All right, good evening, brethren.
We're gonna begin our service this evening. Our text is in Isaiah 36, and
I'm gonna read the whole chapter now, as we're not gonna go verse
by verse. We're not gonna cover every verse,
but the meaning of what's recorded here. So Isaiah 36, let's look at all
22 verses. Now it came to pass in the 14th
year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against
all the defensed cities of Judah and took them. And the king of
Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto King Hezekiah
with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of
the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field. Then came
forth unto him Eliakim, Hilkiah's son, which was over the house,
and Shevna the scribe, and Jehoah, Asaph's son the recorder, and
Rabshakeh, said unto them, say ye now to Hezekiah, thus saith
the great king, the king of Assyria, what confidence is this wherein
thou trustest? Notice he didn't even refer to
Hezekiah as a king, he just spoke of his king and his great king. He said in verse five, I say
sayest thou, but they are but vain words, I have counsel and
strength for war. Now on whom dost thou trust that
thou rebellest against me? Lo, thou trustest in the staff
of this broken reed on Egypt, whereon if a man lean it will
go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to
all that trust in him. But if thou say to me, we trust
in the Lord our God, is it not he whose high places and whose
altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem,
ye shall worship before this altar? Now therefore give pledges,
I pray thee, to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give
thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set
riders upon them. How then wilt thou turn away
the face of one captain, of the least of my master's servants,
and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen. And
am I now come up without the Lord against this land to destroy
it? The Lord said unto me, Go up against this land and destroy
it. Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rav Sheki, Speak,
I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language, for we
understand it. and speak not to us in the Jews'
language in the ears of the people that are on the wall. But Rabshakeh
said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to
speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men
that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung and
drink their own piss with you? Then Rabshakeh stood and cried
with a loud voice in the Jews' language and said, Hear ye the
words of the great King, the King of Assyria. Thus saith the
King, Let not Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able
to deliver you. Neither let Hezekiah make you
trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us.
This city shall not be delivered into the hand of the King of
Assyria. Hearken not to Hezekiah, for thus saith the King of Assyria,
Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me.
and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree,
and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern. Until I come
and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn
and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, beware lest Hezekiah
persuade you, saying, the Lord will deliver us. Hath any of
the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the
king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Haman and
Arphad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim,
and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who are they
among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land
out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out
of my hand? But they held their peace, and
answered him not a word, for the king's commandment was, saying,
Answer him not. Then came Eliakim the son of
Hilkiah that was over the household, and Shibnah the scribe, and Joah
the son of Asaph the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes
rent, and told him the words of Rabshakeh. Let's pray before we begin. Our
gracious Lord, Father, we thank you for your grace. Lord, that
we see that though we ourselves are full of darkness and sin
and folly and would depart from you, Lord, we thank you for the
grace that you show to your servants, to your children, to those whom
you love, and you turn them away from the flesh and deliver them
unto Christ. Lord, that you deliver us in
grace and in mercy, apart from any works that we have done.
Lord, that you are pleased to exalt your Son in our midst.
Father, we ask that you would bless us now. Lord, that you
would give us of your Spirit, even as we are gathered together
here in one Spirit and in one mind, to worship our God and
Savior, Jesus Christ. Lord, we ask that you would bless
us. For without you, Lord, we meet in vain. But Lord, we ask
that you would pour out your spirit upon us and open our ear,
cause us to hear your word. Lord, we ask, may we see Christ
Jesus, our Lord and Savior this night. And may we be made to
rejoice in his salvation, being delivered from the bondage of
sin and the change of darkness, Lord, that we might come into
the light and declare what God hath wrought for his people.
Lord, we ask that you would be with your people, each where
they are, that you would bless us and enable us to hear the
word and to receive it, that you would open our hearts and
prepare it to receive the word of our Savior. And Lord, turn
us from self, and Lord, Fill us with Thy Spirit. Lord, help those that are suffering
and struggling and weak and sorrowful. Lord, help them to find their
all in Christ. It's in the name of our Lord
and Savior that we pray. Amen. Okay, so our text is Isaiah 36,
and we'll be looking at across all the verses in this chapter,
roughly. Now, in the next several chapters,
what Isaiah does is he ceases to write about prophetical things. He stops recording the prophecies
that the Lord is giving him, and he does this to record history,
some history of Israel in their present day. And this should
really be relatable to the church of Christ because that's what
our God does for us, right? When he teaches us the truths
of the gospel, when he reveals his son Christ to us and causes
us to hear his precious word, and he nourishes the new man
which he has formed in his people of his spirit, after he's taught
them, he sends them out into the world and we begin to experience
the truth of his word so that we learn it not only in a head
knowledge, a textbook knowledge, but we learn it by experience
so that we know and understand our God, that we learn of him,
that we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. And so the Lord will provide
exercises of his own hand according to his own choosing, which are
always for her good. Her being defined as the church,
being defined as the one to them that love God, to them who are
the called according to his purpose. And so the truths of God are
proved through the experience that he brings his people through.
Now, tonight, what we'll see here, the scriptures that we'll
look at tonight together, we'll see that of our natural leaning,
what we do naturally, all right, the wisdom of our mind, the strength
of ourselves, our thoughts, what we trust in, we find that we
lean towards our own wisdom, and our own strength to help
us and to deliver us out of trouble, even though the Lord has shown
us that he himself is salvation, that he is our wisdom, that he
is our strength and our deliverer, and he's going to make sure that
we know this too, that we lean all upon him and not on ourselves,
because the children of God have a Savior who never forsakes them. The children of God have a Savior
who never forsakes them, even though they depart from Him and
forsake Him in unbelief. But He is a faithful Father to
His children. And so to you that hear me this
night, understand that we have a great God and Savior, the Lord
Jesus Christ, whom God has sent to save his people. And so to
the hopeless, those who have no strength of themselves, those
who have no wisdom of their own, to those who have been brought
to nothing and are hopeless, He says to us in Proverbs 3,
5-7, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto
thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him,
and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes,
fear the Lord, and depart from evil. And tonight we see that
the evil that we're speaking of here is trusting self rather
than the Lord, right? Trusting ourselves, trusting
our wisdom and seeking to deliver ourselves rather than seeking
the Lord. So I've titled this message,
When Flesh Fails. When Flesh Fails. And when I speak of flesh, I
mean what we are naturally of Adam. Well, we are born of our
parents. The wisdom and the intelligence
we have, the strengths we have, the gifts that we have, naturally
speaking, these things are the flesh. And I've titled this,
When Flesh Fails. All right, now, first one is
a break, as we see a break from prophetic recordings, and it's,
to record these important historical events in which we see that the
King of Assyria comes up to the very neck of Judah. Means he
comes up to, he's gone through his land and he's come right
up to the chief city. He hasn't overtaken Jerusalem
yet, but he's right up to the neck and he's surrounded it with
a great army. And this is just as the prophecies
that the Lord gave to Isaiah foretold. If you turn with me
back to Isaiah chapter eight, look back in Isaiah chapter eight,
and we'll look at verses seven and eight. He says, now therefore behold
the Lord. The Lord bringeth upon them. This means that it's the Lord's
divine will to bring upon his people these exercises, these
trials, to prove that which he has done for them. He's proving
it. in them what he's done. He's
showing his people what he's done, what he's accomplished
in them. And so the Lord bringeth upon, up upon them the waters
of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria. So
he's determined to bring the king of Assyria against his people. With all his glory, all the glory
of the king of Assyria, all his might and strength, his army,
and he shall come up over all his channels and go over all
his banks." So this king of Assyria is seeking to extend his reach,
his influence, his kingdom beyond what the Lord had appointed to
him. And we're told that he shall
pass through Judah and shall overflow and go over. He shall
reach even to the neck and the stretching out of his wings shall
fill the breadth of thy land, O Emmanuel. All right, so it
reaches even unto the neck. Now this prophecy was given in
the days of Ahaz before Hezekiah was even king. And so now after
many years, we're told here in Isaiah 36, let's look at verse
one and two. Now it came to pass in the 14th
year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against
all the defensed cities of Judah and took them. He easily took
all those cities that had walls and were defensed, that were
little fortifications, and he took them very easily. And the
king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish, one of the cities
there that he overtook, and he sent him up to Jerusalem unto
King Hezekiah with a great army, and he stood by the conduit of
the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field." Now,
our Lord has told us, he's shown us in his word that all his word
comes to pass, it does not fail. In fact, we saw in Isaiah 34
verse 16, he said, seek ye out of the book of the Lord and read,
no one of these shall fail. Not a single word of the Lord
shall fail. The flesh will fail, right? Our flesh will fail, our
will, what we think should happen, the way things should happen,
what we think is right, that shall fail. And the Lord will
see to it to show us that our flesh is not all sovereign and
all reigning and all powerful, but we are weak in ourselves
and unable to accomplish our will. But God is God, he is the
Lord and he accomplishes all his will. In fact, when it says,
and he stood by the conduit of the upper pool and the highway
of the fuller's field, there in verse two, This actually is
the same exact place where the Lord sent Isaiah with his son,
Sheer Jashub, to speak to King Ahaz, that's Hezekiah's father,
King Ahaz, the king before him, and it's when the Lord gave him
a sign, because the king himself rebelled against God and would
not give the sign. He gave the excuse saying, I'm
not going to tempt God, but it's because King Ahaz already had
a plan. He had his ideas. He had what
he thought was going to work and deliver him from the hand
of his enemies. And I'll read it to you. This
is what the sign that the Lord gave there at that conduit pool. to King Ahaz and to his people
there. Therefore, this is Isaiah 714,
therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. So, King Ahaz was glorying in
the other two kings, in the king Rezan, who was the king of Syria,
and he gloried in the son of Ramaliah over Samaria. And what the Lord was showing
us is that he did not believe God. He didn't trust the Lord.
He didn't seek the Lord for his wisdom and his salvation. And
so now here comes Hezekiah. This is Ahaz's own son. But we've heard and we know that
Hezekiah is a godly king, one who fears the Lord. And yet here
we see that he's already started down the path of his father before
him unbelief and in turning from the Lord. So in like manner of
his father's unbelief, he's guilty and committing the same evil,
the same evil as his father. Now turn with me, and we'll stay
here for a bit, to 2 Kings 18. 2 Kings 18. And this is why I'm saying that
he already started down that same path of evil as his father
Ahaz. 2 Kings 18, and we'll look at verses
13 through 16, and then make a few comments on these verses.
So back in our text, let me just say between verses one and two,
this is the text now of what's occurred between the taking of
the defensed cities by the king of Assyria." So he's come up
into Judah and he's taken the defense cities. And now this
happens before the army is sent up to Jerusalem. It says, now
in the 14th year of King Hezekiah, did Sennacherib king of Assyria
come up against all the fenced cities of Judah and took them.
And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish
saying, so before they came up from Lachish, Hezekiah already
sent to the king of Assyria himself. And he said, I've offended, return
from me. That which thou puttest on me
will I bear. And the king of Assyria appointed
unto Hezekiah king of Judah 300 talents of silver and 30 talents
of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the
silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the
treasures of the king's house. At that time did Hezekiah cut
off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from
the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave
it to the king of Assyria. So this response of Hezekiah,
when they came up and took the fence cities very easily, I might
add, we see right away that he's suffering from unbelief. He's
fearful, he's afraid because they just came in and just did
what they wanted there in the cities of Judah. He's going in
the same path as his father Ahaz. He's glorying in the king of
Assyria just as his father had glory in reason of Syria and
Babylon. the son of Ramaliah of Samaria.
And so the situation looks bad, it looks hopeless to him. And the first thing he does immediately
is to lean upon his own understanding. He didn't lean upon the Lord,
he leaned upon his own understanding. He didn't acknowledge the Lord
in all his ways, but he became wise in his own eyes. And he
thought, I know what I need to do to fix this. I'll appeal to
him to his mercy and to his grace. the king of Assyria, and I'll
just, I'll be willing to do whatever he says I have to do. So he even
went so far as to pillage the temple of God so as to appease
the king of Assyria, another man of flesh, just like himself. And so that's the weakness that's
revealed in us in the face of adversity. In our flesh, when
these trials come, our flesh would never believe God. Our
flesh is always willing to turn to our own wisdom, our own thoughts,
our own strength, and to get ourselves out of the trouble
that we feel we've created for ourselves or that has come upon
us. And the church, you know, the
world will do that. The world does that very comfortably.
That's all that they know. They don't have the Spirit of
God. All they are is flesh. They don't have any spiritual
light in them. They're not children born of
Christ. See, they're not born again,
so it's natural for them to trust in their own strength. But we
see it even in the children of God. This is Hezekiah here who's
done the same thing, because every one of us in this flesh
is sinner. We're a sinner. We're full of
sin and iniquity. We are but dust. And that's shown
to us, that we cannot save ourselves. And so the church here, Hezekiah
picturing the church, should turn to seek the grace and mercy
of God. We should beg for God's mercy. But instead we show that far
too often God is our last resort. He's the last one that we turn
to and the last one that we think of. And so with Hezekiah doing
this, it's actually amazing because here's where we begin to see
the sovereign God show grace and mercy to Hezekiah that was
never shown to Ahaz. Hezekiah is just like his father
Ahaz. He's going down the same path
of evil, but God shows mercy and grace to Hezekiah, right? So that though we ourselves depart
from the Lord, we that are his children, right? Those whom,
as we saw the last couple of weeks, those whom he foreknew,
meaning those whom God loved from all eternity before the
foundation of the world, we're told that he predestinated them.
And those whom he predestinated, he justified them. He sent Christ
to justify them on the cross. and those who are justified,
he calls them with that divine calling. Many hear the call,
the outward call, many have gone to church and heard messages
concerning Christ and salvation, but how few hear that call effectually
in the heart, delivering them from the bondage of sin and the
darkness of this nature. So that though we depart from
him, the Lord will never forsake his children. he will never be
turned from his promises in Christ. The prophet Malachi in 3.6 said,
for I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are
not consumed. So it's because the Lord is God
and that he is gracious and that he has provided salvation, he
doesn't change. He's not turned from that even
when we are turned from him. and they'll all turn from him,
we see his grace exercised upon his children and turning them
back to himself. And the Lord will for a time,
he will suffer us to do our own thing. He will allow it, he'll
suffer us to do our own thing because according to his purpose,
he's usually bringing us in it, he's always bringing us in it
to the end of ourselves. So that we are, as we're flopping
around and flailing around trying to save ourselves and do our
own thing, through that withering trial and through that adversity,
the pool of pride and self-conceit and self-righteousness is being
drained. So all we're left with is just
that muddy, wet mess of filth of our sin that we're in, having
no hope, no strength of ourselves. And so Hezekiah's strength, when
he did this, and he gave everything that he could give, and still
it didn't turn the king, he melted in the face of his enemies. And
it appears like he's just a gross hypocrite. And he is, he is,
he's a sinner. That's the beauty of the scriptures
is that the Lord's very, he doesn't pull any punches. He's very honest
in showing us what we are, what sinners we are, so that we can't
boast in Lord over another and say, well, look at me, I'm not
like you, I'm better than you. No, not at all. Every one of
us is a filthy sinner in need of the grace and mercy of God
shown to sinners alone in his son, Jesus Christ. And so for
one who professes to believe Christ, it doesn't look good.
And religion, when they see that, they're usually very quick to
condemn such in one, right, for their behavior. But the Lord
is showing us all what we are by nature and how quick we are
to turn to our own flesh to fix what only Christ himself is able
to fix and only what he himself must fix. Now let me just give
a couple of observations here in 2 Kings 18. First, Hezekiah
said to the king of Assyria, he said, I have offended thee,
or I have offended, return from me. So here he is apologizing
to the enemy. He's seeking to make peace with
this ambassador of evil. He's going to the enemy to make
peace with him rather than seeking for peace with God, rather than
seeking deliverance with God, rather than saying, Lord, I've
offended thee. What have I done, Lord? What would you have me
to do, Lord? Save me, have mercy upon me.
My enemies are coming up upon me, right? Even what we see today,
right? There's many in politics apologizing
for things that they necessarily weren't directly responsible
for, unless you look at their policies, perhaps. But they're
apologizing, and for all the apologizing they do, it's never,
ever enough. It's never enough. The second
thing we see here is that he stands ready to serve this master
of darkness. He says, that which thou puttest
on me will I bear. And then third, the burden that
was placed upon him was 300 talents of silver, 30 talents of gold.
And I did the, I looked it up and that comes to just about
22,000 pounds of precious metals, not ounces, but 22,000 pounds
of precious metals. So that's a lot and Hezekiah
paid it, right? And you might say, well, that's
great because it delivered him in his, Wisdom, he paid the price,
and it delivered him from being overtaken by his enemies. But
did it deliver him? No, it didn't, because here comes
this great army. The king took the money, said,
thank you very much, and sent his army right on up there, now
right to the very neck of Judah there, surrounding the city of
Jerusalem, to take it. And so, the flesh, we see, will never
save us. Our best works, our greatest
works, even our righteousnesses, our good works cannot save us. They don't make us accepted with
God. It's not how much good works
we do that saves us. None of us could ever achieve
that goal of perfection. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. And that's why God provided salvation. If there was a law that could
have saved us, God would have provided it. But the fact that
he sent his son shows us that this flesh cannot save ourselves,
cannot make us righteous before God. And that's the one with
whom we have to do. And so it'll never be enough.
All our works will never be enough to satisfy our enemies, just
as they won't satisfy the Lord. And so bow as you will before
the enemy, bow as you will before the masses screaming for everyone's
head, it's never ever enough, right? Proverbs says, hell and
destruction are never full, so the eyes of man are never satisfied. It's never going to be enough. But the grace of God in this
is that he showed this to Hezekiah. Hezekiah was brought to see this. Hezekiah, who's going down the
path of evil like his father before him, was brought to see
that all his works came to nothing and he was granted repentance,
so that the situation got more desperate. In the grace of God,
God turned it more desperate. He didn't allow it to turn the
heart of the king of Assyria, but brought him right up there
to where Hezekiah was, and that pool of self-confidence and self-will
was all drained out and empty before him, so that he saw, nothing
I've done has worked. Nothing I've done has worked.
And that brings us back to our text in Isaiah 36 now. So first
here, I'm not gonna go through every verse, but the first attacks
are directed more so against the ministers, the ministers
of the people. And so we see that and understand
that to be the ministers of the gospel. And so we read here in
Isaiah 36, Verse four, we would pick up Isaiah 36 verses four
through nine. Hezekiah is asked, why wasn't
he paying? Why did you stop paying that
which your father Ahaz used to pay the king? Because Ahaz used
to pay Assyria a lot and Hezekiah stopped paying him. And he asks,
are you trusting in Egypt? Why are you trusting in Egypt?
They're so weak. If you lean on Egypt, they'll
break and you'll suffer greatly for trusting in Egypt. And he
asks, are you trusting in God? And here's where Rabshakeh showed
his ignorance, but he still was casting it to the people of God
saying, oh, are you trusting in God? Well, look what you've
done. And he didn't realize that he's really speaking of the idolatry
that Hezekiah took away, but he says in verse seven, but if
thou say to me, we trust in the Lord our God, is it not he whose
high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away and
said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ye shall worship before this
altar? And I couldn't help but see the
correlation to the ministers of Christ. Because the ministers
of Christ do the same thing that Hezekiah did. We're called to
remove the trappings of religion. When you look at many churches
that go by the name of Christ, or much of religion, it's all
about religious trappings. presenting you with this facade
of religion to transport the natural up to a sense of the
divine, right? A sense of the spiritual thing.
It's to kind of take you out of the normal surroundings of
what you're used to and lift you up in some spiritual experience
in that sense. But that's what the ministers
of Christ remove and strip it down, remove all those things
that are binding people in dead works religion, thinking that
those things save and that those things please God or that God
is somehow pleased with the smoke of incense. that we're waving
around or doing some other religious service. And so we remove those
dead works and say, worship Christ alone. Look to the Lord Jesus
Christ alone. All who believe on him, all who
trust him shall never be ashamed, but they are delivered from their
sins. They are delivered from the condemnation
of their sins. So we declare we worship before
this altar, before Christ and Christ alone. All right, just
like that. And so the enemy intensifies
the attacks, because the last thing that the enemy wants is
for us to worship Christ alone, to trust Him, to believe God,
to believe His Christ, to believe His Savior, to rest all our hope
and confidence on Him, to be turned from self and believe
the salvation our God has provided in his son. And so the attack
intensifies in verse 10. He says, and am I now come up
without the Lord against this land to destroy it? The Lord
said unto me, go up against this land and destroy it. And so you
can see that when the Lord, when we are turned, when the Lord
brings us into the light of the gospel, and we see Christ our
Savior, and the Lord has turned us from dead works and trusting
lies and those things which are condemning us into hell, when
we're turned from that and turned to the living God to believe
Him, the attacks intensify, and that doubt comes in to cause
us to fear and think, Well, I'm having all this trouble now.
And the last thing I did was I used to do all these religious
things, and now I hope in Christ and Christ alone, and now everything's
falling apart. And everything's, I'm going into
great trials and great afflictions, and I thought it was gonna get
easier, but it gets harder and harder. And so we see how that
doubt, how the enemy uses these attacks to introduce this doubt
and to turn us back from Christ, to go back to the way things
were under the dead works of things that cannot save. And
so we see this, right? We know, we've seen people hearing
the gospel and believing the truth, right? Having tasted of
the Lord and even going so far as to be baptized and many who
are baptized and come up out of the waters, come up with a
sense of some depression sometimes because their hope was that doing
these religious works, that it was going to help them and save
them. But that's not our confidence.
It's not in what we do. It's in who we know, who we believe. Our confidence is in Christ,
and we believe that even who we believe is of the Lord and
not of this flesh. It's his work. It's his divine
grace and power which has given us life to behold our salvation. And so we've met people before
where they hear the truth, they come out of those dead works,
and they do these things and think everything's going to be
great now. And they're wondering why suddenly they're having all
this trouble and why they're not walking with pixie dust and
a little pep in their step and why things are suddenly going
astray and going wrong. And so they begin to question
whether faith and hope in Christ alone is sufficient to save them. And for those whose work is nothing
more but built upon rocky ground, right, those who whose hope isn't
connected to the root, which is Christ, but is a work of the
flesh, they're just excited in the flesh, they wither quickly
under the adversity and the persecution which comes to those who hope
in Christ. And fearing they've committed
some grave error in turning from their dead religious works, they
return back, they turn away from Christ and go back to their religious
vomit once again. and they look and they find that
peace because the enemy no longer cares. They're no longer in the
kingdom. Not that they ever were truly
in the kingdom, but from our perspective, they appeared, they
tasted of the Lord. And so worshiping Christ alone
will always be attacked by the enemy. Paul said to Timothy,
and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer
persecution. All that will live godly in Christ
Jesus shall suffer persecution. But such can only be said of
the children of God who continue in Christ alone. All right, Paul
said to the Philippians, for we are the circumcision. We're the ones who have been
chastened and pruned in the heart, which only the Spirit of God
can do, where only God can reach. Man in religion can reach the
flesh. He can change behaviors, and
he can cut out things of the flesh, just like a circumcision,
he can cut it out, but he can't change the heart of man. And
so Paul says, we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit
and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. All right, so next now, Rabshakeh,
he turns from addressing the ministers, all right, and he
begins to address the people. And what he does is he sows mistrust
in the people against their king. He starts to sow mistrust against
the people in the people against their king, and he promises that
if they follow the king of Assyria, that this king of Assyria, this
liar, this deceiver, will bring them into peace and paradise
and good times, right? That he'll lead them into paradise.
So let's look at that in verse 14, Isaiah 36, verse 14. Thus saith the king of Assyria,
let not Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver
you. And then in verse 15, he says,
nor will the Lord be able to deliver you. But verse 16 in
the middle there, he says, make an agreement with me by a present
and come out to me and eat ye every one of his vine and every
one of his fig tree and drink ye every one the waters of his
own sister. All right, just like dead religion,
be turned back to your own wisdom, the waters of your own cistern,
your own strength, just eat these things till I come again and
I'll take you to this land of paradise with me. As he says
in verse 17, until I come and take you away to a land like
your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and
vineyards. Frankly, I don't want a land
like my own land. I'm done with this land. This
land isn't my land, my hope or my confidence. I look for a city
whose foundations and builder and maker is God, right? With our father, Abraham. So
in all these great promises, you hear the hiss of the devil
in them. He's just saying, just trust
me, just look to me, I'll be your light, I'll be your guide,
and I'll make everything peaceful and well for you. But if you
continue to trust the Lord, I'm going to destroy you, he says,
right? But he can't, he cannot destroy
the Lord's people, all right? And then this wicked one, in
speaking to the people, he compares the true and living God to all
the other gods whom they destroyed and showed to be no gods at all,
right? The gods of the nations. He says
in verse 20, who are they among all the gods of these lands that
have delivered their land out of my hand? that the Lord should
deliver Jerusalem out of my hand." Right? So, he says this, but
no one answers him. The ministers don't answer him,
the people don't answer him, because the king told them, don't
speak back, don't get into it with the enemy here. And so we
see here in all this chapter, what we see here, because this
is all we're gonna cover tonight, is that the enemy's arguments
are very persuasive to the flesh. The afflictions, the trials,
the hardships that we go through can be very trying and very persuasive
to the flesh that looking to the Lord alone perhaps is not
the wisest thing and cannot save us. But if we bow before the
enemy and bow before this world and serve this world and the
evil one, that all things will be well for us and all things
will go good for us. And his arguments are very appealing
naturally to the flesh, right? Because naturally we just want
to have peace and not go through all this change and have all
these contradictions against our flesh, right? We want to
be at ease and at peace, but the things that we seek to for
ease and peace are the things of flesh and they cannot save
us. And the deliverance that the
enemy speaks of are things that are very appealing to us because
they're of sight. It's things that we can see and
things that we can immediately experience, all right? And then
the enemy even comes with great numbers, right? But the Lord
tells us, don't fear their numbers. Don't look to their success.
It doesn't mean that God is with them and don't argue with them
because the reality is if we argue with those who come against
us, They don't even know the half of it. If we're honest,
we ourselves are sinners and in need of the grace of God. And so we don't get into those
things with the enemy. So in all this, brethren, remember
that Christ bore the temptation of the devil. We are turned away
and go astray until the Lord in grace turns us back. And this
is done in grace because Christ our Savior endured the temptation
of the devil for his people. When the devil tempted him when
he was hungry, having fasted for 40 days and nights there
in the desert, he said, make bread. You can make bread. And
the Lord said, no, we live by that every word that comes from
the mouth of the Lord, we live upon the bread of heaven, right? And to us, we know that's Christ.
We are sustained by Christ, our gospel food and drink. And he
asked him to prove that he was the son of God, right? In casting
himself down, saying, God will deliver you, right? To tempt
the Lord. He tempted them to make him ruler
and say, you'll have influence over all the kingdoms of the
earth if you just bow down and worship me. And Christ our Savior
endured these temptations perfectly so that he, as the fit sacrifice,
the Lamb of God, bearing the sins of his people in his own
body, went to the cross and there made himself a willing sacrifice
and offering unto the Father laying down his own life, shedding
his blood to make atonement for the sins of the people, to put
away the sins of his people so that now in Christ and in Christ
alone we have peace with God. He has reconciled God and his
people together through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the spirit is given to reveal
faith in his people, because those who are his people hear
that word and have no confidence in the flesh and believe him
and call out upon him for mercy and grace and for cleansing of
sin, that Christ's blood be made effectual to them. and that they
would be given faith and his spirit to never depart from Christ
and to walk faithfully in righteousness which is in the Lord Jesus Christ
who teaches us and sustains us and guides us in all in his way. And so rather than stand at the
ready, rather than stand at the ready to believe the enemy and
to bow down to the enemy and do what he would have us to do,
we are to stand ready in service to the Lord. As Isaiah stood
ready in Isaiah 6, 8, when he was cleansed, purged of his sin
from the altar, the altar of Christ, He said, he heard the
voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go
for us? And then he said, I, here am
I, send me. Isaiah, having the spirit of
Christ stood at the ready to serve his Lord and master, his
God, his savior, Jesus Christ. And Paul tells us in Romans 6.13,
Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness
unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive
from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness
unto God." Again, by His Spirit, we stand at the ready to serve
God, not to serve this flesh. We're called to serve the living
God. And Paul said in Romans 12, 1,
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye
present your bodies, stand at the ready, present your bodies,
a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable
service." Because our God and Savior has called us to stand
in Christ, to believe Him, to trust Him alone for salvation,
and so I pray that the Lord would Bless that word to your hearts,
that you that are fearful and bowing down before the enemy,
that you would see that our God has given all things necessary
for salvation in his son, Jesus Christ. And that you be turned
from dead works and the trappings of religion and be turned to
the living God, turned to the Lord Jesus Christ. Cry out to
him for mercy, He's a gracious and merciful savior to all who
call upon him. Pray the Lord to bless that word
to your hearts. Amen. All right, let's close in prayer.
Our gracious Lord, we thank you, Father, for the salvation that
we see you've provided for your people and that you are faithful
to those whom you love, to those whom you've predestinated and
justified in your son, Jesus Christ. to those who have called
with your effectual calling in the heart by your spirit. Lord,
that you keep and preserve your people by your grace and power. Father, we ask that you would
help your people, turn us from trusting and being fearful and
glorifying darkness and evil and wickedness. But Lord, that
you would bless your people and keep them ever looking to the
Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, without your grace we can
do nothing, but with Christ we can do all things, through Christ
who strengthens us. Lord, we pray that you would
bless your people now with your spirit, your presence, that you
would indeed turn many from darkness, and many from the way of error,
many from the path of evil, and turn them to Christ the Savior
Now is the day of salvation. Lord, please pour out your spirit
upon us and upon this nation, turning us from darkness to the
light of your son, Jesus Christ. It's in his name we pray and
give thanks. Amen.