That'll be the Day

Passage: Isaiah 19:1-25

As you may have noticed, Isaiah doesn’t limit his condemnation to the people of Judah. God’s prophet expands his gaze to the four corners of the earth, taking in every nation whose idolatry and corruption have been exposed to the light of God’s judgment. In Isaiah 19 God spends some time highlighting what he has in store for Egypt. It doesn’t look good.

The passage ends, however, on a hopeful note that seems at odds with the overall message. Given that Isaiah’s intended audience is the people of Judah, it’s not hard to imagine that the conclusion to chapter 19 is not, at least initially, well-received.

After going into some detail regarding the ways God will break Egypt, the historic enemy of his people, Isaiah writes:
In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD Almighty.
He goes on to say that Egypt will erect a monument and a temple to the God of the Hebrews. That the Egyptians and the Assyrians and the children of Israel will be united in their allegiance to the one true God. Isaiah concludes,
In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance."
Wait a minute, say Isaiah’s audience members. That’s not the way the story ends. It ends with God crushing our enemies and restoring us – his chosen ones – to our rightful place as rulers of the world!

Not so. God’s stated purpose for his people, right from the start, has been to use them as a conduit for his blessing to the entire world. God gives Isaiah a glimpse of what that will look like: the powers of the world no longer locked in an endless struggle for dominance but locked in a familial embrace. The nations finding unity on their knees before a God not of war and destruction but a God of peace and reconciliation. God’s goal for his people is not to get them ahead of everyone else, but to show everyone else the way. One day, says Isaiah, there won’t be Israel and Assyria and Egypt. There will just be one people: the people of God.

This is what we’re working on. A world drawn together not under a dominant unifying government, but under the care and direction of a loving and all-powerful God. Our job isn’t to topple and decry the governments and nations we don’t like. According to Isaiah, that’s God’s job. Ours is to worship the one true God, to show the world what it means to live as God’s people, and hope to God that we see the day our enemies are embraced as his children.