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 knock out his message, his 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 Amoz 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, its 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 plan 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 have 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 people in desperate need of your revelation to us. Though we are people saved by your grace of salvation, it is still the case that we frequently rebel against the truth, that we grow haughty in pride.

We ask that you would correct these things in us, that you would make known the 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.

It begins here that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, 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. What you are to imagine in this imagery is the picture of a rapist, right?

Assyria 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 give an account for every stray word that we have, for every thought that we have, and that 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, and 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. He 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. Now, 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 being that lofty.

And this Holy One, holy meaning, you 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 not to be mocked.

You see why this is so great. If you mock your sibling, you offend your sibling when you're little, it's not that big of a deal. You offend your parent when you're little, it's a bigger deal. And then you offend someone greater, someone higher in society, a king, etc.

There are serious consequences for these things, depending on what the nature of the offense is, what the nature of the threat is. 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 penalty the Lord has, apart from His own care that He has provided in His Son. It continues on here, it says, See, one who is proud boasts even beyond themselves. It's not just that they boast in 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 arrogance, 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 Keptown's 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 has dug wells and drank waters, dry up with the sole of His foot all the streams of Egypt. In 1 Kings, the same passage appears, and it makes it 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 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 Rehoboam 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, you 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 liked doing when I was a kid, you know, take 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 that'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? And 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, 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 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 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 where we're 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 would raise 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. In Isaiah 2, verse 12, it says,. So what does he say about 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 Sennacherib doing? Lifting himself above the trees? He's making himself the target. He doesn't realize what he's doing, 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 beyond what they have themselves accomplished, but even that what they have themselves accomplished is not ultimately from them, it is from the Lord.

It says, 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 have 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 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 going about seeing this prosperity thinking, 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 some game with the child and you rig it so that the child always wins. This is what's happening.

You know, Assyria does not realize 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 sovereign, ordaining all 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. You would kind of expect, yeah, pagan nation, 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 Isaiah 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 at Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the boastful look in His eyes.

In other words, once He's 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 peoples, and as one who gathers eggs that have been forsaken. So I have gathered all the earth, and there was none that moved a wing, or opened 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 Assyria to discipline His people. That is why He's given them 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 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 wicked for the day of evil. And this is what it says throughout the Bible, that any success you have, it ultimately comes from the Lord.

Do not take credit for any of that. Psalm 127 .1 says that unless the Lord is building the house, the one who builds it labors 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. It says in 1 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 is 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 said a bunch of things about how everything we have been given, or everything that we have, we've received from others.

Now, of course, what he was trying to do was to kind of break down the reality of private property belonging to people. 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 that we have not received. That's what Scripture says. Now, the difference is, it's not from other people. The 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 that is 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, 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 Assyria imagines the inhabitants of the nations being like tinder grass because in a sense they are.

But really, they are tinder grass too. You know, he uses all those phrases about plants in the field, tinder grass, grass on the housetop. Think about grass on a housetop. The roots can't go deep. 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's said in Psalm 129. This is, you know, the psalmist says, the flowers plowed upon 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 turned backwards.

Let them be like the 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 happen frequently throughout Isaiah.

You know, they treat others as the grass of the field. They themselves become the grass of the field. And the Lord knows. The Lord knows all his actions. He knows he's sitting down. He knows he's going out.

He's coming in. It's raging against me. This is not just true of Assyria. This is true of all things. The Lord knows all things. He is omniscient. David in Psalm 139 too applies this to himself that the Lord knows his own going out and coming in and setting down, etc.

Right? The Lord knows your 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.

Every time you neglect the Lord, you have him out of mind. That is a time when 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 is so great.

It's something that must have some answer. And so he describes this with Assyria as a complacency that's coming up to his ears. You know, Hezekiah has unrolled the scroll. He has lifted up the stench to God just like 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 sin. There's nothing that you yourself, by yourself, can do about it.

And he describes the punishment. He will put his hook in his nose, his bit in his mouth, turn you back by the way which you came. This is something that is appropriate to treat someone who thinks of himself as strong and above all creation.

Right? What is man? Man is something, according to Psalm 8, put above all creation, right? We 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 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 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 cruelty with which you've treated others, the hubris with which you have approached me, approached creation, that same hubris will be launched right back at you and you will suffer.

And so this is the penalty, to go back by the way which you came. Now he has come from Assyria to Alteca in Egypt to Lachish and Libna and Judah, but the point is not that the itinerary will be reversed.

The point is that he goes back to Assyria from his humble beginnings, you know, that he has 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, right?

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 sin 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 the Spirit, we are ignorant of his goodness, right? 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 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 144 ,000 these virgins 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 actual righteousness inherently but through the righteousness that he develops in us, both that imputed by Christ and the holiness that we grow in without which no one can see the Lord.

Today I 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. If he has given him, how will he not give us all things? He'll give us all things.

There's a great reward for those who have fled Zion. Amen. Dear Heavenly 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 sorry, grow in pride but we would grow in humility, learning to appreciate you for all things.

In Jesus' name, Amen.