Wednesday, March 6, 2024 PM

Isaiah’s Historical Setting and the Assyrian Threat

We'll be reading verse 1 here in a moment. Let's begin with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the day. Thank you for the opportunity to study your word, to hear from you about your son, Jesus Christ.

We pray that by your spirit you would warm our hearts to your word, that we would rejoice in its truth. And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I started the study on Isaiah on Sunday night, but because it's Isaiah, I'm also going to be teaching it on Wednesday night, so that it is 66 chapters long, and there's a lot to consider, even in the introduction.

But we've been reading Isaiah Sunday mornings since September of 2021, and we're just about finished. And all along the way, I kept on thinking about, boy, we need to go through this book. And so, I thought going through it in a teaching format, a lesson format, I think would be...

My operating outline is up here. I think that it's important to just remember that Isaiah is very large, and the first big section I have entitled, Sermons for a Difficult Present, because Isaiah is writing his image-filled, poetry-filled, prophecy-filled sermons for his people, for Israel or Judah, during the time of the Assyrian world power, the Assyrian threat.

A particular story about that, of course, is when Sennacherib led his armies to lay siege to Jerusalem. And of course, we hear about that in chapters 36 and 37, the Assyrian night. It's a night because it was dim for the Jews for a little while, but also because God put that whole threat to bed.

But then, beginning in chapter 38, Hezekiah begins to act foolishly with the Babylonians, and this ramps up for sermons for a challenging future. When the Babylonian threat is being considered, the reality of the coming exile and destruction of Jerusalem are now being considered.

And yet, what lies beyond that is, of course, the new covenant and the arrival of Christ. This is a very broad outline that I think will serve us fairly well moving forward. But we're not going to be going through the main body of Isaiah just yet.

We have a lot of introductory considerations to make, so you don't have to copy all of this down. Most of it will be up next week. However, we're talking right now, this is my outline for our introduction, what we need to talk about before we talk about.

The Kings of Judah in Isaiah’s Days

So we want to talk about, first of all, the chronological periods of Isaiah. My outline here is simply basically reading verse 1 backwards, so let's go ahead and read Isaiah chapter 1, verse 1. Says the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

So right now, we're just thinking about the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. We're thinking about those chronological periods. Isaiah lived a pretty long time. He preached a long time.

And those time periods were broken up by kings. The reason for that has to do, says to David, that his lineage would be reigning on the throne in Jerusalem. And so our attention is placed upon these kings of Judah, each one of them a descendant of David, each one of them in the line of the kings of Judah, and thought about Uzziah through Hezekiah.

And now, Manasseh's not mentioned in verse 1 that Isaiah was killed by Manasseh. We don't know if that's true or not, but Isaiah lived through the latter part of Hezekiah's reign. Very likely, he lived on into Manasseh's reign.

So, we want to think about what goes on in this time. We've already surveyed Uzziah to Manasseh. Uzziah was a very, very successful king, brought much glory back to Judah. He was only surpassed by Solomon in his effectiveness as a king.

Jotham kept the momentum going even after his father contracted leprosy as a judgment because he tried to offer sacrifices in the temple. Then Ahaz was a very wicked king who was very worried about world powers and willing to make deals, bad deals with pagan kings.

It was to Ahaz that Isaiah gave the word of the Lord to ask for a sign, and Ahaz refused because he was being ignorant. And so, Isaiah said, well, the Lord will give you a sign. A virgin shall be with child and who shall conceive and be with child.

Hezekiah, of course, we know Hezekiah is a very good king. He made many religious reforms, tore down many high places where idols were being worshipped, and he also improved the defenses of Jerusalem and also was very faithful to the Lord even though the Syrians laid siege to the city.

Famously, the Lord gave him extra years of life, and he was also the father of Manasseh, a very wicked king, very, very wicked king, reigned 52 years and filled Jerusalem with innocent blood from one end to the other, though at the very end he did repent.

The Kings of Israel and the Fall of the Northern Kingdom

So, we've talked about the kings of Judah, and so now the kings of Israel. Now, they're not mentioned in verse 1, but of course, we can't really think about the days of Uzziah and Jotham without thinking about the Israelite kings that were also reigning during that same time.

There were a lot of interactions between the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, and in fact, the northern kingdom and their wicked kings are addressed.

In Isaiah.

They are spoken about in Isaiah. So this is all during that very same time period. So we should think about these kings of Israel because they reigned during the days of these kings of Judah. The first one we should think about is Jeroboam II.

He reigned for, I think, about 41 years, very prosperous and very idolatrous, but he recaptured a great deal of territory that they had lost, and you can read about his story in 2 Kings 14. Zechariah was the last of Jehu's lineage.

Remember Jehu, the crazy chariot driver who killed all of Ahab and Jezebel's royal family, who was very, very zealous and very, very bloody? Well, Zechariah was the last. God had promised Jehu that his descendants would reign for this many lineages, this many offspring, and so he fulfilled that promise, but he only reigned six months and was assassinated by Shalem.

Shalem reigned a grand total of one month and was assassinated by Minaham, and then Minaham reigns for a while, but he was known for his brutality and heavy taxation. And then, Pecahiah reigns, but he was assassinated by Pecah, so you can kind of see the instability of the northern kingdom, things getting worse and worse, and this is where, during Pecah's reign, many of the regions of the northern kingdom were taken over by Assyria.

Many of the northern tribes that were farther away from the capital of Samaria, they were taken away into captivity, and it was a very, very bad time for the northern kingdom, and Hoshea was the last of the kings of the northern kingdom, and while he was king, Samaria fell.

And you can read about his story in 2 Kings 17 and 18. So, what we read about these northern kings and this northern kingdom is catastrophic and chaos. Does anybody remember the name of the very first king of the northern kingdom?

Jeroboam. Right, so, Jeroboam was a controversial figure during the days of Solomon. He had a big following, but he didn't like Solomon. He didn't like all the heavy labor and heavy taxation that Solomon had put upon the people to do these grandiose building projects, and so Jeroboam had to go into exile because he was one of the FBI's most wanted in Solomon's kingdom, but when Rehoboam, Solomon's son, became king, he was foolish.

He went to the council of the elders and told the tribal leaders that he was going to make things even harder on them. At this point, they rebelled, and they took Jeroboam to be their king, and God told Jeroboam In 1 Kings 11, we'll read beginning in verse 29.

Now, Jeroboam had been an official in the administration of Solomon before he became an enemy, but in verse 29 of chapter 11, we read,. Now it happened at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem that the prophet Ahijah, the Shiloh knight, met him on the way, and he had clothed himself with a new garment, and the two were alone in the field.

Then Ahijah took hold of the new garment that was on him and tore it into twelve pieces. And he said to Jeroboam, Take for yourself ten pieces, for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give ten tribes to you.

But he will have one tribe for the sake of my servant David, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, because they have seen what is right in my eyes and keep my statutes and my judgments, as did his father David.

When God made his promise to David that his descendants would reign upon the throne in Jerusalem, God also said that he would punish and chastise and bring discipline against David's descendants if they did not obey God, if they did not keep covenant with him.

And so here is God keeping his promise, and in a manner reminiscent of when Saul lost the kingdom and his robe, Samuel's robe tore, the prophet's garment tore, as Saul grabbed at him when Samuel turned to leave.

And then Samuel said, So the Lord will be tearing the kingdom away from you and giving it to a man after his own heart. So here the prophet's garment is once again torn, but this time into twelve pieces.

Ten tribes go with Jeroboam, and Judah remains with David, and also in the mix, the twelfth tribe. So what we have here is an explanation. Jeroboam was not getting the kingdom because Jeroboam was amazing, but because Rehoboam and Solomon were awful.

And they were awful particularly because of idolatry, particularly because of idolatry. Now what does God promise Jeroboam in verse 37? So I will take you, and you shall reign over all your heart desires, and you shall be king over Israel.

Then it shall be, if you heed all that I command you, walk in my ways, and do what is right in my sight, by my statutes and my commandments, as my servant David did, then I will be with you, and build for you an enduring house, as I built for David, and will give Israel to you.

So, this covenant that God proposes to Jeroboam, this promise he proposes, he says, it depends on how well you perform. It depends upon your faithfulness. Are you going to be faithful or are you not? Again, the entire fate of the kingdom rests upon the faithfulness of the king.

Will he follow through? Will he be covenantally faithful or not? So, they lost, Jeroboam lost all these tribes from his kingdom because of the sin of idolatry, sin of idolatry. And what did Jeroboam then turn around and do?

Well, he didn't want his subjects to be traveling down to Jerusalem to worship God down there because that might mean that they would, their hearts would be turned back to Judah, back to Jeroboam and the other king.

And so, he built shrines at Bethel and Dan of golden calves and said, here, you can worship at these places instead. So, obviously, he did not learn the lesson. And there's a very, very tragic verse when Israel split away from Judah.

And this is in verse 16 of chapter 12, 1 Kings 12, verse 16. And this is the fallout with Rehoboam. Verse 16, now, when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, saying, What share have we in David?

We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel, now see to your own house, O David. It's almost as sad as the refrain, His blood be upon us and our children. We want nothing to do with the descendant of David or with the lineage of David from Jesse.

Very, very sad verse. And it foreshadows of these jealous brothers who will have no part in the chosen son. Kind of reminds us of a story from Genesis. Well, not only do we have the kings of Israel to consider during the days of these kings of Judah, but the major threat that we hear about in Isaiah chapters 1 through 37 is the threat of Assyria.

Now, remember the statue from the book of Daniel, the vision that the king of Babylon had, the dream that he had. And there were four kingdoms, the head of gold, the chest and arms of silver, the waist and thighs of bronze, and the legs and the feet of iron, the feet of iron and clay.

And the four different world empires that were talked about there, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and then Rome. But there was a kingdom prior to Babylon that held sway over the entirety of the known world.

And that nation was called Assyria. In fact, Assyria owned Babylon. And at one point, Babylon rebelled and they destroyed it. They leveled it. And then they rebuilt it, winning hearts and minds. Rebuilt Babylon to their own standards.

And Assyria was the world power and they were written about in the Bible. They were addressed in the Bible. The kings of Assyria were the testers and the oppressors of God's old covenant people. Sometimes the kings of Israel and Judah were tempted to adopt the paganism of Assyria, to model their worship after these very powerful kings.

They've got something going for them. It seems to be working for them. Look how powerful they are. We could use a little of that. That was a temptation to adopt Assyrian culture, Assyrian gods. They also were tempted to pay off Assyrian power.

And they would take gold and silver from the temple and pay the Assyrian kings to keep them happy. Sometimes they were tempted to make fleshly alliances with other pagan nations like Egypt, or the nation of Syria.

Not Assyria, but Syria. And they would make alliances to try to buttress their own defense against Assyria. Israel and Judah often chose the wrong way and they suffered the judgment of God. And God used Assyrian oppression as his tool of chastisement, as his tool of judgment, time and time again.

The first king we can think about is Tiglath-Pileser III. He was the royal figure known as the one who initiated Assyria as a world empire. He's the one who made it something. He was in charge when they expanded.

He actually doubled the land area of the empire all across the ancient Near East. And not only did he double the land area, but he was able to centralize power into his own house, so that he grew very, very powerful.

And you can read about him in 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles. As a summary, at the beginning of 1 Chronicles, you get a very quick survey of all of Israel's history. And then at the very end, you hear about him again in 2 Chronicles 28.

Next king was Shalmaneser V. And he is the one who, along with Sargon II, completely took down the northern kingdom, credited with the eradication of the northern kingdom, the exile of all of those Jews into the Assyrian conquest.

Shalmaneser V expanded the already expansive empire. Sargon II was known as a great military leader and tactician. He is the beginning of a new dynasty. So Shalmaneser and Tiglath-Pileser were all part of one family.

Sargon II began a new dynasty in Assyria. And his dynasty lasted for about 100 years. And he was a very great builder. Sennacherib is a name we run into a lot in our readings of 2 Kings and also Isaiah.

He's the one who made Nineveh the capital of Assyria. He improved it. He built its inner and outer walls, and they still stand today. They're so big and strong. And he's the one who led the famous assault against Judah and King Hezekiah.

And they have his engravings and records today about all of his conquering throughout the ancient Near East and his boasts about conquering this god and that god, very much like Rabshakeh's speech to the Jewish leaders in Isaiah.

And he boasted about all the kings he defeated. And then when he got down to the very last of his list, he said he bottled or he cooped up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage in the city of Jerusalem. Of course, he couldn't say that he defeated Hezekiah or that he took the city of Jerusalem or that he defeated him like he did all the rest of his conquest because he didn't.

And while he was taking care of a minor threat out in the Shephelah, the lower plains between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Sea, an angel of the Lord came into the Assyrian camp and killed 185 ,000 Assyrians.

With his mercenary army basically evaporated overnight, Sennacherib had to turn tail and go home. And it was as if fish hooks were put into his face, and he was dragged home in shame. Where his sons proceeded to assassinate him, two of them, and then they ran off and the remaining son, Esarhaddon, became king.

And he conquered Egypt in 671 BC, and he reconstructed Babylon. The future empire of Babylon was greatly aided by this Assyrian king who rebuilt the city after it had been destroyed. And while he was rebuilding the city, he shifted the capital to Babylon away from Nineveh.

And in fact, while he was reigning there from Babylon, he hauled Manasseh in all the way to Babylon on a rebellion charge to put Manasseh into his place because Manasseh was not doing what he was supposed to as an Assyrian vassal.

And we can read about Esarhaddon in 2 Kings 19, 2 Chronicles 33, and also in Ezra chapter 4, he's mentioned as well. So all these different kings of Assyria, we encounter them throughout the scriptures, and they play a role in the Assyrian threat that is looming all the way through those first 37 chapters of Isaiah, and it gives us kind of a context for what is going on.

The kings of Assyria, they were a very big threat, but they were God's tools. They were just God's tools. They were tools in his tool belt. And he used these mighty Assyrian kings as tools to refine and chasten and judge his people.

And it was against the backdrop of the Assyrian threat that we have so many promises. Think about these chapters, Isaiah 7, Isaiah 9, Isaiah 11. There are so many precious promises of Christ that we have that were given during troubled times, the times of the Assyrian world powers that had everybody scared, had everybody worried, everybody not being able to sleep well at night because of the Assyrian kings.

But this Assyrian domination was used by God to strip false hope away from the people until the people of Judah were ready and hungry for these promises of a savior because the power of Assyria humbled them and readied them for the hope of a savior.

This greater threat that keeps on coming into the reading of Isaiah, this greater threat, this broader threat that looms on the mind of the prophet and those to whom he is speaking, how God describes Assyria and how he deals with them as the little peons that they are in his sight, that should really inform our faith and instruct our prayers.

Ours, please hear this, ours is not the only time, place, and culture where we live under a greater threat. Any reading of church history will tell you that many, many generations have been worse off and closer to the brink than we are.

Ours is not the only time, place, and culture that engages with the flailing tyranny of our own leaders while worried about the far-reaching tyranny of foreign leaders. That was going on in Isaiah's day.

It was going on in the year 600. It was going on in the year 1000. It was going on 60 years ago. And it's going on today. But, here's the promise, you will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.

Isaiah 26, 13, against the Assyrian backdrop. Okay, any questions or thoughts as we close?