How could Isaiah's stomach talking to such a man?
Well, maybe you have had hopes of reaching some decadent individual that is just totally steeped in darkness the same way. Isaiah is trying to reach him. He's trying to bring light into the land. He's a prophet of God.
God did not send Isaiah to stomach Ahaz. He sent Isaiah to deliver a message and is no different with us. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Isaiah chapter 7 as he begins a new message called A Determined Unbeliever. The title is A Determined Unbeliever. That would be King Ahaz. He was just adamant about resisting God and likely he did to his death. So before I get to the first verse, I want to talk about him a little bit. Where we are in Isaiah is the seventh chapter, which as we studied last session, follows Isaiah's second or latter call to ministry. We are after the death of Uzziah during the reign of Jotham, Uzziah's son. This King Ahaz, his father. Isaiah is silent. After the death of Uzziah when Jotham becomes king, we don't hear from Isaiah.
That's a good thing. The king, Jotham, well, we read about him in Second Chronicles 27 and he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh according to all that his father Uzziah had done, although he did not enter the temple of Yahweh, but still the people acted corruptly. Well, this is important to understand what's going on. Uzziah, the good king, he got a little carried away with his authority and tried to offer incense in the temple and of course he was smitten with leprosy by God and the priest got him out of there and he was still a good king. His son Jotham comes to power and he is a good king and he doesn't try to do the same thing, but that little footnote on the second verse of Second Chronicles 27, but still the people acted corruptly.
That has everything to do with all the suffering that's going to go on in this chapter historically. Well, then Ahaz, the son of Jotham, becomes king and there's this surge of evil in the land, open defiance against Yahweh. Second Chronicles 28 tells us, for Yahweh brought Judah low because of Ahaz, king of Israel, for he had encouraged moral decline in Judah and had been continually unfaithful to Yahweh.
How would you like that on your spiritual resume, that you brought the people low? Again, for Yahweh brought Judah low because of Ahaz, king of Israel. So when Jotham dies, Ahaz comes to power, God has to activate again his messenger Isaiah and that's what this chapter is.
It's Isaiah coming to this wicked king and he's going to begin to give him every opportunity to be a good king and not bring the people low. Because again, one man can bring the nation down. Well, the nation has to cooperate. Thus that saying, but still the people acted corruptly. That means they acted corruptly against their God. Defying God is not free.
It comes with a price. You may not pay up right away, Ergo, Ecclesiastes 8.11, but you will pay and it will cost more than you can afford. Nothing in Scripture is about a single person. Nothing in Scripture, dare I say, is even just about God. Otherwise, why would God share it with us?
It always has others in mind. If it were just about God, then he wouldn't have to say anything. But he speaks to us.
He's revealing things to us. And when we come to our Scripture, it is not just about one person. It includes the reader.
It includes the participants. And it is a wonderful thing about the Scripture. There is a statement from God in that. Well, the history of Israel and Judah was radically affected at the time that Ahaz comes to the throne. Assyria gets a new king, Tiglath-Pileser.
And until now, when Assyria made raids into Israel or other countries in that area, it was really just to get loot, to take slaves and get what they wanted and then leave. But when this man comes to power, he has a foreign policy that changes everything. And it's going to affect the Jewish people directly. And this foreign policy that he inaugurates is the massive deportation and repopulation of the people that he conquers. In other words, he sort of goes to Beijing and China and conquers it and takes all those people that live in Beijing and move them to Kabul and Afghanistan where he conquered them too and then takes the people from Hanoi and Vietnam and shuffles them around. And he's just mixing all these people up.
This keeps them off balance. They can't get together and resist him. And this is what he's going to do. He's going to come and he's going to conquer the northern kingdom. He's going to take all the people out.
It's going to take him about 65 years to completely do it. We know that from when we get to verse 8. Especially the upper class people. He would be sure to get them out of the land and put them in a place where they would benefit his domain but they would not be able to rally against his kingdom.
And it was a very successful policy. And this is going to test the faith of the prophet Isaiah who up until this time has enjoyed two godly kings, Uzziah and his son Jotham. And Uzziah is just preaching to the wicked. But now he's going to have an army at his doorstep.
We don't care anything about him. In fact, at this time in history, unlike in the days of Jonah, the Assyrians have become a very vicious people. They're skinning people alive and hanging their skins over the walls and just psychological warfare. Their military was very competent. They had raider battalions.
They're just bad people to have to fight against. And so we'll come back to some of that in verse 1 now. Now it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezen, king of Syria, and Pekah, the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to make war against it but could not prevail against it. And it was told to the house of David, verse 2, saying, serious forces are deployed in Ephraim, so his heart and the heart of his people were moved as the trees of the woods are moved with the wind. Isaiah is writing this. He gets a little flowery there to tell us, you know, they were panic stricken. And there's this image of the, you know, the trees swaying.
That's their hearts. Well, Ahaz becomes king at 25 years old, and he reigns for 16 years. That would be four American presidential terms. We know two can really be tough.
So two terms it is. But he is double that. And you know, his grandfather, as I mentioned, Uzziah, and his father were godly kings.
Ahaz would have none of that. He is going to show God who the boss is, who he thinks. That's his approach. And God does everything to reach him by sending Isaiah to him.
And he's going to do everything he can. He's determined to be content with rejecting Yahweh. You can't say he's godless because he has his fake gods. But he, of course, that would just make him an idolater and a heathen. Anyway, it is the year 734 B.C., about 734 years before the birth of Christ.
And that's important to the story, to understand what's going on. Because the northern kingdom is still there. Israel was divided in after Solomon's death into Judah and Israel. Israel, also known as Ephraim or Jacob, but it's the northern kingdom. So you've got those four descriptions, northern kingdom Israel, Jacob, Ephraim.
Ephraim is what the northern kingdom is referred to here. And they're still in place, but in 12 years, 12 years from the time that Isaiah confronts this king Ahaz, Samaria will fall, the capital city of the northern kingdom. And 65 years from when he engages this king in just a few verses, the judgment will be complete, the northern kingdom will be completely relocated, the people will be assimilated into pagan lands, and that will be it. However, of the tribes that lived in that area, many of them became refugees and moved to the south, so the tribes are preserved. The Jews will be able to identify their tribal distinction up until Rome destroys Jerusalem in 70 AD and all that went on with that.
The records were lost, and so the Jews cannot tell you to this day what tribe they are from. That will be resolved as we get closer to the last of the last days, closer to the rapture. Anyway, the prophet comes along and he's telling them, he's going to tell them, you've got 65 years, but they won't believe him.
The unrighteous will not receive it, and so the consequences will fall on them. So the Assyrian empire is afoot. They are going to take the start right away, right away they're going to start attacking the northern kingdom, and there's a reason why.
They're going to start attacking Syria also, which will fall in two years. So to defend themselves, the northern kingdom and Syria join forces. Judah does not want to go with them. Judah instead, under King Ahaz, instead of going to God, Judah goes to the Assyrians. He says, well look, we three kings can't beat Assyria, so I'm going to side with Assyria.
Makes perfect sense. Well what made more sense is if he would just side with God, he wouldn't have to worry about any alliance other than that with Yahweh, but of course he did not believe it. And so Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel were determined to force him to join them.
How are they going to do that? Well, they want to attack, they were going to kill him, and they had a king, Tabel, ready to put in his place. We get that in verse six, where they named this replacement king that they intend to put in the place of Ahaz, but it won't succeed. It won't succeed because Ahaz still is the line of David, and that line is not going to be destroyed. God is going to protect the line of David for Messiah to come 700 years later. And God's word will not fail. The grass may wither, the flowers fade, but his word stands forever. So Syria and Israel, the reason why the heart of Ahaz is swaying because the northern kingdom is already coming against Jerusalem, and now Syria is going to join them, and he knows they're not going to be able to withstand them.
And that's why he's panic-stricken, and so are the people with him. Now, the king of the northern tribes, Pekah, he killed a lot of Jews, a lot of his own people, a lot of those in Judah. Ultimately, he was assassinated by one of his own people, Hoshea, the last king of the northern kingdom, who became a vassal king of Israel. Okay, that's the history part, but this still goes on, this kind of stuff, in some form. Maybe not with a sword, but people can assassinate your character. There's other ways to do dirty things to people, to get power, to do evil. And this Pekah, as I mentioned, he took captives during this invasion, and in addition to the people that they killed, they have suffered great losses, and so this is why he was feared, because people were dying all over the place.
In fact, Syria even carried off people. Pekah, this king that's presently in power, Isaiah only names him one time, but he names a Damascus king three times, because Isaiah has such contempt for him. He's not going to give his name. I'm not saying his name again.
Once is enough for any lifetime. Anyway, Pekah, inflicting all of these casualties, 2 Chronicles 28, 6, because they had forsaken Yahweh. That's why God allowed Judah to suffer these losses.
He even took some 200,000 women's sons and daughters from Judah up to the northern kingdom, but Obed the prophet engaged him and said, you got to put them back, and he does, oddly enough. Anyway, here we are, all of this war going around, you know, put yourself in their place. Imagine if you had armies, you know, a hundred miles from here, ready to converge on the place that you lived. I mean, all of the complications that would, interstate trucking would go away.
You couldn't get refills for your ink pens and other such things. Of course, that would be minor. But anyway, Assyria at this, so 734 BC, in two years, the Assyrians will succeed in conquering Damascus. God is going to promise Ahaz that he's going to protect him nonetheless. Ahaz doesn't want to hear it.
Most of the northern kingdom, with the exception of Samaria, the capital, which was a natural fortification, the geography, the topography of the land was just a natural fortification, making it difficult to conquer. But they took all the other people away. They'll hold out for 12 years. And the prophet Isaiah is going to Ahaz, and he's going to counsel him. When we get to verse four, he's going to say, don't worry about this. Verse three now, then Yahweh said to Isaiah, go out now to meet Ahaz, you and Shireh Jashub, your son, at the end of the aqueduct from the upper pool on the highway to the fuller's field. So Isaiah is going to engage the king now.
He's activated again, having not heard from him because the kingdom was pretty much, had good kings. But he is going to engage King Ahaz at God's command and not through his own observations. In other words, Isaiah knows Ahaz is wicked, and he doesn't say, you know, I've got to go talk to this guy.
He doesn't do that. He doesn't make a move until God sends him. And when God sends him, he will be able to say, thus says the Lord, instead of thus says Isaiah. Ahaz at this point is inspecting the water supply.
That's where the fuller's field was, where they did the laundry. And we read in 2 Chronicles 28 again about this character Ahaz. So we know what Isaiah is dealing with. He burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinoam and burned his children in the fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom Yahweh had cast out before the children of Israel.
So the historian is saying, these are the people God cast out with Joshua in the days of the judges that they were fighting in the early chapters of Judges. And yet this king tosses Yahweh away and embraces their gods. And he becomes a cold-blooded murderer of his own children for personal gain. This is part of his worship. So his gods, his little make-believe gods, which are demons, can give him what he wants, the power he wants. We have a saying, he sold his soul to the devil. Again, 2 Chronicles gives us a little bit more insight on this character. Ahaz gathered the articles of the house of God, cut in pieces the articles of the house of God, shut up the doors of the house of Yahweh, and made for himself altars in every corner of Jerusalem. And in every single city of Judah, he made high places to burn incense to other gods and provoked to anger Yahweh, the God of his fathers.
So the indictment is very clear. There's nothing redeemable about this character. Well, as a king, he's trying to be the king and protect his city.
Big deal. You know, you can be just a child killer as he is, and what, that's going to like, okay, that balances the books? Of course not. How could Isaiah's stomach talking to such a man? Well, maybe you have had hopes of reaching some decadent individual that is just totally steeped in darkness. The same way, God is, Isaiah is trying to reach him. He's trying to bring light into the land. He's a prophet of God. God did not send Isaiah to stomach Ahaz. He sent Isaiah to deliver a message, and it is no different with us.
I mean, just look at some of these politicians and you're almost nauseated. But if given the chance to preach the gospel to you, there's not a born-again Christian who wouldn't take that chance. That's what it means to love your enemies. If you can be used to save their soul, you would, without hesitation.
If you were to say, no, let them go to hell, well, then you probably aren't a Christian you think you are. Anyway, he tells the prophet, take your son with you, She'er Jashub, not a good name for a boy. Isaiah's sons, and two of them are named. We get the other one in chapter 8.
I'll try to avoid mentioning it until we get there, because it's even harder than this one. Well, Isaiah's sons were given these prophetic names because they were walking sermons. They were messengers, just their names, so that when you looked at the kid, knowing his name, you got a sermon. Isaiah's name means Yahweh saves. That excludes everybody else. The name Michael means, who's like God?
Are you kidding me? That's what the name means. There's nobody like God.
It's rhetorical. His son, She'er, his name means remnant shall return. Well, this is what God was saying in chapter 6, when the prophet said, I'll go take the message, and he said, go tell these people keep hearing and not respond to what they're hearing. And then he says in verse 13 of chapter 6, and yet a tenth will be in it and will return and be for consuming.
That's King Nebuchadnezzar will consume them, not all of them. But anyway, this remnant shall return. Well, a remnant means survivors. They're not in the majority.
They're the minority. Something catastrophic and not good. I don't know. Can you have catastrophic blessings? I don't know. Anyway, it's a catastrophe. It's a bad thing. And so in the message of the child's name is that, well, God's going to preserve his people.
That should give some hope. The other son will have a name that means speed to the spoil, hasten to the plunder. It's a message of judgment. So one has these rays of hope and mercy, and the other name is judgment because that's what the job called for. Verse 4, and say to him, take heed and be quiet. Do not fear or be faint-hearted for these two stubs of smoking firebrands, for the fierce anger of reason and Syria and the son of Remaliah. This is, you know, we don't get to the prophet really comforting, giving us that New Testament comfort in our troubles until we get to the 40th chapter. Much of this is the background of what was happening in the life of the prophet, his ministry, and what the people were doing.
But within this, still, we are getting the comfort of God. To this murderer of his own children, God sends the prophet to reach out to him, to try to bring him out of the darkness. And when he says, take heed and be quiet, it's not like we would, you know, take heed and shut up.
That's not what is being said. He's saying, take heed and be calm. That's the message of the prophet to this monster. He's trying to reach him and it's going to take steps, but it's not going to succeed.
Sometimes it does, not here. For Judah's sake, for the sake of the people, Isaiah is sent to show evil Ahaz, the way out of evil, how to get out of it. Now he says, for these two stubs of smoking firebrands, the two kings, the king of Syria and the king of the northern part of Israel, as I mentioned, he's not going to mention Pekah again because he just finds him abhorrent. Aren't there politicians, before you say their name, you pause? Maybe I don't have to say it.
Maybe there's another way in case you get to point to their district or something. Anyway, verse five, because Syria, Ephraim and the son of Remaliah have plotted evil against you, saying, let us go up against Judah and trouble it and let us make a gap in its wall for ourselves and set a king over them, the son of Tabel. Verse seven, thus says the Lord Yahweh, it shall not stand nor shall it come to pass. So the prophet is saying, yep, Syria and the northern kingdom are in an alliance to kill you, overthrow the kingdom and put Tabel in your place. And God is telling you, through me, it ain't going to happen. You would think Ahaz would say, thank you Lord. He's hardening up. His heart is hardening up and that's why the prophet was told again back in verse six, he says, make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes. Oh, don't do that.
A sarcasm in that. It's a challenge to them because any sane person will say, what must I do to be saved? When Peter said to Simon Magnus, he says, you know, you are poisoned with bitterness and bound in iniquity. Simon said, pray the Lord these things will happen to me. Well, that means God is giving a chance. The person can respond to that invitation.
It ain't going to happen here. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio today. Cross Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.
You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new editions of Cross Reference Radio. Just search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick right here on Cross Reference Radio.
