Isaiah study guide – Good Question

Is it fair for Jesus to bless those who believe without seeing when this is so hard for some people?

Q. “Blessed are those who believe but do not see.” Some people have a very hard time with this.

I can understand why you say that. People tend to be oriented towards one of the senses as their chief means of acquiring information and making sense of the world. We speak of people as being “visually oriented,” or as “auditory learners,” etc.

For a visually oriented person, seeing literally is believing. The best way to get them to understand something is to show them. The world around them registers vividly in pictures in their minds, and that’s how they grasp things and make coherence of them. So it can be discouraging for such a person to encounter biblical statements such as, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

However, we need to appreciate that when Jesus said this to Thomas after inviting him to touch the wounds in his hands and side (was Thomas actually a tactile learner?), Jesus was actually observing that Thomas had the privilege of being an eyewitness to his life, ministry, death and especially resurrection. Everyone afterwards would have to believe in these things based on the testimony of those who had witnessed them. And so Jesus pronounces a blessing on all who believe in the witness of His chosen messengers.

Jesus isn’t privileging one way of knowing over another. In fact, in the Bible we often see God “speaking the language” of visually oriented people to help them believe and obey. He told Abraham, for example, to look up in the sky and count the stars, because that’s how many descendants he would have. Many of Jesus’ parables are actually vivid word pictures, like the ones about a camel going through the eye of a needle or a tiny mustard seed growing into a great tree. You really need to visualize these to “get” them. So God is an equal-opportunity communicator!

I was struck by this distinction between the visual and auditory styles when I was working on the Isaiah study guide. Some people believe the words of a single prophet are found throughout the whole book of Isaiah, while others who are equally committed to the inspiration and authority of the Bible as the word of God believe that a second prophet speaks later in the book. In the guide I explain the reasons for holding these different understandings.

One reason why many people believe there are two prophets is that in the first part of the book, God communicates with the prophet primarily through visual means, including an amazing vision of heavenly worship that becomes his calling. For his part, this prophet communicates with the people largely by acting out “signs” and even by putting up placards.

In the second part of the book, however, God communicates with the prophet primarily through speaking. This prophet is called when he hears and answers a voice. He later describes how God speaks to him as he awakens each morning.

This illustrated for me how God graciously adapts his communication to each one of us, “speaking our language” to help us understand who he is and how we can follow him. God knows that for many of us, seeing is believing. So he shows us things visually and then expects us to trust and obey him in light of those things—that’s where faith comes in.

So I’d encourage you to remember times when God has spoken to you through visual means. When have you experienced God in the beauty of creation? What objects has God brought into your life that speak of his love and care? What things have you observed that have served ever since as mini-parables about some aspect of God and his ways?

I think that if you reflect on experiences like these, you’ll find that you truly have been blessed, through what you’ve seen.

Thomas verifies the reality of Jesus’ resurrection (painting by Caravaggio)

Does God harden people’s hearts so they won’t be saved? (Part 2)

Q. Peter clearly states in his second letter that “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Several statements in the Bible that seem to be contrary to this don’t make sense to me. Two examples are Joshua 11:20, “The Lord hardened their hearts . . . that they might receive no mercy,” and John 12:40, “He has blinded their eyes and deadened their hearts so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn, and I would heal them.” Wouldn’t God want to make it easier for all of us to get to Him? So why would God discourage some people from believing or make it harder for them than for others? Related to this is the way people or nations had their hearts hardened so that God could demonstrate his power. Pharaoh seemed ready to let the Israelites go, but instead God hardened his heart and the plagues came, including death to all the first born.

In my first post in response to this question I discussed the statement in the book of Joshua. Let me now consider the one you cite from the book of John. And next time I’ll look at the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.

This statement is actually a quotation from Isaiah, as John notes. In Matthew and Mark the same quotation is used to explain Jesus’ method of speaking in parables. John uses it instead to comment on Jesus’ method of revealing who he was through “signs.” But in both cases it refers to a method that can either conceal or reveal, depending on the state of a person’s heart.

In Session 2 of my study guide to Isaiah I explain the background to this statement. Isaiah has just had a vision of God in the temple:

“God asks, ‘Who will go for us?’ and Isaiah eagerly volunteers. But the assignment turns out to be a perplexing one. The new prophet is to bring messages from God to the people of Judah. But they will so persistently ignore these messages that they will become less and less able to understand what God wants. As a result, the nation will ultimately be devastated by its enemies. Only a faint glimmer of hope will remain in the end.

“Even though it sounds here as if God wants the people to resist and be destroyed, this is quite unlikely. We’ll see in the rest of the book of Isaiah, as we also see throughout the Scriptures, that God really wants people to respond positively to his warnings and invitations and so be rescued. Rather, the language here reflects God’s knowledge of the people’s confidence in their own strategies and his realization that they will choose their own way even more stubbornly when they’re challenged. And so God tells Isaiah, ironically, to go and make the people even more insensible and resistant. Whatever their response, the reality of the situation needs to be proclaimed.”

In the study guide I then invite groups to consider questions such as these:
~ C.S. Lewis once wrote, “It is better for the creature itself, even if it never becomes good, that it should know itself a failure.” Do you agree?
~ How can we distinguish between those times when a hard truth needs to be spoken to another person, even if they’re unlikely to be able to hear it, and those times when it’s best to say nothing and wait for the person to become more open?

This was the problem that both Isaiah and Jesus faced: They needed to proclaim something vital about what God was doing in their day, but many of the people who heard them were so set against God that this proclamation would only harden their resistance. But it couldn’t be abandoned on that account. So even though God tells Isaiah to “make the heart of this people calloused . . . and close their eyes,” and John paraphrases this by saying that God himself has “blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts,” it’s the people’s stubborn resistance, intensified by encountering this proclamation, that’s actually responsible.

It’s kind of a no-win situation for God’s prophets and his Messiah: say nothing about the new thing God is doing in the world because most people don’t want to hear it, or proclaim it for the sake of those who might hear, even at the cost of hardening those who are resisting? A difficult problem, caused by people, for a God who is not willing that any should perish.

Does Isaiah’s prophecy about a remnant returning predict the formation of the state of Israel?

I’m reading through the Bible and have gotten as far as Isaiah, where I’ve just read, “The Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people” from nations all over the world. Is this a prophecy of the formation of the state of Israel in 1948?

My study guide to the book of Isaiah in the Understanding the Books of the Bible series takes readers through the entire book, situating each passage in its historical context and explaining how Isaiah’s words apply both to his own day and to future events. The guide explores the Messianic significance of this specific prophecy about the Root of Jesse. Let me tell you a bit of what it says here.

With biblical prophecy, it’s important always to determine first what the original message was for the original audience. Only then can you understand any further Messianic or end-times implications.

The “shoot from the stump of Jesse” in this passage is originally a new king in the line of David, Hezekiah, who will be faithful to Yahweh and reverse the policy of his father Ahaz. Ahaz appeased Assyria and even put up altars modeled after Assyrian ones. But Hezekiah will trust Yahweh, refuse to serve Assyria as a vassal, and see Yahweh’s deliverance. Then there will be peace, and just as God reached out his hand to bring the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, he will reach out “a second time” to bring home the “remnant,” Israelites who were carried off into Assyria as exiles or who fled to other countries to escape the Assyrians. That’s the message for the original audience.

But Hezekiah is also a type of Christ, and what is said about him has Messianic overtones. When Jesus comes to reign, there will be a similar gathering of the “remnant.” But who will they be? My understanding is that they are gathered from all the nations because they’re people from all the nations. This gathering brings together the “great multitude” described in Revelation, which comes “from every nation, tribe, people and language.” In other words, under the New Covenant the “chosen people” become a multinational community. As Paul writes in Galatians, “If you are in Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.” (See the study guide to Paul’s Journey Letters, session 19.)

The implications of this are that the 1948 formation of the state of Israel is most likely not what is envisioned and predicted in Isaiah’s oracle about the “Root of Jesse.” So modern Israel does not enjoy any special privileges in the world. Rather, it is a nation-state that is responsible before God for conducting itself with justice and prudence like any other nation.

I’m glad you’re reading through the whole Bible! That’s the best way to come to understand each individual part: by seeing where it fits within the whole. Keep on reading!