Lessons from Isaiah 31
We are living in turbulent times! It seems that we are being challenged at every front. Rumours of war have now become war, nation sovereignty is under attack, literally, nations are rising up against nation, flooding has destroyed the lives and livelihoods of many, fires have ravaged our nation. I look around and experience the very foundation of family life being threatened. On the health front many face serious challenges
But today I am going to bring you some good news! Its not going to all disappear, but it will lead us on a path such that it will lead us to the point that enables us to say with confidence “Yes we have these challenges and concerns, but I know the One I believe in and He is more than able to guard and protect all I have entrusted to Him!”
Today let’s turn our heads, so that we don’t look at the shadow but we look at the light that is Jesus!
This upheaval, trauma, turbulence and fear that many are feeling at this time, was never more evident in the life of the Jewish nation, than in the time of the Assyrian dominance around 700BC. And we can learn a lot from this.
Let’s go through a bit of history and geography first
At this time we have the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital and King Ahaz as king. Then we have the northern kingdom of Judah. To the north of that we have Syria (Aram southern part of Syria), then east of Syria we have Assyria
Assyria from 911-631 BC, built what is largely considered the first modern world empire. They built it entirely through conquest and maintained it entirely through terror.
Around 700BC Syria and Israel decided to form an alliance to resist Assyria. They approach King Ahaz of Judah to join them and when Judah (King Ahaz) refused to join them, they attacked Judah. Through Isaiah, God told Ahaz to trust Him for defense. Ahaz did not, but rather appealed to Assyria for military defense. Assyria responded and conquered Syria and took control of both Israel and Judah. So now, Ahaz was king in name only, and Assyria is the dominant power in the region.
Twenty years later Hezekiah, Ahaz’s son becomes king of Judah in Jerusalem. Hezekiah was a godly man, the opposite of his father, Ahaz .
2 Kings 18:4-6 NIV
4 He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it.
5 Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.
Light and darkness don’t mix and Hezekiah rebels against the Assyrian subjugation. But Assyria won’t tolerate this and attacks.
Hezekiah is now in trouble! A major power is attacking so Hezekiah’s advisors start negotiating with Egypt, another regional power house for support. But God warns them through Isaiah the prophet
Isaiah 31 NIV
Woe to Those Who Rely on Egypt
31 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord.
(The chariot was the dominant military weapon from 1700 BC to 500 BC. With it, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Persians all conquered their empires. So, that's why the Israelites were so impressed with chariots. It was the equivalent of today’s modern tank- military hardware to be feared and respected!)
Isaiah continues with this message in v8
Isaiah 31 NIV
8 “Assyria will fall by no human sword; a sword, not of mortals, will devour them. They will flee before the sword and their young men will be put to forced labor.9 Their stronghold will fall because of terror; at the sight of the battle standard their commanders will panic, ”declares the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, whose furnace is in Jerusalem.
So let’s look at a few lessons from this story already
In challenging times “we look to the Holy One of Israel and seek help from the Lord” we don’t look to Egypt and its technology, skills and strengths.
In many ways this is what we tend to do.
Think of the current geopolitical issues we face right now with Russia and China, do we not immediately look to America, NATO,UK, Quad alliance to try and stop this onslaught? And rely on their multitude of chariots- their tanks and advanced weaponry, or rely on their great strength of their horseman or armies or economies to protect us? Now I’m not suggesting in any way that this is wrong to do this but we cannot and must not forget to as a priority to ”look to the Holy One of Israel and seek help from the Lord”
In fact we do see support from Egypt in Isaiah 37:9. But it’s the power of God that brings Hezekiah through in the end. Why- because God directs the path of nations
Proverbs 21:1 New King James Version
21 The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, Like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes.
Proverbs 16:9 NKJV
9 A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.
Or think about some microbiological pandemic such as the one we are facing now. We should not rely on horses (our own strength), on the multitude of chariots (our sciences or technology) or the great strength of our horseman (our skills) without looking to the Holy One of Israel, or seeking help from the Lord. Why- because it is God who directs and gives man the abilities he has, to design the medications we have and the resources to overcome. We need to go to the source in these difficult times
2 Corinthians 3:5 NIV
5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.
The world would say summarizing Isaiah 31:1 “we can defeat this challenge using our strength, our skills and our sciences and our alliances” but maybe we should be saying “we can defeat this challenge using our strength, our skills and our sciences and our alliances, but only with God’s help”
Just thinking about alliances in these unstable times of nation warring against nation, it is very tempting to think that military alliances are your best bet for victory. It’s not always the best option long term. You become totally dependent on that alliance and they can control you- the Belt and Road Initiative by China. Of course there can be substantial short term benefits. (If the Ukraine was part of NATO we would have a very different scenario right now)
This is what military alliances accomplished in this time of Hezekiah
• Israel forming an alliance with Syria to resist Assyria got Israel destroyed.
• Judah requesting an alliance with Assyria for defence resulted in Judah becoming a vassal state, i.e. controlled by Assyria.
• Even Egypt who formed an alliance with Judah resulted in it becoming a vassal state of Assyria
But in the end relying on God for defence against Assyria, not any alliance led to a miraculous victory for Hezekiah.
Let’s pick up the story in Isaiah 36
Isaiah 36:1-2 NIV
Sennacherib Threatens Jerusalem
36 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. 2 Then the king of Assyria sent his field commander with a large army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. [Then] the commander stopped at the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field.
Sennacherib then tells Hezekiah “ The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.’”
Isaiah 37:5-15 NIV
5 King Hezekiah’s officials [went] to Isaiah, 6 Isaiah said to them, “Tell your master, ‘This is what the Lord says: Do not be afraid of what you have heard—those words with which the underlings of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. 7 Listen! When he hears a certain report, I will make him want to return to his own country, and there I will have him cut down with the sword.’”
Sennacherib the King of Assyria then sends another message/letter to Hezekiah ……
carrying on in vs 10
10 “Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, ‘Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.’ 11 Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered?”
Hezekiah’s receives this letter and he goes to God and he prays… vs 14
14 Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. 15 And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord:
And therein we see another key point, firstly not only does Hezekiah approaches Isaiah and approach God at this time, but he then literally lays out the problem before God . He takes the letter and he “spreads it out before the Lord”. We too need to take our concerns, our fears, our challenges, our troubles and “spread them out before the Lord” in prayer. This is more than symbolism, it enables us to focus our minds on our prayer.
The third point I would like to make is this, even though we go to the Lord, and we spread out our concerns before Him, we don’t then stop and do nothing! If your garden is full of weeds it would be ridiculous to suggest that you pray that they all die and then wait to see what happens- no you go and pull them out or use Roundup or something! If you have a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes, you don’t just pray that God would heal you- no, you make sure you take the insulin that has been developed for that disease. If nations are being threatened you develop your defences, and in Australia we should do the same. If you don’t it’s just foolishness. And alliances are not always the best long term solution.
Look what Hezekiah did.
2 Chronicles 32:1-5 NIV Sennacherib Threatens Jerusalem
32 After all that Hezekiah had so faithfully done, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah. He laid siege to the fortified cities, thinking to conquer them for himself. 2 When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he intended to wage war against Jerusalem, 3 he consulted with his officials and military staff about blocking off the water from the springs outside the city, and they helped him. 4 They gathered a large group of people who blocked all the springs and the stream that flowed through the land. “Why should the kings of Assyria come and find plenty of water?” they said. 5 Then he worked hard repairing all the broken sections of the wall and building towers on it. He built another wall outside that one and reinforced the terraces of the City of David. He also made large numbers of weapons and shields.
Vs 30 .. 30 It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channeled the water down to the west side of the City of David.
We need to do the same in Australia. We need to reduce our dependency militarily and economically.
So in an effort to deprive the Assyrians of water, Hezekiah blocked the springs outside the city. He then dug a 533-meter tunnel to the Spring of Gihon, providing the city with fresh water. Its called Hezekiah’s Tunnel or sometimes the Siloam Tunnel today
Two teams of diggers were employed, each starting on opposite ends of the proposed excavation. It was hard work, but when it was completed water now flowed from the Gihon Spring to Siloam pool on the opposite end of the tunnel. It was an engineering marvel at its time! (at points 130 feet underground!)
But he did not stop there he built a massive wall. Its now called the Broad wall! Some references state that Hezekiah’s new wall measured about 23 feet wide (7 m) in some places and it went straight through houses!
Jerusalem’s citizens sacrificed their houses to build the wall so they could survive.
Isaiah describes this in Is. 22:9-11, “You counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall.”
Well we know how the story ends
Isaiah 37:36-38 NIV
36 Then the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! 37 So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.38 One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.
So to sum it all up:
In a crisis the first port of call is always “look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord”
We need to “lay out” our problem before the Lord. This helps us to be specific and so focus our minds on what we are asking God.
Waiting on God does not equate to inertia. We need to be proactive as a people, and as a nation. We need to use all our God given available resources to solve the problem, whether that be on a military front, an economic front, a medical front or even at a personal level.
Then finally using the tools that God has given us, as we go into the fray, remember the word God spoke to Joshua
Deuteronomy 31:6 NIV
6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them,
[militarily, economically, medically]
for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”