Isaiah 30:16-18 - Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you

30:16

The call of God was to repent and trust in Him. Indeed, this is His call to all humanity. But Judah, like the rest of humanity, will do anything but turn to God. So Judah chose instead to "flee on horses". They thought military strength would help her. By the way, this is in some ways the approach of modern day Israel. So they would indeed flee, bu their pursuers would also be swift. There is only one way of salvation, and that is through Jesus. In our own lives we need to come before the Lord, to give up on our own striving which will do nothing but tire us out.

30:17

This verse is the inverse of the way things should be for God's people. A thousand would flee at the threat of one. Instead of being victorious, instead of being the head, she would be defeated, she would be the tail. When we refuse to follow God's ways we become something we were never meant to be, and we become the defeated instead of the victorious.

30:18

We have just had in v15 the solution, the way that Judah should respond. This was followed by a depiction of how she would actually respond, in entirely the wrong way, and the consequences of that. So what is the Lord's response? He waits to be gracious to us. And He exalts Himself to show mercy to us! Then we have talk of His justice. We so often think mercy and justice are somehow opposed to each other. Not in God they aren't. In that famous verse in Micah 6:8 we are told to act justly and to love mercy. Here we have mercy and justice together. There are those who reject the penal substitutionary aspect of the cross. Such people have an understanding level of precisely zilch! The glory of the cross is that justice and mercy are united in Christ. Justice has been completely fulfilled by the blood of Jesus, and unmerited, unlimited mercy has been given to us through Christ. On the cross Christ was exalted, God was exalted. So blessed are all who wait upon the Lord. Remember the circumstance in which this word was first given. Difficult, to put it mildly, times were happening and were about to happen. It can seem as if God is not going to "come through". But He always will. We need to be quiet before Him, to repent of our sins, to trust in Him.