Isaiah 10:5-34, The King of Kings

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Isaiah 10:5-34 The King of Kings

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Isaiah chapter 10, starting in verse 5, repeating to the end of the chapter, verse 34.
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Hear the words of the Lord. Hear the word of the Lord. Ah, Syria, the rod of my anger, the staff in their hands is my fury.
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Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him to take spoil and seize plunder and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
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But he does not so intend. And his heart does not so think, but it is in his heart to destroy and to cut down, to cut off nations, not a few.
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For he says, are not my commanders like kings? Is not Kalno like Carchemish? Is not
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Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus? As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols whose carved images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, shall
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I not do to Jerusalem and her idols as I have done to Samaria and her images? When the
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Lord has finished all his work on 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.
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For he says, by the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding.
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I remove the boundaries of peoples and plunder their treasures. Like a bull, I bring down those who sit on thrones.
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My hand has found, like a nest, the wealth of the peoples. And as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken, so I have gathered all the earth.
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So, and there was none that moved a wing or opened the mouth or chirped.
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Shall the ax boast over him who's with it? Or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?
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As if a rod should wield him who lifts it, or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood.
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Therefore, the Lord God of hosts will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors, and under his glory, a burning will be kindled, like the burning of fire.
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The light of Israel will become a fire and his holy one a flame, and it will burn and devour his thorns and briars in one day.
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The glory of his forest and of his fruitful land the Lord will destroy both soul and body, and it will be as when a sick man wastes away, the remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few that a child can write them down.
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In that day, the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the
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Lord, the holy one of Israel. In truth, a remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob to the mighty
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God. For though your people, Israel, be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return.
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Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts will make a full end as decreed in the midst of the earth.
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Therefore, thus says the Lord God of hosts, oh, my people who dwell in Zion, be not afraid of the
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Assyrians when they strike with a rod and lift up their staff against you as the Egyptians did. For in a very little while, my fury will come to an end and my anger will be directed to their destruction.
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And the Lord of hosts will wield against them a whip as when he struck Midian at the rock of Oreb and his staff will be over the sea and he will lift as he did in Egypt.
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And in that day, his burden will depart from your shoulder and his yoke from your neck.
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And the yoke will be broken because of the fat. He has come to Ayath.
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He has passed through Megron. In Mishmash, he stores his baggage. They have crossed over the pass.
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At Geba, they lodged for the night. Rama trembles. Gibeah of Saul has fled. Cry aloud, oh, daughter of Gilum.
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Give attention, oh, Laisha. Oh, poor Anathoth, Madmenah is in flight.
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The inhabitants of Gebim flee for safety. This very day, he will halt at Nob.
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He will shake his fist at the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem. Behold, the
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Lord God of hosts will lop the bows with terrifying power. The great in height will be hewn down and the lofty will be brought low.
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He will cut down the thickets of the forest with an ax and Lebanon will fall by the majestic one.
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May the Lord has blessings to the reading of his word. Well, we're just eight days away from Christmas.
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Now we're celebrating an historical event that occurred over 2000 years ago.
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The only other holiday like that is Easter, which is really the fulfillment of Christmas. Now, why do we celebrate something that's so old?
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Okay, I know it's really, I mean, let's be real. It's really a replacement for old solstice holidays, winter solstice holidays.
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And we know that Jesus probably was not really born in December because it was, it would have been too cold for the shepherds to be out at night.
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But the fact is we need a reason to have a holiday in late December.
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So we pick Christmas, the birth of Christ. But why did we choose that event? Something so long ago.
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Okay, you say, well, it's a major historical event that changed the course of world history. Yeah, that's true.
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But there are a lot of major historical events that we don't celebrate. We don't celebrate the
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Roman emperor Constantine declaring Christianity legal in the year 313. At least I don't, maybe you all do, but I don't celebrate that.
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Now think how different our lives would be if the major religion of our culture was still paganism and Christians, we were still a persecuted minority.
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You know, Christmas wouldn't be a holiday without Constantine. We don't celebrate Charles Martel defeating the
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Muslims at the Battle of Tours in France in the year 732. I don't celebrate that. Now, if he hadn't done that, we might be living in a
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Muslim country now with no Christmas. So where's the Charles Martel day?
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Well, we don't celebrate the Chinese admiral Xing He, and I know I pronounce all the Chinese names wrong.
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So I just do my best. The Chinese admiral Xing He, who explored Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and sailed to Africa.
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He was out there doing that before any of the European explorers set out. And he could have gone all the way around.
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Africa could have gone up to Europe. He could have colonized Europe. He could have colonized America, for that matter.
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Gone just across the Pacific. And we could all be speaking Mandarin now if Xing He had had his way.
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Would we be celebrating that? Some of you would be. Some of the others, not so sure. Now, although I wish we did in this church, a covenant -reformed
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Lutheran church, tried to make a to -do out of it, we modern people don't really, at least not here in America, celebrate the
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Reformation, even on the 500th anniversary. Although we had changed our lives, changed our culture in really in radical ways.
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If any of these things had changed, had been different, our lives and our country, our culture, would be just entirely different.
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Just totally transformed. We might not like the differences. So there are a lot of major turning points in history that are worth celebrating that we don't.
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So why Christmas? One reason, of course, is that what happened on Christmas is the reason all those other things happened.
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That those weren't just kind of random events. This history, this out -of -control, the free decisions of people, just interacting in convoluted ways and coming up with whatever happens.
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That is, it wasn't that way. It was in fact under control. As Paul says in Galatians chapter four, that Christ came at the fullness of time.
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Otherwise, at the right time, it's when God sent forth his son. It was on purpose.
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Meaning that God the Father sent the son, as Isaiah said earlier, we saw, to us a son is given at exactly the right time.
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Of course, many people think it was a very odd time, 2 ,000 years ago. You know, in the skeptical play,
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Jesus Christ Superstar, Judas asked, in sort of the centerpiece song, every time
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I look at you, Judas speaking to Christ, I don't understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand.
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You'd manage better if you had it planned. Why do you choose such a backward time in such a strange land?
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Well, that gets one thing right. He, the son, did choose the time and the land.
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And he, in fact, he had it planned and nothing is ever, ever out of his hand.
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And we see that here in this passage, Isaiah chapter 10, in four parts.
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First, the instrument. Second, the arrogant. Third, the remnant. And finally, the judgment.
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Okay, first, the instrument. The Lord begins in verse five, speaking through Isaiah, to Assyria, ah, it says in ESV, literally in Hebrew, it's the same word, woe, that we've encountered many times now already in the book of Isaiah.
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Woe, it's the same word he begins chapter 10 with, and we see at the top of chapter 10. Woe to those who decree iniquitous decree.
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Woe, it's a word pronounced, meaning you're gonna be in mourning soon.
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You have rough stuff coming to you, woe. And at that,
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God pronounced that same woe over and over again, if you remember way back in chapter five, there, because of your sins,
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Israel, because of your, here in chapter 10, your iniquitous decrees, your judges ruling for the rich because they can pay them off, you know, if they're taking bribes, woe, you'll be lamenting, you'll be moaning at the funerals that are coming.
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In chapter five, woe, start your funeral mourning already, because it's coming, because your rich people only care about expanding their houses and their estates and their own land.
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They think nothing of the poor who get squeezed out, can't have a farm because all the land's taken up.
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Start the funeral already, woe, because of the party animals who only care about the keg of beer or the best wine or the drinking games, or only care about the rock bands and their tunes, and they gotta have it,
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I hear it all the time, they can't ever go without hearing something piped into their ears through their Bluetooth earbuds or their high quality
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Bose headphones. They got that coming in on all the time, but they can't spare any time listening to or reading the word of God.
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Woe, he says to them, woe to the social justice workers who don't know what real justice is, and so call evil pro -choice and call good bigotry and hate.
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Woe to those who are so wise in their own eyes, they think they've evolved beyond the primitive values of the
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Bible. And they will get, woe, he said back in chapter five, funerals, suicides, broken families, diseases, loneliness, destruction, woe.
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And because of all that, in chapter five, verse 13, it says, my people go into exile.
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Exile means another kingdom comes in and takes them forcefully away into some other land.
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Now, who took them into exile? Well, in 721 BC, the Assyrians destroyed the
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Northern kingdom of Israel. Remember, Israel has split into two. The majority, the Northern part is capital in Samaria, and the
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Southern part, it has capital in Jerusalem. And in 721 BC, the
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Assyrian empire comes in and destroys the Northern kingdom of Israel and takes all those 10 tribes away.
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And they just, they're gone. They're, they disappeared. It has happened just as the Lord said would happen.
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Who did it? The Assyrians did it. So here in verse five, chapter 10, verse five, they, the
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Assyrians, he calls them the rod of my anger. He's the one, he has this rod in his hand, and he is afflicting his people with this rod, these
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Assyrians. In other words, the Assyrians are God's instrument to inflict his anger.
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They have this, they have a staff in their hand, the Assyrians do, they have power over Israel. He says in the next phrase, because of the
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Lord's fury. Now notice verse six, against a godless nation,
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I sent him, meaning the Assyrians. Yes, the Lord taking responsibility for this,
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I have sent him. The Assyrians weren't just a pagan empire out of God's control. You know, just kind of acting on their own free will.
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Nothing the Lord could do about it. He's got to let people act according to their free will. No, the Lord says, I have sent them by the
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Lord himself, they've come. Now, when you think of that phrase, first Israel is called a godless nation.
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You think, how can they be the godless? Wasn't their problem they had, they had too much religion and all these idols and other gods.
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Not that they had none of it. Well, actually being religious and being godly are two different things.
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You can have a lot of religion and be very ungodly, as we see here, but they put shrines to the
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Lord in Dan and in Bethel against God's word, thinking they could worship where and how they wanted.
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And once you do that, once you think you can worship where and how you want, well, then it's easy to think you can worship who you want.
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The religion is all about helping me. I'm the center, I'm the purpose, glorifying me and enabling me to enjoy myself forever or as long as I stay alive.
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Such people become in verse six, godless, even if they're very religious. And so they are then the people of my wrath.
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It's what he calls them. Other way, they're the people God's saying I'm angry at. So the
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God whom we are to glorify and enjoy forever sends an instrument against them, against us.
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Well, in verse six, the Lord commands, notice that he orders Assyria to do something.
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It says, particularly he commands them to take spoil and seize plunder and tread them down like the mire of the streets.
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Okay, that's the order from God himself. Take their stuff and ride your horses right over them.
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So they've been sent on a mission by the Lord, but isn't that, you say, wait, wait, wait, wait, isn't that stealing?
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You know, taking spoil, seizing plunder, going into someone else's country and just taking their stuff? And isn't it murder?
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Trampling down people like they're dirt? Yeah, it is.
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But isn't that against God's commands? You know, the commandments are, surely we all know them, you shall not steal, you shall not murder.
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How could God command them to do what in the 10 commandments he commands all people not to do?
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You know, how is that possible? Well, God is the king. Now other kings, human kings have to keep the law.
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The king of kings is the law. The laws are expressions of what
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God is like. He is not someone who murders. He doesn't steal. Those laws are reflections of his character.
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He enforces those laws. And like any good judge who enforces laws, and he enforces them with his, you know, with the sheriffs, with the deputies, his bailiffs, his department of corrections, those are his instruments, like the
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Assyrians. And so if he decides as the judge, the king of kings, if he decides, look at you, your crooked judges, your crooked police took bribes, or with your plantation owners living off the bent backs of slaves, or look at you, you
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Japanese invaders of China who murdered up to 300 ,000 people at the rape of Nanking alone, or look at you, or abortionists who do the same today in sterile clinics.
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Well, if he decides, look at you, what you've done. You've ignored the rights of the poor and the defenseless.
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Look at you, what you've stolen. It doesn't, it didn't belong to you in the first place. You took it.
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You took it from the slaves. You took it from the Chinese. You took it from whoever. Then that should be, he's the judge, what you stole should be confiscated and rightly belong then to someone else.
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I'm taking it from you. What a good judge would do today, right? If a thief came into, before a judge stole your
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TV, and there's the thief there, the judge said to let the thief keep the TV. Now it's taken from him.
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So here's the Lord as the judge is saying, what you stole is now being confiscated. And if you've done a capital crime, what you've, you know, you can pay for your life.
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So here, the Lord as the judge sends his instruments, the Assyrian army, to take from them what's been stolen.
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Or maybe he sends Northern carpetbaggers to take from Southern slave owners what they stole from the slaves.
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Or whoever pillages you, he decides, he sends them to take from you what you've got wrongly, unjustly.
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Or if he decides as the judge of the whole earth, that you deserve to die for your crimes, and he sends the
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Assyrians or the Union army or an atomic bomb over two of your cities, then they are sent to do his will.
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Those are his instruments. Now, sometimes those instruments, like here, the
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Assyrians attacking, because they attacked Israel from a human point of view, without provocation.
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You know, Israel didn't attack them first. All right, Israel didn't send planes and bomb the Assyrian Navy.
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They didn't, Assyria was not acting out of self -defense. There's no humanly justifiable reason for what the
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Assyrian empire did, right? They are breaking God's commands. Do not murder, do not steal.
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Those commands are, we could say, we call them, theologians do, his will of command.
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Don't murder, don't steal. To sin is to break God's will of command, to violate what he has told you to do.
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If you steal or murder, you have sinned. You can't say, well, God told me to do it.
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God's sovereign, and he didn't stop me, so it must be his will. No, God has already told you not to do it.
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But here, these robbers and these murderers, the Assyrians, they are breaking God's command. His will clearly expressed, not only in scripture, but really all people know, just the way society works, that you shouldn't take what belongs to other people.
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You shouldn't kill them. People know that this society can't last that way, even if they have no knowledge of the
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Bible. There's a natural knowledge that the world can't exist this way if people live like that all the time.
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So the Assyrians are sinning. And yet, here's the hard part. Here's the controversial part. God calls them, even as they're sinning, the rod of my anger, his instrument.
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How's that true? The Lord says he sent them to do the killing and the looting.
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So on the one hand, he commands all people, with his will of command, do not steal, do not murder.
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But on the other hand, it says clearly here in verse 6, he commands Assyria, do it.
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Take their stuff. Trample them down. How's that possible?
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Well, it's possible because, restating what I've said already, but it's a hard idea to get your minds around, because God is the judge.
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Like I just said, a judge can confiscate your property. He has that authority. He has that right. If a judge, acting in his authority, says this
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TV that you have that you got by stealing, and maybe it's now in your living room, but you got it by stealing,
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I'm sending in my instruments, the deputies, and they're going to take that TV out of your house and give it to someone else.
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The judge isn't stealing, is he? No. Here, God is the judge, can confiscate their property, and he can sentence to death.
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Then, like a judge, he orders his instruments, his agents, the sheriff, the Department of Corrections, whoever.
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Here, God is the judge, is ordering his instruments, the Assyrians, to carry out his just verdict.
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That's from God's point of view. But from the Assyrian point of view, they were just acting on their greed and their cruelty.
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They did what came naturally to them. Notice verse 7. So first,
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God intends, as the judge, as the king of kings, on sending his instruments to bring justice on a sinful
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Israel. But he, in verse 7, Assyria, does not so intend, it says.
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He doesn't intend justice. He intends on stealing stuff and eliminating anyone who gets in the way.
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I'll get into that. Yeah, his heart does not so think, it says in verse 7. The Lord intends to bring righteousness on earth, but the
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Assyrians only intend to stuff their own pockets. That's their intention. They intend on extending their power.
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That's what they're about. It's not that the Assyrians, as God's rod, you know, were compelled to do what they didn't wanna do.
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You know, that God somehow pulled their strings and they were these puppets that God made them go destroy the northern kingdom of Israel and then attack
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Jerusalem itself. When otherwise, you know, they were just these peaceful, loving, kind people. You know, just wanting to sit by the streams and quote poetry to little kids and play tag all day.
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Who didn't wanna harm anyone, but God just dragged them kicking and screaming against their will to attack.
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No, of course not. God used their greed and their blood lust.
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The Lord uses their sinful intentions to implement his right intentions.
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They are his instrument. They're like the rod in the hands of a flogger.
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And the Lord is the king issuing his decrees and he's sending his agents to bring it to pass. But that doesn't mean, you know, because the
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Assyrians are God's instruments, they're doing God's will of decree. He's decreed
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Israel that the stuff, this wealth you've acquired through your injustice, your immorality, your idolatry, you deserve death for it, that he's decreed it.
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Then therefore, you know, the Assyrians who do it are excused from their breaking
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God's will of command. Remember the command is not to murder and to rob, but the decree is to plunder and to trample down.
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Now that doesn't mean that on the judgment that the Assyrians can say, hey, Lord, we get a pass.
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We, because we did all that slaughtering and looting at your command, you can't judge us for it. Now the Lord can say back, you did it because you were greedy and bloodthirsty.
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That's why you did it. You weren't trying to, you weren't, you know, you weren't sitting back in Nineveh thinking, man, those
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Israelites are so wicked, they deserve to be punished for their sins. No, they didn't care about that. They wanted, they saw stuff.
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We can take their, that money. We can extend our power. That's all what they were about. And so the
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Lord, the word of the Lord to Assyria then begins in verse five. Whoa, you're gonna get it too.
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God has a rod that he'll use on you eventually. Now let's get your funeral started while we're at it.
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You may be the God, the rod of God's anger, the instrument in his hands to punish what he calls a godless nation.
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But what you did was wrong. Israel may have deserved what you did to them, but you didn't have the right to do it.
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So woe to you. But they boast, my commanders, this is them speaking in verse eight.
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In other words, the generals in my army, they're all like kings. They have that much power or so that they created kings and empire, little kingdoms under them that they have created, they've annexed surrounding nations, sort of like the
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Japanese created what they call the Greater East Asian Co -Prosperity Sphere, which is a mockery.
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This is a propaganda term. They went out conquering in East Asia in the 1930s and early 40s.
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And they would set up these little kingdoms, these nations, like in Manchuria, where they would even call it
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Manchukwa, didn't they? Something like that. And they set up what was the deposed king of our emperor of China.
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They set him up there over Manchuria as their supposedly independent country that just happened to be closely allied with Japan.
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No, it wasn't. It was just a puppet of Japan. And Syria did the same thing. We set up these little empires with their kings.
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They were Syria's commanders. They were under their authority.
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Every other nation would be under orbit around them, whether Japan in World War II, other kingdoms around Assyria there.
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In here, in Isaiah 10, they're expanding, Assyria is, closer and closer to Jerusalem.
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You see all these place names? I know you look at that, and we don't know any of these cities' names, but to them in their day, this would make sense.
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These places are getting closer and closer to me. Put yourself in their shoes.
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They're in Jerusalem. Carchemish is kind of far off. It's up in the Euphrates River, up in Northern Syria, coming closer though to Kalma, a place called
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Kalma, and then Arpa, that's a little closer. Hamath is closer. Damascus is nearby. Samaria, the capital of the
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Northern Kingdom of Israel is right next door. Maybe for us, it would, I don't know, it would be like Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico.
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You're getting right on our border. You're getting close. And so Assyria threatens them. My hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols.
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Assyria's hand, he's reached into them. He's conquered them. And so he says in verse 11, shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols as I have done to Samaria and her images?
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And they destroyed Samaria. Remember that. Shall I not do to Jerusalem too? He's been
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God's instrument. And notice who he thinks who's done it. I've done it. He thinks he's done it on his own.
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Shall I not do it? No one can stop me. But they don't know.
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The Lord is the rider on history, like a rider on a horse, a horseman controlling his horse.
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History goes where he wants it to go. History, his horse is his instrument.
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He is the king who decrees what kings will do. But then the instrument, the instrument becomes arrogant.
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Woe, woe when the instrument becomes arrogant. And we see the arrogance starting in verse 12.
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The arrogant think that what God enabled them to do, they did on their own.
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They don't recognize that there is a king over them. They think they did their things all on their own.
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It's all out of their mind, their willpower, their strength. They are the masters of their own fate.
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They think the captains of their own soul. And so the Lord said in verse 12, you know, when when
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I'm finished, he said when he's finished using them, when he's finished, all his work on Mount Zion in Jerusalem is a purpose to discipline
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Jerusalem. When he's finished with that, humbling his people in Jerusalem, then.
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Whoa. He will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eye.
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He's going to, you know, he's basically saying to Assyria, I have a little more for you to do against Jerusalem.
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After that, you're next. Woe to you. And that's exactly what happened.
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The Assyrians, after destroying the northern kingdom of Israel, came to Judah, kingdom of Judah, a member of the south, and they destroyed nearly every city, killing and probably thousands looting, looting all their things they could get a hold of.
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But then they came to the city of Jerusalem and the general of this Assyrian army called the
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Rabshakeh, the title. I stood outside Jerusalem threatening King Hezekiah.
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And he mocked, you know, he said, you know, we we we've conquered all these other kingdoms.
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And he lists that we conquered all these other kingdoms around you. And their gods were not able to stop us.
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What makes you think that your God can stop us? Arrogance, sheer arrogance.
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And for that arrogance, the Bible says God sent an angel. Who destroyed their army.
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The Greek historian Herodotus, ancient father of history,
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Herodotus wrote that the Assyrian army was struck by a plague. And which is true.
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The Bible says an angel did it. Or Herodotus, the Greek historian that says that a plague did it.
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Well, they both can be. The angel, God's instrument. Maybe he used biological warfare, his instrument to wipe out the
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Assyrians outside Jerusalem. And so Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, the man who thought that he was the king of kings.
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You know, the Assyrians were the one who came up with that title. They invented that phrase for their emperor, the king of kings.
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They said he was the king. Our emperor is the king over all the other kings. But Sennacherib, the king of kings, had to retreat back home with his tail between his legs, having lost his army.
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And as he was in the temple of his God, he was murdered by his own sons.
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So much for that arrogant king of kings. He boasts in verse 13, though before that happened, and starting in verse 13, by the strength of my own hand,
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I have done it. And by my wisdom, created this vast empire.
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It's destroying everyone else. Notice all the I's starting there, verse 13. I have understanding.
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I know how to lay a siege. I know how to conquer countries. I remove the boundaries of people. In other words,
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I'm redrawing the whole map. I bring down those who sit on thrones. Again, king of kings.
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He brags about how easy it was for him, you know, looting other countries in verse 14. It's like taking eggs from an empty nest.
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There's not even a mother bird there to try to peck you away. Just pick it up. It's like we would say, like taking candy from a baby.
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God uses instruments. They were his instruments, but they became arrogant because they thought they did it on themselves.
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God gives us ability. But remember the question in the
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New Testament, what do we have that we were not given? You know, every ability, every bit of wisdom, every bit of goodness about us, we were given.
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But then we think we did it by ourselves and by our willpower, maybe by our wise decision -making, our morality, that we're such decent, noble people, we made the right decisions.
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Our religion, we become proud and we boast.
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And this is really at the heart of the theological disagreement over salvation. Did we do it?
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Ultimately, you know, ultimately, there has to be an ultimate, there has to be that, if you think of a chain of dominoes, there has to be one ultimate finger that pushes over that first domino.
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Whose was it? Is it ours? Was it God's? Is it, you know, is salvation then just sort of equally available to all people?
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But we happen to be the few who were insightful enough, who are insightful enough, who are moral enough, who are spiritually strong enough to make the right decision while all those other people out there, you know, they could have done it too if they would have just applied themselves like I did.
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Is that really the crucial difference? Are we that first finger that tips over that first domino?
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Is it us? By the strength of our spirit, have we saved ourselves? By our wisdom, we've seen what's true.
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Those other people, they're not as insightful as we are. By our hands, we've taken that gift of salvation while others, they haven't.
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Because they're, what are they, less moral than we? Are they less wise? Less noble?
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It's all our doing. Or is it? Notice it's not that we don't make choices.
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Some people get this idea when we're saying, God is sort of the puppet master and no one really makes any choices. No, we do, we make choices.
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Here, Assyria made choices. They were his instrument. We choose to believe, we choose to repent, we choose to live for the
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Lord. We make all our choices. Yes, we do. But why do we do it?
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Do we just kind of create our own choices, ultimately just out of nothing? Or are our choices, maybe, or our family that told us the gospel, or that preacher, or that Sunday school teacher, or that book we read, or whatever it was that led us to Christ, are those just God's instruments?
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That God was behind them all? Being that finger that tips over the dominoes, was it his?
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Are all those things like an ax in the hands of a lumberjack, and his instrument, his tool to get what he wants?
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God used that instrument for his result. I love the way C .H. Spurgeon described it.
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I've quoted this before, but I like it very much. This is Spurgeon speaking. When I was coming to Christ, I thought
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I was doing it all myself. And though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea that the
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Lord was seeking me. One weeknight, when I was sitting in the house of God, the thought struck me.
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How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord, but how did you come to seek the
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Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment. I should not have sought him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek him.
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I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, how came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the scriptures.
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How came I to read the scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so?
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Then in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all and that he was the author of my faith.
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And so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me. And from that doctrine,
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I have not departed to this day. And I desire to make this my constant confession.
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I ascribe by change, holy to God. Spurgeon wasn't arrogant.
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And so he gives glory to God. But the arrogant person glorifies himself.
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I did it. I made the right choice. I saw the truth. Therefore, back to chapter 10 here, because Assyria, his own instrument,
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God's instrument, because he's so arrogant, the Lord God of hosts uses this majestic grand title for God, the almighty king of armies who has these seraphim and these cherubim and these angels and believers and at his beck and call.
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In verse 16, he will send against these Assyrians who are so proud, he will send, he says, a wasting disease.
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Biological warfare, the plague, maybe. Among his stout warriors. You know, they think they can fight off anybody.
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They defeated kings and kingdoms, other armies everywhere, but they won't be able to fight off these germs he's sending.
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Then he, God, will burn Assyria's glory. Everything that they thought was heavy, was meaningful, was impressive, their trophies, their loot, the things they've taken from other nations, their wealth, their weapons, he'll burn it all up in a big bonfire, all burned up like thorns that you throw in a campfire.
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This time it will be their trees. They came into Israel cutting down trees. This time it will be their trees that are cut down in their land that will turn to the dust of a desert.
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They're like Percy Shelley's Ozymandias, the poem. I met a traveler from an antique land who said two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert near them on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that his sculptor willed those passions well, those passions read, which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
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And on the pedestal, these words appear. My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.
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Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sand stretch far away.
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In 2008, Muammar Gaddafi claimed to be the King of Kings and he had 200 tribal chiefs proclaim him that.
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Just three years later, that self -proclaimed King of Kings was in a convoy attacked by NATO bombers, probably mostly
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Americans, and he fled to a construction site and hit at a drainage pipe like a rat.
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And then he was injured by a grenade. He was captured, stabbed in the rear end and pulled onto a front of a pickup truck.
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They drove off and he fell off, mostly naked, and that's how he died.
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So much for that King of Kings. Well, there will always be, though, the remnant.
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We see them in verses 20 to 23. God's instrument sometimes will be arrogant.
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And so, woe to them. But God will preserve his people.
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Now, sure, not all the natural people are his people, the true spiritual people, but a remnant will survive.
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That remnant, the few leftovers, the true believers, the few of Israel who believe, to whom are added the other sheep that the
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Lord Jesus said he must gather from all the other nations and he'll make them all into one flock with one shepherd.
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And they will, he says here, Isaiah 10, they will no more lean on him who struck them.
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They won't be like King Ahaz. Remember him? Remember Ahaz? Last week, he was afraid. He and his men were shaking like trees in the storm.
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So terrorized were they by the coming Assyrians, excuse me, not by the coming Assyrians, by the Assyrians and Israel that they called on Assyria.
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They leaned on Sennacherib and Assyria. They trusted in Assyria to rescue them.
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Well, then Assyria turned on Judah and they struck them. But in that day, the day that the
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Lord saves his remnant, they won't lean on him anymore. They'll lean on the
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Lord. He's the holy one of Israel. You know, the holy one, he's the one who makes them holy.
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He's different. He's holy, distinct, separate. He's different from the other gods in the world around them.
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Sennacherib didn't think the Lord was any different than the other gods. So he mocked the Lord. You know, who do you think your
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God is? How do you think he's any different from these other gods that can't stop me? But Hezekiah leaned on the
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Lord and he leaned on him. Notice in verse 20, in truth and sincerely, not fakery, not like Ahaz.
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Remember when Isaiah comes to Ahaz, God will show you a sign, no matter how supernatural, ask for any sign you want.
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And Ahaz says, I will not test the Lord. Sounds so pious. I will not put the Lord to the test.
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Yeah, this guy's a pagan. He's an idol worshiper. He's not pious, but that's the way he sounded. He put it on a fake thing.
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But Hezekiah and the Semnites, they won't be, they won't be fake. They won't be fake like the godless religious people of Israel with all their shrines and altars.
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They want to have a fake confession like those who say they believe in Jesus, but won't obey him. Those who lean on the
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Lord in truth, in other words, really like Hezekiah, they're saved.
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Because they will lean on the Lord. Notice that in verse 21. Because they lean on the
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Lord, I'll say it in Hebrew, shir jashub, does that sound familiar?
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Isaiah's first son, who was a sign. There are sons who are signs. Verse 21, he spelled it out here for us in English.
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For in Hebrew, we read Hebrew, it would be easy to see. A remnant will return. That's what his first son was named.
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Now return, repent, it's the same word. They not only will return physically to the land so that a son will be given to them, to you a son is given, that they will repent and they will return to, who are they returning to?
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Here in verse 21. This is great, chapter 10, verse 21. Who are they returning to?
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A remnant will return to the mighty God. Wait, does that sound familiar too?
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Where's the mighty God from? Same phrase before, previous chapter. Remember who will be called the mighty
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God? To us, a son is born.
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He's given the remnant, the leftovers, who aren't destroyed by the judgment.
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That's an instrument in his hand, sure, but they won't be destroyed by it. They will repent. Maybe sometimes because of the judgment, they will turn to the son, to Emmanuel, to the wonderful counselor, to the mighty
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God. Christmas is about the father giving us the son, right?
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And the son is the mighty God. Then at a date, maybe we can remember in our own lives, maybe it was dramatic or maybe it wasn't, but then not only did the father give us the son in history, and the son is who in chapter nine?
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The mighty God. He gave us, we who are the remnant, he gave us the believers who lean not on our own understanding or who lean not on our morality or on our religion or whatever it is, but we lean on the
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Lord. The father not only gave us in chapter nine, the mighty
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God, but here in chapter 10, he gave us to the mighty
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God, to Jesus, to the son. He gave the mighty
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God us. So we return to him.
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That's why we return, because he gave us to him, right? There's a lot of giving going on here, isn't there?
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Jesus told us in John chapter six, verse 44, no one can come to me, to Jesus, unless the father who sent me, which he did on Christmas, draws him.
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That's how we come. That's how we repent. We return to the mighty
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God. How do we return to him? Because he gives us to the mighty
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God. And that's what's going on right now. Christmas is the past, it's fine to remember it. God gave the son once for all.
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Christmas is not relived every year. It's an historical event, it's done. Now the father, what he's doing now, he is in the process of giving us the remnant, the leftovers from all the nations, those he spared from judgment.
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He's giving us the remnant that will return to the mighty
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God, to the son. They repent, we repent, and we return to him, to Jesus.
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As for Israel, in verse 22, though they are, notice that currently in verse 22, they are now,
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Isaiah says, as the sand of the sea. So in other words, that promise way back to Abraham that his descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky, as many as the sand on the sea, that is pronounced as literally fulfilled here in Isaiah chapter 10.
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But only a remnant of them will return. In other words, only a remnant of them will repent and truly believe in the mighty
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God, in Jesus. And this verse is quoted in Romans chapter nine, verse 23, to explain what is going on now with the gospel.
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Why are not all the Jews returning and repenting and believing in Jesus, the mighty God? Is that like a detour?
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Is that an accident of history? It's kind of unplanned. He came offering them the kingdom, but they rejected it.
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And so, you know, kind of like that fictional Judas, you know, said, it's out of hand.
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And God's now kind of filling his time by saving some Gentiles until someday he'll return to going back to Israel, getting them to return to the mighty
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God. No, of course not. It was all according to plan, to take from the nations who were not
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God's people and add them to the Israelites who did return to the mighty God and make them one people of God.
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That's what he's planned. And notice at the end of verse 22, destruction is decreed.
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Okay, the king of kings has issued a decree, destruction for Israel.
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The Northern kingdom of Israel is completely wiped out and taken away. Judah is almost wiped out, but a remnant, a literal remnant is left over in Jerusalem.
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So that a son can be given back in chapter nine.
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And the son is wonderful counselor, mighty God. Well, from the remnant though, a son was given.
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Herod, the king tried to destroy that son, didn't he? He thought he was the king, he was in control.
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He had all the baby boys of Bethlehem killed just after Joseph had taken him to Egypt.
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And out of Egypt, God called his son, the true Israel.
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But still for Jesus, destruction was decreed for him.
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The result of that destruction of the true Israel, of Jesus on the cross, the result of that, look at that verse 22, destruction is decreed.
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The result is an overflowing of righteousness. Through that destruction of Jesus, we were made right according to plan.
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So here in verse 23, destruction is decreed by the king of kings on the non -remnant, those who will not return to the mighty
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God, or those who do not return to the son who has given destruction until he has made a full end of them, until he has put all his enemies under his feet, which literally, which brings us finally to judgment.
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The remnant brings us to the judgment, beginning of verse 24. Therefore, because he is right now saving a remnant and putting an end to the arrogant, he declares, oh, my people who dwell in Zion, in God's presence, where the temple was, presence of God was, be not afraid of the
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Assyrians. Be not afraid of the Assyrians. When they strike with a rod and lift up their staff, that symbol of power, of authority, against you, why not be afraid?
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You know, I don't think the rod of God's anger, because in verse 25, in a very little while, my fury will come to an end.
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Hey, wait, just last week, I thought chapter nine, I thought his hand was stretched out still.
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Remember that repeated over and over again? So we got the point. His hand is stretched out still.
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His anger never ceases. But here, his fury comes to an end. What's going on?
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But that, his hand stretched out still, that's for those who aren't his people, those who don't repent, those who aren't the remnant.
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For his people, for those who lean on him, those who turn to the mighty
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God, to the Son, his hand is not stretched out still.
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He vented his fury on his Son, on the cross.
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Remember, destruction was decreed for him, the
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Lamb of God. It was decreed from before the foundation of the world, so that at the judgment, we will hear, not that, not him saying, my hand is stretched out still.
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We will hear, be not afraid. My fury has come to an end.
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Destruction was decreed, not on you, but on him. So he continues, my anger will be directed, not on you, but at the destruction of those trying to destroy you.
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He wielded them as a weapon. They were his ax. They were his tool. He wielded, maybe today, cancer as a weapon, divorce, car wrecks, miscarriages.
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Arrest, maybe old age. Maybe his own law that convicts you of your sin.
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All kinds of weapons. And for a while, he lets it sting his own people too.
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But don't be afraid. Says in a little while, just a little while, the
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Lord will wield another weapon, says a whip against those weapons. You know, like Gideon slaughtered the enemy.
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He'll reign, his staff. Sure, it looks like Assyria has the staff for now, ruling over you, authority, power in this world now.
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But his staff, his scepter, the instrument of his kingdom will be over all the world, across the oceans.
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And he will guide his people like he did out of Egypt. He will guide them out of the threats of the world, like Israel through the
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Red Sea. The things that burdened you here, the diseases, even finally the death that maybe terrified you, that controlled you, that wore you down, that'll be lifted off.
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So don't be afraid. They're just God's instruments. Don't you know?
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He's wielding them all. They're under his control. They'll only do what he wants them to do.
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Now, sure, they'll look threatening for a while. You know, when that bad diagnosis comes back, when the problems seem to be getting worse, and you get that notice in the mail or delivered by a deputy, it looks very threatening for a while.
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And that's what they're warned in verses 28 to 32 that will happen. Again, these kind of place names that we wonder, what are these places?
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We don't know. But the Assyrians are coming closer, city after city, landmark after landmark, each one a little closer to Jerusalem.
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Be like for us today to say an invading army is coming through Florida. They'll pass through Georgia, cross over South Carolina, lodges in Charlotte for the night,
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North Carolina trembles. Inhabitants of Virginia flee for safety. And then they will stand on the
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Potomac shaking their fist at Washington. But still, the
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Lord says, don't be afraid. Sure, the enemy will shake its fist at you.
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It'll come close right outside your walls. Your enemy will try to overwhelm you.
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The world will tell you that, you know, you're on the wrong side of history. You're backwards. The flesh will feel like that it will take you into sin.
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The devil will rage and death itself will make you feel that it will destroy you.
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It will stand right outside your house, shaking its fist at you. But don't be afraid.
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Look, in verse 33, again, that grand title, the
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Lord God of hosts, the King of kings. He'll lop them off with terrifying power, power, terrifying to God's enemies, power to raise the dead.
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The emperors, the self -proclaimed kings of kings, the God of this world, the grim reaper, everything that appears so powerful for now, even the instruments the
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Lord used, they'll all be brought down, cut down, you know, like thorns before a bush hog.
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The majestic one will bring them down. So why don't we celebrate
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Christmas? You know, God's used a lot of instruments, a lot of great men, some great women, great events to steer history in the way that he wants it to go.
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But at Christmas, it wasn't just God wielding another tool like Sennacherib or even good
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King Hezekiah or Constantine or Charles Martel or even Martin Luther. It was God, God himself,
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Emmanuel, the Lord in human flesh given to us once for all so that now that the father, now the father is giving us to him, the mighty
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God. He decreed destruction to come on him so that it wouldn't have to come on us.
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So even if the army stands, the enemy stands right outside shaking his fist at us, we don't have to be afraid.
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He's the mighty God. He's the majestic one. He's the
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King of Kings. He's the director of history. His throne is forever and ever.
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He wields the scepter. He holds the kingdom. He's promised us as close as the enemies may come, he will cut them down and he will raise us up with Christ on that last day.