I awoke this morning from a nightmare. I'm at a podium and all of my closest friends and family are there. I'm to speak about scripture and give a message. But the message isn't prepared. I'm nervous, terrified, speechless, mumbling, overwhelmed. I awake in a cold sweat, facing down the temptation that all I really am is a big phony, a religious performer.
Welcome to my personal Assyria.
We 21st century folks are quite advanced technologically and scientifically. The complexity of wealth management is like nothing the world has ever seen, is it? We have advanced indeed. In light of what we have become, isn't it difficult to believe in the God espoused by books that are 25 to 27 centuries old?
Welcome to our collective Assyria.
Assyria, of course, is the nation that is threatening Israel and Judah in the mid 700's B.C. But Assyria is more than that. Assyria was the first world power. When Assyria arrived on the scene, it's as though LeBron James showed up to play in a YMCA pick-up basketball game. Before LeBron showed up, you thought you knew who the good players were. Now, things have changed. Before Assyria, your realm of experience is narrow. Most days are like the others. Before Assyria, the foundations of your life aren't shaken. Before Assyria, its possible to have a child's faith in God because the world you knew as a child is still the same.
The effect that Assyria had on the ancient world was powerful. All the tribal deities of the ancient world are shown by Assyria to be nothing more than old movie sets to be toppled and repainted. Most of God's people fell for this. And although Assyria itself has vanished in the mists of history, the effect is the same with our "Assyria's." For our part, we experience a very visible world power called self-assertion, which makes our childhood faith seem like rubbish. We are miniaturized by global politics. We slip up on the life-force known as "it's not personal, it's business." Truth, honesty, patience, and love seem to be "after all but the playthings and victims of force." The tail seems to wag the dog. Assyria seems to rule God. The rod seems to shake the one who lifts it.
Isaiah 10:5-34 proclaims a mighty gospel: Assyria's rumor-mill, news-cycle, intimidation, world-dominance can do nothing about righteousness. This is nothing new for Isaiah. This is the only good news for all the chapters we've covered so far. God's people have chosen wealth and pleasure over God. (ch. 5) They present sham worship. (ch. 6) They are too impressed with Assyria (ch. 7-9) Chapter 10 is realistic: we don't stand a chance against Assyria. This would all be bad news except for Isaiah's key point: this devastation is really purification. And it was new for its time. Isaiah proclaims the same holy, supremely righteous God as Moses or David, but Isaiah carries it to a new level: "This was the first time that any man faced the sovereign force of the world in the full sweep of victory, and told himself and his fellow-men: 'This is not travelling in the greatness of its own strength, but is simply a dead, unconscious instrument in the hand of God.' (Smith, 176). In other words, Assyria may be powerful. But it's only a rod. Against the flood of imperial power stands Isaiah and a God who is supreme, who will permit these things to execute justice and purify people.
There are two conclusions from this: first, the Assyria of your life is just a rod in God's hand, not the other way around. "Everything that has come forcibly and gloriously to the front of things, every drift that appears to dominate history, all that asserts its claim on our wonder, and offers its own simple and strong solution of our life," our "Assyria's", are nothing but a dead instrument in the hand of our God. If the metaphor of a 'rod' sounds too abusive, think of a sculptor's chisel, or some sandpaper, or a nail file. My nightmare is my Assyria, the temptation to think that my faith is just an old movie set that looks nice but there's no real substance there. The general store isn't really a general store. The church isn't really a church. But Christ is more real than my nightmare. I can lay my nightmare before him and say, "God, however much truth there is my nightmare, whether or not I'm a "movie set Christian," I ask for you to give me a real love for you." In other words, "God, don't let my Assyria crush me, but use it to sculpt a real follower who is anything but a phony." God will use your Assyria too.
Second, if you are being purified, you are being deepened. As children, perhaps we had an easy, innocent trust in God (particularly if we had good parents). At some point, in building our pedigrees and resumes whether for the folks at the top of the heap in middle school or high school, or for the folks in the corner offices, we weren't innocent anymore. We don't have our innocent faith anymore. Your childhood faith may have been murdered by the Assyria's of this world. A new adult faith may need to be resurrected from the ashes. Isaiah teaches about a faith like this, which claims that no matter what happens in this world, everything and everyone will still have to answer to God's righteousness. This is our inheritance in Christ. It is what remains, no matter what.
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