Like a Lion and a Bird: God’s Fierce Protection in Isaiah 31

Posted on by Adrian Clark
Lion on a cliff and eagle flying above a sunlit mountain valley

Read Isaiah 31

We now leave Isaiah 30 and move on to the next chapter. It again starts with a woe declared against Egypt, as we read in the first verse: “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the LORD“. As we discussed in a previous blog, Judah had their “Egypt”, something that represented their dependence on another country for their defence, rather than depending on the Lord for their salvation. But we pilgrims can have our “Egypts” as well, as we rely on our finances, our jobs, and many other things instead of relying on the Lord for our salvation. 

But then Isaiah wrote, “This is what the LORD says to me: ‘As a lion growls, a great lion over its prey – and though a whole band of shepherds is called together against it, it is not frightened by their shouts or disturbed by their clamour – so the LORD Almighty will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and on its heights. Like birds hovering overhead, the LORD Almighty will shield Jerusalem; he will shield it and deliver it, he will “pass over” it and will rescue it’” (Isaiah 31:4-5). Isaiah once again used his pictorial language to describe how the Lord will protect Jerusalem, Mount Zion, firstly as a lion, and secondly as a bird. Think of the fearless attitude of the “great lion”, which wasn’t going to be scared by the actions of anyone close by. That was how God would protect Jerusalem. The coming Assyrians could shout and try to scare Him away, but such tactics wouldn’t work with God. He will come down to fight for Mount Zion, and nothing would stop His purpose or push Him away. Verse 5 in another translation reads, “The LORD of Heaven’s Armies will hover over Jerusalem and protect it like a bird protecting its nest. He will defend and save the city; he will pass over it and rescue it””. Imagine a large bird and how protective it can be of its young. In that context, I remember watching a swan, a cob, take on a large aggressive dog that was threatening its young on a river bank. The dog soon retreated. That was how the hovering Lord would protect Jerusalem from the invaders. The reference to the Lord “passing over” to achieve the rescue was reminiscent of the first Passover in Egypt, reminding the Judeans that what God had done for them before He would do again. 

This is something for us pilgrims to bear in mind. Are we in trouble, of any form, today? Perhaps a sickness, or a relational problem. Perhaps a financial challenge or something similar. Well, hasn’t God helped us before? Didn’t he “pass over” the previous issue and sort it? What did it take to make this happen? It wasn’t us heading for a loan shark or a relative to borrow money. It wasn’t us heading for a divorce court or a lawyer’s office. It was looking to God for a solution, in faith that our Heavenly Father would help us. Should we be praying, “Do it again, Lord”? 

We can hear the loving heart of God in verse 6: “Though you are such wicked rebels, my people, come and return to the LORD“. Look at the emphasis on “My people”. That’s who the Judeans were, and it is also who we are. A people loved by God. His children. And like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, God is looking out for us if we have drifted or travelled away from Him. Perhaps we have stopped going to church or reading our Bible. Perhaps we have filled the times when we usually fellowshipped with God’s people with other activities. Perhaps God has become a distant memory, one that we avoid dwelling on. Well, God is still there looking out for us. In Luke 15:20, and about the prodigal son, we read, “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him”. The next verse reads, “His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’” God will never turn anyone with a repentant heart away from Him. 

Isaiah 31 ends with a reference to the slaughter of the Assyrians by the sword of the Angel of the Lord. 185,000 of them, and we can read the account of what happened in 2 Kings 19. But the Lord’s anger blazed out on them from Zion, and He dealt with His and His people’s enemies. We remember that he did this while they were “wicked rebels“, still wedded to “the gold and silver images [their] sinful hands have made”. But that is the heart of God, and He hasn’t changed. Romans 5:8: “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners”. In Jerusalem, two thousand or so years ago, we might have found ourselves in the crowd calling out, “Crucify Him”. In fact, through our sin and rebellion against God, we have done just that. And yet, Jesus looked down through the centuries, saw us in our sins, and died for us anyway. We cannot get our natural minds around what God did for us, and yet, as believers in God, saved by His grace and our acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, we have been reborn as spiritual beings. One day, God’s anger will once again blaze out from Zion, and hell will at last be populated by all His enemies.

Dear Father God. You have so richly blessed us, with blessings upon blessings. And yet we still wander away from You sometimes. Please forgive our waywardness and lead us in Your ways, we pray, this day and every daytime. Amen.

Ariel, the Altar of Blood

Posted on by Adrian Clark

What sorrow awaits Ariel, the City of David. Year after year you celebrate your feasts. Yet I will bring disaster upon you, and there will be much weeping and sorrow. For Jerusalem will become what her name Ariel means— an altar covered with blood. I will be your enemy, surrounding Jerusalem and attacking its walls. I will build siege towers and destroy it.”
Isaiah 29:1-3 NLT

An unusual name appears in our reading today. “Ariel”. It is a name more associated with a washing powder in the UK today, but in Isaiah’s day it meant “an altar covered with blood”, a definition usefully supplied in verse 2. But in other translations it means “lion of God” or “altar hearth”, probably referring to the Temple in Jerusalem. 

Chapters 28-33 in Isaiah all start with “What sorrow awaits”, or “Woe to”, five “woes” in all. “Woe” is an exclamation of grief for the terrible judgment that is yet to come. In this chapter, the Lord describes judgment coming on Jerusalem. But as we journey through Isaiah, we find that much of his writing is connected with warnings, prophecies or oracles of doom yet to come on a people, nation, or even empire. And he was very accurate in what he wrote, as history has confirmed. So chapter 29 contains “woes” directed against Jerusalem. If I were living in those days and had heard what he said, I would like to think I would take notice and change my ways, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, and at the time the people paid very little attention to him.

The people of Judah had a very strong foundation in God, with religious leaders and a wealth of God-breathed literature underpinning what God desired of them. They knew that if they followed His ways, they would be blessed and protected; if they didn’t, they would be cursed and unprotected. They could read all about this in Deuteronomy, just as we can, although people in Isaiah’s day were largely uneducated and relied on priests and other religious leaders to disseminate God’s Word. But it is a human condition that sin is a preferred way of life, and because God was, and is, slow to anger, they wrongly felt that He didn’t much care about how they behaved. Perhaps their logic ran along the line that it was all very well for their early ancestors, but they were much more sophisticated. And that is perhaps our first thought this morning. I have heard arguments today from people who have rejected God and His Word because they think that it applies to a people, unsophisticated and uneducated, who used to live many years ago. After all, they say, we now have all this knowledge and scientific data, and have no further need for God and His ways. To such a people, we can point to the experiences of God’s people in the 8th Century BC and suggest they take note and seriously consider what happened to them. Hebrews 13:8-9: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas. Your strength comes from God’s grace, not from rules about food, which don’t help those who follow them”. 

Here is another thought, based on the judgment coming for the behaviour of God’s people. Perhaps we need to remember that being close to God does not make us immune from correction. Jerusalem had the temple. It had the priesthood. It had the sacrifices and religious festivals. It had a long history of God’s dealings with His people. Yet none of these things could protect the people if their hearts had turned away from God. This offers a significant lesson for Christians. We can be surrounded by Christian things—church attendance, worship, Bible reading, Christian fellowship—and still have hearts spiritually distant from God. We also need to remember that religious activity is not the same as spiritual obedience. Jesus later warned of people who would honour God with their lips while their hearts were far from Him, quoting a later verse in Isaiah 29. We remember the story of Samuel selecting a king to replace Saul, and watching as Jesse’s sons were paraded before him. He took one look at the son called Eliab and thought “Surely this is the Lord’s anointed”, but the next verse reads, “But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart”” (1 Samuel 16:7). The question we must ask ourselves today is “What is the state of our hearts?” Are we devoted to God and His ways, following Jesus wholeheartedly, or are we just paying lip service to our liturgies, while our minds dwell on other things, such as what was on television last night, or our favourite football team’s prowess in yesterday’s match? Through Isaiah, God was very critical of the way the Israelites were behaving. He wrote, “When you come to worship me, who asked you to parade through my courts with all your ceremony? Stop bringing me your meaningless gifts; the incense of your offerings disgusts me! As for your celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath and your special days for fasting— they are all sinful and false. I want no more of your pious meetings” (Isaiah 1:12-13). James too wrote on this theme, and we read, “But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it” (James 1:22-25).

The people in Judea probably thought that if they continued to go through the motions in their religion, then they would be alright. Isaiah wrote, “Year after year you celebrate your feasts” but God added another word “Yet”. We pilgrims have to beware of this word, because it confirms that any assumptions we might like to make about our faith could be followed by a “yet”. Those two verses at the end of Psalm 139 must be on the lips of every pilgrim frequently: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life”. We must remember that God loves us, and because of that, He won’t leave us in a life of complacency or sin without discipline. 

But in all the negatives of our verses today, there is hope. Our faith in God is alive and well, I’m sure, and He is quick to respond to a repentant heart. He loves us as a father loves His children and will go to extraordinary lengths to nurture us and educate us in His ways. 

Dear Father God. Thank You for Your love and care. We know it is easy to go through spiritual motions and delude ourselves about their reality. We pray David’s prayer, that You would search our hearts and keep us close to You, this day and for all time. In Jesus’ name. Amen.