Isaiah 17

“An oracle against Damascus: Look, Damascus is no longer a city.  It has become a ruined heap.  The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they will be places for flocks.  They will lie down without fear.  The fortress disappears from Ephraim, and a kingdom from Damascus.  The remnant of Aram will be like the splendor of the Israelites.  This is the declaration of the Lord of Hosts.” Isaiah 17:1-3 (HCSB)

Anyone involved in ministry has experienced the trial of laboring in a difficult situation with little or no fruit.  Sometimes, we convince ourselves that our “mission field” is incapable of producing fruit, but we are wrong.  God can produce trophies of grace from the most unpromising of conditions.  This is what chapters 17-19 are all about.

If these chapters seem like difficult reading, it is probably because it is difficult for us to be confronted with the reality of how abhorrent sin is to Almighty God.  He detests it and will not pass it by as though it were not there.  The fact that this sustained judgment annoys us says more about us than it does about the narrative.  Perhaps it is just in this area that we need to re-evaluate ourselves as God sees us.

Isaiah continues to pronounce judgments on surrounding nations…Damascus (Syria), Cush (Ethiopia), and Egypt.  You may ask, “If God is the God of Israel, why is He judging other nations?”  It is because God is not ONLY the God of Israel…He is Lord of all!  He is Lord, whether people accept Him or not.  It is not as if He is Lord because we accept and worship Him as such.  He IS Lord, regardless of mankind’s recognition of His Lordship.  

That is what is so offensive to the world about God: Man has no choice as to Who is Lord.  Deny Him and invent your own god if you want.  Yahweh is still Lord of all!  And it is only a matter of time before He exposes all other worship as false.

Damascas was Syria’s capital city.  Syria’s future was to be one of ruin and lonely forsakenness.  The picture is of flocks grazing with nobody to look after them.  It is a vivid picture of what life is like for those who don’t know God when the glory has departed because their “idols” have proven to be mere, powerless, lifeless objects.

Whatever is left of Aram, after the Assyrians have raided it, will be like Israel’s so-called “glory” once God has departed.  It will be no more than the few gleanings left in the field after the harvest or the few olives on an olive tree once it has been shaken.  Because Israel (aka Ephraim) and Syria were allies (right down to the idolatry), that meant Israel was going to share the same fate as the Syrians.

Western society cannot expect a different future from what happened to Syria or Ephraim.  But there is Hope.  Assyria’s power will come to an end, and even in the most unlikely places, God has a faithful remnant: a few “gleanings,” but His, nonetheless. (Amos 4:11)