Discouragements For Subordinates

Please turn your Bible to Isaiah 36. We're going to continue looking at Sennacherib's discouragement of the people of Judah.

Here he moves from speaking to the leaders of Judah to talking to the people themselves.

When you have that, please stand for the reading of God's Word. Then Eliakim, Shevna, and Joah said to the

Rabshakeh, Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah, within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.

But the Rabshakeh said, Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?

Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.

Thus says the king, Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you.

Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying, The Lord will surely deliver us.

This city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, Make your peace with me, and come out to me.

Then each one of you will eat of his own vine, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.

Beware, lest Hezekiah mislead you by saying, The Lord will deliver us. Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sefer Bayim? Have they delivered

Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the

Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? But they were silent, and answered him not a word, for the king's command was,

Do not answer him. Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of the

Rabshakeh. Amen. You may be seated. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for this narrative that you have recorded for us here in Isaiah. We pray that we would be cognizant of the spiritual battle that is afoot, that we would be prepared to resist the attacks of Satan, that we would be ready to face any discouragement the enemy throws our way.

In Jesus' name, amen. So I said just a moment ago, before the king,

Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, had sent the Rabshakeh to go and discourage the rulers, but now he reveals that his main purpose is not to discourage the rulers, but it is, in fact, to discourage the people themselves.

It's said there in verse 11, These are words that are supposed to be spoken to those who are sitting on the wall.

Now you can imagine, as all the different cities around Judah have been attacked and people have fled from them, they've all retreated to Jerusalem.

So Jerusalem is now full of people, overcrowded with people, and they have limited resources.

And so they have this enemy pressing up against them, ready to do warfare, sitting outside the gates, so they cannot leave the city to be able to get any resources.

And the enemy wants to discourage them so that they would not follow their ruler.

Now, naively, you might think that all that matters is Hezekiah's standing and his confidence.

But really, a leader has no power without the approval of his people. A leader really has nothing if all the people turn on him and they decide that his words are not worth being followed.

And this is the case with us and with our enemy. I mentioned last week that leaders have a special target placed on their back, and the enemy approaches them.

But this does not mean that the enemy does not try to tempt every single individual.

If he can turn people away from godly leaders, then he has accomplished his purposes, and so he will.

And it would not be wise of us to think that we are not engaged in some kind of battle because it is those who have taken more prominent roles within the church, more prominent roles within the church at large even, who are facing those battles.

And we, individually, as either laymen or pastors of no special report, would have to face.

But the reality is that he is seeking to discourage every last one of us, and he is prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking to devour.

So we ought to be sober and vigilant. And so there are two ways that the enemy does this.

He does this by discouraging, in these particular ways, by denigrating the true gospel and true authority, and then also by promoting a false gospel and a false authority.

And so looking first at his denigrating of true things, his denigrating true gospel, he speaks in this passage and says to them that they are doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine.

He wants them to hear these words loud and clear. He says that he stands up. Okay, so you stand up so that you are able to be heard well.

He calls out in a loud voice, calls out so they can hear, and he speaks in the language of Judah in order that they can understand.

Now, before they were speaking in the language of Judah, and Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said,

Speak to us in Aramaic. Now, later on, and you might be more familiar with this in the New Testament, this was the common language of the people of Judah.

They were speaking in Aramaic. The words that were inscribed above Jesus, that this is

Jesus, the king of the Jews, what languages were those words inscribed in? They were inscribed in Latin.

They were inscribed in Greek. They were inscribed in Aramaic because Aramaic is the language of the

Jews at the time of the New Testament. At this time, roughly 701

B .C., it is the language primarily of the Syrians, and for everyone else it's more of a trade language.

And so it's the case that some of the people of Judah do not know this trade language. And Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah say,

Speak to us in the trade language. We understand that. That will be easy for you. Then they don't have to hear all this stuff that you're saying, and we can just keep these conversations among ourselves.

He says, No, I want them to hear. I have been sent in order to discourage them, and so I'm going to speak in their language so that they can understand me and that they can be fully discouraged.

People find, even when you can speak another language, you tend to find words phrased in your own language to be more persuasive than interacting with someone in the language of another.

It's just much more compelling to you to hear things in your own native tongue. One way to think of the

Rabshakeh here is he is this cross -cultural missionary of hopelessness. So he's going to this other land.

He's learned their culture in order to persuade them just like a missionary would, just like a missionary would be sent to learn a language, try to learn a culture in order to persuade people.

This guy has taken the time to learn the language of Judah so that he can persuade God's people to turn away from God's authority.

This is the case for you. It's the case today that the enemy employs whatever tactics he can in order to discourage people away from the true gospel.

You are subject to all kinds of propaganda trying to discourage you away from the true gospel.

A lot of people don't think of themselves as being very susceptible to propaganda. They think of themselves as being very objective, reasoned thinkers.

But it's just not the case that anyone is really able to detect all the ways subtly that lies and priorities are shifted out of bounds by the world around us and imposed on us.

If you want just a small illustration of this, think about how not too long ago when smoking advertisements were very common, make people look cool smoking, how widely acceptable smoking is.

And then more recently, smoking, all the ads around smoking are trying to disgust you with smoking to the degree where you think it is just the most deadly thing on earth.

Now, if you talk to someone who's Gen Z age,

I have found that they tend to be very, very disgusted by smoking. So much so that it is not just in a...

In my estimation, it seems to be even beyond what would be determined by a reasonable analysis of things.

There's an impression that the world gave at one point to make people think smoking was just the coolest thing ever.

Then an impression that the world gives later that it's just the worst thing ever. And we are very susceptible to these impressions that we are given.

And so we should not think that we are... Yeah, that we are not susceptible to this.

We are very susceptible to the propaganda of the enemy. And so we need to resist that.

We need to spend time thinking about the goodness and truth of the gospel so that when it's suggested that it's not good, when it's suggested that it will not save, that God will not be enough, that we have our minds so full of the truth that the gospel is good, the gospel does save, that we can be free from sin, that when the enemy speaks otherwise with either direct words or gentle suggestions, that we are ready to resist those things.

And so you have to spend time thinking about the goodness of the gospel. Spend time thanking

God for him having saved you. Spend time reading his word and what it says. Spend time even thinking about the world to come.

I find that very few Christians do this, either because they think it's too speculative to think of the world to come, or because they are simply too apathetic about the matter and distracted by the world at hand.

But this is why a lot of people struggle with the Christian life, is because they are so surrounded by the here and now and do not have their mind on what is to come and on the goodness that God has promised, that they are not able to endure what is taking place here now.

So it goes on and it discourages not just by denigrating the true gospel, but also by denigrating true authority.

It says in verse 13, Then the Rabshakeh stood and called a loud and loud voice in the language of Judah, Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.

Thus says the king, Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you.

Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying, The Lord will surely deliver us. This city will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.

So he tells the people not to trust in Hezekiah. Now, to make sure that I don't miss this explanation, if you're confused by why it's talking about eating their own dung and drinking their own urine, or if you've got an overcrowded city where they're not allowed to go out of the city in order to find resources because there's an army around the city.

This is siege warfare. You basically just sit there until you starve. This is how war is done. You sit there until you starve and you finally tap out.

You come out and you get taken captive. So this is why he says this.

And you can imagine ways that would not be appropriate for me to say at the pulpit of how this could be stated more crudely if you were trying to discourage them.

There are cruder ways that this could be said. They are consigned to eat their own dung and drink their own urine because they will run out of resources.

And he tells them that Hezekiah, don't let him deceive you. He's telling you to trust in the Lord. Don't let him deceive you.

Now, it's interesting because none of this really has to do with Hezekiah. It has to do with the promises that have been given from God.

In Isaiah 10, very clear prophecy from Isaiah that Assyria will be defeated.

In fact, it's even so specific that it says that they will be defeated right as they approach

Jerusalem. So it's saying that this is the point in time where they are defeated. Just, you know, they're calling their shots.

God is calling his shots here in Isaiah 10. Now, not only that, but Hezekiah has gotten a personal promise that God will save him from the king of Assyria.

And this has been broadcast even farther than the land of Assyria. Even Babylon has heard this promise that God gave

Hezekiah. We see this in 2 Chronicles. So later on in Isaiah, we'll see that Hezekiah was sick and God saves him.

And then he promises that he will save him from the king of Assyria. And he's given a particular sign. That sign is the shadow moving backwards so that, you know, it's almost like time itself moving backwards and he gets more time.

And 2 Chronicles tells us that word of this has reached all the way to Babylon. And so you have word from God that these things are true.

And so really, it's not Hezekiah's words that are being questioned. It's God's word. But this is how the enemy often tries to get at people, is tries to say that authority that God has put in place to tell you his words because it's a little harder to get you to distrust

God himself, I'm going to get you to distrust that authority and use that as a proxy for getting you to distrust, getting you to distrust

God. Now, there are all kinds of ways that people distrust the authorities that God has put in their life.

One that our confession addresses, it talks about how people often, when they see sin in the church, they want to separate themselves from the

Lord and supper because they don't want communion to be polluted. And it says it is not right to distrust the church and its management of that and to leave immediately without allowing the church to go through the process.

But a lot of people simply do not trust. Now, I'm not saying that the church can't make any mistakes that would ever require some kind of action, but a lot of people just simply do not have an attitude of trust toward the authorities that God has put in their life.

A lot of times a pastor will say something very true from the pulpit or in personal counseling, biblically, he will show you what the word of God says, tell you what to do, but there will be something about him or about his character that the enemy will point to to totally undermine what was simply biblical.

It was simply biblical instruction. And you will look and the enemy will say, don't look at the fact that this is coming from the

Bible, don't look at the fact that this is coming from God, look at the messenger that he is telling you this through.

Because he has faults, maybe you should distrust all of this. And this happens especially with children, right?

With children, as they get older, they start seeing the faults in their parents, starts making them rebel, making them distrust their parents, even when their parents have told them something simply biblical.

And this is especially true as children get more introduced to things in the world, things that they think their parents are entirely naive about when the reality is they are the ones that are naive about them.

As one illustration of this, I knew a boy who invited someone over to his home and this man, or this other boy, had a hat that was a leopard skin cowboy hat.

And the father said something along the lines of, this man looks like a pimp. And the other boy later told me,

I didn't know my dad knew what that was. He just thought his dad was entirely oblivious to the things that happened in the world.

My parents have never talked to me about these particular things. There's no way they could possibly know about those particular things.

It's very tempting for children to think this way. So parents, as you interact with your children, let them know that the fact that you are protecting them from evil things in the world does not mean that you are oblivious to evil things in the world.

And children, as you grow up, the enemy is going to tempt you, is going to try to point out all the faults in your parents.

And your parents do have faults. And you're going to see them and you're going to think, these are reasons why I shouldn't trust my parents.

But it's not your parents that you need to trust so much as the word of God that they are pointing to, the biblical truths they are pointing to.

So do not let the enemy distract you from what is true just because the messenger that God has sent to you to tell you those things has faults.

So not only does the enemy denigrate the true gospel and true authority, he also promotes a false gospel and false authority.

It says in verse 16, Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, Make your peace with me and come out to me.

Then each of you will eat of his own vine, and each one his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern, till I come and take you away to a land like your own, land of grain and wine, land of bread and vineyards.

Okay, so what is he saying? He's saying, if you listen to me, you'll get to stay in your own land for a little while, and then when

I take you to my land, it's going to be wonderful. It's going to be a land, yeah, it will be a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.

It's going to be an excellent land. Now, maybe you're familiar with some of this language. What is he saying? He's essentially saying it's a promised land.

You look at Deuteronomy 7 .13, it says, He will love you, bless you, and multiply you.

He will also bless the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, the grain, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds, etc.

And then in 1 Kings 4, 1 Kings 4 .25,

describing the time of Solomon, when Solomon was over the people of Israel, granting them,

God working through him to establish a lot of prosperity. It says, And Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beersheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, all the days of Solomon.

This is what God had promised while the people were going through the wilderness. This is what

God had established through his king. This promise of having their own vine, having their own fig tree, being a land of grain and wine.

All of these are God's promises to the people. But what the enemy is doing here, what

Sennacherib is doing here, is basically saying, I have a similar promise. I have something that's just as good and I am trying to offer it to you.

He is offering a false gospel. And this is what the enemy does. The enemy offers people false gospels.

If you look at anything going on in the world, you'll realize that it's just mimicking the true gospel in some way.

You look around and you see, if you're familiar with transhumanism, the idea that as man merges with machine you'll be able to store your own brain and basically live forever.

It's trying to offer some kind of eternal life. Or you look at what the pharmaceutical industry pushes on people in order to correct their problems instead of addressing spiritual problems at their root.

They're trying to promote peace and joy. These are things that God provides.

God provides all these things and the world wants to offer something different. The world wants to say, come enjoy material indulgences rather than pursuing

God's kingdom because that's what's going to give you real joy, real enjoyment. All of these things are false gospels.

Notice the auspices in which they come under. If an enemy comes to you and wants you to surrender rather than just conquering you, why wouldn't they just conquer you?

Why would they ask you to surrender? The reality is there's some kind of desperation there.

They can't let on with that desperation. Instead, they have to make it look like compassion.

That's what Sennacherib is doing. He can't say I'm a little bit desperate and we'll see some of his desperation soon in the next chapter.

He can't say that. All he can say is that he is compassionate towards them. Look, I'll give you these nice things.

We'll care for you. This is what the enemy does. This is what the enemy did in the garden. He basically expressed goodwill towards Eve.

He said God doesn't want this for you but I want this for you. I want something that's good for you. And he offers peace.

That's what people want to do. They want to make peace with the enemy. But there is no peace with the enemy. You adulterous peoples, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God, it says in James 4 .4?

There is no peace with the world. You have to always be on guard. You have to always be ready.

You're probably familiar with the famous Ben Franklin quote. It says those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

This is what's going on here with Judah. Freedom is something that they're willing to throw aside in order to have safety.

Well, if you get us here safely, we'll be fine being captives. That's what some of them are being tempted into.

But if you would give up liberty for safety, you deserve neither. God has offered both.

God has offered both to us. And to throw them away is to throw away the very good promises of God for a false gospel, for a false promise that never delivers.

And then on top of promoting a false gospel, he promotes a false authority. In verse 18, it says,

Beware, lest Hezekiah mislead you by saying, The Lord will deliver us. Has any of the gods of the nations delivered

His land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sefer Vayim?

Have they delivered Samaria out of My hand? Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered their lands out of My hand that the

Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of My hand? Now, we saw this same speech last week, and we'll see it again in a couple of weeks when

Sennacherib sends that very same message. If I defeated all these other gods, then how is it that I would not be able to defeat your god?

And so he sets himself up as a greater kind of authority. He calls himself the great king in verse 11.

And then on top of that, he describes himself as one being sent by the Lord Himself in verse 10.

He is one who is setting himself up as sort of an antichrist, right? An antichrist being...

A lot of people think of that as being one who is against Christ, right? That's how we tend to use the prefix anti.

When the Bible talks about antichrist, anti in Greek more often means a replacement for. Okay, so this is a false

Christ, a replacement Christ. And this is not anachronistic to speak this way either because what were these people supposed to hope for?

This one who would lead them into this land of promise, this one who would give them, establish the grain and wine, the abundance of eating under their own fig tree, etc.

And this is what Solomon, as the son of David, is doing. And so they're waiting for a greater son of David to accomplish this.

But Sennacherib is describing himself this way, right? He's describing himself as a better authority.

He obviously looks like a more capable authority in the way he has defeated so many things. And the people of Judah right now are in dire straits.

So he sets himself up as a very, very high authority. And it's very tempting to see that sort of thing and have it sway you.

People are often swayed by confidence or by charisma. You know, you see this even in the church.

This is not just true in the world. Some pastors, the reason why a lot of their theology is just so widely accepted is simply because they are just so confident about the way they say it.

And you look at that and you go, man, he really seems to believe this. It must be true.

You know, it's very easy to take that mindset rather than to go to the Word of God and examine the matter for yourself, to use that confidence or that charisma as a proxy for real authority.

And of course, if it happens in the church, it's certainly happening in the world. Many speak with all kinds of confidence.

Many will promote their false gospel, promote themselves as some sort of false messiah, or as some sort of true messiah, but actually being a false messiah.

You know, quintessentially this is true of the pope. He sets himself up as head of the church. It used to be that they would very strongly argue that there was no salvation outside of the

Roman Catholic Church. Now a lot of that's gone out the window. And the way they promote a false gospel is somewhat different.

But it used to be a very exclusive claim, and it would be very terrifying to those who were swayed by that sort of thing to be found outside of the

Roman Catholic Church. But this is something that faces all of us as you face issues in the world where people are going to be arguing for all kinds of false ideologies.

They will state it with confidence. They will say, you don't want to be found outside of this or else you will not have salvation. But none of that is true.

None of that is true because we have a good God who is not only able to save, not only capable, but very willing.

He is a good God. We have a true messiah, one who has already come at this point in history. We're in a better position than the people of Judah were because they had to look forward to this messiah who was to come.

We have already received that messiah. We have a great salvation that is here in Jesus Christ.

And those who have trusted in him have had all their guilt washed away, and there's no reason to look back and to be distracted by the world and think, why don't

I trust in something else? And you see frequently that the Bible says that these promises are fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

For example, consider Malachi, excuse me, not

Malachi, Micah 4 .4. Micah 4 starts off with the very same passage that Isaiah 2 starts off with.

You'll be familiar with this. It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted above the hills, and people shall flow to it.

And many nations shall come and say, Come, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.

And it talks about beating swords into plowshares. Are you familiar with this? This was all said in Isaiah 2.

Micah and Isaiah are contemporary prophets. There's debate about which of them wrote first, and maybe the other is including the prophecy of the other.

It's not really clear which one. But it does seem to be possible that this very last verse of this,

Isaiah intentionally left off because it comes in this narrative. In Micah 4 .4

it says, So this passage where Isaiah, in Isaiah 2, is prophesying this gospel, this kingdom that will be established in that Messiah through Jesus Christ, leaves off this one little verse about every man sitting under his vine and fig tree.

It sort of gives you a clue that there's going to be some threat to that.

Indeed, we see that threat here in chapter 36, where Sennacherib offers for them to sit under their own vine and fig tree if they follow him.

But what we see in Micah is that this is a promise that belongs to the Messiah. This is a promise that is true in his kingdom, to sit under your own vine and enjoy your own things, rather than to be a slave of another and not have anything at all.

And so those who trust the enemy and do not trust God, they risk, they will become slaves of him and not be able to enjoy their own things as he takes over their whole life.

And then Zechariah 3 makes it abundantly clear that this is all fulfilled in the

Messiah. It says, Behold, I will bring my servant the branch.

The branch is even how Isaiah has spoken of this Messiah, Jesus Christ. For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes,

I will engrave its inscription, declares the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day.

In that day, declares the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree.

No more slavery, no more slavery to sin, no more slavery to the guilt of the enemy, no more slavery to death, knowing that when you die, there will be nothing else and you will have nothing, but rather knowing that you will have everything, that not only will you be able to enjoy a few things of your own, a vine and a fig tree, but that we will be co -heirs with Christ, inheriting all things, owning all things.

And this is something that can be enjoyed even in this life, though not manifest yet, even in this life as we know that God has assigned all things for our good through Jesus Christ.

Do not trust the enemy, do not listen to the lies, do not listen when he denigrates true authority, true gospel, do not listen when he promotes a false gospel, false authority, but listen to the word of God that's come from the mouth of God, listen to the true gospel, and heed the authorities that he has put in your life to remind you of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the great gospel that we have in Jesus Christ.

We pray that you would help us to heed those authorities that you have given to us to remind us of this good news.

We pray that you would steal us from the advance of the enemy, that we would not heed his lies.