For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel,
In returning and rest shall ye be saved;
in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength:
and ye would not.But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses; therefore shall ye flee:
and, We will ride upon the swift; therefore shall they that pursue you be swift.One thousand shall flee at the rebuke of one;
at the rebuke of five shall ye flee;
till ye be left as a beacon upon the top of a mountain,
and as an ensign on a hill.And therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you;
and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you:
for the Lord is a God of justice:
blessed are all they that wait for Him.For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou shalt weep no more;
He will surely be gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry;
when He shall hear, He will answer thee.And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction,
yet shall not thy teachers be hidden any more,
but thine eyes shall see thy teachers;
and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying,
This is the way, walk ye in it,
when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.
In order to understand this passage of Scripture, I think it is necessary for us to know a little of the background.
The nation of Judah was situated at that time between two great nations. In the north was the kingdom of Assyria; in the south was the kingdom of Egypt. This little nation of Judah was squeezed, as it were, between these two great nations.
Whenever there was a campaign, Assyria would pass through the land of Judah in order to reach Egypt, and vice versa. In a sense, you see that Judah was in a very difficult situation. As a little nation, she had to try to balance herself between these two powers.
Humanly speaking, of course, she had to be very clever to walk a tightrope, trying to balance one against the other for her own survival.
And this was what she did. Whenever she was in trouble from one nation, she tried to seek help from the other nation, and vice versa.
Probably this happened at this particular juncture, at the time of King Hezekiah. We know that King Hezekiah was a good king, and yet he was faced with such a dilemma.
In order to fight against the oppression of Assyria, at that time he sought the help of Egypt. You will find that in 2 Kings 18. We do not have time to go over it; you can do it yourself.
But when King Hezekiah was doing that, the word of God came through the prophet Isaiah. Why? Because instead of going to the Lord for help, instead of seeking the Lord’s face, the little nation of Judah was trying to solve their dilemma by their own wisdom, by their own cleverness.
And this was considered as rebellion against the Lord. A nation that was supposed to know the law forgot their God and tried to seek the help of an earthly kingdom. God was not pleased with it.
So He sent His prophet Isaiah to the nation and said that if you seek the help of Egypt, you will find that Egypt was like a broken reed. Both you and Egypt will fall.
And the word of the Lord to that nation at that time was this: “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
What they needed to do was to return to God and rest in God. Then they would be saved. In quietness—nothing running around—and confidence, not in men but in God, would be their strength.
Now, brothers and sisters, applying this word to us today, the church of God is a little flock, so far as she is compared to this world.
We find that in Luke 12:32:
Fear not, little flock;
for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
You still find the church of God is a little flock. And this little flock, in a sense, is situated between two great forces. On the one side is the world, the secular world, represented by Egypt. On the other hand is the religious world, represented by Assyria, or Babylon.
God has delivered us out of this world, out of Egypt. But we find ourselves oppressed by Babylon, by Assyria. In order to balance against the oppression from the religious world, we seek the help of the secular world, and vice versa.
Let me illustrate with what happened at the time of the Reformation. At that time, you find these Reformers were raised by God to seek deliverance from papacy, from the Roman Catholic system.
And yet, in doing that, they received the help of those earthly princes. The result was that sometimes you find the church of God under the oppression of the secular world, and at other times you find she is captured by the religious world.
The word of God to His people is: “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be thy strength.”
To apply it to us individually, now, dear brothers and sisters, oftentimes we find ourselves surrounded with adverse forces. Suppose we are placed in a situation where we are pressed from all sides. What are we going to do to get out of such a dilemma?
Suppose we have lots of problems coming from all directions. What are we going to do?
Brothers and sisters, you know our natural tendency when we are pressed: we try to plan, we try to scheme, we try to figure out a way. We try to seek help from one side in order to balance the other side.
You will find that when we are in times of trouble, when we are under pressure, when we have trials, our first reaction will be, “Well, try to figure out a way. Try to balance these forces. Try to solve it with our cleverness.”
And when we are doing that, you will find we are running hither and thither. We struggle, we strive, we worry, we complain. We doubt, we lose our sleep, we get restless.
But oftentimes, brothers and sisters, we forget to return to the Lord. We have a God who is faithful, and yet when we are met with practical problems and situations, we forget we have a God.
Our reaction is all from ourselves, looking to ourselves for help. What a rebellious people we are.
The word of God to us is to return—to return and rest. Then we shall be saved.
How we need to return to the Lord again and again. You know, sometimes in the Scripture you find such prayers as, “Lord, turn to us, and we return to Thee,” as if the Lord needs to return to us.
So far as our feelings are concerned, sometimes we feel that God has left us, that He has forsaken us, and we cry that He should return to us. Then we will return to Him. Now, this is our feeling.
But so far as the fact is concerned, He has not left us, nor has He forsaken us. It is we who have left Him. We should return.
And if we return, we will find that He is waiting there for us. Of course, the power to return has to come from Him; that is true. But thank God, He is always here. He has never left us nor forsaken us. He is waiting for us to return to Him.
We need to return. And as we return to Him, then we rest in His finished work. We rest in all that He has promised us.
You remember the Lord Jesus said:
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me;
for I am meek and lowly in heart:
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
We need to come to the Lord. We need to return to Him. Whenever we are pressed, brothers and sisters, the first thing to do is to return to the Lord. And as we return to the Lord, we shall come to rest.
We begin to see all that He is, what He has accomplished for us, who He is, and what He has promised. When we begin to see these things, then we rest. We rest.
There is no need to doubt. There is no need to worry. There is no need to struggle or to fret. We just return and rest.
And when we come and rest in Him, we shall be saved. We shall be saved.
But it is more than just salvation. “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” Now, brothers and sisters, to be saved is one thing; to be strong is another thing.
He will not only save us if we return and rest in Him, but you will find that as we return and learn to rest in Him, we enter into a quietness. Our flesh begins to be calm.
You know, our problem is that we are not quiet enough. We are restless. We waste much of our energy and strength because we are struggling and striving. Oh, if only we can return to Him and see Him.
The Lord is in His holy temple:
let all the earth keep silence before Him.
If we enter behind the veil, you will find in the Holiest of All everything is quiet. Everything is quiet. It is a life behind the veil; it is a life with the Lord. As we enter behind the veil, everything is quiet.
We see the Lord, and confidence begins to rise up in us. We know He is trustworthy. Paul said, “Our confidence is not in ourselves.” Our confidence is in Him.
So I do believe, brothers and sisters, that God has a word for us today. He is calling us to return and rest in Him, for this shall be our salvation. He is calling us to enter into quietness and confidence, and we shall find spiritual strength for all our needs.
Now, this is the word of God. But did the nation of Israel receive that word? They said, “We would not. We will run. We will be swift.”
In other words, they wanted to rely on something tangible and visible. They did not have faith to believe in the God who is invisible, who seemed intangible to their flesh. They would rather rely on something that they could lay hold of with their hands.
They would not listen to God. They would not return to the Lord. And the result was that God said, “All right. If you want to run, you will run. If you want to be swift, you will be pursued with swiftness.”
“At the rebuke of one, a thousand will flee; at the rebuke of five, all ye will flee.” Now think of it. What a reverse of the promise of God.
If you read Leviticus 26, you will find in that chapter God said, “If you will keep My statutes, if you will keep My commandments, then one will make a hundred flee, and a hundred will make ten thousand flee.”
But if you do not listen to My word, then you will flee even without anyone pursuing you. Because the nation of Israel would not listen to God, they were put under the disciplinary hand of the Lord.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, what should be our attitude before God? Life is full of pressure. Life is full of problems. What should be our reaction? What should be our attitude?
“In returning and rest shall be your salvation. In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” If we do not, what will be the result? We will be under the disciplinary hand of the Lord.
But do you think that because of that God will forsake us? Not so. Because in Isaiah 30:18 we read, “Therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you.”
The Lord has not forsaken us. He is there, patiently waiting for us, that He may be gracious to us. He wants to be gracious to us, but He cannot. He wants to lift Himself up and have mercy upon us, but He cannot. He has to wait for us until we are ready.
Do you think that we are waiting for God? He is waiting for us. And all that wait upon Him shall be blessed.
So here you find these two waitings. One is that God is waiting for us, to be merciful and gracious; and the other is that blessed are those who wait upon the Lord. He waits for us until we wait upon Him.
Let me use an illustration. Probably you have read it somewhere in Brother Nee’s books. I think it was in one of Brother Nee’s books. He mentioned an experience of his.
He and a few others went swimming. They began to see that one was drowning. Brother Nee himself was not a good swimmer, but there was a good swimmer there. So he expected that brother to jump in and rescue the drowning one, another brother in the Lord.
But that brother, who was good at swimming, just stood there and watched. Brother Nee got so excited and said, “Why do you not go in and save him? Why is your heart so hard? You see, your brother is sinking, he is drowning, and you just stand there and watch. How can you do that?”
But that brother would not do anything. He just stood there and watched the brother sink down. But after he came up twice, when he came up the third time and was going down the third time, that brother jumped into the water and brought him to the shore.
Afterward, Brother Nee could not understand. So he asked the brother, “Why did you do such a thing? You could have saved him before he suffered that long. Why did you not do it?”
And the brother said, “You do not know. When a man is sinking, if anyone tries to rescue him, he will wrap himself around that man, and both will go down. You have to let him give up every hope, until he is not struggling anymore. Then you can bring him to the shore.”
And how true it is. How often we misunderstand God. “Lord, we are in trouble. We are sinking, we are drowning. We do not know what to do. We are running hither and thither. We try everything we can, and it does not seem to help. Now, where are You? Do You really care? Why do You stand by and just watch and do nothing?”
How often we murmur against God, not knowing that we are under discipline, not knowing that He cannot do anything. Why? Because we are struggling. We do not return to Him. We do not rest. There is no quietness. There is no confidence.
He has to allow us to go to the end of ourselves. And when we come to the end of ourselves and say, “Well, this is finished,” is it finished? That is the beginning.
You find that God is waiting for you. He is waiting there until you give up every struggle and striving, until you enter into rest. Then He will be gracious to you. He will lift Himself up and rescue you.
But, dear brothers and sisters, we will not wait upon the Lord until we consider ourselves as dead. If there is anything still alive there, we want to do it ourselves. We want to try.
“Blessed are all they that wait upon Him.” When you come to the point of waiting upon the Lord, you will find the Lord is waiting there for you. He has been waiting there all the time.
He has not forsaken you. He has heard you. When you cry, He has heard you. He gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction. That is true.
Who would like adversity? But here you find God gives you the bread of adversity. We all like bread, but we do not like adversity. We all want water, but we do not want affliction.
But here you find God will give us the bread of adversity. He will give us the water of affliction. You know, adversity and affliction are bread and water to us. They will feed us. They will satisfy us.
Because God is there, even adversity and affliction are bread and water to us. Even though God may give us bread of adversity and water of affliction to eat and drink, yet your teachers shall not be hidden from you.
Adversity and affliction are good teachers, if the Spirit of God is in them. They are good teachers. Sometimes we are so stubborn that we have to learn it the hard way.
Oh, if only we were meek and lowly in heart. If only we would listen and not harden our hearts. If only we would return and rest. If only we would enter into quietness and confidence. But we would not.
We have to learn it the hard way. God has to give us the bread of adversity and the water of affliction in order to teach us.
We may turn to the right and to the left, and the word comes to us and says, “This is the way; walk ye in it.” What is the way? The way is: “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” This is the way.
And you know what is the consequence, what is the result, the outcome of it? If you read on, you will find God delivers them from idols, delivers them from anything foreign to God. God gives them rain, gives them seed, gives them abundance, gives them water.
The moon shall shine as the sun, and the sun shall shine sevenfold. In other words, through all these troubles, God is teaching us. And after we are taught, we will enter into the riches of Christ.
So, dear brothers and sisters, this morning I believe God wants us to have this word. Meditate upon it. Take it to heart. And practice it by the grace of God.
“In returning and rest shall ye be saved.” Whenever you are in trouble, whenever you are under pressure, remember this: “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
O heavenly Father, how we praise and thank Thee that Thou hast a word for us. As we are faced with many problems, pressed on all sides, oh, how we praise and thank Thee that Thou art not silent, but Thou dost give us Thy word: “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
O Lord, soften our hearts, that we may not rush here and there and forget Thee. O Lord, teach us how to return, how to rest, how to be quiet, how to have our confidence in Thee and in Thee alone.
Oh, how we praise and thank Thee. Even though sometimes Thou dost give us bread of adversity and water of affliction, yet Thou dost teach us through all these circumstances, and Thou dost always bring us into abundance, into the fullness that is in Christ.
Oh, we do praise and thank Thee, for Thou art gracious; Thou art merciful. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus.