A Failure of Leadership

Isaiah 3-4

            In the era when the church was persecuted by the Roman empire, one of the Roman strategies was to target the leaders of the church—bishops and pastors. Their reasoning went, “Cut off the head, and the body will die.” The church proved more resilient than that and, despite a number of defections, the church endured. Still, it remains an effective strategy. Nations like the US and Israel regularly target the leaders of terrorist organizations in order to destabilize those organizations. Leadership is important.

            In Isaiah 3, the Lord threatens the leadership of Israel: from the hero and the warrior on down. And in that leadership vacuum, He threatens to turn their social order upside down. When He says that He will make mere youths their officials, that’s not a promise but a curse. “I will place the least qualified over you.” In his book, The Death of Expertise, Thomas Nichols says that expertise in a field involves a number of things, and experience is one of them. When I was a young pastor, I wouldn’t have much appreciated that sentiment: I thought education was enough to make me an expert. A quarter century later, I realize that experience leavens knowledge; experience gives birth (hopefully) to wisdom.

            Anyway, part of the Lord’s judgment on idolatrous Israel is on her leaders who have either led her into idolatry or not done enough to summon her out of it. Indeed, Israel’s leadership has encouraged her in values that are the opposite of what the Lord desires, especially evidenced in injustice against the poor.

            Finally, as so often in the prophets, sermons filled with terrible condemnation erupt into proclamation of God’s restorative grace. So here. In chapter 4, we read about a Branch that will bring healing to Israel. The Branch and a new shoot from it will be explained more in chapter 11, where it is clearing looking forward not just to a new day for Israel but for the coming age of the Messiah.