Do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be afraid, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you; I will help you;
I will uphold you with My righteous right hand. (Isa 41:10)
Big Idea:
God can uphold us in anything
so we trust him in everything.
We trust him anywhere we are. He is with us.
We do not fear. He is our God.
He will strengthen us, help us, and uphold us. He does everything we need. Sometimes it feels like you can’t even get up.
A theme in the book of Isaiah is standing firm in who God is and what he calls you to do. God is holy. He is far above us. Completely different, and we are to rest in who he is. We can stand firm in that. We are going to look at a passage that shows us we can trust in God. it comes to us in a significant event in the Bible.
If you think about significant moments in biblical history you may think about creation, the Israelites leaving Egypt, David and Goliath. We are looking at a significant deliverance today. It is the deliverance of Israel from the Assyrian General Sennacherib.
Assyria was making Israel pay tribute to them. King Hezekiah decided not to do that, so Assyria came to Israel with their army to conquer Hezekiah and the nation of Israel.
Text
In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. 2 And the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem, with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Washer’s Field. 3 And there came out to him Eliakim the son of Hilkiah,
4 And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours? 5 Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me? 6 Behold, you are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. 7 But if you say to me, “We trust in the LORD our God,” is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar”? 8 Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. 9 How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master’s servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? 10 Moreover, is it without the LORD that I have come up against this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it.'”
11 Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah said to the Rabshakeh, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”
12 But the Rabshakeh said, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and drink their own urine?”
13 Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! 14 Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you. 15 Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD by saying, “The LORD will surely deliver us. This city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” 16 Do not listen to Hezekiah. For thus says the king of Assyria: Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat of his own vine, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern, 18 Beware lest Hezekiah mislead you by saying, “The LORD will deliver us.” Has any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?
21 But they were silent and answered him not a word, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.” Isaiah 36:1-22
Hezekiah, Whats your plan.
-we are prepared. We have a wall.
-maybe not a big deal. 300,000 troops.
-maybe they will be nice.
This is a big problem. The Assyrians were a scary people.
Senarcherub had over 300,000 soldiers with him.
Hezekiah sends to Isaiah.
As soon as King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the LORD. 2 And he sent Eliakim, to the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz. 3 They said to him, “Thus says Hezekiah, ‘This day is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace; … 4 It may be that the LORD your God will hear the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to mock the living God, and will rebuke the words that the LORD your God has heard; therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left.‘” 5 When the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, 6 Isaiah said to them, “Say to your master, ‘Thus says the LORD: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the young men of the king of Assyria have reviled me. 7 Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.'” (Isaiah 37:1-7 ESV)
Hezekiah Prayer
Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD. 15 And he prayed… 16 “O LORD of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. 17 Incline your ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. … 20 So now, O LORD our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the LORD.” (Isaiah 37:14-20 ESV)
What God does.
And the angel of the LORD went out and struck down a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. 37 Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home and lived at Nineveh. 38 And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword. And after they escaped into the land of Ararat, Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place. (Isaiah 37:36-38 ESV)
God delivered them. Through a simple prayer. Hezekiah didn’t have the bigger army, didn’t have a lot of confidence. God is able to deliver his people. Deliver us from enemies. Deliver us from defeat. Deliver us from death.
The world power of Assyria comes up against a small nation and is completely defeated! God allowed them to do this work and then said that is far enough.
A cylinder found in Senacherub palace.
“As for the king of Judah, Hezekiah, who had not submitted to my authority, I besieged and captured forty-six of his fortified cities, along with many smaller towns, taken in battle with my battering rams. … As for Hezekiah, I shut him up like a caged bird in his royal city of Jerusalem. I then constructed a series of fortresses around him, and I did not allow anyone to come out of the city gates. His towns which I captured I gave to the kings of Ashod, Ekron, and Gaza.”
Never mentions the capture of Jerusalem. He caged Hezekiah in. Jerusalem would have been six times the size of Lachish. If he took Lachish these would have been called the Reliefs of Jerusalem. None of that. Says he handed over the towns he captured. He returned to Assyria and was killed by his own sons.
There is some spin. Nothing new under the sun.
We can stand firm in our faith. God can protect us. God stands by his promises.
There is nothing he cannot do. God made a promise that David would always have someone on the throne of Jerusalem. God stands by his promise. There are things in life that may come and go.
We are not promised that we won’t have hard time. We are not promised that there will be no adversaries. We are not promised that people won’t prevail over us. All of those could and may happen. But we are promised that in Jesus, nothing can separate us from the love of God. We are promised that not even death can keep us from that.
[For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39 NIV)
Who has something they are worried about? Will your team win the super bowl. Will your job provide for all your needs? Will your retirement be here. Will there be another war? Will Suzie talk to me at school tomorrow? Are your kids on a good path? Are your parents on a good path? Why is this person at work always making fun of me for my faith?
Big Idea:
Do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be afraid, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you; I will help you;
I will uphold you with My righteous right hand. (Isa 41:10)
God can uphold us in anything
So we trust him in everything.
When you have to stand up in class and give a presentation and the class looks like a bunch of barbaric Assyrians. When another student doesn’t like you and feels like Sennacherib coming after you. When all your plans have failed.
