All right, brethren, we're gonna
begin service. And our text this evening is
rather lengthy, so I'm going to read it now because we're
not going to go through every verse of the text tonight. And it's found in Isaiah 37.
Isaiah 37. Can you make it a degree cooler? So Isaiah 37, beginning of verse
one, and we'll read to the end. And it came to pass when King
Hezekiah heard that, heard it, heard what we read last week,
what the king of Assyria was saying, that he was going to
take Jerusalem. When he heard it, that he rent
his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into
the house of the Lord. And he sent Eliakim, who was
over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of
the priests, covered with sackcloth, unto Isaiah the prophet, the
son of Amos. And they said unto him, Thus
saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and
of blasphemy, for the children are come to the birth, and there
is not strength to bring forth. In other words, we're helpless. We're helpless. It may be the
Lord thy God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of
Assyria, his master, hath sent to reproach the living God, and
will reprove the words which the Lord thy God hath heard.
Wherefore, lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left.
So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, and Isaiah said
unto them, Thus shall ye say unto your master, Thus saith
the Lord, Be not afraid. Be not afraid of the words that
thou hast heard wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria
have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast upon
him, and he shall hear a rumor, and return to his own and I will
cause him to fall by the sword in his own land." So Rabshakeh
returned and found the king of Assyria warring against Libna,
for he had heard that he was departed from Lachish. And he
heard saying concerning Tirhaka king of Ethiopia, he is come
forth to make war with thee. And when he heard it he sent
messengers to Hezekiah saying, Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah
king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God, in whom thou trustest,
deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand
of the king of Assyria. Behold, thou hast heard what
the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands by destroying
them utterly, and shalt thou be delivered. Have the gods of
the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed, as
Gozen, as Haran, as Rezif, and the children of Eden which were
in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath,
and the king of Arphid, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim,
Hena, and Iva?" And Hezekiah received the letter from the
hand of the messengers and read it. And Hezekiah went up unto
the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah
prayed unto the Lord, saying, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel,
that dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone.
Of all the kingdoms of the earth, thou hast made heaven and earth. Incline thine ear, O Lord, and
hear. Open thine eyes, O Lord, and
see, and hear all the words of Sennacherib which hath sent to
reproach the living God. Of a truth, Lord, the kings of
Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their countries,
and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were no gods,
but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. Therefore they
have destroyed them. Now therefore, O Lord our God,
save us from the hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may
know that thou art the LORD, even thou only. Then Isaiah the
son of Amos sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD God
of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib
king of Assyria, this is the word which the LORD hath spoken
concerning him. The virgin, the daughter of Zion,
hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn. the daughter of
Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. Whom hast thou reproached
and blasphemed, and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice,
and lifted up thine eyes on high, even against the Holy One of
Israel? By thy servants hast thou reproached the Lord, and
hast said, By the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the
height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon, and I will
cut down the tall cedars thereof, and the choice fir-trees thereof.
And I will enter into the height of his border, and the forest
of his carmine. I have digged in drunk water,
and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers
of the besieged places. And the Lord asks him, Hast thou
not heard long ago how I have done it, and of ancient times
that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass
that thou shouldest be to lay waste defensed cities into ruinous
heaps." In other words, he's deflating the pride of the king
of Assyria to say, it's only by me that you are able to even
conquer these nations. I made them to be weak before
you, and that's how you defeated them, but now you're coming against
me and despising my name. And so he says, Therefore, their
inhabitants were of small power. They were dismayed and confounded.
They were as the grass of the field, and as the green herb,
as the grass on the housetops, and as the corn blasted before
it be grown up. But I know thy abode, and thy
going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me. Because
thy rage against me, and thy tumult is come up into mine ears,
therefore will I put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in
thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way which thou camest,
and this shall be a sign unto thee." So he tells Hezekiah what
he's going to do to him, and now he gives a sign to Hezekiah
whereby he shall know that the Lord is with him. He says, you
shall eat this year such as groweth of itself, and the second year
that which springeth of the same, and in the third year sow ye
and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruit thereof. And
the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again
take root downward and bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem
shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of Mount
Zion, the zeal of the LORD of hosts, shall do this. Therefore
thus saith the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, He shall
not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come
before it with shields, nor cast a bank against it. By the way
that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come
into this city, saith the Lord. For I will defend this city to
save it for mine own sake and for my servant David's sake.
Then the angel of the Lord went forth and smote in the camp of
the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand, and when they arose
early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria
departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. And it
came to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god,
that Adramelech and Sherezer his sons smote him with the sword,
and they escaped into the land of Armenia, and Esarhaddon his
son reigned in his stead. And it's likely that The reason
his two sons smote him, they were believed to be the eldest
sons, and the king of Assyria, Sennacherib, having seen the
defeat of his army, just utterly wiped out, asked his wise men,
what happened? What do you think went wrong?
And they told him, well, this is the God of Abraham, who offered
his son to God. He was going to kill his son,
And they misunderstood, of course, but they thought that if, well,
he believed that, well, perhaps if I slay my two sons, if I offer
both my oldest sons to my god, Nisroch, then he will overpower
their god and fight for me. And that's probably why they
smote him. I mean, it could have just been
the shame of their dad, but they would have been next in line
to rule. So it's believed, perhaps, that that's why they did that. All right, well, let's pray,
and then we'll go to the message. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for the grace that we see on display
for your people. Lord, truly, you are a God who
is merciful, kind, and gracious to those whom you've set your
love upon, to those who you've delivered from darkness and from
death and cause them to be helpless in themselves and have no hope
in themselves, but find it all in your salvation in your Son,
Jesus Christ. And Lord, we too, like Hezekiah
and the children of Jerusalem, the remnant of Jerusalem, Lord,
we too are helpless and powerless over our enemy and unable to
to overcome the sin and the evil and the darkness in our own hearts
and in this flesh. But Lord, where we are weak and
where we fail, Lord, you are always able. And you triumph
over darkness and triumph over evil. And Lord, you have triumphed
over our enemies on the cross when you laid down your life
to put away the sins of your people. Lord, we thank you for
your great sacrifice and your willingness and faithfulness
to lay down your life to obtain eternal salvation for us who
have nothing to give to you, no means of saving ourselves
or earning this righteousness or earning this favor from you.
But Lord, as sinners and beggars, we come before you seeking your
mercy and grace, and that you would pour out your spirit upon
us and cause us to hear the word of grace. And Lord, we pray that you would
look upon our nation. Lord, you hear and see the sin
which is so prevalent now, and the warring and the words and
the violence and the coldness in the hearts of the people,
and that the love of many has grown cold, and that there are
evil things being done. Lord, we ask that you would have
mercy upon us. It seems like a complex issue
to us, and anything we do and anything that the politicians
do seems to be the most foolish and ignorant thing to be done.
And so, Lord, we confess that we can't work our way out of it, and we
can't make laws to get ourselves out of it, but Lord, we ask that
Your Spirit, Lord, You would turn from judgment upon this
nation, and that You would bring a spirit of peace upon us, and
that You would settle the people, cause us to find peace, especially
in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we would hear the gospel, be
fed, and that a great many would be delivered from darkness in
this time. Lord, that you would call out
your people from darkness, bring them into
the churches, and that you would prepare our hearts. For Lord,
it seems like dark days are ahead for the nation. but we know that
you are able to provide for your people, even as we see here in
our passage tonight, Lord, that you would take these words and
teach us and strengthen us and comfort us, that we would not
be afraid of the enemy, that we would look to you and rejoice
in your salvation and be made to see your arm of salvation
revealed to the people. And Lord, you know, our trouble
concerning a building. You know, Lord, that we have
no place public where we can meet as of now. And Lord, we
know how important it is that the people have a public place
to come and worship and hear the gospel preached faithfully
concerning your son Jesus Christ and what he has accomplished.
So Lord, we ask that you would provide for us, that you would
give us wisdom and direction to know where you would have
us to be. that you would close doors where they are to be closed
and open them where they are to be opened, and that you would
give your people the vision, Lord, to behold Christ and to
serve and minister the people where you would have us to be.
We pray this in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen. Okay, brethren. So our text tonight
is Isaiah 37. And there's 38 verses in this
chapter, so we're not going to be reading or commenting on all
of these verses here. But this is a continuation of
what Isaiah did in departing from writing of prophecy, specifically,
and now records an account of the history of the church there
when Hezekiah was king of Judah. What we see in this chapter,
as we were going through it, is that it's actually a chapter
which typifies or pictures the salvation of the church. This is how the Lord saves every
one of his children. Each one of his children are
saved in this way, where we see the Lord delivering us from our
own corrupt, defiled flesh with its foolish ideas and darkened
and corrupt ideas and it turns us to behold and to see the deliverance
of our God, to find salvation in him. And so the other thing
that we see is that God himself is going to gain all the glory
in the salvation of his people. It's not gonna be us boasting
and bragging of what we've done to save ourselves. and how we've
convinced God to save us, but rather we're gonna behold and
see that it's God who in grace and mercy has stooped down and
been merciful and gracious to us, even though we ourselves
don't deserve it. And, you know, many want to know,
well, how can I be saved? I have troubles, I have fears,
and I don't know what to do about them. How can I be saved? And they'll go so far as to acknowledge
that they are lost and confused concerning the things of God,
but they don't know how to be saved. They don't know how, to
use the vernacular of many in our day, how do I get saved? They wanna know, how can I get
saved? And while therein lies the problem,
just saying that betrays the fact that we don't have spiritual
knowledge concerning the things of God. We don't know how to
get ourselves saved because we don't have the power or the knowledge
in us to get ourselves saved. And that's what the Lord is showing
in his word. Naturally we may not see that
or believe that, but the Lord shows us the truth of it in his
word. And so the reason why we don't
know how to get ourselves saved, and the reason why we come to
a wall at some point and realize I don't know what to do here
anymore to save myself, it's because salvation is not of man's
works. It's not something that he has
in himself to to save himself. So that what we find is that
it's God who in grace saves helpless sinners. He saves helpless sinners
who cannot save themselves. He brings them to see that. And
so salvation is a work of God in which he works repentance
in the heart. And what I mean by repentance
is he's the one who turns us from going on in our dead works
of religion or dead works of righteousness. He's the one who
turns us from trusting in those things. He'll bring us to see
that these things cannot save us and that we're going nowhere
fast. And he turns us from those dead works and turns us to his
salvation he provided in his son, Jesus Christ. So that's
what I mean by repentance. It doesn't mean you stop doing
certain things and start doing other things. I mean, yes, you
do, but it's not of you. It's not of your power and it's
not the way man teaches it typically. They teach you, well, stop doing
that and start doing this and then you'll be saved. No, it
still works. The Lord turns us from trusting
dead works to believe on Christ, to believe that the salvation
that God has provided in his son. All right, so tonight, we
enter into another chapter of history here to witness the repentance
that God has worked in the heart of Hezekiah. We will see that,
that God has given him repentance, turning him from dead works to
fall upon, to call upon, to cast himself upon the mercy and grace
of God. And then we see the Lord's deliverance
to him and to his people. to the people there in Jerusalem. And it's all done for his great
namesake. All right? Now I've titled this,
Have You Heard? Have You Heard? And if you read
the whole chapter, you'll see there's a whole lot of hearing
and seeing going on and asking whether you've seen or heard.
And we're not gonna touch every verse, but I do believe it's
a relevant title to this message. Have You Heard? And first we'll
look at how the Lord turned Hezekiah from the flesh. Then we'll see
the prayer that he asks Isaiah to pray with them for the remnant
of his people. And then we'll close with seeing
what the Lord did in delivering his people. All right, so turned
from the flesh. Now, those who would know the
truth, you that would know the truth, you that would know peace,
you that would know the comfort of salvation, know first this,
that salvation is the work of God. Salvation is the work of
God. And to those who don't yet believe
or have the comfort of the Lord in this truth, that's a fearful
thing. They think, what do you mean?
Cast all my care and all my confidence on the Lord? You're telling me
to stop doing and to call out upon the Lord Jesus Christ, mercy
in Him, for grace in Him, and trust that God is going to save
me? Is that really what you're asking
me to do? And that's a fearful thing to
those who don't know the comfort of the Lord and asking for his
mercy. But in fact, in Proverbs 1 verse 7, we're told that the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. So you that would
know this of the Lord, it's the fear of the Lord. That is the
beginning of knowledge. So if we know something of the
Lord, it begins by us venturing upon him, by casting all our
hope and care upon him, leaning upon him and trusting him to
the end for all things, believing that what he has said in his
word, that he saves his people and he shall save his people
and provide for them richly and abundantly. It's a fearful thing,
but the Lord comforts all his people in this and brings them
to this point. And that's not to say that we
don't have struggles and trials and tribulations and afflictions.
You look at Paul, and when he went through, it was very hard. He was beaten and shipwrecked
and went hungry and naked, he said, and was cold many nights
for the sake of the gospel. But you also see how the Lord
gave him grace for that as well. and prepared him for that so
that he was made willing to do that for the sake of the elect. And so the Lord provides everything
we need in service to him. and certainly in the salvation
he's provided. Now, the reason why, if we would
know these things, it begins with fear of the Lord, meaning
trust the Lord, believe him, cast everything upon him, it's
because man himself has everything all twisted up in corruption. We're defiled in sin since the
garden, in Adam. When Adam fell, we were in his
loins, and that means when he sinned, we sinned, because when
he sinned, he became corrupted in death, and death passed upon
all his seed in him, so that every child after him born of
him came forth corrupted of the same sin. that he was guilty
of, and death by sin all entered the world there. And so man has
it twisted. In fact, we see this in John
chapter six, verse 28 and 29. The Jews who were here in Christ,
they saw the miracles that he had done when he made much food
out of a couple loaves and fish and fed a multitude, 5,000 men,
not including all the women and the children, And so they asked,
what can we do? What do we need to do to work
the works of God like we see you doing? We wanna be able to
do that. We wanna do these things and
provide for ourselves. But even if we could do that,
if we could whip up bread whenever in the wilderness and drink whenever
we're thirsty, That isn't salvation. Having that endless supply of
food and water in this life is not salvation. And so the Lord
turns the people from that, right? Well, they asked, let me say
what they asked, or they said unto him, what shall we do that
we might work the works of God? And so they wanted God as a co-pilot,
smiling and approving all that they do and everything that comes
into their mind. And the Lord turns them from that and takes
their eyes off of that carnal, dead work that they wanted to
do. And he turns them to Christ.
Because again, if we could do those things, that's not salvation.
So what if we could have an endless supply of bread and water in
this life. And he says, you know, in me, he turns them to himself
because in Christ, we ever feed upon the bread of heaven. And
by his spirit living in us, we ever have a fountain of living
waters flowing within us. It's spiritual. It's spiritual,
but it's eternal. It's not gonna end when we give
up this life here. It's eternal. And so Christ answered
and said unto them, This is the work of God. This is the work
of God that ye believe on him whom he has sent. And so he was
saying, it's not even your work, it's the work of God to do. And
it's to reveal faith in his people, to believe on him whom he has
sent. All right, so now as we saw last
week, Hezekiah was walking in the flesh. When he took the silver
and the gold, even robbing from the temple of God, when he took
those things and gave them to Assyria, it did nothing. It was
in the flesh, it didn't help his cause at all. Assyria still
came right up to the borders of Jerusalem and we're gonna
take it. And this is because the Lord's not going to honor
our works in the flesh. He's not going to approve of
them and say, well, all right, we'll use that and let that go.
No, he's going to have all the glory in salvation. And the Lord
tells us this in scripture. Turn over to Romans eight, verse
five. Romans eight, verse five. And
we'll just look at a few verses there. Here Paul by the spirit says,
They that are after the flesh do mind, or do observe, or do
practice the things of the flesh. Those that are after the flesh,
they mind the things of the flesh. But they that are after the spirit,
the things of the spirit. Now, Hezekiah was a child of
God, and we saw last week how he was minding the things of
the flesh. He was minding the things of
the flesh. And there's many that live and die like that, minding
the things of the flesh. Everything is just, they rise
up and they go to bed serving the flesh. That's all they think
about and all that they live for and strive for. But the Lord
will deliver his children of promise. They may go a whole
lifetime, serving the flesh. But if they're the Lord's, when
it's his time of love for them, he's gonna bring them to see
that all that lifetime was nothing. It didn't save them, it didn't
help them, it didn't deliver them from darkness. And he brings
them to the end of themselves, as painful as it is, but it's
for the good of those that he loves, that he brings them to
the end. And so he's gonna do this because
it's a grace, it's grace towards them. It says, for to be carnally
minded, if the Lord was to leave us in this, to be carnally minded
is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Now, here's why carnal mindedness
is death. Because the carnal mind is enmity
against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be. And by carnal mindedness, that
takes in all the things, things that we think of as sins in the
flesh, things that we already know of that, but even those
good things. The Lord says even the plowing
of the wicked is sin. Even doing a good work like going
out to the field to plow the field to feed your family is
of the wicked, it's sin, because it's not done in faith. They're
not thinking of the Lord, they're doing it for themselves, and
they're not serving the Lord. And so carnal-mindedness can
involve all those things that even we as people think of as
good things, whether they're religious things or non-religious
things, they're all carnal-mindedness because our heart and mind is
set on this life and this world and nothing else. And so, left
to themselves, we too would be just like all the other Jews,
confident in our works, confident in our righteousness, confident
in the things that we ourselves are doing, and the Lord's gonna
deliver us from that, confident in our spirituality, but the
Lord breaks us of all those things, all right? And then Paul says
at the end there, so then they that are in the flesh cannot
please God. Those that are trusting in the
flesh, trusting in their goodness, trusting in their works of righteousness,
trusting in what they've done or haven't done, he says they
cannot please God. There's one that pleases God,
and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Even me standing here preaching
to you of Christ isn't a good work that saves me. My hope is
in the Lord Jesus Christ. and his blood cleanses me from
all sin. That's my hope and my confidence,
not in what I'm doing in serving the Lord. It's the Lord Jesus
Christ himself. So our God saves his children
from that darkness, from that death, and delivers them out
of it. And this is what we see that
the Lord did with Hezekiah. He granted Hezekiah repentance
so that he heard, after he gave all that gold and silver, he
heard What Rabshakeh said, he heard the threats because he
still came up to Jerusalem and said what he said, but this time,
having been granted repentance in the heart by the Lord, he
realized, my fleshly works haven't done nothing for me, and he was
turned to the Lord. It says in verse one, back in
our text, Isaiah 37, one, and it came to pass when Hezekiah
heard it, heard what Rabshakeh said, that he rent his clothes
and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the
Lord. And then he sends two prominent
men. These were not just little peoples. These were important
people in his court that served him. It was Eliakim and Shebna
and they heard Reb Sheka speak. And so they were sent to Isaiah
and they tell Isaiah what has been said. They said unto him,
verse three, thus saith Hezekiah, this day is a day of trouble
and a day of rebuke and of blasphemy. and for the children are come
to the birth and there is not strength to bring forth. And so they were desperate and
they were afraid. They saw a great army. There
was at least 185,000 men outside their walls there at that time. And so all their fleshly ideas,
all their wisdom and all their works up to that point had failed
and they were helpless, they were afraid. They were broken
and brought to the end of themselves. And I think many of us can relate
to that because I know many times I've had issues or problems or
trials, and I can honestly say I'm just going through them and
handling them as I would in the flesh, not thinking of anything,
but everything just fails, fails, fails, or gets worse and worse
and worse. And then I'm brought to say,
oh, I've totally forgotten the Lord. I haven't even sought the
Lord in this. I was walking in the flesh. And
it's humbling to be brought down like that, to see that all my
best efforts and everything that I thought was good and everything
that I thought was going well suddenly isn't. And we're stripped
there before the Lord and have nothing to hide behind. And we're
just naked before him. But the Lord's brought us to
that point to show us our absolute need of Him, that we could only
find that grace and comfort in Him. And so they could turn to
no one but God, otherwise they were going to perish. And so
the other thing that we see here is that he went into the house
of the Lord. And it's not because that place
was necessarily any more spiritual or a more godly place there,
but it was to do it publicly. He rent his clothes, and when
the people, when the king would rent his clothes, it would spread
through the whole land there that the king has rent his clothes.
That means there's trouble, and he went to the house of the Lord
publicly so that they all knew and heard that the king knew
that they were in great trouble. And it was helpful to them because
then they would know and they too would begin to seek the Lord. And he went up there and sackcloth,
he rent his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth. And so
it's good. And so we see how even the Lord
uses these things, these public things, even for prominent people
to be humbled before us. because it reminds us as well
that we really do need the Lord, and we can't do this on our own. And if we're his, he's not gonna
let us do it on our own. He's going to bring us low in
ourselves, we'll be humbled under his hand, and he'll lift us up
in his due time when he deems it best. And so I like what John
Gill said on this. He said, trouble should never
keep us from the house of the Lord. It should never keep us
from, but it should bring us to the house of the Lord. If
you're in trouble, don't use that as an excuse that I need
to take this day on Sunday or when you have an opportunity
to serve the Lord to organize your life or to do something
good. Go hear the gospel, be fed, be
nourished spiritually with the gospel of Christ because being
fed and nourished and strengthened by Him, you'll be able to serve
those and minister to others who have need of being ministered
to. Now, after this work of repentance,
which the Lord revealed, worked in Hezekiah, he asks Isaiah to
pray. So this brings us to a prayer
for the remnant. Now, I can't help but feel the
burden that Hezekiah must have felt under the chastening hand
of the Lord. He knew he did wrong. When you
know you've done wrong, it's hard to go to the Lord. It's
hard to turn to him because sometimes the chastening is so severe that
you feel like you're not saved. You feel like you've never known
the Lord, or how could I be so foolish to do the things that
I've done? And you could feel it, that Hezekiah
feels a burden here because he doesn't say, my God, pray to
my God or pray to our God. He says, would you pray to thy
God, Isaiah, right? He's going to the prophet Isaiah
and he says, thy God. Look at verse four there. He
said, it may be the Lord thy God will hear the words of Rabshakeh,
whom the king of Assyria, his master, hath sent to reproach
the living God, and will reprove the words of the Lord thy God,
which the Lord thy God hath heard. Wherefore, lift up thy prayer,
for the remnant that is left. And when I read that and saw
that, I was thinking about him saying, thy God, it made me think
of the preciousness that we have in Christ. Christ is precious
to his people because our Lord and Savior came willingly leaving
his throne. He, like this king here, went
in sackcloth. That's just a picture, a type
of what Christ did in laying aside his glory and taking upon
him this flesh. the likeness of sinful flesh,
yet himself being without sin, and he came and dwelt among us,
and so in that he came and was perfect, he made himself, he
is a fit and perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God, sent to take
away the sins of his people, to die in their place as their
substitute, as their surety, to pay the debt of righteousness
that we owe and cannot pay. And by His blood, He cleansed
us of our sins, cleansed us of our guilt, removed the condemnation
and the wrath and anger of God against us, that we might know
Him and be reconciled to Him and have peace with God. And
He did this for us while as yet we were yet enemies in our minds. and yet enemies against God and
living in the flesh, which is enmity against God. And so he
did this and we see in that what a friend we have in the Lord
that he would do this for us, that he would do this for those
people whom he loved from before the foundation of the earth.
And his blood speaks better things than that of Abel, right? Abel's
blood was shed in the field by his brother who killed him. And
his blood cried out for justice and for wrath to be executed
against his murderer. But Christ was murdered, he allowed
himself to be killed, and his blood speaks better things, for
his blood cries peace. and righteousness, and his blood
covers his people and delivers them from their sins. And so
rather than justice and wrath, we have peace with God through
the blood of Jesus Christ. And though we feel the rod of
chastening, and we look at how we've acted, how foolish and
brash we've been, and find ourselves in great straits, being overwhelmed
by just the whole predicament that we find ourselves in, We're
reminded in Christ that if any man sin, we have an advocate
with the Father, even Jesus Christ, the righteous, because He is
our righteousness. We who have no righteousness,
He is the righteousness of His people. He's the righteousness
of the helpless sinner who has no righteousness of their own.
And in Hebrews 12 11, we're told, now no chastening for the present,
seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth
the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised
thereby." In other words, God brings chastening upon us for
our good, right? He's stripping us of that self-confident,
cocky, attitude that we have by nature in ourselves that we
feel our need of Him. Wherefore, remembering this,
lift up the hands which hang down in the feeble knees, and
make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame
be turned out of the way, but let it rather be healed." And
the straight paths that we make for our feet is calling upon
Christ. It's believing Him. It's having
faith in Him. It's not running out and doing
a bunch of good works to try and earn favor with God. it's
believing the Lord. And if he lays it on your heart
to help another and to do good works, great, but that's not
why we're saved or what keeps us saved. All our salvation is
fixed in the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone. Now to those who
have other options and other plans and other ideas to work
out, they don't hear this word. This word isn't for them. This
word is to those who are destitute of hope, who have no other salvation
that they can find. And so the Lord, He is the Christ,
He's the Messiah, He's the Savior for the hopeless. Pray to Him,
come to Him, right where you are, believe on Him. Confess
your need and ask His forgiveness and pray to Him for all who seek
His salvation, who seek deliverance for their sins, they find it
in Him. He's a gracious and merciful God to those who come to him.
And so all the chastening that you felt and experienced, it's
been to strip you of your foolishness in the flesh, to deliver you
from the help that you were, little bits that you found in
the flesh, and to make you see your need of the only salvation
that God has provided in Jesus Christ. You know, it wasn't even
until there was an earthquake. If you remember when Paul and
Silas were in the jail in Philippi, that Philippian jailer heard
them singing and speaking the things of God. But it wasn't
until there was an earthquake that he was awakened and he saw
that the jail cells were open and he was about to take his
own life because he knew the Romans were gonna take it for
him the next day when the prisoners were gone. And Paul said, stay
your ham, don't harm yourself, we're all here. And then he ran
in and said, sirs, what must I do to be saved? When he was
brought to the end of himself, that's when he cried out, what
must I do to be saved? And they said simply this, believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved in all your
house. Believing on Christ, that's the
work of God, that he works in his people. And so, This prayer
here is unto the Father, and it's for the remnant that is
left. That is, this is a chosen, blood-redeemed
people for whom Christ came, and that he's faithfully wrought
salvation for them. And so the hope of this remnant
is that the Lord has heard, right, wherewith the servants of the
King of Assyria have blasphemed his name. And he did that when
he likened the God of, Hezekiah that when he likened the true
living God the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob When he likened
them to just being just like all the other false gods right
and all the other gods that that are nothing and don't help their
people and You know the what we should do is pray to him cast
all your all upon him and He'll hear you if it when it's for
his glory. He will hear you and He will
answer and deliver you from your sin and the condemnation and
the lack of peace that you have in your heart. He restores peace.
He gives peace and salvation to His people. So pray to Him,
trust Him, cast your all upon Him. believe on him because he
is salvation. All right, now this brings us
to what the Lord did. So first the Lord did hear and
he did answer by Isaiah. Verse seven says, behold, I will
send a blast upon him and he shall hear a rumor and return
to his own land and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his
own land. And so there is a rumor that
Sennacherib heard. All right, we know there was
a rumor concerning Ethiopia attacking him. But I don't know that he
heard that, really heard that, until the Lord executed judgment
against his army. Then he heard it. He heard the
rumor because he knew that he was stripped down and could not
take on the Ethiopians. He couldn't even take on Hezekiah
and the people there in Jerusalem. When he heard of Ethiopia the
first, he tried to provoke Hezekiah to quickly give in. He sent another
letter, that's what that whole long chapter is, he sends another
letter saying, don't trust, don't be deceived by your God, which
is the words of the devil right there, just like he said to Eve,
but don't be deceived by him, he's not gonna be able to deliver
you. But rather than answering that letter, Hezekiah went and
spread it before the Lord. He took a right to the Lord.
Verse 17, he said, see and hear all the words of Sennacherib,
which hath sent to reproach the living God. And so the Lord responded
to this, we see in verse 35. He said, I will defend this city
to save it for mine own sake and for my servant David's sake,
which is a type of Christ, because Christ must come through the
Jews there. And then we read the angel of
the Lord went out, verse 36, went forth, and smote in the
camp of the Assyrians 185,000, and when they arose early in
the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." Now that's
an astounding number of people to just be wiped out in one night
by the angel of the Lord. And it's a picture, it reminds
us of the multitude of peoples on the broad road which leadeth
to destruction. and have no mind or thought or
knowledge of God. They have no fear of God, and
they're just perishing in their sins. And we read here, same
with Sennacherib, king of Assyria. He, seeing all this, departed
and went and returned and dwelt at Nineveh. There was no repentance
granted to Sennacherib. And it came to pass, as he was
worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adramelech and
Sarezer his sons smote him with the sword, and they escaped into
the land of Armenia, and his son reigned in his stead." So
the Lord did that, right? That's one way in which he provided
salvation and showed himself for Hezekiah and the people there. But he did one other thing for
Hezekiah. He gave him a sign in verse 30. Look there, and
this shall be a sign unto thee, ye shall eat this year such as
groweth of itself, and the second year that which springeth of
the same, and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards,
and eat the fruit thereof. Now if you think about it, these
people were under a siege, and we're not in an agrarian society
anymore, so we don't necessarily think about this, depending on
when they were there, it was likely around harvest time, or
I'm sorry, at planting time, which means the people wouldn't
have been able to go out into the seed or maybe, or to seed
the fields, to plow the fields and to seed them, or maybe they
got the seed, but they weren't able to do anything to tend it
because they came. You know, we even see that with,
you know, with COVID-19 recently in China, They weren't able to
go out there and sow many of their fields because at the time
when they should have been out there, they were all locked away,
many of them, or couldn't get a lot of products. So now we
kind of get a sense as to what that could be like. And so these
people, they couldn't have done anything. And the Lord said,
I'm going to produce, I'm going to provide for you. What grows
of the land, you'll eat and it'll sustain you. And what grows up
the next year, you'll eat and it'll sustain you. It was probably
a sabbatical year where they weren't supposed to sow, the
field that year, so maybe that's what it was, and then the third
year they would go out and plant. And he says, verse 32, the remnant
that has escaped of the house of Judas shall again take root
downward and bear fruit upward. And so this remnant that's escaped,
the Lord says has escaped, they didn't escape the trouble, they
didn't escape having the hardship going through the fear of the
army coming against them, to seeing that being driven from
their homes and rushing into Jerusalem to protect themselves
because they probably fled from some of the defense cities and
whatnot. And it's just like we didn't escape from the sin that
Adam committed and the misery which has come upon us all as
a result of sin and death entering The earth, we haven't escaped
that. We've experienced that and gone through it. But what
we have escaped is the wrath and the damnation of God against
those who love not the truth and don't believe his son, don't
trust his salvation. And so, like those fields, which
had no input from a human, right? They didn't go out there and
plant. They couldn't get out there and plant. They couldn't plow.
They couldn't work and bring forth fruit. That's a picture
of us. We can't, by our hands, by our
works, bring forth fruit unto God. It's all of grace, and that's
what the Lord is saying there. It's a work of grace, which He
works in His people, that though you can't produce righteous,
acceptable fruit with Him, The Lord, by his grace, by his spirit,
is able to produce righteous, acceptable fruit, because it's
made righteous and acceptable by the blood of Jesus Christ. And so he's saying that all the
righteous shall be rooted in the root of righteousness, which
is the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says, verse 32, and we'll
close with this, for out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and
they that escape out of Mount Zion The zeal of the Lord of
hosts shall do this. And so you that would know the
Lord, know that it's the zeal of the Lord that works salvation
in the hearts of his people. So I pray the Lord will bring
you to see that and to call upon him. All right, let's pray. Our
gracious Lord, we thank you, Father, for your mercy. We thank
you for your grace and your salvation in your son, Jesus Christ. Lord,
cause us to hear your word. Cause us to hear the gospel. Cause us to see the only salvation
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And give us repentance from dead
works and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Because Lord, there is
no other salvation but in him whom you've provided for this
very purpose. We ask this in the name of our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.