On Christian Progress
A Homily on Isaiah 58:9-14
Isaiah 58 is one of the great calls to charity, generosity, and justice in the Old Testament prophets. The Lord openly rebukes His people for their religious zeal and devotion because they, as Jesus would later say, neglected the weightier matters of the Law. As the passage continues, the set of commands given by God gets more and more intense. It begins with a question, “Is this the kind of fasting I want?” From an inquiry, it moves to a stated desire; in verses 6 and 7, God tells His people, “I want you to…”. From a stated desire, we move to an outright command, “You must…” Five times He tells the people what they must do. They must remove each other's burdens and quit pointing fingers of accusation; feed the hungry; observe the Sabbath; find joy in the Sabbath; and refrain from selfish pursuits on the Sabbath.
Question, desire, command.
This represents a way to talk about our growth and progression in and through the Christian life.
First, we examine our own lives and ask ourselves, “Is this really what God desires?” Oftentimes we may even hear the voice of the Spirit ask us, “Do you think this is what I desire from you?”
Soon enough the questions get answered as we discover what God desires. As we grow up in God, mature in the life of the Spirit, God touches our hearts and sets them ablaze with His desire. God’s heart is filled with desire for every one of us. He has thoughts and dreams about us and our lives. He has those same thoughts and dreams about our neighbors, the suffering, the forgotten, the poor, and the lonely. God’s heart is alive with desire for them and their well-being.
As our growth in the Christian faith continues, we come to the commands of God. “You must”, He tells us. But what we see here in Isaiah is that God’s commands are one and the same as His desires. Twice we are told “I want” (v. 6 and 7). These two statements of desire are identical to the first two commands and their reward.
But why are God’s commands listed here in the final place? Shouldn’t we live from God’s desires? Yes, we should. However, a mature child can obey his father’s commands even when He doesn’t fully comprehend what exactly He wants or why. Or, sometimes, although we know the desires of our father, yet our hearts and weak and dull, and we must, through faith, like an obedient child, do what we have been commanded to do.
While speaking about God’s commands in relation to His desires, C.S. Lewis called duty a “substitute for love”. It is “like a crutch, which is a substitute for a leg”. It is not a leg, not the thing meant to carry us, but it is necessary from time to time when our legs are broken.
Each of us will face times in life where our legs seem broken and we struggle to follow God, times when God feels distant, or times in which we are confused as to what we should do. In those moments, we can lean upon the commands of God, knowing that they will lead us straight back into His fiery heart.
When we follow God’s commands, notice this promise alone comes after the pair of commands, to feed the hungry that we are fed by God. We should not read this as a kind of quid pro quo; if you do this for me, then I’ll do this for you. No, what Isaiah is telling us is that God’s commands are always and ultimately for our own benefit and good. That our care for others and God’s care for us as linked together because when we care for others, we truly find ourselves and thus find God.
C.S. Lewis again on God’s commands and our good:
“Supposing you are taking a dog on a lead through a turnstile or past a post. You know what happens (apart from his usual ceremonies in passing a post!). He tries to go to the wrong side and gets his head looped round the post. You see that he can’t do it, and therefore pull him back. You pull him back because you want to enable him to go forward. He wants exactly the same thing—namely to go forward: for that very reason he resists your pull back, or, if he is an obedient dog, yields to it reluctantly as a matter of duty which seems to him to be quite in opposition to his own will: though in fact it is only by yielding to you that he will ever succeed in getting where he wants.”
“My dear dog, if by your will you mean what you really want to do, viz. to get forward along the road, I not only understand this desire but share it. Forward is exactly where I want you to go.”
“God not only understands but shares the desire which is at the root of all my evil—the desire for complete and ecstatic happiness. He made me for no other purpose than to enjoy it. But He knows, and I do not, how it can be really and permanently attained. He knows that most of my personal attempts to reach it are actually putting it further and further out of my reach.”
“But [the thirst] will never be quenched as I tried to quench it. If I refrain—if I submit to the collar and come round the right side of the lamp-post—God will be guiding me quickly as He can to where I shall get what I really wanted all the time.”
And what about the final three commands about the Sabbath? You’ll remember that the Sabbath was the pinnacle of God’s creation in Genesis 1 and 2. Sabbath was the time in which God and man come together. What are we do? Be with God, enjoy God, and share that life with others. Those are the final three commands.
Be with God.
Enjoy Him and His gifts.
Share it with others.
“Then you will find joy”, the prophet tells us. We will be brought back to that time and place where the desires of God come alive to us, and our hearts burn like His. That progression, and the ebbs and flows between question, desire, and command, is what the Christian life is.
But rest assured, we “know for certain that the Lord has spoken” these things for our good and the good of the world.