Isaiah 30:18-26 records an encouraging report about our Lord waiting to give us His best gifts.  It proved to be very applicable for a Christmas Day message.  The preaching portion included not only what God will do, but also how His people will respond.  It is this future look that contains information on how genuine Christians respond to God now.  In Isaiah, this type of response guarantees that God’s people will escape destruction and be completely delivered in the Day of the Lord.  Verses 20-21, for instance, describe a new capacity to see and hear.  Spirit-controlled Christians have this capacity now.  That leads to an inevitable change of lifestyle (v. 22) as genuine Christians do away with their idolatry.  Contrast this response of the godly with Revelation 9:20-21 where we read of those who “did not…give up worshiping…idols…”  The ethical sections of prophetic material instruct the Church by showing how genuine Believers live life now while they wait for their Lord’s return.

Isaiah 28 closes with a parable.  Like New Testament parables, one key to interpreting them is to note repetition (in this case the idea of being taught by God in vv. 26 and 29).  The successful farmers believe in God’s ways and farm their land accordingly, unlike God’s people.  Isaiah was addressing God’s people, many of whom, were not trusting and obeying God.  That’s the point of this section: God’s people are encouraged to believe and obey God’s word like the farmers in the parable do.  Verse 29’s description of our Lord is designed to drive us to depend on Him for guidance and direction through life.  Remember that Isaiah is continuing to urge God’s people to stop the trend of looking more and more like society and less and less like their Savior.  Meaning for parables are often disclosed through the law of end stress (what comes last is important).  This certainly is true in 28:29.  We shouldn’t forget at Christmas time that this description of God first occurred back in Isaiah 9:6 where it points to our Savior, the Son given to us.

Isaiah 28 is possibly the clearest presentation of God’s people being made up of two groups: counterfeit believers and true believers.  The intention of chapter 28 is to move true believers towards trusting God’s invitation to rest in Him.  Verses 12 states why Ephraim and its leadership were to be judged: “to whom [the Lord] said, ‘This is rest…’; yet they would not hear.”  In contrast to Ephraim, true believers do listen to God’s Word, they trust in God’s “precious cornerstone” (v. 16), and they experience the results: “Whoever believes will not be in haste.”  Chapter 28 forces us to look at all the stressors in life that cause us to worry and be anxious.  It forces us to look at the times when we’re tempted to believe that God cannot deliver us. It forces us to look at all those other sources of rest we might be tempted to trust.  The example of Ephraim and the leadership teaches us to “go and do otherwise.”  By exposing their unbelief, Isaiah urges true believers to believe in Christ and to live out that faith in the form of righteousness.