Fixed vs Growth: The Obstacle of Wanting a Bread King

The Old Testament is full of passages describing God removing barriers before His people.  These passages occur in an historic context and relate to God’s saving His people from immediate enemies or other disasters.  But they also foreshadow God’s removal of the ultimate barrier—sin—through the coming His promised Savior.  It was the intertwining of those prophetic messages and the influence of sin that led the Jewish people of Jesus’ day to look for a political savior, a champion and warrior, who would defeat their enemies the Romans and give them victory and an earthly kingdom.  We read in John 6 the feeding of the five thousand, and how at the end the people attempted to forcibly make Jesus their king.  In Matthew 21, we read about Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  Jesus is greeted with the red-carpet treatment:  robes and palm branches strewn in His path, cries of Hosanna to the Son of David, a reference to King David, and to the promised Messiah.  The crowd fails to notice that He rides a donkey, not a war-horse; His kingdom is not of this world (John 18: 36).

It is very tempting for us as well to want an earthly King.  Someone who will solve our problems, defeat and exact revenge upon our enemies, give us an unending supply of bread and pay all of our bills.  The people of Israel in the Old Testament wanted the same thing.  In 1 Samuel 8: 4-9, the people tell the prophet Samuel that they want an earthly King; the neighboring nations have Kings and they feel left out. They rejected God’s leadership (vs 7).  They forgot the mercy of God in their wilderness journey—how He supplied miraculous manna-bread, knocked down city walls and routed their enemies with His power.  In 1 Samuel 8: 9 – 22, Samuel describes what an earthly King would do:  conscript their sons as soldiers, demand taxes to build cities and armies, and force them to serve him.  And the people chose that style of King over the loving care of Jehovah.  The rest of the books of Samuel and Kings describe the often ugly consequences of their demands for an earthly King.

a.       In your quest to deal with obstacles in your life, have you sought an “earthly King” or relied upon earthly resources, rather than relying upon God?

b.      Did you face consequences or undesirable second or third order effects from that reliance?

Isaiah prophesied during the times of several kings, including the notoriously evil Ahaz who sacrificed his sons to Moloch. The book of Isaiah is suffused with prophecy about God’s care, His power, His divine removal of obstacles.  Isaiah 40 in particular is full of incredibly beautiful imagery of God’s divine dominion over obstacles:  wilderness paths are made straight, valleys are raised up, mountains and hills are made flat, and rough ground becomes level and smooth.  

Meditate on Isaiah 40: 1 – 8.  If you have time, listen to the section of Handel's Messiah based on Isaiah 40: 1 – 5 (a video can be found here).  It is a beautiful musical expression of this passage; listened to in conjunction with your reading, it can enhance your meditation on this portion of God’s word.  The words accompanying the music will be a King-James-style translation; use the contrast between those words and your likely more modern translation to enhance your understanding of the passage.

a.       The first words of this passage are “comfort, comfort”.  The poetic double use of this word places emphasis on it.  What are the people to be told that will comfort them?  What are they released from?

b.      Matthew 3:1 – 3 speaks of John the Baptist and quotes Isaiah 40:3.  There is a clear link made between the promised redemption from the slavery of sin in Isaiah 40 to the arrival of Christ Jesus, announced by John the Baptist.  How did John the Baptist prepare the way for Christ—what was his call to the people of his day (see Matthew 3:8)?

c.       You too are released from your sin by God’s grace in Christ. Read verses 3 – 5 of Isaiah 40.  Is this to be interpreted as a promise for an easy life, the promise of a Bread King?  How should we interpret these verses?’