God's weariness is not what we think it is

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032519.cfm
Isaiah 7:10-14; 8:10
Luke 1:26-38 

It’s not good to bother God.

Is that true? In fact, is that even possible? Most importantly, is that really how we imagine God thinks about our requests? Are we a bothersome creation? Well, how about this verse from Isaiah 7:13:

“Is it not enough for you to weary people,
must you also weary my God?”

The gist of Isaiah’s lament about wearing out God’s patience appears to mean that we shouldn’t bother God with our problems any more than we should bother each other. God, though, is not weary from our bothering him. He is weary by our lack of intimacy with him, which requires both trust and a constant alliance. Weary and bothered are not the same things.

The tales in the book of Kings, which Isaiah recounts, rolls out the Hebrew people’s slow descent from a tightly tied and prophetically led nation of God-fearing folks (albeit constantly in conflagration with obedience) into a secular set of nations unable any longer to commit to the one true God. They chose disparate, conflicting authorities, based entirely upon wielded power and political wrangling instead of a loving, highly interactive God. 

Love doesn’t mean saccharine sweet or pathetically patronizing. Love can be dangerous, startling, and dramatic. God’s love expects faithfulness that relies upon repentance. These things require discipline and trust. Ergo, the desire to look elsewhere. Compared to the cursing, crushing power of the world, and the invasive, soul-draining slavery to its economic and technological goals, though, God’s a much better option. That’s not the choice that the Hebrew people made. They chose leadership under kings, where prophets, priests, and judges took a back seat. Seats in a bus heading over a cliff.

Once under the substitutionary leadership of kingdom life the Hebrews find themselves subject to leaders who don’t actually realize who God is, much less that God wants to speak to them. And, even when God does speak the leadership doesn’t listen. 

This may seem like a segue into anti-secular government propaganda. That’s not where it’s really going. It’s about other-than-God aspirations. We're stuck with secular governments until the saints and angels come to reclaim and restore the universe with Jesus at the helm. Kings existed before Israel hopped on the monarchic bandwagon. So did despots, tribal warfare, and swords.

This story is not about those things. Isaiah speaks about Ahaz because the King of Judah in 750 B.C., a young 20-something ruler got everything wrong about God. He did not trust the God of his fathers, and even sacrificed one of his sons to the fire of Moloch, the burning Phoenician statue god who required that children be placed into burning metal arms and killed to appease his wrath. Ahaz desired everything the power of other rulers had, and abandoned speaking to and listening to his own people’s God by cow-towing to the gruesome, fierce pagan powers that fed his carnal thirsts. 

Ahaz represents the final straw upon the overbearing weight of a once united Davidic central monarchy of Israel. Saul was the first king of the Israelites. David, the next. Solomon, David’s son, built a thriving commercial power upon a faithful monarchy. Nonetheless, the tendrils of ungodly leadership started with Solomon. Ahaz seized upon the darker part of that history.

After dallying with way too many women (dozens and dozens), Solomon incorporated all of his wive’s gods into the infrastructure of Israel. He then sorted out the country into 12 regions, for administrative purposes. Thus began the splitting up of Israel. At his death, the whole lot divided into two parts — Israel to the North and Judah to the south.

Israel, now influenced and energized by its own independence, waxed and waned between contention and cooperation with Judah for 500 years. Kings in both Israel and Judah took turns falling into idol-worship, and then suffering at the hands of outside nations and their warring armies, all because of their unfaithfulness to God. It wasn't bad luck. It was despicable choices. Despite the prophetic warnings and repeated appeals from Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and eventually Micah, Israel eventually disappears from history. Judah is left. Temporarily.

During the chaos toward Israel's decline, Judah is annexed by Assyria, thanks to Ahaz' cowardice. He failed to help Israel. Then with his ultimate surrender to Assyria, posed as a collaboration, Ahaz signals further waving off of God’s protection. Doom befalls the chosen people's choice of leadership under a litany of failing kings. Though Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah, reversed his father's sinful reign and restored Judah to a faithful worship nation, that reign provided only a 150 year respite — as prophesied in Micah 1:2-2:13 — before the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem and the deportation of most of Judah’s people. 

Empathy for Ahaz is difficult, as is empathy for any of the wayward kings. Yet, the definition of empathy includes "like-mindedness." We do understand the propensity to choose darkness over light. We can apply Ahaz’s abdication of rule, and his renouncing his people, to our own casual dalliances and eventual alliances with other powers. We know too well the abdication of our authority at all of its levels — as a son and daughter, a friend, a parent, a coworker. Much of our past (none which can be changed) identifies abdication. Well, maybe it's just me.

The application of Ahaz' unfaithfulness stems from “signs” that Ahaz was supposed to request from God. This is most egregious, and frightening to consider in our own lives.

Ask for a sign from the LORD, your God;
let it be deep as the nether world, or high as the sky!
But Ahaz answered,
"I will not ask! I will not tempt the LORD!"
(Isaiah 7:10-12)

Ahaz’s confusion of who God is resembles our own confusion. Signs from God are not a bother, or an infringement, but our roadmap. God cannot be worn out by our pleas. Rather, he is wearied by our dismissals. We consistently refuse to look to him. God spoke to Ahaz and suggested that he ask for a sign. Has he done that with us? Is there some whispered plea from God that we’re missing? See, the startling point is that God suggested the idea of asking for a sign. He revealed his willingness. This is no small matter.

In further stunned reality, which also should shake our memories, God went ahead with the "deep" and "high" sign after all! For whatever reason Ahaz assumed that bothering God for a sign would result in "testing God," God went ahead with the sign anyway. 

Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign:
the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son,
and shall name him Emmanuel,
which means "God is with us!" 
(Isaiah 8:10)

What? The penultimate of prophetic signs comes to the most pitiable and wacked out of Israel's kings. Not only was Ahaz throwing away a golden opportunity to aright Israel and Judah, he tossed away the most important scripture sign of human history. This was the sign of redemption for all of creation. Instead of being known as the purveyor of Jesus birth announcement, Ahaz is recognized only as a putz, a stupid, worthless person.

Still, God gave the sign to Isaiah, which Micah extended to claim Bethlehem as the place of Emmanuel's birth.

In our defense, we can say that the signs given to us and dismissed out of hand will still be projected upon creation. Whew. All is not lost. We can call this the "Ahaz defense" of not being a bother to God, assured that God will still get the word out. I suppose. It's certainly something I have practiced doing without reflecting upon the ultimate danger to my own soul. "Yikes," as Steve Leininger would say.

Instead, there is that choice for intimacy, repentance, and further signs. There's still the pain of looking foolish, and forgoing my personal pleasure path. Painful paths with different purposes. Purveyor of signs, or pitiful putz. 

Help me Lord to know the difference.