In the midst of lavish promises of a beautiful future and restoration, Isaiah 62:6 stands out with the glaring ferocity of a warrior in a ballet class. Verse five is frilly, beautiful, bubbly and sweet, ending with the words “As a man rejoices over his new wife, so your God will rejoice over you” (NCV), summoning with it memories of all the festive wedding celebrations we’ve been to over the years. So, why then, without warning, does verse six warn, in a quiet and sterling voice, with a knobby finger pointed in our face and a steely penetrating gaze: “Jerusalem, I have put guards on the walls to watch. They must not be silent day or night. You people who remind the Lord of your needs in prayer should never be quiet?” Or, as the Good News Bible has it, “On your walls, Jerusalem, I have placed sentries; they must never be silent day or night. They must remind the Lord of His promises and never let him forget them?” Why, after promises of a wedding festival, should such urgency and danger enter the scene? A sentry, or a sentinel, according to the Webster’s dictionary, is “a soldier sent to watch or guard an army, camp or other place from surprise, to observe the approach of danger and give notice of it.” Danger? It’s a wedding! This verse is like the moment we dread in a movie theater, when an otherwise happy scene is interrupted with chilling music, and we’re left sitting on the edge of our seats expecting something evil to steal across the screen … Why should this warning appear in the middle of this chapter?
Because there is an Enemy, one who longs to steal every gift of the King from our lives, who seeks to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10); because the moment we are passive, unprepared, and naively ignoring the Enemy’s presence, the door has been opened for him to plunder our lives. Of what, you may ask? Of everything that God has promised us out of His great love for us.
For example, the Bible promises us riches we can only imagine – health (1 Peter 2:24, Isaiah 58:7-8,11, Psalm 41:3, Psalm 91:3, etc.), joy (Isaiah 58:13-14, Psalm 34:11-12, Psalm 41:2, etc.), large families (Deut. 28:4, Deut. 30:9, Psalm 107:38, etc.), plenty of food (Psalm 111:5, Psalm 145:15, Psalm 146:7, Proverbs 10:3, etc.), and so much more (Psalm 34:10, for example, says, “Those who look to the Lord will have every good thing,” and 2 peter 1:3-4 states that, “Jesus has the power of God, by which he has given us everything we need to live and to serve God …”). Furthermore, the Bible provides reassurance, over and over and over again, that God is a God who keeps His promises. For example, Isaiah 62:8 says, “The Lord has made a promise, and by his power he will keep his promise” (NCV). Numbers 23:19, in the Good News Bible, says, “God is not like people, who lie; He is not a human who changes his mind. Whatever He promises, He does; He speaks, and it is done.” In Ruth 2:20, it says, “The Lord always keeps His promises to the living and the dead” (which means, He even attends to the prayers of people who have died, that their children and grandchildren will be saved, for instance … which is AWESOME! :) ). Psalm 12:6 tells us that, “The promises of the Lord can be trusted; they are as genuine as silver refined seven times in the furnace.” Acts 3:25, contradicting what many people say of Old Testament promises, assures us that, “The promises of God through his prophets are for you, and you share in the covenant which God made with your ancestors.” For other assurances of God's faithfulness to His promises, we could turn to Psalm 145:13, Psalm 146:6, Isaiah 42:16, Hebrews 10:23, and countless others.
But back to my initial question – why the warning, why the militancy of Isaiah 62:6? Why the mention of danger? And what does all of this have to do with the way we live our lives as Christians today? The warning is there, because, as beautiful as all these gifts are, if we are not diligent in holding on to them, if we are not a little feral and noisy about clinging to the promises of God, they will be stolen from us – not because God isn’t faithful, but because we have been lazy and careless with them. To put it in terms we might better understand, think of it this way. A parent who bought their children wonderful gifts for Christmas has blessed them and carried through on their promises to do so. Now, if that child leaves that gift on a park bench and someone picks it up and takes off with it – this does not make the parent less faithful or benevolent. The problem is that the child was careless, irresponsible, and did not value the gift enough to guard it carefully. This is our problem! This is the reason we do not see more of the promises I listed above in our daily lives. We are not guarding the promises of God, are not standing on them, are accusing Him of not being faithful when the tangible representation of that promise fails to appear, etc. However, this makes no sense at all! If a promise has been stolen from us, it is really because we have not been diligent to watch for the Enemy and to guard against him; we have failed to continuously speak the Word and remind God (and more importantly, the Enemy) of the promises we have (right now, as we pray - not when the answer shows up), have not sounded the alarm when danger appeared on the horizon, and dug in with all the fierceness and militancy required to receive the celebrated gift. Furthermore, we have not been reminding that ol’ Sneak, that Proverbs says a thief who is caught must pay back seven times what he stole (look it up!), and that therefore, he must repay us for the promises of God we have allowed him to steal in the past. We must take responsibility for seeing the promises come to pass in our lives, must be knowledgeable about what the Word says is ours, and determined to stand strong in those truths. We must be girded about with the belt of truth, and armed on the day of battle. We must, even in our celebration of our marriage to the King of Kings, be armed and aware of the Wedding Crasher, and prepared to evict him violently from the premises of our relationship with God.
So, my friends, my question to you today is – are you noisy? Are you armed with the Word of God? Are you ferociously guarding the promises of God till you see them come to pass – and even moreso afterwards? Are you, even in the celebration of God’s love for you and the wedding feast He has prepared for you, keeping one eye warily open for the Enemy’s tactics? You better be … and so had I. Good luck, fellow warriors. Fight well.
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