He says, I'm going to give you what God says. I want you to take these words back to the King. You've come and asked me to pray? Well, while he's there praying, God's telling Isaiah what to say.
And the first thing is, do not be afraid. One of the most cherished words that God speaks to us. It's so prevalent in the New Testament.
I fear not. Original sin has made earth the battlefield, a battlefield where faith fights fear. 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 37 with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Isaiah chapter 37, battlefield of fear. That's where faith fights its wars from the battlefield of fear. Because of the voice of Satan in the previous chapter, in chapter 36, life had for these Jews in Jerusalem become just that, a place to fight fear. And what we learned from this 37th chapter in response to chapter 36 is that it took their doctrine, their right understanding of what God had told men about himself and about them. It took trust, trusting God, faith, prayer. That's a big part of this 37th chapter.
And it also took a resolve that had to be there with or without fear. Whether you felt still terrified or not, you had to have this resolve that you were going to trust God if you're going to line up with the righteous. Of course, in this city, there's a remnant of the righteous.
Many of them are still corrupt. They'll benefit from what the remnant achieved in going to God. And whatever is taking place on the inside of our faith, hopefully, lining up with God, it will show up on the outside. This generation of Jewish believers shows us how to trust under siege. They show all the generations of the Jews what they should be doing. And you look at the Jews today, the Jewish people, and most of them you just say, do they even read their own scripture? Many of them so remarkably ignorant, they're still listening to the rabbis with bypassing their own Bibles. And so here we have this model in chapter 37 of how to respond to a crisis as a believer. The fake believers, their story is not told.
It's skipped over. God is telling the story of essentially two men. There are others too. But the main two, of course, are King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah.
This duo is just very helpful for us. Now Hezekiah, his officers, of course, they go out and they speak to Reb Shaka, the Assyrian commander, as he threatens them and mocks them. And when they come back and tell Hezekiah what happened, Hezekiah will go to God. He will go to the temple. And there he will recall, it appears, the promise of God, not word for word, but in practice. And this verse from 2 Chronicles 7.14, it doesn't really apply to Christians. It is for the Jewish people. I'll read it to you.
I know many of you, him and Ha, of course, there's elements of it that do. But overall, it's for the Jewish people. It's for people of faith, but it's tailored.
Listen to it. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land. Well, we have Christ. We're not in that same situation.
It's not identical. I don't want to get too caught up in that. If you insist, no, that's for us.
Okay, well, fine. But actually, it is for the Jews who have drifted to come back to God and at the temple call upon Him. Well, Hezekiah did not drift this point in history. He is totally there with God. And he goes to the temple. He's going to call on the Lord following the template that Solomon gave us in 2 Chronicles 7. So we look at verse 1. And so it was when King Hezekiah heard it that he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord.
It appears he did not hesitate. He gets this terrible news from the Reb Shaka. His Hezekiah's three envoys go out and Reb Shaka tells them all these things.
They come back and tell him. And the sackcloth, of course, is just that outward expression of deep distress in the midst of a crisis. Now, interesting that there's no mention of Isaiah putting on sackcloth. Isaiah gets the word. He's like, he's eating a sandwich.
Uh-huh, what happened? It's just like, he's not fazed. He says, hear what God has to say.
And you're just attracted to that. Isaiah loved the nation just as much as King Hezekiah. They both faced the same ominous threat, but there's a slight difference in how they go about it. And that's not condemning Hezekiah at all. It says, and he went into the house of Yahweh. Well, there's nowhere else to go, and he didn't want to go anywhere else. You know, if you turn to Christ because you can't find anywhere else to go, but you would go somewhere else if you could.
Well, that's not ideal. And so, penitently, he goes immediately to God's house, and he sends messengers, the ones that came to him and told him, he sends them to Isaiah. Psalm 63, 2. So I look for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory, because your lovingkindness is better than life, and my lips shall praise you.
We have a song like that, based on those very words, almost verbatim. You know, your lovingkindness is better than life. And anyway, this psalm, he goes to the sanctuary in the psalm. I have looked for you in the sanctuary. It's not the only psalm. Psalm 73, same thing. I understood when I went to the sanctuary of the Lord.
And here, Hezekiah, beelines there. Seeking divine help, however, is of course not enough. You have to seek divine help from the true God. Fake gods disqualify sincerity and faith, and it's one of the lessons from the prophets on Mount Carmel, the prophets of Baal. They were very sincere. They trusted their fake god, but it did not benefit them. Well, now, verse 2, then he sent Eliakim, who was over the house of Shebna, the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz. Well, we covered who these men were in chapter 36, verses 2 and 3. James writes this, Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church. Let them pray over you, anointing with oil in the name of the Lord.
I like that verse because it takes away from the pastors the requirement to read minds. I like to tell, well, you know, if you need something, tell us. Don't leave it to us to try to figure it out. Why should we be put in that spot? Just tell us, especially as other people, too. They have needs, too. We suppose to track them. So just tell us.
And I like, is anyone using, go to the elders and tell them? Don't think they're going to figure it out. Anyway, I think I may have misspoke about this order of events last session. I did not go back and listen.
And I may have said less, or maybe it was a stunt double that said it. You know, you work so hard to make no mistakes. You go back, you check, you recheck, and then every single pastor makes a mistake at some point. And so you bring your Bibles. Not a doctrinal point, thank God.
Usually we don't make those. But I think I said they went to Isaiah first and then the king. Well, if I did say that, I was testing you. If I did say that, it's the other way.
They did go to the king, and then they came to Isaiah. Now that I got that out of the way, how much agony do you think I went through when I realized, hey, you know what? I think I got that one wrong. A lot. I started looking in the want it. I'm getting another job. I can't take this anymore. Anyway, verse 3, and they said to him, thus says Hezekiah.
Actually, this is even better how it works out than my scenario, if I indeed do it. And they said to him, thus says Hezekiah, this day is a day of trouble, verse 3, and rebuke and blasphemy for the children have come to birth, but there's no strength to bring them forth. Now, taking it from the bottom of the verse up, the children have come to birth, but there is no strength to bring them forth. I think what they're saying here is that the reforms that Hezekiah and Isaiah and the righteous remnant in Jerusalem had instituted, they really were big, trying to get the culture back to Yahweh. And he's saying, you know, we've done all this work, but now the Assyrians are here, and they're going to wipe us out, and it's like for nothing. And so it's kind of, it's nice how he words this, that the kingdom was being undermined at the time by the idolaters who were Jewish in Jerusalem.
They were greedy, there were many of them corrupt. This is emphasized by Isaiah in his first five chapters. He lays out all the things that they were doing. And Isaiah chapter 1, for example, verses 16 and 17, the prophet says, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
They weren't doing that. And he says more scathing things in that first chapter, you know, calls them, you know, spiritually dumber than a donkey. So he lays it out, and we come away, we say, okay, we understand what the prophet and the king and the remnant were facing there in Jerusalem.
And the corruption and the idolatry that the majority seems to have been guilty of, of course, we're breaking down the morals, causing suffering in life, and the spiritual meaning of their covenant was destroyed. So in response to the first four chapters, the first five chapters, it's kind of laid out this way, where God says, this is what's wrong, Isaiah's telling us. And then we have that sixth chapter, God's response.
And what was the response? To send this dynamo prophet, Isaiah, in the year King Isaiah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up in the temple and trained a group of this robe-filled sanctuary. So there you have God's response. Then at the same time, if you just follow this biblical pattern, corruption of the Jews, God's response in sending the prophet, get the latter chapters like chapter 10, and then you see God saying, now I'm going to punish the people, and I'm going to use the Assyrians to do it. Well, that's going to cause Hezekiah a lot of questions because he knows that's taking place. And he doesn't know if when God is ready to turn the Assyrians off, he's hoping that you're going to do it when he goes to pray.
Because 30 years of the Assyrian menace, it was brought on by that troublemaker called rebellion, rebellion against God. So Israel's future hinges on this moment, verse 4. It may be that Yahweh your God will hear the words of Reb Shechah, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to reproach the living God, and will rebuke the words which Yahweh your God has heard.
Therefore lift up your prayer and your prayer for the remnant that is left. It may be that Yahweh your God will hear the words of Reb Shechah, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to reproach the living God, and will rebuke the words which Yahweh your God has heard. Well prior to this invasion, Hezekiah had become deathly ill and was healed. And at the same time God assured him that the land, that Jerusalem and the man himself would be delivered. But he doesn't get presumptuous with that. He doesn't just say, you know, well therefore God's obligated, he spoke to the prophet. He's very cautious how he handles this. His doubts are fair because they're based on Judah's guilt.
Well, maybe he will survive. Maybe, you know, if he just takes to Isaiah's word, okay I will survive, the city won't be conquered, but how much more bloodshed will we suffer? Because Judah had been wiped out almost.
All the fortified cities were conquered. Over 200,000 of them were taken captive. Countless others slaughtered. And so he doesn't approach this presumptuously. How far will the punishment go? And he did not cling to false, well God's going to do this, and God's going to do that. He didn't know what God was going to do. When you have someone given prophecy like that, just ask them the question, what's the penalty in the scripture for being a false prophet?
It's capital crime. How many false prophecies does it take to be a false prophet? One. So be careful before you go around telling everybody what you think God is going to do. I think it sobers all of us up. We all may at one time or another just be so sure, well God's going to do something. Well, he's already doing something, but you know, when Christians go to the stake, there were those saying God's going to save them, and they did not. Not that God was wrong, God took them to heaven. So there's a little bit of a wake up call for all of us in approaching God presumptuously, and we learn that from Hezekiah, that he's not being presumptuous. He does say that he's hoping God will act on their blasphemy and give them a pass no longer. So he says here in verse 4, therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left. This is what they're telling Isaiah. A rally to intercessory prayer.
Intercession means I've got to get involved, I can't sit on the sidelines. You know who illustrates that wonderfully for us? Don't answer the question because you'll never get it right. Well, at least not who I'm going to think.
You might get it right, but it won't be the... Anyway, Zipporah. Zipporah, Moses' wife. God was looking to kill Moses for violating the law and daring to stand as leader of the people. Point made, that's one of the great purposes of just that moment.
That's the point. God's not fooling around with you as the leader. Well, she is the one that circumcised the child. She gets involved. She's not apathetic, she's not inactive, she's zealous and she's angry too. She's angry at Moses. And, you know, she throws the foreskin at the feet and says, you know, you're a bloody man.
You do did this. It's so candid how the Bible takes this family moment that's ministry in the home and publishes it for all time, all history, for us to come and learn. So my point is that Zipporah, she got involved. Intercessory prayer, praying on behalf of others, draws you in.
You get involved. And it's fueled by the Spirit of God, but that Spirit of God can be frustrated if we don't act. If she just sat there or left a tent, the story would have been different. God would have had to get another lawmaker, maybe like Leon. Instead of you wouldn't know Moses, thus says Leon. All right.
All right, coming back to this. So Hezekiah, spiritually, I don't know if you get how powerful that is. You know, God could just get another Moses and I just inserted the name. Hezekiah, again, spiritually wise enough not to dismiss the threat and not to succumb to it at the same time. That's poise.
I see the threat. He's not caving to the threat and he's not going crazy. He's going to God's house and he's keeping his wits about him. He did not have this blind faith. The sackcloth is saying, this is major league.
This is a heavyweight situation. And his call for Isaiah to pray showed his confidence in prayer. Prayer counts because the devil works so hard to tell us that it does not. And so the comment Luke adds that Jesus talking about prayer to the apostles, men ought always pray and not lose heart.
Well, he only said that because that's what we do. We lose heart. But if you love somebody enough, you won't lose heart.
You just will stay at it. And love covers a multitude of sins. Love is invincible in that sense. And hell knows it. And the Christian who is aspiring to be Christ-like will learn these lessons.
And so even though the Lord had brought Assyria to chasten Judah, the king hoped that the judgment was now over, using them as an instrument. The sovereignty of God, Job 38 11, God speaking to Job, when I said, speaking to the oceans, this far you may come but no father and here your proud waves must stop. That's the sovereignty of God. He knows when to turn it off.
He knows when to leave it on. And the Christian learns that. And we don't rebel against him because of that. Verse 5, so the servants of the king came to Isaiah and Isaiah said to them, thus you shall say to your master, thus says Yahweh, do not be afraid of the words which you have heard with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. So Isaiah, he's older now. He's an old prophet. He's established as a prophet. And he knows what his role is.
And he is carrying it out. And he says, I'm going to give you what God says. I want you to take these words back to the king. You've come and asked me to pray. Well, while he's there praying, God's telling Isaiah what to say.
And the first thing is, do not be afraid. One of the most cherished words that God speaks to us. It's so prevalent in the New Testament.
I fear not. Original sin has made earth the battlefield, a battlefield where faith fights fear. You know, there's original sin. We're all sinners. Then there's the sinful acts that we commit based on that original sin.
So when someone is sick, a beloved Christian is sick with a terminal sickness, that's sin, not their sin, but sin on earth. And the curse upon mankind that we have to go through. And God says, of course, I'm going to make this worth it.
Just abide in me. You keep your faith going. And as believers leave this life, will one of the first things we hear or have imparted to us is fear not? Because, you know, a lot of people get up to that gate of death and there's fear. Believers.
Some others such as, you know, dive right in. But it's real. And so that's why God tells us fear not. He means it.
It doesn't mean the outcome is going to be the way you want. It means He'll be with you. And He says here in verse six, of the words which you have heard, do not be afraid of the words which you have heard. That was the voice of the devil from chapter 36.
A real devil with a real army and real swords that cut and kill. God hears all the praises, the genuine praises of believers, and He hears all the blasphemes. And He serves notice to those who aren't believers that it will be used against you. Matthew chapter 12, verse 36. But I say to you that every idle word men may speak, they will give a count of it in the day of judgment.
That's pretty serious coming from God Almighty. How would an unbeliever know that unless we tell them? That's what Paul's argument is in Romans 10. How should they hear without a preacher? And how should they preach unless they are sent? And that can be on an individual, evangelical level or from a pulpit. Anyway, he continues here in verse six at the bottom, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
Now Isaiah, you know, all those prophets, they knew how to stick it to the devil's people. And here's an example. The word servants is not the common word for servants. It's used elsewhere, but in context it's like an errand boy or a lad. But to use it here in this context, the structure of the Hebrew is derogatory. It's contemptuous. They're saying, you know, those little flunkies of Sennacherib, his Assyrian flunkies. So he says, which the flunkies of king Assyria have blasphemed me. That is a closer reading to what Isaiah is actually saying. And so there's the servants of Hezekiah listening to Isaiah's word and they're going, yes. And he says, I love when the prophet speaks. So verse thirty, verse seven now, surely I will send the Spirit upon him and he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land. You know, prophecy blends a lot of things into simple sentences that can span decades, if not centuries, and it kind of leaves it for us to figure it out. In this case, where he says, I will send the Spirit upon him and he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land. Well, yeah, he's going to do that, but then he comes back and then he says, and Isaiah leaves all that out and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.
Well, that's twenty years from now before that takes place. And yet they treated it like this is what God said, and they went by faith on these things. And here we have, you know, this giant New Testament and we struggle to believe, but at least we're struggling. So he makes no reference here to the devastation that's coming to the Assyrian army, the 185,000 slaughtered in one night, because he already did, he already mentioned it. Isaiah thirty-one, verse eight, then Assyria shall fall by a sword, not a man, not of man, and a sword not of mankind shall devour him, but he shall flee from the sword. The idea being that Sennacherib, the king, when his armies return and they're wiped out that night, they're terrified and they flee. They don't just mosey back to Assyria. Isaiah is saying they're going to be shaken up by that, and they'll never come back into Judah again. So God knows how to lead enemies to their doom. He is going to hear a rumor.
Right now, at this time in history, there's an Ethiopian king who will also be king over Egypt. Merge the two together. 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.
