When he says the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this, the meaning of that is this is something God wants to do.
He's looking forward to doing this. That's the zeal. You know if you hire somebody to do work and they're just, you know, dragging, you're pushing them up the hill, maybe you're a foreman and you've got people that are just, man, you'd rather double the work and have them help. Or you've got somebody that's zealous that we could do, let's take this thing, let's get this thing bumped out.
I don't like it any more than you do, but we can do this. 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. Isaiah chapter 37 is the text Pastor Rick will be teaching from today on this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Verse 16, O Yahweh of hosts, God of Israel, the one who dwells between the cherubim, you are God, you alone. Of all the kingdoms of the earth, you have made heaven and earth. So we pause here and remember I mentioned in the beginning that his doctrine was a part of this. We have Acts 2-22 in motion, continuing steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and prayer and communion and fellowship. Well that's what we have here.
Hezekiah, he's not isolated, he's plugged into the prophet, he has his servants, he goes to God, he says God is the creator of heaven and earth, so he's a creationist. Verse 17, incline your ear, O Yahweh, and hear, open your eyes, O Yahweh, and see, and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. Well, coming from a man like him, there's no insult there, open your ears, open your eyes, but you know, we can use that in insulting, why don't you just open your eyes? You know, that's not what he's saying. So he's saying this with feeling, this feeling behind this. You know, he's crying out to God, maybe not with tears, but he's serious. Verse 18, truly Yahweh the king of Assyria has laid waste to all the nations and their lands. So he says, I admit, what Sennacherib is telling us is true, he's wiped out these peoples who had these false gods. The king has no sense of entitlement, but he does have a spirit of dependence.
And if you have a spirit of entitlement that somehow God owes you, you might want to get rid of that and instead just look to be dependent on the Lord. So the king says, here's the problem, Sennacherib, write out with that, verse 19, that he continues what he has done, he has cast out their gods into the fire, for they are not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood, stone, therefore they destroyed them. So again, his doctrine, he's sharing it right out, the living God versus the dead idols, something martyrs never lose sight of. You know, God did not, the Lord did not have to say to Stephen, fear not, he just showed up.
That did it, just seeing the Lord, Stephen had no fear when he checked out. Anyway, I want to just, Acts chapter 4, verse 18, because here we have the living God versus these idols. And the name Jesus, in the context of Christ or Nazareth, it is a big deal.
The name of Christ Jesus is not, there's nothing common about it, there's nothing average about it. In Acts chapter 4, so they called them, that's the apostles, and commanded them not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus. You see chaplains today, they're saying you cannot be a chaplain in the name of Jesus. You can be in front of Mohammed or Krishna or whoever else, we don't want to hear you invoking the name Jesus. Because, well I'll just give you another one, Acts 21, verse 13, this is when they're telling Paul not to go to Jerusalem, he'll be persecuted. He says, I am ready, not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. Philippians chapter 2, verse 10, that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue, every knee shall bow of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth. You see what I'm saying, when I pray, I love saying in Jesus' name, because I love Him.
And it is personal. I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ because of Jesus Christ, and so do countless multitudes of Christians through the ages to this day have this relationship. It is making a distinction between the fake gods and the real Savior. And I think that when you pray, you know, with boldness, in the name of Jesus, I'm not saying it's not a, you don't have to do this, I'm just telling you, I enjoy doing that.
I open my prayers, the three ways Christ did, you know, righteous Father, our Father who art in heaven, Heavenly Father, just because I want to. But that doesn't mean I think others should. However, I still know that the Bible teaches that, nor is there salvation in any other name given among men by which we must be saved.
And so, yeah, it's not being proud of, it's just making that declaration. Isaiah, no less than eight times, he refers to the no gods. And here he says, Hezekiah says, for they are not gods. Yahweh is God. And Yahweh of the Old Testament is Jesus of the New Testament. Isaiah chapter two, verse eight, their land is also full of no gods. They worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.
Now the Hebrew is no gods, but it was translated idols. And as I've said a few times before, going through the Old Testament, Ezekiel, he just, he lays it on heavy. Well now, that's my emphasis on the name of Jesus. It used to be a song. There's a few of them. The one that's coming to mind, Jesus, just a mention of your name.
The flowers bloom, the desert blooms again. I think it's a Jimmy Swaggart song actually. He can sing, he can play that piano. And anyway, it used to, in spite of his shortcomings. So, verse 20 now. Now therefore, O Yahweh our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you are Yahweh, you alone.
Nor is there salvation in any other name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow. And Paul, when he says that, he's quoting Isaiah incidentally. So, here at the prophet in verse 20, he wants more than deliverance from Israel for Jerusalem. He wants more than deliverance for his life, for the people, for the city of Jerusalem.
He wants God to be glorified. So you see, this is a great man of faith, this king. It is a central theme in Isaiah, that God be glorified, that the Gentiles get this light.
And it's nice to see it. Verse 21, then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah saying, thus says Yahweh God of Israel, because you have prayed to me against Sennacherib, king of Assyria. We'll pause there. As I mentioned, men ought always pray, I mean humans, people, ought always pray and not lose heart. And here we see God ringing in on that in the Old Testament. The king is praying to God. God is answering the king's prayer. He doesn't know it at the moment, but he's answering it to the prophet Isaiah. Anyway, verse 22, this is the word which Yahweh has spoken concerning him. The virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you, laughed you to scorn, and the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head behind your back. And so the prophet is saying that in the end, we will mock the king of the Assyrians.
This was supposed to create peace in the heart of the Jews. Philippians 4, verse 7, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. When Paul wrote the Philippian letter that I've been quoting a few times this evening, talking about faith and courage, he wrote it after having been stoned and shipwrecked and beaten and arrested and chased. So he knew he was talking about. He wasn't just, you know, comfortable in a palace somewhere and he's writing out, being anxious for nothing.
He's been living this stuff. And where we are in Acts, we haven't, he's not yet written the Philippian letter. So all he's been through in Acts, later on, he's still going to be a champion of the faith. A lot of people become jaded or disappointed with God. You know, look, I've been suffering all of this time and God doesn't answer my prayers and, you know, if he's such a God, you know, not Paul, he just, he's just hitting it hard every chance he gets. The peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. It's an interesting study to go through the letters, the epistles, and see how many times they say Jesus, Christ Jesus, Jesus the Lord.
They're just very much into making that very clear. Anyway, the end result is you've insulted the wrong God, O Sennacher. Verse 23, whom have you reproached and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted up your eyes on high against the Holy One of Israel?
And so, you've crossed the line. Psalm 2, verse 4, he who sits in the heaven shall laugh. Yahweh shall hold them in derision. I know when you're going through stuff, you want God to, okay, is today, today the day that you're going to wipe out the Assyrians?
How much more do I have to go through? Well, we learn, we learn to just serve the Lord no matter what's happening. Verse 24, but your servants, your servants, by your servants you have reproached the Lord and said, by the multitude of my chariots I have come up to the height of the mountains, to the limits of Lebanon. I will cut down its tall cedars and its choice cypress trees. I will enter its father's height to its fruitful forest. Verse 25, I have dug and drunk water and with the soles of my feet I have dried up the brooks of defense.
So, this is the Sennacher Reb. God is saying this is what's in his heart. This is how he, this is what he's thinking.
He's wrong. He uses the pronouns I and my seven times in this section, this soliloquy, if you will, reminds us of chapter 14 in Isaiah where Satan is, I will lift up my throne and he talks about himself so much. Or the parable of the lost self-made man in Luke chapter 12, my silos, my grain, and you know, you fool, tonight your soul will be required of you. And so it's being shown here that the wicked, they are self-impressed.
They think they're self-made and they're not. Everything Assyria had was because they were an instrument of God. Verse 26, instrument of judgment. Did you not hear how long ago, how long ago how I made it from ancient times that I formed it?
Now I have brought it to pass that you should be for crushing fortified cities into heaps of ruins. So now this is God responding. The prophet is laying this out for his audience after these events, of course, and he's saying that God is the one and he's the sovereign one. Verse 27, therefore the inhabitants had little power. They were dismayed and confounded. They were as the grass of the field and the green herb as the grass on the housetops and grain blighted before it has grown. Verse 28, but I know your dwelling place.
You're going out, you're coming in, and you're rage against me. Well, so the doctrine is right. Again, we're getting doctrine, proper teachings about God from God. In verse 27, when he mentions the housetops with the grass on top, those are flat roofs. They used mud, you know, to kind of hold everything together. They leaked when it did rain, but of course that would allow things to grow up there. And so in its season, there would be green, you know, the roofs would be green. Sometimes if you don't get the power washer out, your houses will be green. So we understand things will grow. Well, anyway, in case you're wondering, how's the roof growing grass, those flat roofs?
And then dust would blow dust on the roofs and giving vegetation a chance to take root. Anyway, in verse 27, the Lord says, I know where you live, and I know what you're doing, and we want to tell that to, you know, the evolutionists, for instance, who chases insulting theories, believe anything but God, and we want to tell them that. God knows what you're up to. He knows you're being intellectually dishonest. It's just such an easy thing to shoot down, you know, the first animal evolved with the second one.
I mean, just, anyway, it's too easy. Verse 29, because your rage against Me and your tumult have come up to My ears, therefore I will put My hook in your nose and My bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way which you came. Well, the Assyrians were notorious for putting hooks in the nose of prisoners. God is, I don't believe this is literal, because when the army is wiped out, the 185,000, it's not the entire army that's wiped out, but how big was the army? If you killed that many, you still had a big army left, which is incidentally an indication of how they stripped the land to feed those troops and how much suffering that caused the Jews. God's going to bring that up in a moment, but He's going to go the way He came, and He's going to go against His will, and that's what Isaiah, verse 29, is saying. This hasn't happened yet, chronologically, and Isaiah is laying out the details, and it all happened, just like he said, verse 30.
This shall be a sign to you. You shall eat this year, such as grows of itself, and the second year, what springs from the same, also the third year, sow and reap. In the third year, sow and reap, plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. So for two years, the people will live off the land.
This will be miraculous. They have to produce enough just naturally after the Assyrians had come in and stripped the land. So they were worried, are we going to die of starvation if we survive the Assyrian army? And the prophet is very sensitive to this. God, of course, is sensitive to this and tells the prophet, don't worry, you're going to eat, you're going to live off the land, you're going to rebuild your cities, you're going to get your act back together. All the Jews that are here on earth today, popular in the world, are actually coming, mainly coming out of this, these survivors that were in the city.
Anyway, not exclusively, but largely. The 31st verse now, and the remnant who have escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, bear fruit upward. Verse 32, for out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and those who escape from Mount Zion, the zeal of Yahweh of hosts will do this. And there is my statement about the Jewish nation just multiplying largely because of these survivors. Had there not been this central remnant of survivors, the others would have been assimilated like the northern kingdom, and more than likely that would have been the end of the Jewish people, which was not going to happen. Satan has really tried to depopulate the Jewish people to the point where they are no longer a distinct people and it just has failed and it will never succeed. Anyway, when he says the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this, the meaning of that is, this is something God wants to do.
He's looking forward to doing this. That's the zeal. You know, if you hire somebody to do work and they're just, you know, dragging, you're pushing them up the hill, maybe you're a foreman and you've got people that are just, man, you'd rather double the work than have them help. Or you've got somebody that's zealous, that we could do, let's take this thing, let's get this thing bumped out.
I don't like it any more than you do, but we can do this. I've had the pleasure of working with men like that. And I tell you, the other ones that weren't like that, you just look to get rid of them. Fortunately, I had wise foremen that could perceive it and say, we got an ace over here, and of course we got this dead weight over here, we can't keep those two together.
The ace will no longer, you know, so they get rid of that guy and they bring you somebody that has that zeal. Yeah, we know the job is hard, but that's the job. And if you're a Christian in the workplace, you're not supposed to let people out-zeal you, if I can say it that way. I mean, you're supposed to be, it's a witness, the world is watching.
And if your testimony is, yeah, that one's the Christian, the lazy one, the one that's always trying to get out of the work, the one that's always complaining, the one that's always got a gripe, that's not a good witness. Verse 33, therefore thus says Yahweh concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not come into this city nor shoot an arrow there nor come before it with shield nor build a siege mount against it, fulfilled. Verse 34, by the way that he came, the same shall he return, and he shall not come into this city, says Yahweh, fulfilled. Verse 35, for I will defend this city to save it for my own sake and for my servant David's sake.
When that's, of course, the promises of God will not be defeated by anyone, and this is fulfilled. What would you do if you were listening to this? If the Assyrian army, they'd already wiped out all these villages in your land, and they're at the gates, they're telling you what they're going to do, they're going to gouge your eyes out. Would you believe the prophet? You know, here he makes a promise, you know, the king Sennacherib's going to die, but it doesn't happen for 20 years. So would you be in one of those, you got that one wrong, and then at the 20 years when you read in the newspaper Sennacherib killed by his own sons in the house of Naosh or whatever his god was, then you say, boy, I should have believed. Skip the step of doubt if you can.
It will try to get you anyway, but you don't have to fall through it. Jeremiah, when he read these words, what sorrow must have filled his heart, knowing that God's zeal wanted to deliver Jerusalem and did in Jeremiah's day, but it wasn't going to happen for him. For Jeremiah, as zealous as God was for the city, there was nothing he could do, because the remnant was not strong enough, not their fault, but the evil had just become so big that God let it run its course.
He did what he always does with majority evil. He causes all things to work together for the good, and out of that came not only Jeremiah, but Ezekiel and Daniel. Just think of the prophecies that are in those two books alone concerning end times, never mind the ones fulfilled in their time when Daniel lays out, you know, the history of the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans. Historians look at that and say, ah, you know, he must have wrote that afterwards, and it's proven that he did not. He wrote it before it ever happened. Amazing to trust God's word. That's why we put such an emphasis. The thing I've liked about Calvary Chapel from Chuck Smith is that the emphasis has always been on the teaching of God's word without excluding everything else, but this is not well received in many circles.
In the many circles, it's resisted very much. Verse 36, then the angel of Yahweh went out and killed in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000, and when the people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses all dead, and they said, huh. The first thing that, how did the people know? They probably saw the vultures. They probably heard the scavengers. You know, maybe they did just wake up and pull up the blinds and just see the pile of dead bodies, but I think, you know, as hilly as that area is, it probably was, man, look at all those buzzards up there.
What's going on? Anyway, the insult was directed personally to Yahweh, and it's dealt with personally by Yahweh in that he sent the angel, which is pre-incarnate Christ. I believe this is a Christophany, that this is the Lord that just, he just killed him. It says here in verse 36, and killed in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000. And, you know, that's too many to just bag up and take back to Assyria and give a proper burial.
This created a lot of work. No mention of Big Mouth Rabshakah surviving. Maybe he perished in this also. Anyway, at the bottom is the verse, verse 36, and when the people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses all dead. Not the first time this happened to an army against the Jews. Exodus 14, when Pharaoh's army chased the Jews. So Yahweh saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.
Where's some morbid scenes? It's not just in the Old Testament how gruesome is the crucifixion. Verse 37, so Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went away, returned home and remained at Nineveh. And Isaiah in chapter 31 already told us that he's looking to get away. He's not just sashaying, well, let's just go home. That didn't work out.
No, he's pretty nervous. Verse 38, now it came to pass as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch, his god, that his sons Adrammelek and Sharizah struck him down with the sword, and they escaped into the land of Ararat in modern Turkey. Well, actually Turkey, Armenia, and Iran are all connected to that mountain range in Ararat.
So where are we? And Estrahedon, the son, reigned in this place, and he'll conquer a lot of places too, but not the Jews. So there's a 20-year gap between verses 37 and 38. Sennacherib lived for those 20 years and continued his military exploits in other places, but never did he come back to Judah. Those roads were closed for him by God, and that's pretty much it. I'm always amazed by how confident the prophets were.
And maybe when you've had a chance to exercise such faith in your own life, when everybody else is doubting you, but you know what God has told you, and then it comes to pass. It is truly good. 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.
