29:9,10
God has spoken against the hordes of the nations, but attention is immediately turned back to Jerusalem herself. The defeat of Assyria was still a way off, and the defeat of the nations a very long way off, and there were many things that needed to be done first. In the immediate future Jerusalem would be attacked by Assyria and nearly defeated. Jerusalem needed to come to terms with her sin. At present she had persistently rejected God’s word, so her prophets and seers would be blinded. Before the final defeat of the nations there was salvation for the world, and then large scale repentance on the part of Israel. Jerusalem would have thought “Assyria will be defeated, so that is the problem sorted”. But Assyria was not the problem, she was in fact only the instrument to be used by God to chastise Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s problem was her rebellion against God.
29:11,12
Isaiah seemed to know that the people would not respond to his message. The message was sealed, not because the message itself was sealed, but because the hearts and minds of the people were sealed. They did not know how to read the message. In evangelism we so often focus on how we present the message, but while we should seek to do that well, it is not the root of the problem. We should spend more time praying for God to open the hearts and minds of the people to enable them to hear and understand the word of God.
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