The Path to Restoration

ARGUMENT · RESTORATION

From the spirit of deep sleep to the righteous king

Our paper None Gives What He Has Not argues that a Christian should decline the vote. The first question every reader asks is what to do instead. Isaiah answered that question for Jerusalem. God had made its people “to drink a spirit of deep sleep” (Isa. 29:10), and its leaders were looking to Egypt for rescue. Isaiah told them where restoration would come from and in what order: the people turn and cry to God, God gives a righteous king, and the Spirit comes from on high. This paper follows that order from Isaiah 29 to 32 and argues that it leaves no room for a people choosing its own deliverer.

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01

The question

A reader who grants None Gives What He Has Not is left with a harder question than the one it answered. That paper says why a Christian should not vote for rulers. It does not say how deliverance comes. If the ballot cannot rescue the country, what can, and what does a man do while he waits?

Isaiah spoke to Jerusalem when Assyria was the great power of the age and the city’s leaders were looking to Egypt for protection (Isa. 30:1–2). His message runs from a sentence, “For the Lord has made you to drink a spirit of deep sleep” (Isa. 29:10), to a promise, “For, behold, a righteous king shall reign, and princes shall govern with judgment” (Isa. 32:1). Between the two he lays out the way back, in order. Stated as a syllogism, the case runs as follows.

02

The sleep

Isaiah’s diagnosis is not the one Jerusalem expected. The trouble was not the Assyrian army. It was a sleep, and God sent it: “For the Lord has made you to drink a spirit of deep sleep; and he shall close their eyes, and the eyes of their prophets and of their rulers, who see secret things” (Isa. 29:10). The sleep is a sentence, not a mood, and it falls hardest on the men whose office is to see for everyone else, the prophets who look toward God and the rulers who look over the land. A blind man falls alone. A blind seer takes a people with him.

Three verses later Isaiah names the cause. “This people draw nigh to me with their mouth, and they honour me with their lips, but their heart is far from me: but in vain do they worship me, teaching the commandments and doctrines of men” (Isa. 29:13). The people had kept God’s name and put the teaching of men in place of his word. Christ read the verse over the Pharisees (Matt. 15:7–9) and gave its result in one sentence: “they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matt. 15:14). Paul read the sleep of 29:10 over the Israel of his own day (Rom. 11:8).

We do not claim to read God’s decrees, but Scripture gives the marks of a people given over, and they can be checked. Paul describes a people whose “foolish heart was darkened” because they “did not like to retain God in their knowledge,” and says that “God gave them over to a reprobate mind” (Rom. 1:21, 28). The last verse of Judges describes a people with no king over it: “every man did that which was right in his own sight” (Judg. 21:25). Scripture records that as a ruin. In 2015 our highest court wrote its principle into law, holding that “the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy” (Obergefell v. Hodges). The ruling made each man’s own choice the measure of what marriage is, and our paper What Is Liberalism? traces it to the premise that men are born free and equal. A people whose law calls Judges 21:25 liberty has the eyes Isaiah describes.

03

The help that fails

Jerusalem’s leaders did what blind men do and reached for the nearest wall. Isaiah called it sin: “ye have framed counsel, not by me, and covenants not by my Spirit, to add sins to sins” (Isa. 30:1). He did not object that the Egyptian alliance was a poor tactic. He objected that it sought from men the help that belongs to God: “Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, who trust in horses and chariots … and have not trusted in the Holy One of Israel, and have not sought the Lord” (Isa. 31:1). Then he gave the reason it would fail: “even an Egyptian, a man, and not God; the flesh of horses, and there is no help in them” (Isa. 31:3). When the Assyrian king’s envoy reached the walls, he mocked the same trust: “thou trustest on this bruised staff of reed, on Egypt: as soon as a man leans upon it, it shall go into his hand, and pierce it” (Isa. 36:6).

Isaiah does not mention the vote, and we do not claim he does. None Gives What He Has Not argues on other ground that the vote is a means God never gave the people, and where this paper treats the ballot as Jerusalem’s Egypt, it stands only as far as that paper does. Two points stand on Isaiah alone.

No nation is restored by trusting in men. The mark of the people Isaiah sees restored is that “they shall no more trust in men” (Isa. 32:3), and the Psalm says it to every generation: “Trust not in princes, nor in the children of men, in whom there is no safety” (Ps. 145:3 [146:3]). A Christian who looks to the next election to rescue the country leans on the reed, whichever candidate he leans on.

A blinded people cannot vote its way to sight. An election hands the choice of rulers to the judgment of the people, and the judgment of the people is what the sleep has closed. When the seers, the rulers, and the people are all asleep, a ballot decides only which blind man leads, and Christ has said where that road ends. A Christian who sees does not change that by voting, because an election belongs to the judgment of the people, not to his. A people cannot give itself the eyes God took away. The remedy has to come from outside the sleeping, and Isaiah puts it there.

04

The way back

Isaiah’s way back begins with the people, and it begins low. “When thou shalt turn and mourn, then thou shalt be saved; and thou shalt know where thou wast, when thou didst trust in vanities” (Isa. 30:15). Salvation follows turning, and turning comes with mourning, the grief of a man who sees at last where he stood. Isaiah does not start with the nation’s sins in general. He starts with the trust in vanities, the reliance God’s own people placed in what could not save them, and he names the outward sign of the turn: “in that day men shall renounce their silver idols and their golden idols, which their hands made” (Isa. 31:7).

A blind man cannot choose his way to sight, but he can cry. Bartimaeus sat blind by the road outside Jericho and cried, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me,” and when the crowd told him to be quiet, “he cried the more a great deal” (Mark 10:47–48). He did not cry for a better guide. He cried to the King, and “immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way” (Mark 10:52). God waits for that cry: “when he perceived the voice of thy cry, he hearkened to thee” (Isa. 30:19). Judges gives the same order: “the children of Israel cried to the Lord; and the Lord raised up a saviour to Israel, and he saved them” (Judg. 3:9). The people cried, and God raised the deliverer. An election, as None Gives What He Has Not observed, reverses the order. The people choose the deliverer and ask God to bless the choice.

Jerusalem’s deliverance came in that order. When Sennacherib’s letter arrived, Hezekiah “went up to the house of the Lord, and opened it before the Lord,” and prayed, “deliver us from his hands, that every kingdom of the earth may know that thou art God alone” (Isa. 37:14, 20). The Chronicler sets king and prophet side by side: “king Ezekias and Esaias the prophet the son of Amos prayed concerning these things, and they cried to heaven” (2 Chron. 32:20). Isaiah had promised that “the Assyrian shall fall: not the sword of a great man, nor the sword of a mean man shall devour him” (Isa. 31:8), and so it happened: “the angel of the Lord went forth, and slew out of the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand” (Isa. 37:36). The sword that fell on the camp was no man’s, as Isaiah had said. They Cried to the Lord records eight later deliverances that came the same way.

05

The king God gives

The promise of Isaiah 32 opens with a king. “For, behold, a righteous king shall reign, and princes shall govern with judgment” (Isa. 32:1). Its first fulfillment was Hezekiah, the king of Judah in Isaiah’s own day, and its full fulfillment is Christ. Calvin read it the same way. “This prediction undoubtedly relates to Hezekiah and his reign,” he wrote, and “this description undoubtedly refers to Christ, of whom Hezekiah was a type, and whose kingdom he foreshadowed.” The best way to restore the church, he added, is “when good government is maintained.” Isaiah’s restoration comes as rule, and four things about this king bear on the argument.

He is given, not chosen. Isaiah does not say the people will choose him, and the rest of Scripture says how such a king comes. The law told Israel to set over itself “the ruler whom the Lord God shall choose” (Deut. 17:15). When Israel demanded a king “as also the other nations have,” a king who would “fight our battles,” God said, “they have rejected me from reigning over them” (1 Kgdms 8:5, 7, 20 [1 Sam. 8:5, 7, 20]). Even then God chose the man, and Samuel presented Saul as the one “whom the Lord has chosen to himself” (1 Kgdms 10:24 [1 Sam. 10:24]). Hosea gave the verdict on a nation that made its own rulers: “They have made kings for themselves, but not by me” (Hos. 8:4). Paul told the history in a sentence. God removed Saul and “raised up unto them David to be their king” (Acts 13:22). Scripture condemns a people looking for deliverance to a ruler of its own making, not kingship itself.

He is bound to a book. The law that has God choose the king puts him under God’s word. He “shall by no means turn the people back to Egypt, lest he should multiply to himself horses” (Deut. 17:16), which forbids the sin of Isaiah 31 in advance. He copies out the law and reads in it all his life, “that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, that he depart not from the commandments on the right hand or on the left” (Deut. 17:20). The righteous king of Isaiah 32 is not a strongman. He is a man under a book, and he turns from it neither right nor left.

He does not rule alone. Isaiah promises princes with the king, men who “govern with judgment.” Calvin saw why: “It is therefore necessary that a king shall have good governors, who shall supply the place of eyes and hands.” The seers of chapter 29 were blinded. The princes of chapter 32 are the eyes God gives back, as he promised at the opening of the book: “I will establish thy judges as before, and thy counsellors as at the beginning” (Isa. 1:26).

He is a gift to pray for. Isaiah announces this king as good news, and a people does right to want what God promises. Scripture counts the lack of a king among Israel’s judgments. The last verse of Judges records it as a ruin (Judg. 21:25), and Hosea sets it at the head of Israel’s chastisement: “the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince.” Restoration brings the king back beside God, not in his place: “afterward shall the children of Israel return, and shall seek the Lord their God, and David their king” (Hos. 3:4–5). The psalm for Solomon asks God for exactly this: “O God, give thy judgment to the king, and thy righteousness to the king’s son” (Ps. 71:1 [72:1]). The Psalm that forbids trust in princes says where that trust belongs instead: “Blessed is he whose helper is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God” (Ps. 145:5 [146:5]). A Christian hopes in God for a righteous king. He does not hope in the king.

Hezekiah shows the difference. He “trusted in the Lord God of Israel; and after him there was not any like him among the kings of Juda” (4 Kgdms 18:5 [2 Kings 18:5]), and when Assyria came he did not ask the people to trust him. He told them, “With him are arms of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to save us, and to fight our battle” (2 Chron. 32:8). Israel had once demanded a king to fight its battles (1 Kgdms 8:20 [1 Sam. 8:20]). Hezekiah told the people who would fight theirs. A righteous king turns the people’s trust to God, which is why Isaiah can promise a king and, in the same passage, a people who “shall no more trust in men” (Isa. 32:3).

The promise reaches its full measure in Christ, and he reigns now. “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18). He is “the prince of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5), and the Psalm tells the kings under him what he requires: “Now therefore understand, ye kings: be instructed, all ye that judge the earth. Serve the Lord with fear” (Ps. 2:10–11). His reign does not make righteous kings unnecessary. Hezekiah foreshadowed it, and every righteous king since serves it. The King as Father argues what kind of authority such a king holds. This paper argues only how he comes. God gives him.

06

A people who hear

The king’s reign changes the people under it. “And they shall no more trust in men, but they shall incline their ears to hear. And the heart of the weak ones shall attend to hear, and the stammering tongues shall soon learn to speak peace” (Isa. 32:3–4). This is the sleep of chapter 29 undone, and chapter 29 had already promised it: “the deaf shall hear the words of the book,” “the eyes of the blind shall see” (Isa. 29:18), and in nearly the words of chapter 32, “the stammering tongues shall learn to speak peace” (Isa. 29:24). Calvin tied the chapters together in his comment on Isaiah 32: “This promise is contrasted with the dreadful threatening which he had uttered in a former chapter,” the threat of 29:10. He also drew the conclusion this paper depends on. The prophet “does not merely declare what men will do, but what God himself will do in men.”

Restored sight shows itself in public life. “And they shall no more at all tell a fool to rule” (Isa. 32:5). The verse gives the people a part. It does not say they choose the king, and it places their part after their sight is restored. That fits the part None Gives What He Has Not calls recognition. A people that can see knows a fool from a righteous man and will not hand the fool the government. A people under a spirit of deep sleep cannot do even that, which is why Isaiah puts the waking first.

Restored sight also sees through the men who led the people astray: “thine ears shall hear the words of them that went after thee to lead thee astray, who say, This is the way, let us walk in it, whether to the right or to the left” (Isa. 30:21). Isaiah’s right and left are directions on a road, not parties, and nothing in this argument rests on the words. The verse still fits the frame this site exists to question. The deceivers offer a way and do not care which direction it runs.

07

The Spirit from on high

Isaiah does not end with the king. After the promise of the king he warns the confident women of Jerusalem of a full year of pain and a land given over to thorn and grass, and all of it lasts “until the Spirit shall come upon you from on high” (Isa. 32:15). Only then does the restoration reach its end: “Then judgment shall abide in the wilderness, and righteousness shall dwell in Carmel. And the works of righteousness shall be peace; and righteousness shall ensure rest, and the righteous shall be confident for ever” (Isa. 32:16–17).

The order matters. A king can rule a people, but he cannot give it a new heart. Judges records what happened when the ruler was gone: “it came to pass when the judge died, that they went back, and again corrupted themselves worse than their fathers” (Judg. 2:19). The work that finishes the restoration belongs to the Spirit. Christ promised his disciples “power from on high” (Luke 24:49), and at Pentecost Peter said who sent it: “being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this” (Acts 2:33). Christ, the king in whom Isaiah’s promise is fully kept, does not replace the Spirit. He sends him.

08

What we do

Isaiah’s order does not leave a man idle while he waits. It gives him the hardest work there is, and none of it waits on an election. Faithful in a Very Little sets out the duties of each office in full. These are the ones this passage puts first.

He wakes. The sleep is broken by the book. Daniel found the end of the captivity by reading: “I Daniel understood by books the number of the years which was the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremias” (Dan. 9:2). A man who wants his eyes opened reads Scripture every day, as the law told the king to read it, “all the days of his life” (Deut. 17:19). Then he turns and mourns over his own trust in vanities (Isa. 30:15), the hope he placed in elections, parties, and men.

He raises princes. Isaiah promised princes with the king, and princes are made in houses. A father who teaches his sons the law the king had to copy out, who trains them to govern themselves, and who shows them a man who does not trust in men is raising the “good governors” Calvin said a righteous king needs. A single man is one of those princes in the making, and he starts by governing himself.

He asks his church to cry. Isaiah’s sleep fell hardest on the seers, and the church’s teachers stand where the seers stood. A man asks his elders whether the church teaches the book or “the commandments and doctrines of men” (Isa. 29:13), and he asks them to lead the church in the cry Hezekiah and Isaiah raised together (2 Chron. 32:20). The church prays for the rulers it has (1 Tim. 2:1–2), and it asks God for righteous ones, as the psalm for Solomon does (Ps. 71:1 [72:1]).

He stops leaning on the reed. He declines the vote for the reasons None Gives What He Has Not sets out, and he speaks to the rulers he has as the Psalm speaks to kings: “be instructed, all ye that judge the earth” (Ps. 2:10). Then he waits, which is the hardest part. “Blessed are they that stay themselves upon him” (Isa. 30:18).

09

Five objections

“Isaiah spoke to Judah, not to America.” He did, and this paper does not read Isaiah 32 as a prophecy about any modern nation. It reads the order in which God restored a people under his judgment, and God does not change: “For I am the Lord your God, and I am not changed” (Mal. 3:6). Christ read Isaiah 29 over the Pharisees and Paul read it over the Israel of his day (Matt. 15:7–9, Rom. 11:8). If the sleep can be read in a later generation, so can the way out of it.

“The king of Isaiah 32 is Christ, so waiting for a king means waiting for the Second Coming.” The promise was kept first in Hezekiah, a king of Judah in history, and fully in Christ, who reigns now (Matt. 28:18). Calvin found both in the same verse and saw no need to choose. The first fulfillment came long before Christ did, so nothing in Isaiah makes a righteous king wait on his return. Scripture addresses the kings under Christ in the present tense, “Serve the Lord with fear” (Ps. 2:11), and Isaiah promised princes with the king.

“God can work through an election.” He can work through anything, and he called a pagan conqueror “my anointed Cyrus” (Isa. 45:1). That is God’s freedom, not the path he gives his people. The exiles did not choose Cyrus. They were told to pray for the land that held them (Jer. 36:7 [29:7]), and when the seventy years drew near, Daniel wrote, “I set my face toward the Lord God, to seek him diligently by prayer and supplications, with fastings and sackcloth” (Dan. 9:3). God moved the king. The Christian’s question is not what God is able to use but what God has told him to do.

“While Christians wait, the wicked will rule.” Isaiah treats wicked rulers as part of the sentence, not as something the people’s choice prevents: “I will make youths their princes, and mockers shall have dominion over them” (Isa. 3:4). Calvin said the same of his own age: “we deserve to have such governors, since we do not allow God to rule over us.” A sentence like that is lifted by turning, which is where Isaiah begins.

“Waiting for a king is passivity, or a wish for a strongman.” The path Isaiah sets out is work: repentance, prayer, the government of a house, the training of sons, and plain speech to rulers. And the king Isaiah promises is the opposite of a strongman. He trusts God and turns the people to trust him (2 Chron. 32:8), and the law binds him to a book “that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren” (Deut. 17:20). Wanting such a king is not the error. Trusting any king in God’s place is, and a Christian who moves his trust from the electorate to a man on horseback has traded one Egypt for another.

10

Where the argument stops

It does not predict a king. It does not say when God will give this country righteous rulers, or who they will be. Isaiah gave Jerusalem no date, and we have none.

It does not make any king a savior. A righteous king is God’s gift to a people that turns to him, and the people who receive him trust God, not men (Isa. 32:3). The work that finishes the restoration belongs to the Spirit (Isa. 32:15).

It does not counsel resistance. The rulers we have are the powers that be (Rom. 13:1). The Christian obeys them, honors them, and prays for them, as None Gives What He Has Not sets out.

Its sharpest claim rests on one premise. If our people were not under the judgment Isaiah describes, the second point of section 03 would fail, though the first, that no nation is restored by trusting in men, would stand on Isaiah alone. Section 02 gives the marks of that judgment, and a reader who rejects the conclusion should reject it there.

SOURCES

Texts and editions

SCRIPTURE

Old Testament: The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, trans. Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton (London, 1844), with English Bible references in brackets where the numbering differs.

New Testament: The Holy Bible, King James Version (1611).

PRIMARY

John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, vol. 2, trans. William Pringle (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1851), on Isaiah 32:1–4.

Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015).

OUR OWN WORK

None Gives What He Has Not. Faithful in a Very Little. They Cried to the Lord. The King as Father. What Is Liberalism?

Published by Beyond Left and Right. Old Testament quotations follow Brenton’s Septuagint, so several read differently from the King James Version, which we quote for the New Testament. Correspondence: contact@beyondleftandright.com