"Got Ammo?"

Scripture Passage

Isaiah 28:1-29; 2 Kings 17:5; 2 Kings 18:9-12; 2 Kings 17:6-41; Isaiah 1:1-20

Scripture Focus

So now God will have to speak to his people
     through foreign oppressors who speak a strange language!
                                                    (Isaiah 28:11 NLT)

Observation

I confess—I don’t know what to focus in on this morning. I am intrigued by the way the Isaiah 28 passage begins—“[Samaria] is the pride of a people brought down by wine” (28:1 NLT). I understand that I’m a teetotaler in a world that certainly isn’t, but I attended a KC Royals ballgame Friday night (haven’t been in years) and was reminded again of our culture’s glorification (worship?) of alcohol (and of gaming, by the way). Call it "nothing" all you want…”Don’t be a stick in the mud, Kent”… ”Hey, surely I can have a beer with the boys now and again!”—I’m convinced it’s part of what’s destroying us as a nation.

That same chapter, however, has a verse that’s particularly significant to anyone who really believes in and values the activity of the Holy Spirit in and through the church today…significant because it’s a verse that the Apostle Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 14 while discussing the activity of the gifts of the Spirit within the church. I’ve often tried to think about why Paul chose to quote Isaiah 28:11 in a discussion of the gifts of the Spirit—what about *this* passage seemed applicable?

In Isaiah 28, Isaiah pictures even the priests (!) as so drunk with wine that they complain of the Lord’s instructions as childish gibberish (with their own slurred speech). Neither the priests nor the people have any appreciation for the Lord’s instructions. So in response, God says (my paraphrase), “I’ll spell it out for you, then! You treat my words as the unintelligible babbling of an infant—I’ll send you some unintelligible babbling in the form of an invading foreign army!”

So now God will have to speak to his people
     through foreign oppressors who speak a strange language!
                                                (Isaiah 28:11 NLT)

That’s the verse Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians when referencing the manifestation of the spiritual gift of tongues! What could be the connection? Why does Paul choose *this* text in particular?

Today I’d suggest that Paul is turning the analogy on its head, so to speak…that, for Paul, the connection is this one:

“God once used an invading army to teach Israel a thing or two…and that God has now raised up and equipped a new army—His church—to show this world a thing or two.”

One thing that certainly has to be remembered if that’s the case is how the church must view power and conquest differently than the Assyrian army did (and different than our world does)—that we lead by serving…that we conquer when we surrender!

Given that, there’s no doubt we’re called to battle. And given Paul’s analogy, we battle effectively only in the full experience and empowerment of Holy Spirit. Apart from His presence and activity, we’re an army with no ammo.

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