GOD’S WISTFULNESS Part II

II. READY TO GO HOME

Isa. 48 is addressed to a people ready to go home. To leave exile and return to responsible freedom.

But, to return to Jerusalem, after a generation in exile in Babylon, presupposes a new commitment to God’s commandments. God is aching in this passage. The God we meet here is like a yearning parent who, after punishing His children, wishes like everything that they have learned their lesson and He will not have to send them into captivity and bondage again. God is more ambitious, as it were, for His children than they are for themselves!

The bridge from captivity–Babylon–to Zion and freedom–Jerusalem–is obedience to God’s commandments. V. 18 makes it clear that the keeping of God’s commandments is critical to shalom, or health and wholeness.

The commentator Walter Brueggemann suggests that Isaiah in this passage is arguing forcibly that obedience to the commandments is a pre-requisite for healthy human relationships. The commandments as guidelines for covenantal social relationships intend an end to greed, acquisitiveness, exploitation, disrespect, and brutality of the strong against the weak (Brueggemann).

So, in Isaiah we see a patriarchal God who both loves us and also wants us to live under the shelter of His love. The prodigal son story (Luke 15), the lost sheep story (Luke 15), the lost coin story (Luke 15), and the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20) all portray a loving father.

In order, though, for us to know this shalom, we must leave behind the comforts of Babylon and risk new forgiveness and grace.

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