Who Did You Think I Was?
Joel May, Speaker
Isaiah 37:21-38 | July 28, 2024 - Sunday Morning,
Almighty God, we do pray that You would open our ears that we may hear, open our eyes that we may see, open our hearts that we may respond to the Word that You would have for us today. It’s in Your Son’s name that we pray these things. Amen.
If you would go ahead and open your Bibles, we’ll continue in our series on the lift of Hezekiah and Isaiah. We’ll be in Isaiah chapter 37. We’ll read that in just a second.
But first, as many of you know, it is the Olympic season. One of the great things about the Olympics, maybe unfortunately one of the few remaining great things about the Olympics, is that you get to watch some of the most accomplished, most successful, most determined competitors in the world going head to head against one another. There’s almost no sport or no competition in the Olympics that is a complete blowout. In fact, many of these things come down to milliseconds, races come down to milliseconds. Gymnastics comes down to a twitch or a slight correction at the very end.
There are so many competitions that come down to the wire. Penalty kicks, extra time, all of these things, and it’s so fun to watch the world’s greatest go head to head and it just comes down to just a tiny little bit of one person ekes it out, ekes out a win, scratches tooth and claw, and they somehow secure a victory. It’s really fun to watch that.
Now I’ve got bad news for us. That is now what we are about to see in Isaiah 37. In fact, what we are about to see in Isaiah 37 is the exact opposite. When it comes to God’s dealing with His enemies and with the enemies of His people, we are not watching a competition of equals going head to head. We’re not watching two strong powers duking it out back and forth until time expires or until one finally gets tired. Instead, what we are watching is total dominion, absolute authority, unquestioned control from start to finish, of God over His opponents.
Now this might actually be surprising as we come to this text, starting in verse 21. If you have been here or you know the context, this might be surprising because up to this point what we have seen is seemingly the unopposed, conquering and conquest of all of the areas surrounding Jerusalem and Judah by the Assyrian empire and by Sennacherib. So up to this point what we are expecting is that God’s people are about to be decimated and maybe, just maybe, God will come to their rescue and He will help them scrape by with a win. So the surprise here is that, in fact, it’s not God going head to head with Assyria and barely getting a victory, but what we’re going to see is that God, from start to finish, knew what was going to happen and He was in control, He had authority, not Sennacherib.
As we come to verse 21, keep that in mind. Let’s read this together, verses 21 through 38, to the end of this chapter. This is what it says:
“Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Because you have prayed to Me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, this is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:
“‘She despises you, she scorns you—
the virgin daughter of Zion;
she wags her head behind you—
the daughter of Jerusalem.
“‘Whom have you mocked and reviled?
Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes to the heights?
Against the Holy One of Israel!
By your servants you have mocked the Lord,
and you have said, With my many chariots
I have gone up the heights of the mountains,
to the far recesses of Lebanon,
to cut down its tallest cedars,
its choicest cypresses,
to come to its remotest height,
its most fruitful forest.
I dug wells
and drank waters,
to dry up with the sole of my foot
all the streams of Egypt.
“‘Have you not heard
that I determined it long ago?
I planned from days of old
what now I bring to pass,
that you should make fortified cities
crash into heaps of ruins,
while their inhabitants, shorn of strength,
are dismayed and confounded,
and have become like plants of the field
and like tender grass,
like grass on the housetops,
blighted before it is grown.
“‘I know your sitting down
and your going out and coming in,
and your raging against Me.
Because you have raged against Me
and your complacency has come to My ears,
I will put My hook in your nose
and My bit in your mouth,
and I will turn you back on the way
by which you came.’
“And this shall be the sign for you: This year you shall eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that. Then in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
“Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it, for My own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”
And the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home and lived at Nineveh. And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword. And after they escaped into the land of Ararat, Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.”
This is the Word of the Lord.
In this passage, we see God’s response to Hezekiah’s prayer, which came right before this. Hezekiah prays for the Lord to hear, to see, and to respond, and now we see the way that God responds. There are four major actions, if you will, four major things that God does in His response to Hezekiah. The first one He reprimands pride, second He restrains wickedness, third He refreshes our perspective, and fourth He renews our wonder. All those will be repeated, don’t worry.
But first, reprimanding pride. This one might be the most obvious. Sennacherib all throughout this passage is described as being oppressive, destructive, belligerent, arrogant, braggadocios, haughty. You pick the word for pride; Sennacherib fits that category. All throughout here he’s described as someone who raises his voice against God, who lifts his eyes high against God, and who brags about all of his accomplishments. He says with my many chariots I’ve climbed up to Lebanon, I’ve dried up all the streams of Egypt.
Guys, do you know what “streams” are in Egypt? The Nile River is in Egypt and he’s saying me and my army, we’re so powerful that we can dry up the Nile. Yet, we’re still going to dig wells and we’re going to drink water. We’re going to be fine. He’s bragging in his accomplishments and all these things that he thinks that him, by his own power, by his own strength, he was able to accomplish.
Lebanon would have been the region to the north surrounding Judah and it says we’re up on the highest part of the northernmost mountains surrounding. The trees have nothing against us, the waters have nothing against us. Nature cannot control us. We’ve been in Egypt, the south region, in the desert, that can’t stop us. Nothing can stop us. And furthermore he brags about the fact, or at least we know earlier, in earlier passages, he brags about the fact that he’s destroyed all these other cities.
God actually says, yeah, it’s true. You have made fortified cities crash into heaps of ruins. You have caused desolation. You have caused people to be dismayed and confounded. That is all true. Yet, Sennacherib genuinely believes that based on his military and political success so far he is absolutely untouchable. He genuinely believes that based on what he and his people have accomplished he’s unstoppable. Not even God can stop him. He will and should be able to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants. He has a status and success based sense of entitlement and assurance.
What we see is God reprimanding that and saying that is not where you can put your hope. You still have no hope against me. Look at the way that God says He’s going to treat him.
Verse 29. He says I will put My hook in your nose and My bit in your mouth.
What He’s saying here is that because Sennacherib, because the Assyrians have acted like ravenous, raging beasts, that is the way that God is going to have to reprimand him. He’s going to treat him like a raging bull and He’s going to put His hook in his nose and He’s going to lead him away and He’s going to cast him out. He says he will not enter the city. God responds to Sennacherib in his pride by reprimanding him and saying your might has no comparison with My power.
Now you know and we’ve seen over and over again in the course of the world and oftentimes in your own personal lives that the more accomplished a person or an organization or a country might become, the more likely it is that they will fall into pride and arrogance and decadence and here’s the thing – we expect that oftentimes to happen in the world around us, but unfortunately that can also happen in our own lives. It can happen in our own churches. We are not immune to the problem of pride. We are absolutely not immune to the same mentality that Sennacherib has here, so what might this sound like in the lives of believers.
I’m going to give a couple, hopefully, hypothetical examples. What might this sound like in the lives of believers? Here it is. By doing faithful and honest work, I’ve become known as an outstanding student, or an outstanding employee. Now because of my reputation I can start working on my own terms and pursue my own goals and no one will ever question me because of my good name.
That might be a temptation in our own hearts. Maybe it will sound something like this – by the great strength of my self-discipline and my spiritual tenacity, and my servant-heartedness, I have climbed the ranks of my church’s leadership team and now no one will be able to withstand my personal plans for this year’s potluck, my personal desires for this semester’s Sunday School curriculum, because I am so holy I have conquered all of the Christian apologetics books and all of the systematic theology books and I’ve prayed all the right prayers and now no one in the church will be able to thwart my plans.
These hopefully are silly and hypothetical examples, but the point here holds, that pride can and oftentimes does still show up in the lives of believers, and that is something that if we are not careful our success, even our spiritual success, can turn into haughtiness and arrogance. Friends, the Lord will reprimand pride. He will reprimand pride.
Second. We see God restraining wickedness.
Now it should be relatively obvious here that if the Lord were not on Judah’s side, Sennacherib and the Assyrian army for sure would have completed this conquest and they would have absolutely decimated Judah. They would have absolutely destroyed Judah. Yet the Lord restrains the wickedness of this evil empire.
This goes hand in hand with the way that He reprimands pride. He reprimands their pride and He restrains their wickedness. Sennacherib’s attitude is not just prideful, it’s actually rageful. I don’t know if that’s a word, but it is in this context. He’s rageful against God. He’s full of rage against anyone who might oppose him and ultimately God says you’re full of rage against Me, so He restrains this rage, this wickedness. God’s response, verse 33, He says he shall not come into the city, he shall not shoot an arrow. He says I will defend it. By the way that he came, the same way he shall return, which means that Sennacherib is going to go home empty-handed and ashamed.
In fact, parallel passages actually point out that when he returns to Nineveh, he returns ashamed.
Now how, how does God restrain the wickedness of His enemies? Well, look at this. Verse 36. The angel of the Lord went out and killed 185,000. Single-handedly.
I was watching a movie preview that I was hoping would be decent, a decent action movie, and I realized that it was another one of these cheesy, over the top movies where this ex-agent is just constantly surrounded by 25 special forces in full tactical gear and the ex-agent is in handcuffs, then all of a sudden there’s, like, he kind of turns, does that little move, and he looks around and he’s like “I got this.” Then this one guy with no weapons, restrained, he fights off 25 special forces and he uses one of their heads to break his handcuffs open. He becomes victorious and you are supposed to think to yourself, okay, if you’re a guy like me, you think to yourself, “Yeah, I could probably do that.” But more realistically, you think to yourself, “That’s absurd, but it’s kind of fun. Right? This guy is highly trained. I bet he could really do that.” But no, that’s not realistic.
Yet what we see in this passage is not a movie, it’s not a movie preview about a special agent. No, it’s actually a historical fact. It is a true account that the angel of the Lord came down and single-handedly destroyed, killed 185,000 military men of the most powerful empire at the time. This truly happened. It is real. The angel of the Lord did this.
Now quick aside on who or what it the angel of the Lord. We’ve probably touched on this in many other sermons in the past, but the angel of the Lord, there’s a couple of theories, a couple ideas.
Number one. It could have just been one of God’s angels that He sent for the specific purpose to accomplish this task.
Many commentators, many people will say that it is likely a theophany, a mysterious physical manifestation in some way of God Himself who comes down and accomplishes a task that God Himself can only accomplish.
Some people say it might even be a Christophany, which would be a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ.
Now whether or not it was an angel like Gabriel or Michael or one of the other angels, or whether or not it was a theophany, what we know to be absolutely true is it was a direct intervention. The angel of the Lord speaks and acts as God Himself for God Himself. It was direct and it was definitive.
Look at even the way that it was described. These were all dead bodies. They woke up and they looked around and they said, “Are they sleeping?” They’re not sleeping. These were all dead bodies, confirmed. It was so drastic, it was so extreme, that Sennacherib leaves. He says, “I’m not dealing with this” and he leaves ashamed.
The way that this happens made me think of a passage that probably many of you are familiar with, that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. We hear James say that, we hear Peter say that. God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.
A proverb that also encompasses this truth is Prove 18:12 – before destruction a man’s heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.
Maybe if you learned it in the old King James it would be “pride goeth before the fall.” Before destruction, a man’s heart is haughty. That’s what we see here in the life of Sennacherib. In his mentality, in his approach, he’s haughty, he’s prideful, he’s wicked, he’s arrogant, and what does that earn him? Destruction.
Now this leads us to the next truth. God all throughout this passage doesn’t just show us what He does, doesn’t just tell us about what He does and what He will do, He actually gives us a glimpse into His own perspective. He gives us some reasons why He’s doing this, some motivations.
In doing so, He refreshes our perspective. That’s our third major point here. God is giving us a fresh perspective on why and how He is dealing with Sennacherib. This point three has three subpoints, you’re welcome.
So 3(a). The first thing that refreshes our perspective. Number one, we are shown and reminded that God has united Himself to helpless, weak people who have no hope when they’re left on their own.
Look at the very beginning of the response. Verses 22 and 23. Look at how He characterizes the people that He is about to act for. He calls His city, He calls His people, the virgin daughter of Zion, the daughter of Jerusalem, despised, scorned, wagging her head, ashamed, weak, helpless.
Then He asks this question. He says, “Hey, who are you really raising your voice against? Who did you think I was? Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?” He says the Holy One of Israel. See, God, doesn’t just look at His people and say, well, you know, they weren’t strong enough, I help those who help themselves and they couldn’t help themselves, so sorry, I’m going to start over.
No, instead, He says the virgin daughter, the daughter of Jerusalem, weak and helpless, oppressed, you’re not just criticizing and threatening and bullying and oppressing them, you are actually doing that to Me. You are challenging and threatening Me, the Holy One of Israel.
He shows us that the pride and aggression of Sennacherib is actually pride and aggression towards God Himself, not just His weak, helpless people. He reminds us and gives us this perspective that He identifies Himself with Judah, with His people, and He shows compassion for those who are suffering. He enters into their situation and He says ultimately this is about Me, I’m going to deal with this.
Now here’s the good news for us today, it’s that if you feel like you are not on the up and up, if you feel like you’re in a slow, downward spiral, if you feel weak and fearful and humiliated and helpless, you’re in good company. The people of God all throughout the ages have felt like this in the face of their enemies, in the face of these real circumstances, that are oppressing them and opposing them and threatening them. You don’t have to be on the up and up. You don’t have to be on a self-help plan to get God’s attention for Him to respond.
In fact, His covenant people are supposed to be humble. His covenant people are supposed to reflect His own heart, which is meek and lowly, gentle. God acts on behalf of weak and humble people. He chooses people who had no success of their own. He’s not an MLB team manager who only picks the best players with the most promise and then casts everyone else aside. He’s not in the business of choosing only the strong, but He identifies with and unites Himself to the weak and the lowly.
That’s the first fresh perspective that we get, refreshed perspective.
The second one. We have to see that God is also attentive and active in the lives of nonbelievers, too. Now this again might seem like a no-brainer, but if you’re anything like me, sometimes you thing that God is really paying attention to the believers in this room, but the nonbelievers outside, He’s kind of like, I don’t know, He’s kind of like that deistic, distant clockmaker like some people think He is. So those on the outside, yeah, I mean, He cares but He’s not like paying that much attention.
But what we see in this passage, look at verse 28. God says, “I know your sitting down and your going out and your coming in.” This is an expression that is supposed to mean that God knows and understands and sees the whole scope of Sennacherib’s actions, behaviors, intentions, thoughts. God says, “You aren’t getting by without me seeing. I know what is in your heart. I understand how you’re acting. I know your motivations.”
God is attentive and He’s active. He’s sovereign over all things. He is King of kings and Lord of Lords over all creation, not just His people.
He also, third subpoint, oversees and ordains everything that happens in the universe in such a way that it is directed to accomplish His purposes. So not only is He attentive and active in the while world, but He is attentive and active in the whole world and overseeing it and ordaining it in such a way that everything that happens is in a mysterious way directed towards His glory. Directed towards fulfilling His mysterious purposes.
Look at verse 26. This is an outstanding statement. He says, “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass.”
God is saying you aren’t acting independently here in such a way that I am not involved. He says you don’t have free reign. In fact, I planned this long ago. I determined what would happen long ago.
Let’s think about how this gives us a fresh perspective. Taken altogether, we see in these points these reminders that the King, the Shepherd who cares for and acts on behalf of His weak and helpless people, is also the sovereign creator, sustainer, and ruler of the whole cosmos.
That leads us to our last point, a renewed sense of wonder. In His response, God is renewing our wonder.
Wonder at many things, but as we’ve already seen, wonder at His mighty power. Wonder at His covenant love. Wonder at His mysterious purposes. We are meant through this response to come away with a renewed sense of wonder and awe of God’s power, His protection, His provision, His preservation of His people. The way that He accomplishes and fulfills His purposes is truly wonderful.
We also have a few questions. Look at verse 30 and 31. Verses 30 and 31 God addresses Hezekiah and says, “This shall be a sign for you. This year you shall eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from that. Then in the third year sow and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.”
It is pretty common knowledge that when you have a massive army in the ancient world, they would come in and they would take over a surrounding area and as a result they would eat all of the crops, they would drink up all the fresh water, and ultimately there would be a huge drought, there would be a famine. What God is saying here is that even though that is what typically happens, there will be enough this year for you to be sustained. And then next year there’s going to be a little bit more what springs from that, but then, pay attention, in the third year I’m going to restore the crops. It’s going to come back. You’re going to have plenty. I will provide for you everything that you need.
It’s a three-year sign to remind God’s people of the deliverance that has already been accomplished.
Look at how He also ties this not just to the land, not just to the city, but also to the people. He says the surviving remnant shall again take root and bear fruit. A band of survivors is going to go out from Zion. So they’re going to get both a reminder sign and it’s also going to be something that is sort of a predictive sign. Just like God will preserve the crops even after desolation, He is going to preserve His people even after they are conquered. There’s a future hope embedded in this passage, not just for the current circumstances but for future circumstances as well. God says also, “I will defend the city and save it,” and listen to His perspective once again that should renew our sense of wonder.
Why is He going to do that? For My own sake and for the sake of My servant David. He is drawing on His covenant love, His covenant promises, that He has made to His people and He’s saying, guess what, I’m a God who keeps His promises, and just like I promised to establish you as a people and to be your God, and for you to be Mine, I’m going to keep that promise. I’m going to fulfill that promise. Nothing is going to thwart that. He says for My own sake and for the sake of My servant David, God wants us to see that His glory and love are on full display by the preservation of His people and the fulfillment of His promises. That’s actually His primary purpose. His goal here is to remind us of His power and love and the way that He fulfills His promises and preserves His people.
Now let’s close with four quick takeaways. So we’ve got three, three, four, it’s a big 10-point sermon, but four quick takeaways here.
Number one. God does sometimes make some of His purposes known. So many of His purposes are mysterious and yet He does sometimes make His purposes known, why He is doing certain things. That’s the first takeaway. Think about all that we just saw above. He says for My own sake, for My servant David, I am going to fulfill My promises.
So He does sometimes make some of His purposes known, and yet, takeaway number two, God doesn’t always make all of His purposes known. That’s a reality that we have to live with in the Christian life. That’s a truth that we must grapple with in the Christian life. There are questions that go unanswered in this passage that I’m sure many of you, myself included, would like to know the answer to, such as why did God answer Hezekiah’s prayer immediately but then gives them a three-year sign? What’s up with the timing of that? Why does He respond to Hezekiah and then send the angel of the Lord and then He says you know what I’m going to do now? It’s going to take three years for you to be reminded of this. The timing is mysterious.
Another aspect of mysterious timing is that He kills 185,000, Sennacherib goes away, He establishes the new capital at Nineveh, but then guess what? About 20 years later is when he’s in the temple of Nisroch, his God, and he gets assassinated by his sons. So He delivers the people of Judah in an instant, He turns the army away, but then it takes about 20 years for Sennacherib himself to be dealt with. Why is that? We don’t know exactly.
Another mystery. Why did God allow the Assyrians and many other empires before and after be so destructive for so long? Why is it the case God Himself says this ultimately was My plan? This ultimately was something that I foretold long ago. We don’t have a specific answer in this passage for why God allows Assyrians and other empires the timing and the type of destruction that they do. That’s an unanswered question in this passage. He doesn’t always make all of His purposes known. Some of them will remain mysterious.
One more question that we don’t have an answer to is what exactly was the motivation and method of Sennacherib’s assassination? We know it was by his sons, we know it was in the temple of Nisroch, his god, which is one way of showing that ultimately his god was powerless because his god couldn’t even protect him while he was worshiping in its temple from his own family. Completely powerless. But we might like to know, okay, well, how exactly did it happen, and why. We don’t have the answers to that.
Third takeaway. Yet God is not random or ambiguous. Although He does not always make all of His purposes known, that doesn’t mean that His purposes are random or vague or ambiguous. This story isn’t inspirational folklore, it’s not a choose your own adventure, make your own meaning type of story. This message is actually clear. Despite the things that are still mysterious, the message of this text is clear – God loves His people. God will act on behalf of His people. He listens, He hears, He sees, He responds, and He does it in faithfulness and in truth and in power. That’s the clear message that we see here.
So ultimately this passage isn’t just a historical narrative embedded in a prophecy. Ultimately, this passage is the story of God’s deliverance of His children that He loves from danger and death. It’s a story of a loving husband rescuing His bride from destruction. The message is still clear.
Then finally it’s a foreshadowing of something as well. The fourth takeaway is that there is a greater battle that will take place and now that has taken place. Guess what? God has won that, too. There’s a greater battle than just the Assyrian conquest here that would have to be fought. Just as at this time God had to deal directly and definitively with the problem against His people, the threat against His people, He would do so again later on.
Now this doesn’t mean that Judah’s problem here wasn’t real. It doesn’t mean that Judah’s circumstances and that your circumstances are not substantial. It doesn’t mean that they’re pointless. It doesn’t mean that you can write them off and be stoic about it. But it does mean that as Paul tells us, ultimately the battle is not against flesh and blood. Ultimately our battle is not against Assyria but it’s against principalities, rulers, authorities in the heavenly places, the spirits of darkness that are now at work in the sons of disobedience.
This war, this battle, that we see God win decisively, directly, definitively, is a foreshadowing of the ultimate battle that Christ would have to fight for us to triumph over our sin. It is a foreshadowing and a small picture, what we seen in 700 B.C. of what would come when Christ comes into the world and single-handedly wins the cosmic battle for the restoration and salvation of our souls. Not just the deliverance of a city, the redemption of our souls. He defeats the greater enemy of sin and eternal death and damnation. He takes on the punishment that we actually deserve because in our hearts we are proud and wicked, in our hearts, left to ourselves, we are arrogant. What Christ does, He comes and He puts an end to that reign of pride, He puts an end to the reign of wickedness that would be within us. He delivers us from the enemy of sin. He delivers us from the hand of the devil. He calls us His own. He preserves us. He protects us.
Now why would we not respond with a renewed sense of wonder? A renewed sense of faith in God whose covenant love is put on full display as He fulfills His glorious promises in and through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let’s pray. Father, we ask that as Hezekiah turned towards You in faith in the face of overwhelming circumstances, we whether we find ourselves overwhelmed, overpowered, or whether we find ourselves proud and arrogant today, that we would turn towards You and we would trust You to respond directly, definitively, decisively, in such a way that You would deliver us from the enemy of sin, deliver us from our enemies who want to defeat, threaten, oppress, destroy us, and that You would call us to Yourself through the work of Christ. It’s in His name we pray. Amen.