WWUTT 2019 The Enemy Promises More Than He Delivers (Isaiah 36:1-22)

There was a man called the Rabshakeh who was like a prophet of the king of Assyria, and he came to Jerusalem to try to turn the Jews into pagans, promising them all kinds of worldly things just like Satan does when we understand the text.

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Isaiah 36 and the Rabshakeh’s False Prophecy

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Isaiah, we've been reading 35 chapters of prophecy, which we just finished up last week, and we're entering into a narrative portion where God is going to fulfill what He had promised Judah that He would do, delivering them from the hands of their enemies, namely the Assyrians.

So let me begin here by reading chapter 36, verses 1 through 10 out of the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. Now it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.

And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a heavy military force. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway of the fuller's field. Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, came out to him.

Then Rabshakeh said to them, Say now to Hezekiah, Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, What is this trust that you have? I say, Your counsel and might for the war are only empty words. Now in whom do you trust, that you have rebelled against me?

Behold, you trust in the staff of this crushed reed, even on Egypt, on which if a man leans, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. But if you say to me, We trust in Yahweh our God, is it not he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, You shall worship before this altar?

So now come make a bargain with my master the king of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to give riders for them. How then can you turn away one official of the least of my master's servants, and trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?

So now I have come up, without the approval of Yahweh, against this land to make it a ruin. Yahweh said to me, Go up against this land to make it a ruin. Now the Rabshakeh is kind of a mouthpiece. He's in some sense a prophet for the king of Assyria.

And so he has come to fill the hearts of Judah with dread that the king of Assyria is coming against them and they have no one to rescue them. You've leaned on Egypt. You've trusted in them to deliver for you horses and chariots.

You're going to lean on them like a staff and he's going to pierce your hand. We've already done what we need to do with Pharaoh. He's not going to come to your aid. So who are you going to lean on? Are you going to call upon Yahweh?

And notice the satanic twisting of words that the Rabshakeh manipulates. He says, Your king Hezekiah has torn down high places to your God. Do you think that your God is with you? Why did Hezekiah tear down those high places?

Because they were against God's law. They were high places of worship and some probably did worship God there. They believed that they were, but they were actually worshiping false gods. God said there's only one place he has to be worshiped and that's in the temple in Jerusalem.

And so Hezekiah tore down the high places. The Rabshakeh is saying your king has torn down the high places of worship to your God and you think that he's going to be on your side? Now this would surely plant doubts in the hearts of Jews who were not understanding of the law.

They would have looked at that and thought, oh yeah, he tore down those high places. I guess God is not really going to be on our side. But if they knew the law well, they would know, well yeah, he tore those down because we're not supposed to have them anyway.

Our fathers had built them and sinfully. They were never supposed to be erected. It started with Solomon when he built those high places to false gods to appease his pagan wives. And so they needed to be torn down so that God would be worshiped in only the temple.

But here's the Rabshakeh acting as Satan, a mouthpiece for Satan because he really is a false prophet, being a prophet of the king of Assyria. Just like Satan had said to Eve in the garden, did God really say that you must not eat of any of the trees of the garden?

And Eve said, we can eat of any tree, but we must not eat of this tree, nor can we touch it for in the day that we eat of it, then we will surely die. Of course, Eve kind of adds to the command there.

But Satan comes in asking this question that just makes her question. What was it that God said exactly about what we can eat? We can eat of any tree, but we can't eat of this one, nor can we touch it or we will die.

And so here, Satan through the Rabshakeh is doing the same thing. He's saying your God is not going to be with you. You tore down all of his high places. That would have been in honor of Yahweh. That would have been an obedience to keeping his commandment.

But here, the Rabshakeh was using that to plant doubt in their hearts to make them think that God was not really with them. Now, consider what we've read over the last couple of chapters. Last week, we finished up the prophetic portion, which would have been chapters 34 and 35.

We looked at God had promised the judgment that he would bring upon those who did wickedly and the judgment that he would bring would be total. It would wipe out the land. It would be uninhabitable. And the term that's used there to describe the land in chapter 34 is that it will become a haunt of jackals, which is such a great term.

I grew up in western Kansas. We didn't have jackals out in western Kansas, but we did have plenty of coyotes. And you could hear them at night singing their songs. It sounded like witches laughing. I mean, it really was very, very haunting.

And if you're in a very little bitty town, you know, it wasn't like a big city. It wasn't like the sounds of the countryside would get droned out by the sounds of bustling metropolis. It was just a small town of about 1 ,000, 1 ,200 people or something like that.

And so when it shuts down at night, it's dead quiet. And all you hear are those sounds that are out there in the countryside, those coyotes that are yipping and yapping and laughing and carrying on like there's some sort of wicked witches seance going on out there.

It could be pretty spooky at night. And so that's the place you don't want to go late in the evening. You want to stay close to home. You want to stay in civilization, not out in the wilderness where you don't even know what kind of creatures are lurking out there.

So this place that becomes a wilderness, a haunt of jackals, you can hear the jackals. Cackling at night, and it sounds like evil spirits that are inhabiting that place that are laughing because the living are dead.

And this place now belongs to us. That's chapter 34. But then you get to chapter 35, where God says that he's going to bring lush grass into that land again, and it will be inhabited. It will be a place of life and of flourishing.

And of prosperity, he will restore that which he had judged that which he had taken away. He would give back to his people again. That points us to paradise, the place where we will dwell with God forever.

We're living in a land that's like a haunt of jackals. But one day we will come into God's land, a place where there will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more tears, no more pain, no more death, no more sin.

All the former things will have passed away, and God is making all things new. So right after we read that in chapters 34 and 35, we come into chapter 36, where here the Rabshakeh is coming in to plant doubt in the hearts of the Jews to make them turn from King Hezekiah to the King of Assyria, thinking that the King of Assyria will deliver us.

If we just worship the King of Assyria, then we will be delivered from this terror that is coming against us. So let's continue on in the narrative. Let's go on to verse 11. Then Eliakim and Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, speak now to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it.

And do not speak with us in Judean, in the hearing of the people who are on the wall. But Rabshakeh said, has my master sent me only to your master and to you to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?

Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in Judean and said, hear the words of the great King, the King of Assyria. So you hear what it is that he's doing here. These advisors to King Hezekiah don't want the Rabshakeh to say things that are going to stir the hearts of the people, cause them to doubt, and turn to the King of Assyria.

So they say, just speak to us in Aramaic. We know that language. Most of the Jews don't know that language. So we can speak privately about these things, and these other people won't be affected by the words that he says.

But the Rabshakeh, you know, he sees right through that plot, and he says, no, I'm here to stir all of the hearts of these people to come to the King of Assyria. He's proselytizing. He is trying to get them to turn away from God and turn to the Assyrians paganism.

So he goes on preaching in verse 14, thus says the King, do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you. And do not let Hezekiah make you trust in Yahweh, saying Yahweh 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, and eat each of his vine, and each of his fig tree, and drink each of the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.

But what will that land not have? It will not have God. This land that God has given to the Jews, to Judah, is the land that God had promised to the descendants of Abraham. It was the land where God would dwell with them.

And as long as they are in that land, they are near Jerusalem, where the temple is, where God dwells with his people, then they are near to the Lord. But here the Assyrians, the Rabshakeh, acting as a prophet of the King of Assyria, they're trying to turn the Jews into pagans.

Leave your land. Come to our land. You know what you'll get if you come to our land? Your own tree, your own fig tree that you can eat from, your own cistern of water. We've got so much. You can have your own tree, your own water.

Your land will be like the land that you have here, but better. Only it won't have God. I'm reminded of a quote from Donald Gray Barnhouse, used to be a Presbyterian minister in Pennsylvania, and had a radio show that would broadcast to Philadelphia.

And this is from Michael Horton, who had written about this quote from Barnhouse. Let me read from Horton here. What would things look like if Satan really took control of a city? Over half a century ago, Presbyterian minister Donald Gray Barnhouse offered his own scenario in his weekly sermon that was also broadcast nationwide on CBS radio.

Barnhouse speculated that if Satan took over Philadelphia, the city where Barnhouse pastored, all of the bars would be closed. Pornography would be banished. And pristine streets would be filled with tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other.

There would be no swearing. The children would say, yes, sir, and no, ma 'am. And the churches would be full every Sunday. Yes, in Satan's America. But in those churches, Christ would not be preached.

And so here the rapshika is attempting to woo the Jews to Assyria, promising them basically paradise on earth. You'll have everything that you ever wanted in your own land, but God will not be there. That would be hell on earth.

And what would really happen to the Jews? They would perish in the judgment along with the Assyrians. The Assyrians can promise all those things, lying about all of those things. The Jews wouldn't really get all of those things.

And then coming into that land, when God's judgment comes against the Assyrians, it'll come against the Jews who went with them. And my friends, that's something we have to think about as Christians, even living in the land, living in the place that we are in right now.

This place is not paradise for us. Whatever country you live in, I'm in the United States, so of course, the United States of America is not paradise. It's a great land to live in. We have been afforded many freedoms here, freedoms that most people in the world do not enjoy.

This has been a land of prosperity. It's amazing that I can afford this equipment that I'm sitting around right here with a really, really nice Bible open in front of me and able to broadcast the Word of God in this way because I live in a land with such prosperity.

Used to be to buy this kind of equipment would cost tens of thousands of dollars. But here you can buy it and have it in your own home. I don't need a radio tower and pay for a transmitter. I can do this and record it and put it online and whoever can listen to it.

So we've certainly received a lot of prosperity in this land, but this is not home. Our home is with the Lord. Wherever God dwells, wherever he is, that's what we should be longing for. In Colossians chapter three, we are told, therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on things above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

We should desire Christ above all things. We should be teaching one another to desire Christ above all things. Teach your children to desire Christ above all things. This world will promise us many things, but all of these things will come to waste.

All these things will be burned up in the judgment. It is only those things that are in Christ that are eternal and permanent. Those things that we are promised in him that we will dwell in forever in glory.

And so we continue on with these lies that the Rabshakeh is making. Verse 18, beware, lest Hezekiah mislead you, saying, Yahweh will deliver us. Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria?

What a blasphemous statement. The Rabshakeh bringing Yahweh down to the false gods that every other nation worships. It says no one has been able to save themselves from the king of Assyria. He is greater than Yahweh.

That's what the Rabshakeh is communicating to them. Look for yourselves at the lands. Have any of their gods saved them? What makes you think that your god will save you? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad?

Where are the gods of Sephraveim? And when have they delivered Samaria from my hand? This is from the Rabshakeh. Who among all the gods of these lands have delivered their land from my hand, that Yahweh would deliver Jerusalem from my hand?

But they were silent and did not answer him a word. For the king's commandment was, do not answer him. So the Rabshakeh is going to come in. He's going to say all these things. King Hezekiah said, don't talk to him.

Don't communicate with him. But they're sitting there listening to the Rabshakeh make the arguments that he's making. Last verse of chapter 36. Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him the words of the Rabshakeh.

And that's where we will pick up next week in chapter 37. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we consider what we have read here today, I pray that we would desire to be near to Christ. We live in a land now in which we can draw near to God.

We can be near you through Jesus Christ, our Savior. No matter who lives anywhere in the world, anyone can draw near to Christ. We can draw near to you right where we are. We don't have to travel to a certain place or a temple somewhere to worship you.

For as said in Acts chapter 17, God does not dwell in places made by human hands as if he needed anything. But you dwell in the hearts of your people as we have become temples to the living God, the Holy Spirit dwelling within those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And as we draw near to you, lead us in holiness and righteousness, that we may walk in an upright way that is pleasing to you, living our lives as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, for this is our spiritual act of worship, Romans 12 .1.

And Lord, haste the day when our faith shall be sight. We are gathered into that place where you dwell, and we'll be with you forever in your heavenly kingdom. We see things in the world the way things go.

Some of us live in very luxurious and prosperous places, and some of us live in very tortured places, maybe even war-torn places. No matter where it is that we live, may we not cling to the things of this world or despair of things because of how things are going in this world.

But we hold fast to Christ and we long for the eternal kingdom that we are promised in Christ Jesus our Lord. It's in his name that we pray.

Amen. This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more, visit our website at www .utt .com. If you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast, or just send us a comment, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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