Discouragements For Leaders

Discouragements for Leaders in Isaiah 36

Our scripture passage for the proclamation of God's Word today is in Isaiah 36. So please go ahead and turn to Isaiah 36 and when you have that you can stand for the reading of God's Word. Isaiah 36. We will begin in verse 4.

And the Rabbi Shecha said to them, Say to Hezekiah, thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, on what do you rest this trust of yours? Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war?

In whom do you now trust that you have rebelled against me? Behold you are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to all who trust in him.

But if you say to me, We trust in the Lord our God. Is not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, You shall worship before this altar? Come now, make a wager with my master, the king of Assyria.

I will give you 2 ,000 horses if you are able to on your part set riders on them. How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master's servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?

Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it.

Amen.

You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we look to your word today in this narrative of the nation of Judah, looking for strength, recognizing that we are engaged in a great spiritual war and that we need strength just as they needed strength back then.

We pray that you would bring it in great measure by the power of your spirit. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Leadership, Weakness, and Spiritual Warfare

I would like to begin just by re-reading these first two verses here. The Rabbi Shack has said to them, Say to Hezekiah, Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, on what do you rest this trust of yours?

Do you think that mere words and strategy are power for war? In whom do you now trust that you have rebelled against me? So Hezekiah is the king of Judah. He is being challenged here by Assyria. If you remember from last time, it's been a while since we've been in Isaiah, but every other city in Judah has fallen at this point and only Jerusalem remains.

It's a very critical point for the nation's history. Nothing else is left. They are the only remnant. There are not other cities around where there are more Judeans. It is just Jerusalem where anyone who survives lives.

And Hezekiah will lead the people to victory. Now they have flirted with an alliance with Egypt, and so that is the nature of some of these, some of this mockery, some of this taunting. They have trusted in Egypt in the past, and the question that remains here is will they continue to trust in foreign nations or will they trust in the Lord?

And so part of what the Rabbi Shack is doing in speaking for Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, he has come to discourage the people of Israel. Now next time, we are going to look at the subsequent discouragements which are targeted at the whole people of Jerusalem, but here these discouragements are targeted particularly at the rulers of Jerusalem, particularly at Hezekiah and his servants who are speaking.

For him.

So this is a message for those of you who have any position of leadership. Now, there are all kinds of leaders, right, there are civil leaders, government authorities, there are fathers, there are husbands, there are even mothers over their children.

There are those who are mentors for others or those who are simply by age a sort of authority. And if this doesn't apply to any of you, or if none of those apply to you in particular, then remember this, if you have trusted in Christ, He has made you part of His royal priesthood.

A priest is a position of authority, and royal means kingly, a king is certainly a position of authority. So there is an authority that you have, there is a sense in which you are a leader, and even outside of positions of leadership, it is important for you to know how to think about the attacks that are happening at those who are above you, at leaders above you.

It's a very difficult thing to be a leader, you have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. You speak for one who is higher than you typically, and you are over those who are below you, being responsible for them and their well-being.

This is a heavy burden to bear, and the one who leads people is one who has a big red target painted on their back to be one who is attacked and discouraged by the enemy. So you will face many discouragements as a leader, you'll face many discouragements.

You may wonder why we would spend time on this. A lot of people, they come to church to be encouraged, right? They come for encouragement, they don't want to hear the discouragements, but it is important that we hear the discouragements and understand them in order that we would not be outwitted by Satan.

2 Corinthians 2 says that if we are ignorant of his designs, we will be outwitted by him. And so it is important to understand his designs, to understand the nature of his discouragements, in order that we might be encouraged and not be outwitted by him.

So next time, we will be looking at discouragements toward subordinates, toward those who are under these leaders, but today we are looking at these particular discouragements for leaders. And it's very simple, the nature of these discouragements.

There are, the enemy points out weaknesses, the enemy points out your weaknesses, and he points out his own strengths. Now some of these weaknesses are false weaknesses, some of them are true weaknesses.

Some of the strengths are true strengths, some of the strengths are false strengths. So it really is that simple. There's weaknesses and there's strengths and there's true ones and there's false ones.

And so he begins here by talking about weaknesses, by talking about a true weakness.

He says,.

Behold, you are trusting in Egypt that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to all who trust in him. The people have relied on foreign nations in the past, and now they rely on Egypt.

Egypt in a lot of ways seems like a very strong nation, they have a lot of horses, they have a lot of troops, but the reality is they are a very unreliable ally, and this has been made clear a number of times.

In fact, it was even hinted at earlier in this passage when it said that, in verse 2, that the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish, the king Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And coming from Lachish, which is in Judah, between Egypt and Jerusalem, the idea is that he is coming from Egypt, from the victory that Sennacherib just had over Egypt, just had over their allies.

And so even the direction of his approach to Jerusalem communicates the fact that Egypt is unreliable, that they are weak, that they are easily conquered. And so this is a true weakness that the people have trusted in Egypt.

Now, there's also false weakness.

It says,.

But if you say to me, We trust in the Lord our God, is it not He whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, You shall worship before this altar? So what he's pointing out is Hezekiah in leading the people has instructed the people to pull down false altars, to pull down false gods.

Now to a pagan nation or to people tempted to think in pagan ways, this would look like weakness. You don't have the strength of many gods. You only have the strength of one God. You only have the strength of this particular altar.

This looks like weakness. Now this, of course, is a false weakness. It is not a true weakness as Egypt is. This is a false weakness that the people have, that they do not have the strength of many gods, that they only have the strength of one God.

Now, of course, we know throughout Scripture that God is strong enough, that He is greater than all the other gods, that all the other gods are false gods. So this is a great strength that people have rather than a weakness, but it appears as.

A weakness.

There's oftentimes you'll be approached in ways where it will look like trusting in God to the world, it will look like that is weakness. But you have to rest assured that this is strength. This is not a real weakness, it's a false weakness, and it's actually a strength.

And then the enemy points out strengths of his own, points out true strengths.

He says,.

Come now, make a wager with my master, the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses if you are able on your part to set riders on them. How then can you repulse a single captain of the least of my master's servants when you trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen?

So he makes a wager, you know, a fake bet basically. I would bet you my whole kingdom that I could destroy you even if I gave you many of my horses and even my horsemen because I know you can't even put horsemen on them.

So he's gloating and he's showing just how strong he is, and this is a true strength.

He has.

He has many horses. He does have many strong things. And this is much greater than Egypt, that broken reed of Asstaph. You imagine a reed, right, if you were to use it as a staff and it's bruised, right, it's got a weak point, what will happen?

It will split and then the rough edge of the top, you will lay your hand into it and it will hurt you.

Right?

And this is precisely what would happen to Hezekiah should he continue trusting in Egypt. But the king of Assyria has a great strength. He actually has many horses and horsemen that are more capable than those of Egypt.

And he's so strong that they could not even repulse a single captain of the least of the master servants. In other words, the smallest troop, even just the leader of that would be strong enough to beat…they wouldn't be able to take over even the worst captain in the whole army.

Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me, go up against this land and destroy it. Now, this I will identify as a false strength. It is indeed the case that the Lord is behind Assyria.

In chapter 10, if you remember that, Assyria is described as the axe in the Lord's hand. The Lord really has empowered Assyria. And it's quite possible, I find it even likely looking at this statement and also statements you see elsewhere in the Bible where Cyrus talks about the Lord having talked to him, Nebuchadnezzar describes his speech with the Lord, that Sennacherib really has received direct revelation from the Lord that the Lord was with him in his initial advances against the people of Judah.

However, this is a false strength in that it has already been guaranteed by Isaiah through prophecy that Assyria would not win should they go against Jerusalem all the way, that at Jerusalem they would be defeated.

And so this is a false strength, though he may in some sense have God's power, because they are just an axe, all God has to do is release it. So altogether, you have this, you have the people's weaknesses, both false and true, you have the enemy's strength, both false and true.

Now how are we to respond to these things? You see in Scripture that these kings are used as typological representatives of Satan. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, they are spoken of in ways that we are to see them in their status as an enemy against Judah, as being representative of the great enemy, of Satan, against all believers.

And so these things are given to us as examples in order that we would understand the nature of our enemy, that we would understand the nature of our own strength and be able to respond to these things.

So how do you respond to your own weaknesses, whether they be true or false? How do you respond to the enemy's strength, whether it be true or false? So beginning with the lies, how do you respond to the lies?

You respond to the lies simply by believing the truth. As I said, it's going to be frequently the case that the enemy will discourage you with false weaknesses, where things where it looks like trusting in the Lord is weakness, but the reality is that trusting in the Lord is strength.

There's a lot of times you see this with worship, right? There are many in the world who think that if you don't have idols, if you don't have images, if you're not praying to the saints, if you're not engaged in some kind of idolatrous worship, then you won't have the full strength of God.

If you're not praying to Mary, your prayers are not going to be heard by Jesus, and then your prayers are not going to be heard by the Father. There's many people who would speak to you this way, and you have to know that these things are lies.

You have to be ready to reject those things. There are others who would say that unless you have a very exuberant, even disorderly kind of worship, where people are hopping up and down and running all over and all kinds of disorderly things are happening, then you don't have the Spirit.

Now I know some of us come from backgrounds like that, and we'll often get these things from our relatives or from our old friends who see orderly worship and identify that as spiritless worship, and you will get attacks like this where the enemy is suggesting to you that by having something that is actually real strength, it will identify it as a weakness because the world sees it as a weakness.

This happens in all other areas of your life, too. You know, there are a lot of people who think of biblical counseling as being something very weak, right? The Bible, you're just going to go to this old book to find out what's true, not benefiting from all the modern advances in our understanding of how the mind works, how the psyche works.

Ironically, psyche, coming from the Greek word psuche, meaning soul, these people who say these things don't even believe in a soul. They don't understand how the soul works.

They don't understand at all.

They don't even believe in a soul. But they will identify actually being able to treat the soul with the only tools that can as being a kind of weakness. Or, if you're parenting your kids and you are trying to invest in your own children by homeschooling them, they'll often say that you need to trust in professionals.

You can't do this kind of thing yourself. You need to trust in professionals. There's a lot of times, once again, the enemy will try to discourage you with that sort of mindset or that you need to give your kids unfettered access to the internet or else they're not going to learn the same tools that all the other kids are learning.

They're not going to be able to advance the way that other kids are. Now it's important to teach your children how to get along in the world and teach them skills that are useful, but do not let the enemy discourage you in your protection of.

Your children.

And there are just so many other ways that could be listed where the enemy will discourage you with things that are actually strengths, identifying them as weaknesses because the world sees them as weaknesses.

The world will point to its own strength, too. The enemy will point to his own strength. To false strength, more lies. Puff himself up, say, look at what has happened so far, it shows that I am strong, when really all that has happened has been the providence of God.

That ax being wielded in the Lord's hand himself so that he could drop it at any time. It's not a true strength that they possess as though they have his blessing to win the victory ultimately, rather it is a temporary allowance of these things.

People get very tempted to read God's providence apart from Scripture and to see it as a permanent sort of blessing, but that's not how God works. God raised up Pharaoh in order for him to be destroyed.

God raised up Sennacherib in order for him to be destroyed. Do not read God's providence and extrapolate indefinitely, thinking that he does not have his purposes. Earlier, in Isaiah, talked about the folly of doing so, it's like looking at a farmer and you see him tilling and you think that he's just going to till season after season and never stop.

The farmer is not so foolish, God is not so foolish. He does not continue just allowing the wicked to go on, he will finally act against them. So, do not read God's providence in a way that extrapolates without understanding what his purposes are.

Do not embrace any kind of fatalism that says that the end is so fixed that even the means do not coordinate to it. We believe in God's sovereignty, we believe that God has determined the ends, but he has not determined the ends apart from the means.

If you go to him asking for strength, if you go to him with repentance if there is some matter of sin that you must repent for, he will honor these things, he is faithful. Do not embrace fatalism, do not look at the providence of God and extrapolate without understanding what he himself has said about his own providence.

Do not believe the enemy's lies about his own strength. Now what about the truth? What about the truth that he speaks? How do you deal with that? If you are supposed to reject the lies, what do you do with the truth?

Do you reject the truth? You embrace the truth and you recognize its purpose. That strength that the enemy has is for God's purpose. In fact, God invests in raising up enemies in order to demonstrate his strength.

Just as I said with Pharaoh and Sennacherib, he raised Pharaoh up in order that his glory might be displayed. If you understand that these are God's purposes, then seeing the enemy being strong would be no real discouragement.

It's an understanding that God is simply making the victory greater. There are a lot of times when I used to play billiards with my brother or with other friends and whenever I do bad, I always just pretend that I was setting it up for a big comeback.

Billiards often it's easier when you have all the balls on the table to make a comeback. Sometimes that gloat would work out. This is truly what God is doing. Whenever he is allowing the enemy to grow strong, it is in order to demonstrate his.

Glory.

You embrace that truth and you simply understand it in the framework of what God has stated for his providence. What about your own weaknesses? Once again, you embrace them. God has chosen the weak things of the world in order to demonstrate his strength.

Some of these may be sinful weaknesses. Some of it may be discouragements you may face will be because of your past sins. The enemy may come to you and accuse you for those things and say, because you have all these sins in your past, because you've done these things, there is no way you will survive.

You cannot make it. The mercy of Christ is not enough, but it is enough. It is enough. In fact, the reason why God allows his children to fall into sinful temptations, once again, is in order to show his glory that he might be merciful and gracious in restoring them.

Do not let your past sins, while you should be convicted by them, do not let them haunt you in such a way to think that they put you beyond the mercy of Christ. Instead, God uses those in order to demonstrate the greatness of his mercy.

And then there may be other weaknesses, true weaknesses, that you have that are not particularly sinful but just how God made you or the situation that God has put you in or things that he has taken away from you so that you would be weak.

Once again, these are all in God's purposes. Consider King Hezekiah here and his horses. Why is it that he does not have many horses and he is not able to set many riders on them? Part of that is that they have been whittled down, but part of that is because Scripture has commanded that they not build up a large calvary.

They did not have many chariots. In Deuteronomy, it forbids the king to have many chariots in order that they would be weak, in order that they would not trust in themselves but would trust in the Lord.

And so God has determined that his people, he would intentionally choose them and intentionally have his hand of providence over them so that they would be weak by natural means. Those weaknesses that you face, those are there for God's glory.

They are there for his purposes, and so those should not be taken as discouragements. But if you understand how God's hand of providence works, how his sovereignty works, they should be encouragements because you see how great of a victory as the enemy grows stronger, as you grow weaker, that he is setting up to accomplish.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12, 10, for the sake of Christ, and I am content with weaknesses, insults, persecutions, hardships, and calamities, for when I am weak, then I am strong. This isn't just some senseless contradiction.

He is strong when he is weak because it is in his weakness that God demonstrates his.

Strength.

In our strength, God's strength can't be demonstrated. But in our weakness, God's strength can be demonstrated. And so this is a truth to be embraced. That was the case at the cross. That was the case when Jesus Christ died.

Looked like weakness. It looked like a great victory of the enemy. The enemy looked as strong as he could possibly be. God's kingdom looked as weak as it could possibly be. But this was just setting up the greatest victory that has ever been accomplished.

The victory where Jesus Christ himself defeated death for his people. And so now every time that you face death, every time that you face sin, every time that you face wickedness, you can know that you have the power of that victory behind you because of what Christ has accomplished.

And some of these statements here reinforce this truth. You know, it talks about the broken reed of a staff. That may sound a little familiar to you. You're probably familiar with the phrase, the bruised reed.

It's quoted in the New Testament, but it's quoted from Isaiah. It's quoted from Isaiah 42. It says, a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice.

This is speaking of the Messiah in Isaiah 42 .3. This is the same phrase, even though it says broken in Isaiah 36. The idea being, okay, it snaps and then your hand presses on it and it cuts you. It makes more sense to translate it broken in that context, but these are the same Hebrew words, bruised reed, broken reed.

It's using the same phrase. And so it's simply a picture of weakness. And King Sennacherib, as he says this, describing Egypt as a bruised reed because it can't be trusted. Do you remember the history of Sennacherib?

He was previously Judah's ally and he turned on them. The very thing that's true of Egypt that he's saying that they're a bruised reed, they're weak, they're going to turn on you, was true of him. He's accusing himself.

And this is the case when the enemy throws attacks at us and says, these other things that you are trusting, they can't be trusted. It's true because those are coming from him. He is the one who is the power behind the world, that he is the one who has no strength.

Any of those accusations against you go right back to him. But then what is the case for those of us who are weak? Yes, those things that we trust are weak, but we are weak too. We are bruised reeds as well.

What is our hope? Our hope is the one who does not break the bruised reed. In a faintly burning wick, he will not quench, he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth and the coastlands will wait for his law.

So this is our hope. Our hope is the one who protects the bruised reed. Us and our weakness, our strength is found in Jesus Christ. Our strength is found in the one who is gentle toward us in weakness, but harsh and violent towards those who would oppress his people.

Our strength is found in him. And so just as Sennacherib says, mere words are not strategy and power for war, but Jesus Christ is not mere words, he is the word of God, he is all power. All things are upheld by the word of his power.

And so this word that God has given, that he has spoken forth and sent to the earth, incarnate Jesus Christ, is more than just mere words. He is strength in life. And so whether or not you have a high position of leadership, whether or not you have a low position of leadership, whether you are simply a, and not to denigrate this role, but a priest, part of his royal priesthood, which is a great high position of leadership, you have a great responsibility on your shoulder and you are a great target of attack for the enemy.

And you need to be ready to handle his discouragements, whether they be true or false statements, whether they be about your weaknesses or his strengths, and you must be ready to have your eyes fixed on Christ, who is the true strength for any bruised reed.

Let us pray.

Dear Holy Father, we thank you for the strength that we have in Jesus Christ, we pray that we would not be outwitted by Satan and his designs, that we would understand his purposes and his schemes in order that we might be able to resist, and that we would understand your purposes and your schemes in order that we would be encouraged and not thwarted by any discouragement that comes from the enemy.

We pray in the name of Christ, amen.