Arrogance Rebuked

Please turn in your Bible to Isaiah 37 beginning in verse 21 so on page 597 of the pew

Bible Isaiah 37 beginning in verse 21 So if you recall from last week

Hezekiah has prayed before the Lord He's laid out the letter that has to knockers message has blasphemy

He's asked God to respond to it. And so in this passage God does respond to it and he rebukes

He rebukes the arrogance of Assyria Please stand when you have that for the reading of God's Word Isaiah 37 beginning in verse 21

Then Isaiah the son of Amos sent to Hezekiah saying thus says the

Lord the God of Israel Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria.

This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him She despises you she scorns you the virgin daughter of Zion She wags her head behind you the daughter of Jerusalem Whom have you mocked and reviled against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights?

against the Holy One of Israel By your servants you have mocked the Lord and you have said with my many chariots

I have gone up the heights of the mountains to the far recesses of Lebanon To cut down its tallest cedars its choicest cypresses to come to its remotest height.

It's most fruitful forest. I dug wells and drank waters To dry up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt Have you not heard?

That I determined it long ago. I Planned from days of old what now I bring to pass that you should make fortified cities crash into heaps of ruins

While their inhabitants Shorn of strength are dismayed and confounded and I've become like plants of the field and like tender grass like grass on the housetops

Blighted before it is grown. I Know you are sitting down and you're going out and coming in and you're raging against me

Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come to my ears I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth

And I will turn you back on the way by which you came Amen You may be seated dear

Heavenly Father We come to you today acknowledging that we are a people in desperate need of your revelation to us

Though we are people saved by your grace salvation

It's still the case that we frequently rebel against the truth that we

Grow haughty and pride. We ask that you would correct these things in us that you would make known hidden sins that you would

Make us more like your son in Jesus name. Amen So as I just mentioned this passage is a response to Hezekiah's prayer

Hezekiah's prayer that the Lord would rebuke Sennacherib's Blasphemy his arrogance. So the

Lord does in this passage Now as we've seen throughout Isaiah, especially in some of the earlier chapters

Assyria is to be seen as this great enemy of God's people a lot of times when we are looking at Assyria and we're thinking about how does this apply to us?

The right answer is to think in terms of the enemy in terms of Satan himself and what he is accomplishing and yet What Satan is trying to accomplish is to pull people into the very same sin that he commits which is the sin of arrogance

So when we read this, this is not just a picture of our great enemy It is a picture of what he brings

People into when he draws them by temptation away from what the Lord would call them to away from humility and into arrogance and pride

So this is a Case study as it were in pride in arrogance what it looks like what

God's response to it is and how we should think About it. So as we read this, let us not just think of the arrogance of the enemy

But let us think of our own arrogance our own pride and how God would correct it in us Begins here that Isaiah the son of Amos sent to Hezekiah saying thus says the

Lord the God of Israel Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria. This is the word that the

Lord has spoken concerning him She despises you she scorns you the virgin daughter of Zion. She wags her head behind you the daughter of Jerusalem So this is describing the city

Jerusalem Speaks of the people of Jerusalem calls it the daughter of Jerusalem the virgin daughter of Zion This is describing

Zion itself the city the people in it as being a virgin Right one who is untouched by man where Assyria is coming assaulting

Oh what you are to imagine in this imagery is the the picture of a rapist, right? Syria is this rapist coming at the virgin daughter of Zion coming at the daughter of Jerusalem But this victory is so established it is so certain

That the virgin daughter the city of Jerusalem is able to respond with a wagging head with scorn

She scorns you she despises you There's a great confidence that the people of God can have that every lofty thing will be chopped down That every piece of arrogance will be defeated

It's true for all the enemies of God all their arrogance will be defeated when you face

Arrogance in the world. You can know that one day it will be defeated and you do not have to fret or worry about making yourself the enactor of vengeance because You can be like this virgin daughter of Zion if you are identified with God's people the daughter of Zion You can have 100 % certainty that the

Lord will make right that he will accomplish his purposes The final chapter of the book is already written.

We already know that the enemy is defeated and So he will be defeated and yet at the same time we also know that we will have to get a given account for every stray word that we have for every thought that we have and That we if we are not found among God's people safe and secure in that city of Zion Zion being spoken of in the

New Testament as the church That we will likewise perish He continues on he speaks about why this offense is so great.

Why is it so great to blaspheme the Lord? The answer is because he is the Lord Says whom have you mocked and reviled against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights?

against the Holy One of Israel Well, this is not just any God that he has mocked now

He's mocked other gods in his speech, but he has mocked the God of Israel He has mocked him in the same way that he has mocked other gods lowering the

God of Israel to be like To be like the other gods and then he has elevated himself.

It says he has raised his voice He's lifted his eyes to the heights, you know, meaning that he thinks very little of God you know, he sees himself as as being that lofty and this

Holy One Holy meaning, you know set apart unlike anything else the

Holy One of Israel He is making to be like the other gods. He is making him to be unholy

And this is the nature of pride the nature of pride is to treat God as though he is no more powerful

Than any other God of this world than any other false idol any other dead thing that has no capacity to do anything

This is what we do every time we refuse to trust the Lord every time we look to his word

We see the things it says very plainly But we want to rely on ourselves and our own sensibilities more and we want to trust that over the

Lord What is that doing? That's saying that we know better than the Lord. We're lifting our eyes to the heavens

We're raising our voice above God But he is the

Holy One of Israel. He is he is not to be mocked You see why this is so great if you if you mock

Your sibling, you know you you offend your sibling when you're little You know, it's not that big of a deal.

You'll offend your parent when you little when you're little it's a bigger deal You know and then you offend someone greater someone higher in society, you know a king etc

There are serious consequences are these things depending on what the nature of the offenses what the nature of the threat is

You know, we could be even talking about the death penalty You speak against the Lord Almighty You have spoken against the one who is higher than all things to dishonor him is to incur the greatest

Penalty is to incur the penalty of death And that's what we see here is there's a great penalty against Sennacherib against all who would raise themselves against the

Lord Lifting themselves up in pride thinking of themselves greater than him thinking of themselves as more wise more powerful

And once again, this is not just something that is true of Someone who has with explicit words spoken against the

Lord like Sennacherib It's true for those who implicitly speak against the Lord and the way they live their lives

Thinking that they have sufficient strength to go about their life without the

Lord and to achieve whatever success they want Very blindly not realizing that they must face death one day and there is no cure.

There is no cure for the For the penalty the Lord has apart from his own cure that he has provided in his son

Continues on here. It says by your servants you have mocked the Lord and you have said with my many chariots

I've gone up the heights of the mountains The far recesses of Lebanon to cut down its tallest cedars its choices cypresses to come to its remotest heights its most fruitful forest

I Dug wells and drank waters to dry up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt See one who is proud

Boasts even beyond themselves. It's not just they boast on the things that they have done They have boasted in things that they have not done.

It goes far beyond his own ability he describes it as You know conquering every last one of the trees the trees of Lebanon being the highest trees and he piles up These statements, you know the

Lord when he's describing Sennacherib's error against piles up these statements. He says He goes up to the heights of the mountains to the far recesses of Lebanon Lebanon being the place with the tallest trees to cut down its tallest cedars its choice of cypress remotest height fruitful forest

Etc. Each of these phrases ends with you know, this great thing that he has set himself up above. What is it saying?

He's saying he's greater than all creation. He's setting himself up to be greater than all of creation

He describes himself as being one who is dug wells and drank waters dry up with the sole of his foot all the streams of Egypt in First Kings the same passage appears and it makes a little more clear by talking about foreign waters in other words he's talking not just about drinking up water period but in colonizing and going about in conquest right that he has domesticated all the lands he has drunk all their waters and He imagines his greatness to be so large that his the sole of his foot could dam up the

Nile You know the greatest of rivers You see this kind of language elsewhere in Scripture, right you see

Ray of bone talk about his little finger being greater than his father's thigh You know people imagine themselves to be so great

They lift themselves up so high not just in the things that they do but that making those things more than they really are

You know, maybe you're familiar with this kind of thing once again taking an analogy from childhood

If you learn to ride a bike Start to realize you can do a few interesting things with it.

You can ride without your hands. You can take really deep turns With a bike.

This is something that I like doing when I was a kid You know take a really deep turns with the bike and what do you do? You just keep doing that deeper deeper deeper.

You think you can just go all the way, you know And so one of these points you take one of those turns It's so it's so low you end up crashing hard and this is what happens, you know

People imagine themselves to have such capacity be so much greater than they really are. They end up crashing into the law of the

Lord They really just bloat their minds up and just think about how this works in your own life right in your own life

If you go about not relying on the Lord you have some successes, right? Maybe you go about without prayer for some period of time

Maybe even years of your life without real serious prayer and you think to yourself Well, I can accomplish all these things without the

Lord. I don't need the Lord for any of these things. I'm doing great things In fact, I could do just about anything without him

Right, maybe you're not thinking that explicitly but this is what's going on in your heart as you feel that you don't need the Lord as you

Cease to you fail to come to him expressing any kind of need to him You end up thinking of yourself as being quite capable

This is not just true about about you know Work and prosperity in some kind of financial sense.

It's true about relationships It's true about all kinds of things. A lot of people really imagine their Intuitive wisdom as being a very good wisdom, you know the kind of things they hear culturally, etc, right?

They they They feel like the supply of wisdom that they have is sufficient to get them along.

They imagine they're Everyone really imagines them wise in their own eyes, right? This is the this is the tendency of people is to lift themselves up as being wise in their own eyes and feel that you know, they don't need any kind of correction from God's Word and This is no greater than in a place that has

God's Word, right? Where people feel like well because I have God's Word because I have spent a lot of time in it

There can be no additional correction from God's Word, but yet God's Word is always needed.

We are always in need of him. We have never gotten to the point We are we so wise that we do not need him.

We do not need continual Correction from his word and this is very ironic for Sennacherib or anyone who had raised himself in this way

I mean this language that the Lord is using through his prophet Isaiah is

Very pointed once again, you know I've pointed out a lot of times through this narrative That Isaiah has been building up to this point that there are just many many callbacks in this passage between 36 to 39 lots of callbacks to earlier parts of Isaiah and Isaiah 2 verse 12

Says for the Lord of hosts has a day Against all that is proud and lofty against all that is lifted up and it shall be brought low

Against all the cedars of Lebanon lofty and lifted up against all the oaks of Bashan Against the lofty mountains against the uplifted hills against every high tower against every fortified wall and against all the ships of Tarshish and against All the beautiful craft and the haughtiness of man shall be humbled and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low and the

Lord Alone will be exalted in that day So what does he say about the the cedars of Lebanon?

He has a day in mind when he is going to chop them down anything that is higher than those trees He is going to chop down and what's the knocker of doing lifting himself above the trees

He's making himself the target. He doesn't realize what he's doing. All right. This is what people do when they grow in pride

They don't realize that, you know, they're acting in some kind of defense. They're like, you know, I can handle anything

But what they are doing is they're making themselves the chief target of the Lord lifting themselves above creation

Making themselves the targets of his humbling power it continues on in 26 to not only say that people

Boast in their activities in a way that is in beyond what they have themselves accomplished But even that what they have themselves accomplished is not ultimately from them and is from the

Lord Says have you not heard that I determined it long ago I plan from days of old what now

I bring to pass That you should make fortified cities to crash into heaps of ruin while their inhabitants shorn of strength

They're dismayed and confounded and I've become like plants of the field like tender grass like grass on the hapless tops

Blighted before it is grown God has planned all these things

Long ago now, what is this referring to specifically? This is referring to the fact that Assyria would accomplish the things that it has accomplished

That it would defeat all the nations that it has defeated to get to this point Where they've defeated almost all of Judah only the city of Jerusalem remaining having become

Pretty much the greatest power in the world at this point That all of this was from the hand of God he determined all these things long ago that they would crash everything

That all the other cities would be confounded. They wouldn't understand. Why is all our strength God gone?

How come Assyria was so able to capture us so easily they're all confused by this

Why because this is something that's coming from God's hand. It's not even from Assyria Right Assyria is is going about seeing this prosperity thing.

Oh, wow. I'm really strong. I'm really great and They are playing with a handicap

You know, they don't understand This is like, you know, you play a you play some game with the child and you rig it so the child always wins

This is what's happening You know Assyria does not realize it that they are weak and God has given them a handicap so that they will win every battle

But this is precisely what happened and what is especially ironic Not only is God's sovereign

Ordaining all thing according to things according to the counsel of his will But he has not as he often does kept this a secret.

He has made it known It says have you not heard that I determined it long ago.

That's a rhetorical question And the answer to that is not no, but you would kind of expect yeah pagan nation

They don't they don't know that God planned it long ago Sennacherib knows he has confessed that he knows

Do you remember back in Isaiah 36 10? It said 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

Yahweh himself is communicating with Sennacherib telling him that he's divinely enabling him in Isaiah 10

We see this at great lengths. I'll only read a part of the passage, but I did 10 Talks about God's purpose in Assyria being so meticulous

You know all these little details he has planned out even their advance all the way up to the city of Jerusalem But let me just read this one passage in Isaiah 10 12 through 14

When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem He will punish the speech of error of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes in other

Words once he sufficiently disciplined his people once he's brought Sennacherib outside the walls of the city

For he says by the strength of my hand. I have done it. This is Sennacherib speaking This is Assyria by the strength of my hand.

I have done it and by my wisdom for I have understanding I remove the boundaries of people and Plunder their treasures like a bull

I bring down those who sit on thrones My hand has found like a nest the wealth of the people's and as one who gathers eggs that have been forsaken

So I have gathered all the earth and there was none that moved the wing or open the mouth or chirped

Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it or the saw? magnify itself against him who wields it as if a rod should wield him who lifts it or as if a staff should lift him

Who is not wood? So what does all this mean? Assyria is the rod in God's hand his purposes are to use a

Syria to discipline his people That is why he's given the success against every other nation It is why he's even given him a majority of success against Judah itself and he has

Communicated all this both through Isaiah, but then additionally in some way to Sennacherib himself so that he would know

Now God has made it clear to us what his purposes are. He's made it 100 % clear what his purposes are

He intends to save a people he intends to permit according to Romans 9 wickedness to increase among others to demonstrate his mercy on those vessels of mercy

That he has so why does why does wickedness grow in the world is it because they really are strong No, it is because God has his purposes in those things just as he did with Assyria And so those who

Go about in pride thinking that they can just ignore Their need for the

Lord or ignore what he is doing because they feel like they have accomplished something by their own hand fail on one hand to realize that God has brought it about Fail on the other hand to realize that his whole purpose in that is to raise up vessels for destruction like it says in the

Proverbs God has made everything for its own purpose. Even the Even the wicked for the day of evil

And this is what it says Throughout the Bible that any any success you have it ultimately comes from the

Lord. Do not take credit for any of that Psalm 127 one says that Unless the

Lord is building the house of one who builds at labor and is in vain Unless the Lord watches over the city the watchman stays awake in vain

It is only through the Lord that the builder the watchman has any success says in 1st

Corinthians 4 7 What do you have that you have not received if then you have received it

Why do you boast as though you did not receive it? There's nothing that we have that we have gotten by our own strength.

I remember there were some years ago where There was a politician

I won't bother mentioning his name But he had he had said a bunch of things about how everything we have been given or everything that we have

We've received from others right now, of course what he was trying to do was

To kind of break down the reality of private property belonging to people, you know, he was trying to impose some kind of redistribution

But he heard that and people were raging against him, but at the same time I was thinking well, you know There really is some truth to that.

There's nothing there's nothing that we have not received That's what scripture says now now the difference is it's not from other people Difference is it's from the

Lord and so the gratitude is not due to other people as though all of our things belong to others The gratitude is due to God all of our own things belong to him all of our own selves belong to him all of our gratitude belongs to him and the degree to which

You neglect Thankfulness to the Lord is the degree to which you are cultivating a heart of arrogance

There's ready to stand against him and say that all my strength is from myself. All my wisdom is from myself It is not from him.

I don't need to submit to his word I don't need to be corrected by it I don't need to be corrected by him at all and then he speaks of judgment in verses 28 and 29 of Isaiah 37.

I Know you're sitting down and you're going out and you're coming in you're raging against me Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come up to my ears

I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth and I will turn you back on the way

By which you came so Assyria Will face the

Lord's judgment because the Lord knows and as it's just said in this previous verse not only does the

Lord know but They are like tinder grass now the

Assyria imagines the inhabitants of the nation's being like tinder grass because in a sense they are But really they are tinder grass too

You know uses all those phrases about plants the field tinder grass grass on the housetop Think about grass on a housetop it the roots can't go deep.

It just it just falls away What is that a picture of that's a picture of One who sees others as that is one who will be treated like that himself.

This is the judgment of God It said in Psalm 129 the this is

You know the psalmist says the flowers plowed upon by my back they made long their furrows So he's talking about himself being treated as agriculture that can just be plowed etc.

The Lord is righteous He has cut the cords of the wicked may all who hate Zion be put to shame and turn backwards

Let them be like the grass grass on the housetops Which withers before it grows up with which the reaper does not fill his hand nor the binder of the sheaves of his arm

So in other words what happens to those who see others as weak and just easily plucked up while they themselves are strong They themselves will be made weak

They will be made like the grass on the housetops And this is exactly what happens to Isaiah and you've seen this sort of a poetic justice this

Equality of the punishment to the sin itself happened frequently throughout Isaiah, you know, they treat others.

It's the grass of the field. They themselves become the grass in the field And the

Lord knows the Lord knows all his actions. There's sitting down. This is going out. It's coming in. It's raging against me

This is not just true of a Syria. This is true of all things The Lord knows all things he is omniscient

David and Psalm 139 to applies this to himself that the Lord knows his own going out and coming in and setting down, etc

All right, the Lord knows you're going out and coming in and setting down. He knows everything He knows every thought knows every word knows every action

It's not just that he knows them in addition to you knowing them He knows them and you don't even know all of them.

You can't even number the hairs on your head How much less can you number all your sins You are unaware of just how much your sins are against the

Lord of just how arrogant your thoughts are out Every time you neglect the

Lord you have him out of mind That is time when you're you are not even thinking about the fact that you have him out of mind, right?

the amount of sin that you have brought against yourself by your own

Neglect of the Lord it's so great. It's something that that must have some answer

And so he describes this with Syria as a complacency that's coming up to his ears, you know

Hezekiah has unrolled the scroll he is he has lifted up the stench to God just like you if you were to take some trash

You know, it's all contained in the bag and just spread it out It's just you know, the stench just goes up.

You can't control it. This is how our sin is to God You can't hide the stench of your son there's nothing that you yourself by yourself can do about it and Describes the the punishment he will put it his hook in his nose as bit in his mouth

Turn you back by the way, which you came. No, this is something that is Appropriate to treat someone who thinks of himself as strong and above all creation, right?

What is what is man man is something according to Psalm 8 put above all creation, right? We had just had a sermon on that a minute ago as opposed to the animals

But the punishment if you raise yourself above all creation even above God is to treat as lower creation

He is treated as a beast He is has a hook put in his nose

Now this is interesting because you see this a couple of times throughout scripture, right? the hook put in the nose of the

Leviathan in other words, God is the one who is able to to conquer the great beast

Leviathan or you even see Nebuchadnezzar no mention of a hook is made, but God has

Rebuked his pride by turning him into a beast. He sets himself up above all creation God puts him lower than man and it is especially

Poignant in the case of Sennacherib himself. This is one detail. We don't have from scripture itself.

But if you study extra -biblical history one of the things that Assyria would do when they would take away their captives is they would actually put hooks in their nose and Lead them like animals to the land of Assyria So what he is saying here is basically the the cruelty with what you've treated others the hubris with what you have approached

Approached me approached creation that same hubris will be launched right back at you and you will suffer

And so this is the this is the penalty to go back by the way which you came now He has come from Assyria to Al -taqqa in Egypt to Lakish and Libna and Judah, but the the point is not that the itinerary will be reversed

Right. The point is that he goes back to Assyria From his humble beginnings, you know that he is spread across the land now.

He's going to go back to a state of humility This is the case for us We are born

We come from the dust right Adam came from the dust What was Adam told because of his sin because of his hubris thinking himself wiser than God thinking that he knew better than God did

He will go back to dust and so it is with us

From dust we came to dust. We will return unless there is some answer for our sin

And there is an answer. There's an answer in Jesus Christ We do not have to suffer the great penalty of death

Though our bodies will die and turn to dust We can have eternal life with him our bodies being raised from the grave one day to enjoy

Life forever with God this curse that is due to hubris being avoided through the through the

Sacrifice of Jesus Christ himself having borne that penalty. All right. What was the what was the?

Sin that he was accused of he was accused of blasphemy, right? He was accused of raising himself above all creation putting himself equal with God We read that passage this morning from John 5 so he's accused of blasphemy

Bearing the sin not actually being a blasphemer But bearing the penalty due to one who truly is a blasphemer each one of us who in our lives neglects the

Lord There would be no hope if it were not for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ But through him we have forgiveness of sins from the son of blasphemy

But then on top of that we have the Spirit of God by which He cultivates in our hearts humility a sense of his goodness so that we would give him gratitude right apart from Apart from the

Spirit. We are ignorant of his goodness, right? We do not we do not sense his goodness in a way that the regenerate mind can feeling life

We only feel death Right and it is only through the work of the Spirit within us that we feel a real sense of life so that we can

Give a true gratitude to the Lord to be able to Grow in humility and enjoy these things

So it is through Christ that we have forgiveness through the Spirit that we have a growing humility within us being

Made into the image of Jesus Christ So that we do not have to be the one who is lifting himself above all creation only to be

Cut down because we are above the the heights of Lebanon but we

Who have fled to Zion may be the virgin daughter of Zion who wags her head who knows that the victory is accomplished

Who knows that we will stand there with a hundred and forty four thousand? These virgins who are kept who have kept themselves free of women as it describes in Revelation 14 the great picture of God's people being kept pure not by our

Not by our actual righteousness Inherently, but through the righteousness that he develops in us both that imputed by Christ And then the holiness that we grow in without which no one can see the

Lord You know today I would invite you to examine your life to see what kind of hubris exists in it

What kind of neglect of the Lord and the things that he has given what kind of things you? Attribute as coming from yourself so that you imagine that you are able to accomplish much more

What things that he has given you that you have not acknowledged as coming from him? What ways you consider yourself wise?

just from your own Pragmatics or street smart or the wisdom that you were brought up with rather than what you have received from the

Word of God Examine these things consider them humbly before the Lord Go to the

Lord and he will be merciful because he has Given Jesus Christ and if he has given him how will he not give us all things will give us all things

There's a great reward for those who have fled to Zion Amen Amen dear my father

We thank you for the sacrifice that we have in Jesus Christ. We thank you for the forgiveness of sins we thank you for The gift of the

Spirit We pray that you would fill us with a gratitude a sense of our need for you So that we would not grow in humility, but would or start growing pride, but we would grow in humility