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ISAIAH 30:15 “IN RETURNING AND REST SHALL YE BE SAVED; IN QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE SHALL BE YOUR STRENGTH.” (KJV, NKJV, ASV)
“In repentance and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and trust is your strength.” (NIV, NASB, RSV)
“Only in returning to me and waiting for me will you be saved; in quietness and confidence is your strength.” (TLB)
There isn’t anything about quiet I don’t like. I know a lot of people do not like isolation. But, life is so busy and hectic, I gladly welcome times when it all just stops and things are quiet.
I didn’t include the first part of this verse, primarily because I want to make it straight forward and easy to learn. However, Isaiah writes, “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel says.” Then, He states the undebatable truth: “Hear me Israel, if you return and rest, you will be saved. If you can learn to be quiet and confident in me, you will find strength.”
There is probably nothing more beautiful than a baby sleeping peacefully. If you have ever had the experience of walking a child around the house, trying whatever you can to help them stop crying, and then at last, lay them down to a quiet, restful sleep like the photo above, you can share the same quiet peace that they seem to finally find.
Why is it so hard for us to find that kind of peace in our lives…in this world? Why is it so hard to just stop, be quiet for a few minutes and be still? Surely, the world and all our problems can survive without us intimately involved with all their solutions every minute of the day.
Again, I am sorry that I also did not include the last part of the verse. Isaiah says that GOD says after these wonderful promises, “But you would not.” One version says, Israel, “you would have none of it.”
The Lord says at the beginning of chapter 30, to Israel, “you are obstinate children.” “You carry out plans that are not mine.” “You form alliances but not by my Spirit.” “You heap sin upon sin.”
In verse 9 of the chapter, God calls His people “rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction.” I sure am glad I am not like the children of Israel. Or, am I?
It seems like the more and more I study Israel and their ways in the Old Testament, the more I see that, by our own human nature, we are almost exactly the same…sometimes. Like Israel, we can drift off to chase after lots of things in the world.
Like David, we can look at things we ought not to look at. Like Peter, we can brag about how much we will never leave Jesus, just to run at the first challenge of our faith. The Book is just as much about us as it is about the characters that make up its stories, unfortunately.
All the time, the Lord is standing right there telling us, “if you would just return to what you know of Me, and rest in My provision and grace, you will find salvation.” We aren’t necessarily talking about saved to eternal life, but more saved from everything the world wants to throw at us.
After we have exhausted ourselves chasing dreams of how we think life should be, Jesus says, “return to me!” After running around, trying our hardest to build a good life for ourselves and our family, or making the church grow, or restoring relationships in our own wisdom, the Lord is always right there saying, “maybe try it My way.” “Return to My ways and rest in me…let me show you how I can be the answers to your problems instead of doing it all on your own, and I can save you a lot of trouble.”
He would say to us, “look my son, just be quiet.” Quiet is always associated with peace. In Judges 8:28 we are told, “and the country was quiet for forty years in the days of Gideon.” That meant peace. The Lord told David, in 1 Chronicles 22:9, I will give you a son, Solomon, and “I will give peace and quietness to Israel in his days.”
The opposite is told of the lack of quietness. Job is told in Job 20:20, “because he knows no quietness in his heart, he will not save anything he desires.” Proverbs 17:1 warns us, “Better is a dry morsel with quietness, than a house full of feasting with strife.” Ecclesiastes 4:6 says, “better is a handful with quietness than both hands full, together with toil and grasping for the wind.”
Is it any wonder that we would be told in our text that in quietness and confidence we would find peace and strength? Paul even told the Thessalonians in 2 Thess 3:12, “you all need to work in quietness and eat your own bread.”
Some of the wisest men I have met in my life have often been the ones with the least amount of words to say. How wise and confident seem to be those who take time to think about what they might say, listen more than talk, respond to questions quietly and peacefully and though their words may be fewer, seem to have the right words to say for most circumstances?
There are four instructions here in Isaiah: We need to return, rest, be quiet and be confident. We work hard at doing it our way (thanks Frank Sinatra), running, chasing the wind, working HARD to get results. In our American culture especially, we don’t have a clue how to be quiet. Turn the TV off! Sit still for a few minutes and think about the Lord! Stop talking!
There is a quality that comes from quiet confidence in what the Lord can do that stops the world and its assault on our senses, let alone our peace. The result of returning and rest is being saved. I need to be saved from what the world promises me if I just “do enough.” The result of dwelling in the Lord’s quietness and confidence in Him is strength. And notice that the verse tells us it will be OUR strength.
I will not tell you how to make this truth true in your life. You have to find that out for yourself. I will warn you that by our very nature, we will too often be told, just like the Lord told Israel, “but you would not.”
How true is it that the Word gives us the answers we desperately need and we can’t have them, not because the answers don’t come to us but because we just WILL NOT? In both Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34, we are told that Jesus mourned over Jerusalem. He said He would have, “gathered her children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”
Here was God’s own Son, ready to give Israel everything they needed. He was ready and willing…He loved them like they would never know. But, because they would not hear Him, they received none of His promises. We need to be careful that we are not the same.
This truth may have been promised to Israel in the Old Testament through Isaiah but it is just as true to us today! In the ways the Lord prescribes, in returning and rest we can be saved. In quietness and in confidence, we will find strength. Let it not be said of us, “but you would not.”
Questions to consider: Why is it so hard to just stop and be quiet? In what ways do we as Christians stray away from the Lord’s directions in our lives? Is this “being saved” in Isaiah 30:15 the same as the salvation promised in Acts 2:21? Shouldn’t Christians be the most peaceful people in the world? Why does it seem we are not? What kind of strength seems to be promised in this Scripture?
Other Scriptures to study: Matthew 11:28, “…and I will give you rest.” Job 6:24, “Teach me and I will be quiet.” Ecclesiastes 9:17, “The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded.” 1 Peter 3:4, “…the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”
 
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