1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The
message from God’s Word is taken from Isaiah 36:4-20 & 37:33-36 (READ
TEXT). The message today is entitled, “The
Lord Saves: Part 2,” dear brothers
and sisters in Christ.
2.
A hymn says, “Let children hear
the mighty deeds which God performed of old” (TLH 629:1). This text records
one of these deeds, when the angel of the Lord saved Judah by killing 185,000
Assyrian soldiers. In one night, God laid low the army of the fiercest empire
that part of the world had ever known. It was a mighty deed that God performed
and children of all ages still need to hear about it. We need to hear about it
because every one of us faces troubles and crises where the odds seem stacked
against us. Our God can still do mighty deeds, and he does them.
3.
Three great crises occurred during
the lifetime of the prophet Isaiah. We spoke about the first of these last
week, when the kings of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and Syria conspired to
try to take over the young King Ahaz from his rightful place on David’s throne
in Jerusalem. As we saw, the Lord predicted through Isaiah that the threat from
these nations would come to an end. Sure enough, about a dozen years later
Syria and Israel had been overrun by the Assyrians, the people I like to call
the “motorcycle gang of the ancient Near East.” This formed the second
great crisis of Isaiah’s time, when the Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria. But the Assyrians didn’t stop there. The
Southern Kingdom hardly stood immune to their attack. Our text concerns the
third great crisis Isaiah faced, which occurred some years later when the
Assyrians started invading the Southern Kingdom. Crisis times bring with them extraordinary temptations. When the pressure threatens to turn
overwhelming, the tendency can easily set in to look for help wherever it can
be found and grasp at any glimmers of hope that may seem to be available. In
other words, times of crisis can be times for forsaking the true God.
4.
When the Assyrians made their invasion
into Judah, the Lord stepped in and saved his people in an extraordinary way. This
account is narrated three different times in the Bible. It can be found in two
other places besides here in Isaiah. No question, what was at stake was huge:
not only the survival of the small Southern Kingdom of Judah but also the line
of Davidic kings. The Messiah was to be born from this line, so when the Lord
acted in this case, he was clearly looking after his promise. For a while, it looked like nothing could
stop the Assyrians. Their king, Sennacherib, captured all the fortified
cities in Judah, taking away Jerusalem’s defensive perimeter. Sennacherib
himself boasted that he took forty-six walled cities. He added that he laid
siege to Jerusalem and trapped Judah’s King Hezekiah inside like you would shut
up a bird in a cage.
5.
Before the Assyrian attackers
arrived, Hezekiah had set about strengthening Jerusalem’s defenses. For one
thing, he ordered that a remarkable tunnel be built. This tunnel, which was
discovered in the 19th century, stretched about a third of a mile
long and on the average was almost 6 feet high and 2 feet wide. Cut by hand
with picks, this tunnel supplied Jerusalem with water during the siege. Important as that sort of preparation was,
the most important thing Hezekiah did for his people was to remind them that
the Lord was with them. “Be strong and courageous,” the king said. “Do not
be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with
him, for there are more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh; but
with us is the LORD our God, to help us and to fight our battles” (2
Chronicles 32:7–8).
6.
The Assyrians had mastered
psychological warfare as well as physical fighting. They tried to counter the
things Hezekiah was saying to encourage his people. Along with a great army,
Sennacherib sent a trio of officials to Jerusalem. Just outside the wall of
Jerusalem they met with three of Hezekiah’s most trusted advisers. In a loud
voice and in the Hebrew language the Assyrian diplomats spoke in the hearing of
the defenders on the wall. They claimed that resistance was futile. You can’t
help yourselves here in Judah, they said in effect. Even if we were to give you
2,000 horses, you couldn’t put riders on them. Or do you think you will get the
help you need from Egypt? Think again! Leaning too heavily on Egypt will only
end up hurting you. The Assyrian
delegation even claimed that the Lord wouldn’t help Judah. Hezekiah had been
telling his people to trust in the Lord, they noted, but he had also been
tearing down altars. Now, these were actually altars of false gods, and in
removing them Hezekiah was really cleaning up the Southern Kingdom. The
Assyrians misinterpreted the king’s action, thinking the removal of these
altars would displease the Lord. They pretended to know a lot about Judah’s
God, but they turned out not to know nearly as much as they boasted.
7.
But the Assyrians weren’t finished. They
added: even if the Lord your God wanted to help you, he can’t. Why do you think
it will be any different for you than it was with other nations? Their gods had
no power to stop our advance, the Assyrians noted. As you and I know, none of
the other nations’ gods could stop the Assyrians because none of these other
gods truly existed. The God of Israel was different. As if all these lies weren’t enough, the
Assyrians also made a couple of other false statements that stood out as
extremely foolish, one about the Lord and one about themselves. About the Lord
they said that he had sent them against the land of Judah, wanting them to
destroy it. About themselves, they said that they would be lenient to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem if the city would only surrender. These two statements
were about as bold and false as could be imagined.
8.
There was some truth in what the
Assyrians said about the people of Judah not relying upon their own resources
or on some other nation like Egypt. Yet a mere element of truth is hardly
enough. Actually, a little bit of truth in a lie can prove horribly misleading.
If we are going to have faith in someone or something, that someone or
something better be worthy of our trust, completely worthy.
9.
Years ago, stunt performers called “human
flies” would climb surfaces that no one else could ever dream of climbing. A
favorite stunt for a human fly was to climb a seemingly smooth wall. In Los
Angeles, one of them was climbing the side of a large building. A crowd had
gathered to watch as he found one handhold and toehold after another in what
looked like impossible places. At length, he nearly reached the top. He needed
only one more handhold. Then he saw what appeared to be a gray brick sticking
out from the rest. He had to jump a bit to grab it. A moment after he did, the
onlookers saw him plummet to his death on the street below. In his hand they
found not a brick, but a large and very tightly woven gray spiderweb. From
Paul L. Maier, ed., The Best of Walter A. Maier (St. Louis: Concordia, 1980),
147–48.
10.
This man truly believed it was a
brick, but all his believing didn’t change what it was. It was just a
spiderweb, and it couldn’t hold him up. If the people of Judah thought they
would be able to withstand the Assyrians by themselves, they were wrong. It
didn’t matter how much they might have hoped in themselves or the Egyptians. So
much of temptation comes down to believing that the wrong things will help you.
Yet believing can’t make it so. If you
and I are going to trust in someone or something, that someone or something
better be worthy of our trust. Woe to us if it turns out simply to be the
equivalent of a spiderweb.
11.
Our Lord is worthy of trust. During
World War II, the order was given in a German prison camp that 10 prisoners
would be starved to death. One young prisoner, selected to be among these ten,
cried out in behalf of his wife and children. What would become of them when he
was gone? Then another prisoner, a Roman Catholic priest named Maximilian
Kolbe, stepped up and said: “This man is young. I am old. He has a family. I
have none. Let me take his place.” So the guards took him and 9 others into
the starvation bunker, where they all eventually died. Klaus,
25. Can there be any doubt that Father
Kolbe truly loved this young man and cared about his family? He put himself on
the line for them.
12.
Can there be any doubt that Isaiah’s
name is true, that “the Lord saves”? He showed in this case that he was
worthy of his people’s trust. Not only did he repeatedly reassure Hezekiah
through the prophet Isaiah that he would bring about deliverance for Judah;
when the time came, he actually did so by killing the 185,000 in the Assyrian
camp. The Lord took care of it. As we have seen in the Old Testament, time and
again he promised help and salvation. Yet nothing else shows how ready and able
God is to save the way his great saving act shows it: the life, death, and
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
13.
“Surely he
has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted,”
Isaiah prophesied about the coming Suffering Servant. “But he was wounded
for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the
chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way, and the
LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4–6). Maybe this
saving act didn’t appear as impressive as some others that God had done,
including the one in our text. But, it is the most breathtaking of all, for the
Lord was putting himself on the line for the sin of the world. He did it not
simply to make the point that he is worthy of our trust but even more to atone
for our sin and break its stranglehold on us. Helpless as we are in the face of
sin, death, and the devil, they will not win the victory over us when we trust
the Lord who took the worst they could dish out and defeated them.
14.
This was such a sure thing that Isaiah
predicted it in part in past tense, as if it had already happened: “I will
divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the
strong, because he poured out himself to death and was numbered with the
transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors”
(Isaiah 53:12). Christ is worthy of our trust, and we shall not be condemned.
He has taken care of it.
15.
Times of crisis can be times of great
temptation, and so much of temptation consists in getting us to trust in the
wrong things. Hezekiah gave his people a great piece of advice when the
Assyrian representatives came to talk. Hezekiah said, don’t answer them. It’s
good advice for us too. Don’t try to argue with the devil and his lies. In your
moments of great temptation, cling to the only one who defeats the devil: Christ,
the Lord who saves. Amen. Now the peace that passes all understanding
guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment