Isaiah 41:1-20 The Power of Fear
Israel is in physical bondage to her Babylonian oppressors, but today, in Chapter 41, God will address another oppressor in her experience, and that is fear. Fear is more emotion than substance and yet no less powerful. Fear is a tool that oppressors use to gain and keep power, but fear has power in its own right and can be an oppressor even after the physical oppressor is overcome. We pick up today with a study of this stumbling block
God's power is the focus of Part 1 in His Highway Project (Isaiah 40-48). He opens in Chapter 40 with the overall challenge to consider the sources from which we seek the comfort of empowerment. He made the initial comparison between the power of the flesh—everything that is fleeting, insufficient, and mortal—and His own superiority, sufficiency, and eternality. All flesh, including their efforts and idols, are grass, but He and His word endure forever. He is Israel’s incomparable God.
Isaiah 40 ended with Israel's charge against God for ignoring her just claim like a judge who refused to help a victim (Isaiah 40:27). In response, God now begins to build a case for Himself. He has not forgotten Israel. He has both the sovereignty and power to save her, and He has a plan, if she will only wait on Him. He has promised to empower her, and He begins by giving her a voice.
The victim's cry for a voice resounds in our culture today. As we will see with Israel, being given a voice can be a two-edged sword when the LORD calls everyone to the judgment seat and begins to examine her case.
Isaiah 41:1-4
In Isaiah 41:1, God calls His courtroom to order with a rebuke to the noisy coastlands who are drowning out the testimony of the victim.
Let the victim be heard! This imperative command to keep silent is only spoken once in Isaiah, here in this opening verse, and will contrast to future commands to sing at the news of a coming deliverer.
God then tells both Israel and "the coastlands" His plan for the near future. He opens with another series of rhetorical "who" questions as He announces the as-yet unnamed deliverer who He will raise up to deal with Babylon (41:2-4). The coastlands represent the outmost extremities of the nations under Babylonian rule. What He plans to do will rock the entire civilized world. We know from history that this deliverer would be Cyrus, King of Persia, who would conquer the Babylonian empire, set Israel free from her exile, and send her home to Jerusalem (at least as many Israelites who would choose to go). The announcement gives few details about this deliverer, but it does describe him as a tsedek, a righteous one, in Isaiah 41:2, which is a discordant note. Most Bible translations don't include the word "righteous" in the verse, but it is the meaning of the original Hebrew word. It describes a man who is upright and on a straight path, and Cyrus does indeed plow a straight path through Babylon with the LORD's help.
God then caps His grand prophecy with an "I AM" statement. "I, the LORD, am the first; and with the last I am He" (Isaiah 41:4b). He will make this statement two more times (Isaiah 44:6, 48:12) in Part 1 where He is making a case for His sovereignty and power over both the abusers and the abused.
Isaiah 41:5-7
The coastlands have a reaction to His declaration: They fear. To combat their fear, they immediately turn to "empowering" one another and bolstering themselves with their idols. This is how the world comforts itself when it is afraid.
Isaiah 41:8-20
While all the world is running around in a panic and appealing to their perceived power sources for comfort and a solution, God commands Israel, "Fear not." That imperative is repeated three times in this chapter (Isaiah 41:10, 13, 14), making it the theme for the passage.
We know first-hand just how easy it is to get caught up in an oppressor's panic. It is even more terrifying when the source of the panic has been occasioned by our God. Here in Isaiah, the world is turning on Israel in anger and condemnation. God said that He would help His people if they would just wait for His solution to unfold.
Waiting. That is the hardest part. When it seems like nothing is happening, uncertainty creeps in and brings fear with it, and fear breeds a whole new host of problems.
God begins by establishing who He is to Israel. She is His servant, His chosen one. He has not cast her away. She needs the reassurance of her relationship with Him because that relationship comes with promises of His strengthening, His help, His provision, and, perhaps sweetest of all, His vindication. He does not downplay Israel's powerlessness or her victimization. He answers it with His own power. Her enemies are nothing more than grass before Him, and He is going to cut them down.
When trials and persecutions strike us, we have to remind ourselves that this is how God sees them. While they may persecute us now, that persecution will end. While they may contend with us now, there will come a day when they contend with our God, and their fury will be nothing compared to His fury. And when their day is over, they will lose a kingdom where we will gain one. But we have to endure the waiting period.
The imagery in verses 17-20 should remind Israel of another time in their history when the LORD provided for them like this, namely, their exodus from Egypt. He spurs their memory of what He has done for them in the past and promises these things in the future so that they might "see and know, and consider and understand together, that the hand of the LORD has done this . . ." (41:20) Fear feeds on emotion. To battle the fear, God calls Israel to break away from the emotion and exercise reasoning instead. What do they know of God? What has He done for them in the past? Is He able to do it again in the future?
Isaiah 41:21-29
God lifts Israel up with this reassurance of His power, but how can she experience this power when she has turned to her idols for power? In the second half of the passage, God brings His own charge against Israel. "'Present your case,' says the LORD. 'Bring forth your strong reasons,' says the King of Jacob." (Isaiah 41:21 NKJV) He tells Israel, I gave you a prophetic vision of how I intend to remedy your situation. Can your idols do the same? Can they tell you what will come? Give Me one example of how your idols predicted something and then it came to pass.
Of course, they cannot.
Again, in verse 25, He repeats the prophecy of the coming deliverer.
Prophecy is the ultimate test of godship. If these alternate sources of power cannot predict the future, let alone control it, then where is their power? Idolatry is futile.
What does Israel say to God's charge against her? Nothing. God remarks,
The Stumbling Block of Fear
Fear is the first reaction that God needs to address because it is a monstrous stumbling block to overcome, particularly when trying to comfort someone. First of all, it affects decision-making. It can drive a person to make bad decisions when trying to escape the abuse. It can also keep the person in an abusive relationship for fear of not having needful things like food, housing, a source of income, and medical help. It can keep victims from speaking up, and so the oppression continues. Fear is a tool that oppressors use to rule us.
Think about your own life.
My mother had a very scarring and unstable childhood. When she was seven years old, her father died of cancer, leaving her and her sister with a mentally unstable mother who moved the family around from relative’s house to relative’s house. She suffered neglect at her mother’s hand. Her mother often turned her out of the house and left her to fend for herself. She had to steal food at times to eat. Eventually, her mother gave her away to an adoptive couple. (Her mother only gave her away, not her sister.) Her adoptive parents were oppressive and abusive, and she didn’t escape them until she married my father. But even then, they plagued her, and she actually came to the point of suicide one day, and it was only the fact that she had a little baby to care for that kept her from going through with it. It was at that point that she gave her life to Christ. This was her coming-of-age experience. It made her a very fearful person, and that fear ruled her all of her life.
Once she was married and master of her own family to a certain extent, she took back power over her life with a vengeance. She became a very strict, controlling person who clung to her husband and children with an iron-grip. When she hit relationship obstacles in life, she would withdraw. Eventually she withdrew from social life altogether and lived vicariously through her children. But all her effort to control her world so that it would be safe and secure for her never relieved the fear and she only ended up frustrating her family. She was a believer, a strong believer, and yet she failed to grasp this aspect of God's power. She put more faith in her own power and control over her world than she did in God, and it gave her no comfort.
This is my personal experience with a fearful person, and it helped me understand the ripple effects that fear creates. It affects all of our relationships, but it also affects our witness for Him.
Q: What are we saying about our God when we let fear rule us?
Fear doesn't just affect the individual person. It is socially contagious. It is hard not to be afraid when the entire world is running around in a panic and demanding that we act upon their fear.
Let's use climate change as an example. I understand it is a divisive issue, and I will say up-front that I absolutely believe we should be good stewards of God's creation. That was part of Adam and Eve's original calling, and it is our responsibility as well. Part of the reason God sent Israel into exile is because she did not give the Land its Sabbath rest. But it is God's creation, not man's. When humans take the creatorship from God and exalt themselves as creators of their environment, that crosses a line and we know it crosses a line because fear has now entered the experience. Any time fear enters an experience, that is a red flag that something is wrong in power dynamic because fear is an unspoken admission of powerlessness. People who feel powerless over something react to that powerlessness by trying to take back control--it's just like my mother all over again. You are welcome to disagree with me, but the fact remains that the fear of climate change has gripped the world, and it has happened largely because the world no longer acknowledges God as the power over His creation.
Fear Not
When all the world is afraid, that is when God's people cannot show fear. When we let the world's fear rule us, we deny the power of our God and His sovereignty over us. To the unbelieving world, we are saying our God isn't big enough, strong enough, resourceful enough, or even faithful enough to deal with our circumstances. When we fear, we take God's power from Him, and we lose the opportunity to show the unbelieving world His power in action. We lose our witness.
Fear is a stumbling block especially in battle, whether a physical battle or spiritual one. Did you know that, according to the Mosaic Law, fear is a reason to be exempted from battle? Deuteronomy 20:8 says:
God doesn't want fearful people fighting for Him, because fearful people will bail in the middle of the fight, and they will take others with them because fear is contagious. God had a purpose for sending Israel into Babylon, and He has a purpose for sending us into persecutions and trials--to refine us but also to use us as His witnesses. When we are in the midst of that battle, the natural fear reactions of fight or flight will kick in but without the control needed for a believer to accomplish God's objective in the circumstances. God needs His people to identify with His power and act with control according to His direction. We have to embrace the bigger picture of God working with us through these trials if we are going to prevail in the spiritual battle. Fear should never exempt a believer from the battle.
Key Verse: 2 Timothy 1:7
Isaiah 40-48 fleshes out the power aspect in dealing with fear. Isaiah 49-57 will flesh out the love aspect, and through all these chapters there will be the resounding challenge to see, hear, know, understand and believe so that our decisions will be made from a sound mind. not fueled by fleeting emotion. Remember God's original comparison of what is fleeting and what is eternal. Human emotion is also like grass. It grows and fades from moment to moment and season to season.
We will keep this verse in mind as we continue through this study.
God's power is the focus of Part 1 in His Highway Project (Isaiah 40-48). He opens in Chapter 40 with the overall challenge to consider the sources from which we seek the comfort of empowerment. He made the initial comparison between the power of the flesh—everything that is fleeting, insufficient, and mortal—and His own superiority, sufficiency, and eternality. All flesh, including their efforts and idols, are grass, but He and His word endure forever. He is Israel’s incomparable God.
Isaiah 40 ended with Israel's charge against God for ignoring her just claim like a judge who refused to help a victim (Isaiah 40:27). In response, God now begins to build a case for Himself. He has not forgotten Israel. He has both the sovereignty and power to save her, and He has a plan, if she will only wait on Him. He has promised to empower her, and He begins by giving her a voice.
Q: How is being given a voice empowering and comforting to a victim?
Q: Does being unheard contribute to fear?
The victim's cry for a voice resounds in our culture today. As we will see with Israel, being given a voice can be a two-edged sword when the LORD calls everyone to the judgment seat and begins to examine her case.
Isaiah 41:1-4
In Isaiah 41:1, God calls His courtroom to order with a rebuke to the noisy coastlands who are drowning out the testimony of the victim.
"Keep silence before Me, O coastlands, and let the people renew their strength! Let them come near, then let them speak; Let us come near together for judgment." (Isaiah 41:1 NKJV)
Let the victim be heard! This imperative command to keep silent is only spoken once in Isaiah, here in this opening verse, and will contrast to future commands to sing at the news of a coming deliverer.
God then tells both Israel and "the coastlands" His plan for the near future. He opens with another series of rhetorical "who" questions as He announces the as-yet unnamed deliverer who He will raise up to deal with Babylon (41:2-4). The coastlands represent the outmost extremities of the nations under Babylonian rule. What He plans to do will rock the entire civilized world. We know from history that this deliverer would be Cyrus, King of Persia, who would conquer the Babylonian empire, set Israel free from her exile, and send her home to Jerusalem (at least as many Israelites who would choose to go). The announcement gives few details about this deliverer, but it does describe him as a tsedek, a righteous one, in Isaiah 41:2, which is a discordant note. Most Bible translations don't include the word "righteous" in the verse, but it is the meaning of the original Hebrew word. It describes a man who is upright and on a straight path, and Cyrus does indeed plow a straight path through Babylon with the LORD's help.
God then caps His grand prophecy with an "I AM" statement. "I, the LORD, am the first; and with the last I am He" (Isaiah 41:4b). He will make this statement two more times (Isaiah 44:6, 48:12) in Part 1 where He is making a case for His sovereignty and power over both the abusers and the abused.
Isaiah 41:5-7
The coastlands have a reaction to His declaration: They fear. To combat their fear, they immediately turn to "empowering" one another and bolstering themselves with their idols. This is how the world comforts itself when it is afraid.
Q: In our generation, we have seen what happens when something that is beyond human control or containment sparks a world-wide panic. (I speak of the COVID-19 outbreak.) What actions did the world take to combat the panic?
Q: Why didn't any of these measures calm people's fears?
Q: To what "idols" (perceived sources of power) did the world turn for help and comfort?
Q: Did the world's reaction relieve the oppression or create more oppression?
Q: What other societal issues sprang up from trying to combat the threat according to the world's way? What was the ripple effect of isolation, for instance?
Isaiah 41:8-20
While all the world is running around in a panic and appealing to their perceived power sources for comfort and a solution, God commands Israel, "Fear not." That imperative is repeated three times in this chapter (Isaiah 41:10, 13, 14), making it the theme for the passage.
Q: What caused the fear? What does Israel have to fear?
We know first-hand just how easy it is to get caught up in an oppressor's panic. It is even more terrifying when the source of the panic has been occasioned by our God. Here in Isaiah, the world is turning on Israel in anger and condemnation. God said that He would help His people if they would just wait for His solution to unfold.
Waiting. That is the hardest part. When it seems like nothing is happening, uncertainty creeps in and brings fear with it, and fear breeds a whole new host of problems.
Q: How does God stem Israel's fear in verses 8-20? What promises does He make?
God begins by establishing who He is to Israel. She is His servant, His chosen one. He has not cast her away. She needs the reassurance of her relationship with Him because that relationship comes with promises of His strengthening, His help, His provision, and, perhaps sweetest of all, His vindication. He does not downplay Israel's powerlessness or her victimization. He answers it with His own power. Her enemies are nothing more than grass before Him, and He is going to cut them down.
Q: Is there comfort in knowing that the abusive, overbearing person in your life, who seems so strong and holds such power over you, is just as fragile as you are? Can you see them through God's eyes?
When trials and persecutions strike us, we have to remind ourselves that this is how God sees them. While they may persecute us now, that persecution will end. While they may contend with us now, there will come a day when they contend with our God, and their fury will be nothing compared to His fury. And when their day is over, they will lose a kingdom where we will gain one. But we have to endure the waiting period.
The imagery in verses 17-20 should remind Israel of another time in their history when the LORD provided for them like this, namely, their exodus from Egypt. He spurs their memory of what He has done for them in the past and promises these things in the future so that they might "see and know, and consider and understand together, that the hand of the LORD has done this . . ." (41:20) Fear feeds on emotion. To battle the fear, God calls Israel to break away from the emotion and exercise reasoning instead. What do they know of God? What has He done for them in the past? Is He able to do it again in the future?
Isaiah 41:21-29
God lifts Israel up with this reassurance of His power, but how can she experience this power when she has turned to her idols for power? In the second half of the passage, God brings His own charge against Israel. "'Present your case,' says the LORD. 'Bring forth your strong reasons,' says the King of Jacob." (Isaiah 41:21 NKJV) He tells Israel, I gave you a prophetic vision of how I intend to remedy your situation. Can your idols do the same? Can they tell you what will come? Give Me one example of how your idols predicted something and then it came to pass.
Of course, they cannot.
Again, in verse 25, He repeats the prophecy of the coming deliverer.
"I have stirred up one from the north, and he comes--one from the rising sun [that is, the east] who calls on my name. He treads on rulers as if they were mortar, as if he were a potter treading the clay." (Isaiah 41:25 NIV)
Prophecy is the ultimate test of godship. If these alternate sources of power cannot predict the future, let alone control it, then where is their power? Idolatry is futile.
What does Israel say to God's charge against her? Nothing. God remarks,
"For I looked, and there was no man; I looked among them, but there was no counselor, who, when I asked of them, could answer a word. Indeed they are all worthless; their works are nothing; their molded images are wind and confusion." (Isaiah 41:28-29 NKJV)
The Stumbling Block of Fear
Fear is the first reaction that God needs to address because it is a monstrous stumbling block to overcome, particularly when trying to comfort someone. First of all, it affects decision-making. It can drive a person to make bad decisions when trying to escape the abuse. It can also keep the person in an abusive relationship for fear of not having needful things like food, housing, a source of income, and medical help. It can keep victims from speaking up, and so the oppression continues. Fear is a tool that oppressors use to rule us.
Think about your own life.
Q: Has fear ever kept you from speaking the truth or doing something that you know you should do?
Q: Has fear ever caused you to do something you know you shouldn't do?
Q: Has fear led you into a life of coping and compromise (a crooked place)? Coping doesn't relieve the oppression. It just perpetuates it.
Q: What happens when a fearful person or group of people are also the ones in power? (For example, a child living with fearful parents, or citizens living in a nation run by fearful leaders.) What does life become under the leadership of fearful people?
I can speak to that with some experience. My mother (who is now with the LORD) was my oppressive person in life. I will temper my criticism of her and grant her some grace and forgiveness because I know something of her horrific childhood experience, but at the same time, I consider the legacy that her fear left in my life.
My mother had a very scarring and unstable childhood. When she was seven years old, her father died of cancer, leaving her and her sister with a mentally unstable mother who moved the family around from relative’s house to relative’s house. She suffered neglect at her mother’s hand. Her mother often turned her out of the house and left her to fend for herself. She had to steal food at times to eat. Eventually, her mother gave her away to an adoptive couple. (Her mother only gave her away, not her sister.) Her adoptive parents were oppressive and abusive, and she didn’t escape them until she married my father. But even then, they plagued her, and she actually came to the point of suicide one day, and it was only the fact that she had a little baby to care for that kept her from going through with it. It was at that point that she gave her life to Christ. This was her coming-of-age experience. It made her a very fearful person, and that fear ruled her all of her life.
Once she was married and master of her own family to a certain extent, she took back power over her life with a vengeance. She became a very strict, controlling person who clung to her husband and children with an iron-grip. When she hit relationship obstacles in life, she would withdraw. Eventually she withdrew from social life altogether and lived vicariously through her children. But all her effort to control her world so that it would be safe and secure for her never relieved the fear and she only ended up frustrating her family. She was a believer, a strong believer, and yet she failed to grasp this aspect of God's power. She put more faith in her own power and control over her world than she did in God, and it gave her no comfort.
This is my personal experience with a fearful person, and it helped me understand the ripple effects that fear creates. It affects all of our relationships, but it also affects our witness for Him.
Q: What are we saying about our God when we let fear rule us?
Fear doesn't just affect the individual person. It is socially contagious. It is hard not to be afraid when the entire world is running around in a panic and demanding that we act upon their fear.
Q: Think of our world today. What are some of the fears that have beset us culturally?
Let's use climate change as an example. I understand it is a divisive issue, and I will say up-front that I absolutely believe we should be good stewards of God's creation. That was part of Adam and Eve's original calling, and it is our responsibility as well. Part of the reason God sent Israel into exile is because she did not give the Land its Sabbath rest. But it is God's creation, not man's. When humans take the creatorship from God and exalt themselves as creators of their environment, that crosses a line and we know it crosses a line because fear has now entered the experience. Any time fear enters an experience, that is a red flag that something is wrong in power dynamic because fear is an unspoken admission of powerlessness. People who feel powerless over something react to that powerlessness by trying to take back control--it's just like my mother all over again. You are welcome to disagree with me, but the fact remains that the fear of climate change has gripped the world, and it has happened largely because the world no longer acknowledges God as the power over His creation.
Q: What has been the ripple effect from that fear? How has it dictated how we now live?
Q: Have our efforts relieved the fear?
Q: How has our fear affected our children?
Fear Not
When all the world is afraid, that is when God's people cannot show fear. When we let the world's fear rule us, we deny the power of our God and His sovereignty over us. To the unbelieving world, we are saying our God isn't big enough, strong enough, resourceful enough, or even faithful enough to deal with our circumstances. When we fear, we take God's power from Him, and we lose the opportunity to show the unbelieving world His power in action. We lose our witness.
Fear is a stumbling block especially in battle, whether a physical battle or spiritual one. Did you know that, according to the Mosaic Law, fear is a reason to be exempted from battle? Deuteronomy 20:8 says:
"The officers shall speak further to the people, and say, 'What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest the heart of his brethren faint like his heart.'" (NKJV)
God doesn't want fearful people fighting for Him, because fearful people will bail in the middle of the fight, and they will take others with them because fear is contagious. God had a purpose for sending Israel into Babylon, and He has a purpose for sending us into persecutions and trials--to refine us but also to use us as His witnesses. When we are in the midst of that battle, the natural fear reactions of fight or flight will kick in but without the control needed for a believer to accomplish God's objective in the circumstances. God needs His people to identify with His power and act with control according to His direction. We have to embrace the bigger picture of God working with us through these trials if we are going to prevail in the spiritual battle. Fear should never exempt a believer from the battle.
Key Verse: 2 Timothy 1:7
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV)
Isaiah 40-48 fleshes out the power aspect in dealing with fear. Isaiah 49-57 will flesh out the love aspect, and through all these chapters there will be the resounding challenge to see, hear, know, understand and believe so that our decisions will be made from a sound mind. not fueled by fleeting emotion. Remember God's original comparison of what is fleeting and what is eternal. Human emotion is also like grass. It grows and fades from moment to moment and season to season.
We will keep this verse in mind as we continue through this study.
Q: I asked this question in the Isaiah 40 blog: Why did God begin with a picture of His power and not His love? Have you had any more thoughts on that from this passage?
2 Comments
Perhaps the way in which God is dealing with Israel is to give them a reminder of who He is. in their stupefied state of idol worship and rebellion, they cannot see, hear, or "take it to heart" what they are going through. The consequences of their actions were laid out clearly in Leviticus. Joshua and many others warned them. It seems to me at this point in Isaiah, they need a reminder of who He is and the covenant promises. He is just in all His ways.
n
nThe statement I made above lacks an explanation of personal application and comes across as harsh, but when I study the prophets it is hard for me to see Israel as a victim. There are precious promises that are yet to be fulfilled, according to God's Word, but at present there is still a vail that blocks their view. They will know and understand His great love one day. It is certain.
I am glad you voiced that criticism and hope for Israel. And I agree. From where we stand, knowing what we know of how Israel came to be in exile, it is very difficult for us to see her as a victim. She brought it on herself. But she has been through years of brutalizing experiences (e.g., the siege of Jerusalem), and she is a victim in her own mind, as we see through the statements she makes and God's response to those (I say this with future chapters in mind). When we talk about justice this next week, we are going to discuss this very thing: the blindness she has--a blindness that victims often have--to her own condition.