After Adversity, Teachers

In order to understand these verses, it is important to understand their context. You must keep in mind also throughout this meditation on these verses that Israel is the church, and the church is God’s Israel; they are one and the same.

The vision that the prophet saw regarding Israel has been replayed over and over in the history of the church. Isaiah 30 presents a terrible scene. The Israel of God had made herself the enemy of God, and Jehovah God charged the people of Israel with being rebellious children and a lying people. Essentially that is all that Israel in herself ever could be. That is all that man in himself ever can be. That is what man became in Adam through his fall. All men sinned in Adam and became rebels against God in Adam.

To Israel God had given the law, in which it is clear that God demands perfection. The essence of God’s calling to Israel in the whole law, including all its regulations, is perfect love of God and perfect love of the neighbor. The law did not reform Israel. The law did not make Israel a better and more holy people in comparison to the Gentiles, who were without the law. But the law exposed Israel’s nature, condemned Israel, and made her the greatest nation of sinners on the whole earth.

On account of that condemnation of the law, Israel was the proper object of the avenging wrath of God in the form of the Assyrians, who would sweep down on the nation like a wolf on the sheepfold. Israel could never escape that condemnation of the law, but always she stood condemned by the law because of her transgressions of the law.

We must have a proper understanding of the depth of Jehovah’s condemnation of Israel that she was a nation of rebellious children and lying people. The Lord’s judgment over Israel was not a condemnation of Israel’s actions; that is, the Lord did not point out that Israel by her sinful deeds had broken the law. Rather, the Lord condemned Israel’s nature. By nature—with all her power and being and thus in all that she did—Israel was a nation of rebellious children. It was not as though Israel could outwardly reform her actions and free herself from the condemnation of the Lord, but Israel needed a total change of nature. Besides, a perfect satisfaction had to be made to God for all her sins against the law. Such an analysis of Israel meant that her condition was hopeless and that the only result had to be condemnation and destruction in the judgments of the Holy One of Israel.

Israel’s response was not to humble herself, confess her condition, repent, and believe the gospel of her salvation in the promised savior. That was also a part of the law that the old dispensational church had! By law in the Old Testament two things are meant. Law means instruction. Thus God had instruction for his people in the old dispensation, and part of that instruction was the gospel of Christ. When we talk about the promised savior in the law, we do not mean the law as the revelation from God that the one who keeps the law shall live in it. We do not mean the law as it says that one must do this or that to live and to be blessed. That form of the law only can bring condemnation, the grave, and hell to dead sinners.

There was another side of the revelation of God in the old dispensation, and that was the promise of salvation in Christ, the seed of the woman, the seed of David, and the one in whom all the law would be fulfilled and in whom all the promises of God would be yes and amen!

To rebellious and lying Israel, the Lord had sent the seers and the prophets. They stood in the way of the rebellious children and told them that they could proceed no further in their apostasy and rebellion. In the coming of those teachers, Jehovah himself had come to Israel, and he judged her out of the law as worthy of condemnation and called on Israel to return. When the prophets came and stood in the way of Israel as she ran down the road of destruction, then God stood in front of the people and addressed Israel in the persons of his prophets. Their message was the law, which showed the utter hopelessness of Israel’s condition under the law. And to that people of a hopeless condition, the messengers from God preached the promise as well.

Listen as the prophet preached! “Thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (v. 15).

What a glorious message!

It was the message that God alone is the strength and hope of Israel. It was the message of God as the God of election. It was the message that God is the God of Israel’s salvation. It was the message that Israel had to become nothing before Jehovah and had to stop trying to save herself. She had to return from her rebelliousness and lying against Jehovah. She had to believe his promise and his gospel that the only way of salvation was in the coming savior. At its heart the message was Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation.

That message was essentially no different than the message centuries later of the apostles, who went into the world and preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, calling all men everywhere to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and promising all who believed that they would be saved.

The message identified, by the spiritual characteristics wrought in them by God, those whom God had saved from condemnation, sin, death, and destruction. The message was not about what God’s people must do to be saved but what God does to save his people. Thus the message was that they do nothing for their salvation. The message was that salvation is of Jehovah and that there is no salvation, strength, goodness, or worthiness to be found in man.

And listen to how the rebellious children of Israel responded: “We will not!”

That was their rebellious natures coming out. In the face of the gospel of their salvation, they turned to Egypt for salvation and trusted in Egypt to deliver them from the coming judgments of God. The rebellious children did that because they wanted to add sin to sin. They wanted to continue in their sins. They said to the prophets, “Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us” (vv. 10–11). The rebellious children pushed the prophets aside; they pushed God aside too. They said no to God, and they fashioned for themselves another way of escape from the coming judgment. “We will go to Egypt. Man can save us. If that does not work, we will run away on horses and escape the judgment of God.”

And Jehovah promised a swift destruction.

A terrible scene full of the holiness and righteousness of God and his offended majesty!

Will any in Israel be saved?

Yes!

For Jehovah who spoke to those rebellious children is the sovereign God of election and reprobation.

In the prophet’s message there was a sudden turn from a promise of swift destruction to a promise of salvation to a rebellious people and the description of a wonder of grace that God worked in Israel. The result of God’s judgment upon Israel was a remnant that would return and be “left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain, and as an ensign on an hill” (v. 17). After the destruction there would be left a light that shone out from the top of a mountain and a flag that flew boldly on the top of a hill.

The only explanation of that is God’s election. There was among that rebellious people a twofold seed. The one was destroyed by judgment. The other was redeemed with judgment. According to God’s eternal promise and grace, Jerusalem could not remain a ruined heap forever, and the elect could not be swallowed up in the destruction of the ungodly. To his beloved people God would be gracious, and he would have mercy on his chosen saints. God would cause them to return, to rest in him, and to call upon him, and God would hear them and save them. To that people toward whom Jehovah would be gracious, he promised to give teachers. The people would see and recognize those teachers as being sent from God. By means of those teachers, God would pour out on his people a blessing.

The grammar of verses 20 and 21 admittedly is difficult. The King James Version translates the first sentence with a concessive clause: “Though the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed.” The idea with that translation is very clear. The Lord told the remnant of the people of God that he would save them, yet their lives would not be easy. For them there would be affliction and adversity that God himself would send upon them. Yet over against all that affliction and adversity, the Lord would continue to be faithful to them and give to them teachers by whom the Lord himself would direct their paths. However, the literal language and context of verse 20 do not support such a translation and the resulting interpretation.

Rather, the sentence is a reference to what God had done previously and what he would do afterward. So the meaning is this: “I gave you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, but that adversity and affliction will not always be the case. I will return and give teachers to you.” The phrase “the bread of adversity and the water of affliction” refers to the distressing apostasy that had come on Israel, which would result in a coming siege. God is the absolute sovereign over all, and he is sovereign also over apostasy in the church. He sent that apostasy, and he would at length deliver his church from it. Israel was the church of the old dispensation. In Israel, as in the church, there were always two seeds. There was the seed of the woman, which is Christ and his elect people. And there was the seed of the serpent, which is the devil and his children.

These two seeds always coexist in the church for a time, but there comes a time when the carnal seed gains the upper hand and manifests itself in the church, whereas before the carnal seed was hidden. The carnal seed comes into power and influence in the church and by its decisions and teachings takes the church down the road of apostasy. Under the influence of the carnal seed, the church is turned out of the right way of the gospel and turned to vain hopes, lies, and deceit. Under the direction of the carnal seed, the church is turned out of the way of faith in God as the only hope of salvation and is turned to put her trust in men and the power of men.

We all are very familiar with that situation in the church. We lived in a denomination in which that situation occurred exactly as Isaiah had prophesied it in chapter 30. That denomination as a whole had been the church and Israel of God. That denomination had taught the truth and had been a beacon of light and a standard bearer for the gospel of grace. Gradually she turned out of the way. Man is no longer made to be a sinner whose flesh is totally depraved and whose misery all his life is that he is prone by nature to hate God and his neighbor. Man is now a good person who through his efforts and by the available and enabling grace of God becomes a better and better person throughout his whole life, until he will arrive in the perfection of heaven. The law of God is no longer the ministry of death to make transgressions abound and to make sin exceedingly sinful, but the law is a power of grace and sanctification in the church. The “thou shalt” and the “thou shalt not” of the law is the gospel of the church and the power of God to salvation. Man claims for himself the wonders of God’s grace. The denomination teaches that God gives to man the ability to repent, to believe, and to obey; and man—by exercising his faith, actively turning to God, and his efforts of obedience—brings to himself the forgiveness of sins, fellowship with God, assurance of salvation, and finally heaven itself. Man is taught to look to his own works for the assurance of his salvation. The gospel in that denomination is one of the abilities, activities, and efforts of man. And God is just a helper for man to save himself. There is great apostasy in that denomination.

There was the same apostasy in Israel at the time of Isaiah, and the nation proceeded down that road of apostasy until Israel was carried away captive and the city of Jerusalem was destroyed. We have been witnesses to that in our own day. All of church history bears witness to the fact that where once the gospel was believed, there has come lies and deceits, which many believe, and there is a wholesale departure from the truth in the church.

In Isaiah 30 God says that as the sovereign Lord he did that. “The Lord,” he says, sent those things.

The name Lord in scripture always emphasizes God’s sovereignty in the earth and over history. He is the absolute Lord over all; he possesses the right to do all things that please him; nothing happens by chance; all history is the unfolding and revelation of what already was perfect in the counsel of God. God says, “I gave you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction.”

The bread of adversity and the water of affliction are not references to the general adversities and afflictions that are common to life in this world—disease, death, heartache, disappointment, and sorrow—and thus that come on the elect too. And the bread of adversity and the water of affliction are not references to persecutions and tribulations that the church bears in the wicked world for Christ’s sake because of his word, truth, and testimony. Rather, the bread of adversity and the water of affliction are references to the sufferings of the people of God in the apostasy of the church.

The bread of adversity and the water of affliction are prison food. In the context of Isaiah 30:20–21, the church was a rebellious, lying, and an apostate people. The church was that according to the nature of her members and because the carnal seed had come to hold power and was the dominant power in the church, so that the church was characterized by that rebellion in her leadership and in the general direction of the church’s life. That was the prison into which the people of God in the church were thrust. For a time they had nowhere to turn and nowhere to escape. Their food in the prison of that apostate and rebellious church was prison food. But their food was not the prison food of a modern-day prison, which though notoriously unappetizing nevertheless nourishes those who eat it. Rather, the bread of adversity and the water of affliction was the prison food of the dungeons of old, in which the bread was rotten and moldy, and the water was putrid and diseased. When the prisoners ate that bread and drank that water, it gave them violent fits of vomiting and terrible cases of dysentery. Eating that food and drinking that water, the prisoners were slowly being killed. Thus the bread of adversity and the water of affliction were all the lies and the false doctrine that characterized the preaching of the apostate church. God’s people were stuck in that prison; because of the rotten and putrid preaching, the life was being drained out of them, and they were perishing. The children of Israel heard their leaders proclaim that Egypt would be their salvation and that somehow they would find a way to escape and to be saved.

To put that in terms of today, the members of the church hear that there is something man must do to be saved. They hear the so-called gospel of the grace-given abilities and powers of man whereby he can be saved if he so wills. They hear the so-called gospel of man’s works and obedience as the way to blessedness and salvation. And that prison food kills them, for there is no salvation in man, no hope in the activities of man, and no assurance of deliverance in the arm of man.

When God sent the bread of adversity and the water of affliction in the form of wicked preaching that hurt his people, did God leave himself without a witness?

No!

Just as a kind individual who knows the suffering of the prisoners in a dungeon may pass them a piece of bread that keeps them alive, so God left himself a witness in apostate Israel. He says in the context that he had sent seers and prophets to rebellious Israel. The seers and prophets stood in the road upon which the apostate people were walking and told them to stop. The prophets told the apostate people about their sins, made man nothing, and told the people to turn. The prophets spoke to the people about God, his salvation, and his promise. The prophets said, “Hear the word of the Lord!” No doubt, in that the people of God rejoiced, for they had heard the voice of their savior and of their God.

And what did the people of God see happen to those servants of the Lord? They saw those servants thrust aside. That is what God means when he says, “Yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner anymore.” By the word “anymore,” God describes what had happened while the people of God were in the prison house of the apostate church and eating the bread of adversity and drinking the water of affliction fed to them by the wicked jailors in that prison. The people of God saw those who brought the word of the Lord being pushed aside. The rebellious people said, “Get out of the way; stop preaching to us about God. Can’t you ever say anything positive about man and about us? Tell us things that make us feel good, and take away God from before our eyes!”

That was the astounding boldness of the apostates. The apostates were not confused about who was or who was not speaking the word of the Lord. The apostates were not blind and deaf. They could see the prophets and hear God in their preaching. When the prophets came, they brought God himself to the people. And the apostates said to the prophets, “Take yourselves, your message, and God himself away from us! We are sick of seeing God!” The prophets and seers came and stood in front of the people to stop them from their destructive walk down the road of apostasy, and the rebellious people pushed the prophets and God out of the way in order to continue down the road of apostasy. And so God says that the apostates shoved the prophets into a corner, where the apostates mocked some prophets and beat and killed others. But hear the prophets, the apostates would not, for they could not stand to look at God in all his beauty and loveliness as the Holy One of Israel.

A terrible scene!

A terrible suffering for the people of God!

And God says, “I gave that!”

Over all that suffering God was sovereign!

The very sovereignty of God that gave the bread of adversity and the water of affliction is also the only hope of the people of God in such a state. The Lord speaks in verse 20 as the sovereign over apostasy. He says that he gave that disgusting food and putrid water. That is not because the preaching of the ungodly leaders pleased the Lord. He was displeased with it. He saw what that preaching was doing to his people. He saw them wasting away, spiritual skin and bones, malnourished, and hurting. He saw that, and he hated that. He was angry with those ungodly teachers who were nothing more than cruel jailors, and God despised their lies and deceit.

But the Lord was carrying out his purpose for the judgment and destruction of that carnal seed.

When it seemed as though the whole church had gone after the lie, the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Thessalonians 2:10–12 regarding apostasy in the church,

10. With all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

11. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

12. That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

God is active according to his sovereign purpose of reprobation in the apostasy of the church and the perishing of many in whom he had no pleasure. He sends false teachers and strong delusions, so that the many in whom he had no pleasure might be damned.

In sending the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, God had a good purpose for his people too. Oh, yes. He made them hate the bread of adversity and the water of affliction. He made them long for the pure bread and the clean water that belongs to people who have been freed from prison. That good food was going to be the sweetest thing they had ever tasted.

To that starving, weak, and diseased remnant, God gave a wonderful promise!

God had in mind the destruction of the reprobate and the salvation of his elect remnant. The same sovereign God who brought such misery promised an astounding turn of events: “Yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it.”

That promise was first a promise to give teachers to Israel. In the old dispensation the teachers were the priests and prophets who brought and expounded the word of God. In the new dispensation the promise of teachers refers first to the apostles and with them for a time prophets and evangelists. Then at the end of the apostolic age, the promise of teachers refers to ministers of the word to his church.

God calls them “thy teachers.” They were the church’s true teachers, even in the face of all the apostasy. The evil leaders in Israel at that time were not the church’s true teachers. They were wolves and hirelings. Only those sent by God are the church’s true teachers because they have been appointed by God for the church as instruments in his hand and mouthpieces of his word for his people whom he loves. When these true teachers come, God has his people in view and his own purpose to save his people through the instruction and word of these teachers. When they come, then God comes in all his saving power and grace and mercy for his people’s sake. God will constantly give teachers to his church. Even in apostasy there will be a witness from these teachers of God. Even in the apostasy of Israel, there were teachers in the nation, but they were thrust into a corner, so that they could not stand anymore before the people and proclaim openly the word of the Lord.

So God says that he will give teachers to his people and that their eyes will see those teachers. Those teachers will be seen and received as teachers from God. They will once again teach freely, and the word of the Lord will be proclaimed openly. The men sent by God will be recognized and honored as such in the church instead of being pushed into a corner.

And God will put a message in the mouths of the teachers! The teachers do not have their own messages. Rather, there is one grand and glorious word proclaimed by all faithful teachers sent by God throughout history.

Understand the scene. God depicts in Isaiah 30 the church of God as she walks a path on her pilgrim’s journey to heaven. God put his church on a path, which is a narrow and hard path. But it is a path that leads to heaven. That path Christ defined for us when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life!” Jesus Christ is the path. We walk on that path because we are incorporated into Jesus Christ by a true faith that is given to us by God. The church does not have to search for and find the path, but the path is laid out for her in the word of God in Jesus Christ.

That path Jesus defined as the truth. Jesus Christ is the path, and that path is wholly characterized by the truth, the truth as it is revealed in Christ and set down in scripture. Christ is the reality to which the whole law pointed. The truth of Christ is revealed to God’s people, so that they know it to be the truth and receive and love it as the truth. At the heart of that truth stands Christ and salvation in Christ. It is the truth that man is nothing in his sin and misery. It is the truth that man’s misery is hopeless because he is by nature prone to hate God and his neighbor, so that there is no salvation and no blessedness to be found in man. It is the truth that to all who are engrafted into Christ by a true faith, everlasting righteousness and eternal life are theirs for the sake of the obedience, suffering, and satisfaction of Christ alone through God’s grace alone. It is the truth that in Christ God has made with us an eternal covenant of grace. It is the truth that God will preserve us through this whole life and present us without spot or wrinkle in the assembly of the elect in life eternal. In short it is the truth that salvation is of the Lord.

In Christ alone as the truth there is life. Yes, there is life that is full of grace and mercy from the Lord. It is life free from wrath, condemnation, sin, death, hell, and the grave. It is life with God in Jesus Christ.

God sets his people on that path according to his election of them and by the power of his grace and Holy Spirit. God turns them away from the path of lies and rebellion that is naturally theirs, engrafts them into Christ, and shows them the path of life, so that they walk through the valley of the shadow of death. God does not use teachers for that. He does that without them.

The teachers in Isaiah 30:20–21 are not leading, but they are behind the church as she walks on that path. The teachers come from God and speak this word from God: “This is the way, walk ye in it.”

If I may depict the church as a flock of sheep, the Great Shepherd is in front and leading. His flock hears his voice and follows him. The Great Shepherd places sheepdogs behind the flock. These sheepdogs work by the power of the voice of the Great Shepherd to remind the sheep constantly that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life and that no man comes to the Father but by Jesus Christ!

Why?

God says, “When ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.”

The meaning is that the church is in constant need for teachers of the gospel, teachers of Jesus Christ, and teachers of the truth because of the straying nature of God’s people. They never lose that rebellious, wandering, and lying nature. God does not say, “If you turn to the right hand or turn to the left hand.” God says, “When ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left hand,” which describes the constant straying of his beloved sheep.

The psalmist confesses in Psalm 119:176, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant.”

Isaiah confesses in Isaiah 53:6 and puts in our mouths these words: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.”

And the Lord causes us to hear a voice behind us saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” He causes us to see our teachers and to recognize the voice of Christ in them. He gives to us ears to hear and hearts to understand that the teachers come to us from Christ. God turns us out of our straying and turns us again to the shepherd and bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ. And by that word given through those teachers, God instructs his children unto eternal life.

The New Testament through Paul speaks the same word as Isaiah spoke:

13. Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

14. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?

15. And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! (Rom. 10:13–15)

Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved!

But how shall they call on him if they do not believe?

How do they believe if the voice of Christ that creates faith is not heard?

How can they hear Christ if they do not have a preacher and teacher sent from God?

Oh, indeed how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel. From their mouths we hear the precious word that is the power of God unto salvation!

Paul also says in Ephesians 4:10–15 that the great gift of the ascended Lord Jesus Christ is to give to his church teachers because by means of the word of Christ through them, all things are kept in order in the church:

10. He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.

11. And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;

12. For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:

13. Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:

14. That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

15. But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.

The most precious gift that God gives to his church is a preacher of the gospel. For everything in the church—her being and well-being, her life and growth, her liberty and salvation, and her peace and prosperity—depends on the gospel of God.

To God’s gift of preachers, you must add all our teachers—our parents and our teachers in the good Christian schools. All who bring to us the word of Christ and all who call us from our straying and back to the way, the truth, and the life, which is Jesus Christ, are gifts from God for us and for our salvation as his beloved church.