Wednesday, January 21, 2026 PM

Isaiah’s Call to Fear the Lord Rather Than Human Threats

All right, let's open our Bibles and let's turn to Isaiah chapter 8, and we're going to be reading verses 11 through 15 this evening. Isaiah chapter 8, verses 11 through 15. For the Lord spoke thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, Do not say a conspiracy concerning all that this people call a conspiracy, nor be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.

The Lord of hosts, him you shall hallow. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. He will be as a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel, as a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and many among them shall stumble.

They shall fall and be broken, be snared and taken. Even for the prophet Isaiah, who of course was especially blessed to receive the word of the Lord and to have visions from heaven and to speak the word of God to the people.

A man who had a privileged position in the palace, somebody who was a musician and a priest, a prophet, Isaiah, even he needed to be reminded to not allow his thinking and his heart to be overwhelmed by all of the fear-mongering and the rumors that filled up the air around him.

The Lord deals with Isaiah with a strong hand. He gets Isaiah's attention and says, Don't talk like this people. They're all concerned about this conspiracy regarding, as we've talked about, Rezin and Pecah, the other kings and what they might do.

They're all concerned and they're all afraid of what they consider to be the most important threats of their generation. And God says to Isaiah, Don't think the way they think. Don't talk the way they talk.

Yes, they are full of fear, but you need to be filled with a different type of fear. It's the fear of the Lord that we think about from Proverbs and the Psalms. The fear of the Lord that we think about, that Jesus teaches about and the apostles.

Called for.

A fear of the Lord that is thinking of him first, thinking of him most. That the number one factor in our decision-making, the number one influence in our perception of the world is not the latest news story.

It is our Creator, our Maker, our Lord, our Savior, our God. Now, when God says to his own prophet, Don't think their way, don't talk their way, and don't be afraid of their threats, because when you sound different from them, they are going to try to influence you and threaten you to think their way and value what they.

Value.

But don't be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. It's okay that you do not think in the way that they think and talk in the way that they talk. That shouldn't bother you. Don't be troubled by that.

You've done nothing wrong. Rather than be afraid of what everyone else is afraid of, rather than that, verse 13, the Lord of hosts, him you shall hallow. Let him be your fear. Let him be your dread. In other words, let the Lord of hosts be the most important person in the room for you.

Let the Lord of hosts be the most important relationship in your life. You'll put calls on hold to talk to the Lord. You will interrupt someone else's conversation to give preference to the Lord. You'll set aside a project in order to read something from the Lord.

Let him, hallow him. Let him be the most important person in your life and in the room. Let him be your fear. Let him be your dread. In other words, in the very same place in your life where some threat or some fear could totally consume you, overwhelm you, and distract you 24 -7, in that very same place, let the Lord be there.

Let the Lord fill up all of that space, whatever that is, where fear or threats and rumors might be. Let the Lord be your fear. Let the Lord be your dread. And, if this is the case, the Lord says to Isaiah, he will be as a sanctuary.

In other words, when the Lord of hosts is hallowed in the life of a saint, in the life of a believer, when the Lord is a fear for you, when the Lord is the dread for you, in other words, in the same place where you would be so concerned and afraid, when he's there instead, he will be as a sanctuary to you.

A sanctuary. Now, it's interesting, the word hallow, make holy, well, the word sanctuary is also the word holy, but with a prefix on the front meaning a source of holy, an origin of holy, a place of holiness, a sanctuary.

When we think of a sanctuary, we may think of the holy place in the simple, even the holy of holies, a place that is set apart unto holiness that we would look to that place and say, there is holiness there.

So, hallow the Lord of hosts, he will be for you the source of hallowing, the origin of holiness. He will be for you, O hallowing one, the holy place in which you will rightly fear and tremble. Is this not the way it was with Isaiah in his calling in chapter 6?

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord in the temple, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. And what was the result of Isaiah, by means of a vision, being transported to the heavenly throne room?

The Lord became his dread. The Lord became his fear. There was no other king, no other situation, no other power, no other problem that had any significance to Isaiah in that moment, because it was all about who God was, and his holiness, and the fact that Isaiah said, woe is me, I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips, I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the Lord, the King of.

Glory.

All his thoughts were about the Lord in that moment. And so, the Lord is a sanctuary for those who hallow him. Now, there was a lot of things that Isaiah could be concerned about. There was, of course, the armies of Assyria, and the plot that was forming between Syria and the northern kingdom of Ephraim.

There was the problem with King Ahaz of Judah himself, who was moving out the Lord's altar and putting in a pagan altar in the temple. There's lots of things to be concerned about, lots of things to be bothered about.

But God says to Isaiah, when you hallow me, I'm a sanctuary to you. When I'm filling up your heart where all the dread and fear may be, but if you're hallowing me, I will be a sanctuary to you. And this is an important moment.

Isaiah is reflecting about fear. He's reflecting about wonders, the idea of seeing something so overwhelming that you don't know how to process it. That's the idea of dread and fear, the same words that are used in verse 12 of being afraid or troubled.

Don't be afraid and troubled of men. Rather, hallow the Lord. And then he starts talking about a sanctuary. The Lord will be a sanctuary for those who hallow him and fear him. And what Isaiah is doing here would be clear to those who are in the know.

He's putting together key words in a particular order that those who know, well, they would.

The Song of Moses and the Promise of a Sanctuary

Know.

They'd pick up on it. They'd hear it. Because Isaiah, even though he is a very famous prophet, he wasn't the most famous of all prophets. That was Moses. And although Isaiah himself was a musician, his songs were not in the top 100 charts.

The best song that they knew was the Song of Moses, Exodus 15. And this is not the first time nor the last time in Isaiah that Isaiah reaches back to that very famous song that everybody knew by heart so well and starts taking lines from that song, remixing them, and pointing forward to a type of new glorious future, a new covenant where hope would be in the Messiah.

He's doing it here. In Exodus 15, in verses 11 through 18, we begin hearing about the themes of conspiracy and fear and dread, that many people are afraid, that many people are trembling, and yet the Lord promises sanctuary to his true worshipers.

That's from the Song of Moses, Exodus 15. So, verse 11 of Exodus 15, Moses is singing. He says, Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?

And, of course, they had just seen a bunch of wonders, didn't they? The ten plagues of Egypt, how God had shown himself to be the only true God and shamed everybody who believed in the gods of Egypt through these plagues.

Examples like the Nile River was considered to be a god, and yet God made it turn into blood, and everything died. The sun god, Ra, Pharaoh, supposedly was Ra's embodiment on earth, but then God made it go dark, and there was no more sun.

In all these ways, God mocked the false gods, and many people were afraid, and many people were in dread. Moses is recalling these things.

Verse 12,.

You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them. You and your mercy have led forth the people whom you have redeemed. You have guided them in your strength, your holy habitation. God brought the people of Israel up out of Egypt, brought them across the Red Sea to the mountain of Sinai, where he makes covenant with them.

The people will hear and be afraid. Sorrow will take hold of the inhabitants of Philistia. The chiefs of Edom will be dismayed. The mighty men of Moab trembling will take hold of them. All the inhabitants of Canaan will melt away.

You see, when the Lord's power and strength are on display, what is the result? The nations will fear. They will be dismayed. Verse 16,. Fear and dread will fall on them. Remember the story, though. You remember the children of Israel were also full of fear and dread, weren't they?

They didn't want to be anywhere near that mountain. The trumpets, the thunder, the fire, the smoke. They didn't want to get anywhere near that mountain. But the Lord certainly had their attention. In this moment, when they're before Sinai, and they say, Moses, you better go up there because we can't even get close to it.

Were they concerned about the Philistines? No, they were not. Were they afraid of Pharaoh and his army anymore? No, God had taken care of them. Were they concerned about the Edomites?

Not at all.

All their attention was upon God. And they were in his presence. And so, verse 17, You will bring them in and plant them. Here's the hope that Moses has. He's looking forward to something. You will bring them in and plant them in the mountain of your inheritance.

In the place, O Lord, which you have made for your own dwelling, the sanctuary. The sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established. The Lord shall reign forever and ever. And so, in this passage in which fear and dread, in the context of wonders, is the attention of this portion of Moses' song, the promise is that those who, the children of the Lord, the true people of God who look to him and hope in him, what do they have to look forward to?

An inheritance. He's promised them an inheritance, hasn't he? How is it described? It's described as a mountain. The mountain is described as the place that God makes for his own dwelling. And the sanctuary is something which the Lord himself has built and established.

Where the Lord reigns forever and ever. This is the promised inherited sanctuary that Moses said you all ought to look forward to, and it's the same that Isaiah also is reminded of, that the Lord himself will be as a sanctuary.

Christ as the True Sanctuary and Eternal Life

When we think about that, it's not a huge leap for us then to reflect on. The language that we have in the New Testament that begins to talk about, where is it that the Lord dwells? There's a city that Abraham was looking for whose architect and builder was God, and that this city is described as the heavenly Jerusalem upon a Mount Zion that cannot be touched.

That's Hebrews 11 and 12. Even in the latter prophets of Zechariah, where Zechariah has the vision of Jerusalem being rebuilt, and a young man goes out before him, and Zechariah thinks that the walls need to be measured.

He says, no, no, no, there's no walls. Jerusalem is going to be built without walls. Why? Because of the multitudes that will be there. And so when we think about the promised inheritance being the sanctuary where God dwells, where he reigns forever and ever, the promised inherited mountain, then the promised inheritance is wherever the Lord dwells.

And so we are reminded in John 1 .14, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, tabernacled among us, literally. And we beheld his glory, glories of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

In the next chapter, Jesus is saying, I'm the temple, I'm the sanctuary. If you're looking for the sanctuary, the promised inheritance, Jesus Christ himself stands before you. Which reminds us that God was always the true sanctuary of Israel, even as he was the true life of Adam and Eve, wasn't he?

Man's problem is not the loss of paradise and Eden, it was the loss of God. The loss of our relationship with God. Israel's problem was not the loss of the land and the temple, their problem was the loss of God.

And so God gives himself to us in Christ. The problem observed, the problem established, but what is salvation? This is eternal life, Jesus says, that they know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. That's the inheritance, that's the promise, that's eternal life, knowing God.

And so, in the words of C .S. Lewis, look at this God, full of fear, full of dread, let God be your fear, let him be your dread, look at what he does. Look at the plagues of Egypt, look at the judgments that he brings, look how powerful he is and he's accountable to no one but his own character and his own goodness.

So in the words of C .S. Lewis, the question comes, is he safe?

No. But he's good. He's good.

He's not going to be tamed.

But he's good.

And when he and his power fills our attention and has our focus, he is a sanctuary to us. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the time you've given us in your word. I thank you for the reminder that you gave to Isaiah many, many centuries ago, a reminder that is still freshly needed in our lives, that although there were many fearful things around us to think about, that could completely capture our attention and begin to work on our affections and change them.

Nevertheless, Lord, we know that you are greater and more powerful than them all and that we were made in your image to be thoroughly impressed with you. So we pray that you would help us to fear you and to be enthralled with you and that we would find in you our sanctuary.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.