fate of Israel’s departed glory,” declares the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “In that day Israel’s glory will grow dim; its robust body will waste away.”
Isaiah 17:1-4 NLT
With the demise of Moab behind him, Isaiah’s prophetic writings continue, but now against Damascus and the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Isaiah 17 starts with a description of a ruined city, which was once full of “royal power”, a city that now consisted of ruined buildings, a place where untended flocks of sheep and goats grazed on vegetation no longer cultivated. A city that was once full of Israel’s glory, but now deserted, with no people there anymore, people either killed or taken away into exile. I’m sure we pilgrims all know what a ruined building looks like. Here in Scotland, there are many reminders of past inhabitants living in small stone-built cottages, now roofless and crumbling. Vegetation can be found growing out of the joints between differently-shaped rocks and stones, once lovingly put together as a home for a family, so that they could live by their fields and crops. Or perhaps our thoughts move to the picture today of parts of Ukraine, destroyed by war, buildings with holes in the walls, windows blown out, and blackened by fire.
What would it have been like to have lived in Damascus, Aroer and the fortified towns of Israel in those days? The sound of an approaching army, the sounds of battle, the shrieks of terror as the victorious insurgents entered the town, the terrible events that followed, with people rounded up, killed, and even driven out into places where they didn’t want to go. All their possessions lost, families separated and treated like slaves; much more could be written about the events that ended with the scene before us today, of ruined buildings crumbling away, the sounds of a living and vibrant city replaced by a silence only broken by the noisy grazing of the animals left behind.
Israel and Damascus had trusted in military alliances rather than in God. The very things they had relied upon would be taken away. There would be no protection from their fortifications. Their armies would either have been destroyed or the remaining soldiers had run away. But how does this account of misery and destruction provide any sort of lesson for us pilgrims today? Well, for a start, there is the nagging thought that human attempts to build a life of security and prosperity will never succeed unless God is involved. Jesus told the story of the two builders, one who built his house on foundations of sand and the other on foundations of rock. Jesus said, “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock” (Matthew 7:24-25). But perhaps the Israelites in Damascus fell into the second category of builder, “But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash” (Matthew 7:26-27). We know from the events of that time that God’s people had turned away from Him and were behaving in ways that He had explicitly warned them about. They had replaced the worship of God with the worship of idols. They were living sinful, disobedient lives that their ancestors had been told about in Deuteronomy 28:15-16, “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you: Your towns and your fields will be cursed”. What would happen to the disobedient people who lived in Damascus was described by Moses many years earlier.
There are two ways in which we can build our lives: one with God and one without Him. For those who decide to go their own way, God sometimes begins to remove their support structure, plank by plank, until they turn to Him in repentance and humility, confessing their sins and deciding to live their lives His way. Sometimes God allows this to happen in a spectacular way, as recently with the news account of a senior, high-earning accountant who put in place a series of financial instruments to protect his money and property from the tax authorities, only to find that the judicial system didn’t agree with what he had done. He is now in the modern-day equivalent of the Damascus of old, watching all his possessions being seized and sold to pay his debts. For him and his wife, homelessness is becoming a real possibility.
Jeremiah wrote, “This is what the Lord says: “Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans, who rely on human strength and turn their hearts away from the Lord. They are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future. They will live in the barren wilderness, in an uninhabited salty land” (Jeremiah 17:5-6). This was why Damascus became a heap of ruins, and the Israelites should have read on to the next two verses in Jeremiah, “But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit”. We pilgrims know and understand the next two verses, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve”.
There was a psalmist called Asaph who knew all the Scriptures, including those about the blessings and curses written by Moses in Deuteronomy 28. He couldn’t understand why some people seemed to escape the curses that were the lot of those who refused to follow God and His ways. Psalm 73:2-3, “But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked”. He saw that, “They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills” (Psalm 73:5), and he concluded, “Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence” (Psalm 73:13). Why weren’t they destroyed, he wondered. He couldn’t get his mind around the dilemma, “till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin” (Psalm 73:17-18). His thoughts concluded in the last two verses of this Psalm, “Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you. But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds”.
We pilgrims know that there is no other way to live our lives than to live them God’s way. Even living in a society where perhaps everything around us is shaking. The secular direction that people are going will not end well for them or our nation, and the writer to the Hebrews wrote, “When God spoke from Mount Sinai his voice shook the earth, but now he makes another promise: “Once again I will shake not only the earth but the heavens also.” This means that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things will remain” (Hebrews 12:26-27). But for us pilgrims, there is hope for the future, regardless of what will happen, “Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshipping him with holy fear and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). We are a Kingdom people, children of our wonderfu and amazing Heavenly Father. As Habakkuk wrote, “Though the fig-tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the sheepfold and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights” (Habakkuk 3:17-19). That is the wonder of living life God’s way. We are invincible overcomers, in the knowledge that one day we will be securely home with God. Forever.
Dear Heavenly Father. We know in our heads that You are the Source of all we need to live our lives Your way. Please help us to learn that deep within our hearts so that we can truly complete our journey hand in hand with You, rejoicing and strong. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 