The psalmist says in Psalm 121,
obviously in a situation of needing help, I will lift up mine eyes
unto the hills. Now don't get all sentimental
that he's standing in a nice lake district valley looking
up at the Langdale Pikes. That's not what that means. I
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, to the heavenlies. From whence comes my help? My
help doesn't come from the hills. My help, it says in the next
verse, comes from the Lord. From whence comes my help? My
help comes from the Lord. In times of trouble, for the
believer, my help comes from the Lord. My help doesn't come
from the flesh. My help doesn't come from the
world. My help comes from the Lord.
You think about it. You say, well, I'm not experiencing
much trouble. No, but there are times of change. Everything is
always different circuit. What are we going to do? Things
are not going to be the same as they were. We look to the
Lord. I will lift up mine eyes to the
hills. This is where my help comes from. Now let us read these
nine verses of Isaiah 31. Which doesn't start on a very
promising note, does it? But anyway, let's read the nine
verses. Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, and stay on
horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many, and in
horsemen, because they are very strong. But they look not unto
the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the Lord. Yet he also is
wise, and will bring evil, and will not call back his words,
but will arise against the house of evildoers, and against the
help of them that work iniquity. Now the Egyptians are men, and
not God, and their horse is flesh, and not spirit. When the Lord
shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and
he that is hopin' shall fall down, and they all shall fail
together. For thus hath the Lord spoken
unto me. Like as the lion and the young
lion roaring on his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called
forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor
abase himself for the noise of them. So shall the Lord of hosts
come down to fight for Mount Zion, and for the hill thereof. As birds flying, so will the
Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem. Defending also, He will deliver
it, and passing over, He will preserve it. Turn ye unto him
from whom the children of Israel have deeply revolted. For in
that day every man shall cast away his idols of silver and
his idols of gold, which your own hands have made unto you
for a sin. Then shall the Assyrian fall
with the sword, not of a mighty man, and the sword, not of a
mean man, shall devour him. But he shall flee from the sword,
and his young men shall be discomforted, and he shall pass over to his
stronghold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the
Ensign, saith the Lord, whose fire is in Zion, and his furnace
in Jerusalem. The first commandment that God
gave in the law, in the Ten Commandments, was that we were to have no other
gods but Him. No other gods. So people tend
to think, well, that's talking about the religious world. So
when I'm going to be religious, then there's just one God that
ought to be my God. But all the rest of the time
I live my material life. No. No other gods ever, all the
time, through every minute of your life, no other gods but
him. Because everything else is idolatry. Everything else is idolatry.
Trusting whatever you will is idolatry. It's trusting in one
who is not the Lord our God. You shall have no other gods
but me. He's a jealous God. You say, that's not a very good
characteristic. No, we're not to be jealous of
one another, But what God says is because of his relationship
with his people, it's impossible for anything else to come in
the way. it really is it's it's like it's like you sometimes
hear these people who have weird marriages and they say that they're
married to one another and they love one another but they're
quite happy about one another to have affairs with other men
and women and I think that cannot possibly be a proper how can
that be a proper marriage it's it's an adulterous situation
it cannot it's it's a total lack of faithfulness and in the same
way God will not tolerate any any at all any other gods coming
into the relationship between him and his people. He says,
no other gods but me. John says this, 1 John chapter
5, 21, one of his instructions, remember this is late in the
New Testament, little children speaking to believers, keep yourselves
from idols, keep yourself from idolatry. But these people resisted
God's counsel. These people in Judah resisted
God's counsel. What was happening? Assyria was
coming against them. The Assyrian Empire was coming
against them to destroy them in judgment. And they were in
great fear. They were terrified. But look
back in chapter 30 at verse 7. Where God warns them, God gives
them counsel through Isaiah the prophet. For the Egyptians shall
help in vain and to no purpose. Therefore have I cried concerning
this. Their strength is to sit still.
You'll sit still if you do what God says. You won't go down to
the Egyptians. And then look at verse 15. For
thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel. In returning
and rest shall ye be saved. Not going down to Egypt. in quietness
and in confidence shall be your strength, and you would not.
you would not. They resisted the clear instruction
of God not to seek help from those outside and so in this
chapter 31 and of course the chapter divisions are quite arbitrary
they're pretty good most of the time and I'm not sure what persuaded
the guy that divided it up in the first place to divide it
like this but it will do for our purposes in these nine verses
we've got in the first three verses a message of judgment
you know that that they're setting about to go down to egypt and
here's the message of just one to them that go down to egypt
and then in verses four and five There's a message, there's a
reminder of what God is really like with his people. You're
going down there but you're forgetting what God is really like. And
in verse 6 there's a call to repent, turn ye unto him, a call
to repentance. And then in the rest of it there's
a message of grace, of grace, of how God deals with his people.
and how he saves them. So this is a gospel call to trust
God because God promises protection and deliverance in every situation,
in every situation. You all know what the situations
are that you're going through, that you're facing, the things
that crop up. Where do you go for help? Do
you go to the things of this world? pillars, the places of trust
of this world, or as a child of God, do you go to God? To
God who rules everything for his people. So there's some lessons. There are basically four lessons
in the time that we've got available. First of all, God's saints, God's
people, and you know what God's saints are, God's saints are
those who are His elect, set apart by Him from before the
beginning of time and called out by Holy Spirit regeneration
in their lives. God's saints do not need and
must not seek the help of this world. That's true, that's what
this scripture is teaching us. We don't need and we mustn't
seek the help of this world. Now I'll qualify these things
as we go through. But God's children must not seek
comfort and strength and help from God's enemies. You think
about it. Be they ever so nice, those who
reject the gospel of grace, and these are the words of scripture
and not the words of this man, the words of scripture are that
they are at enmity with God. Enemies of God, not friends of
God, not sympathetic to the things of God. enemies of God, and God's
children mustn't seek comfort, strength, and help in things
that are to do with the troubles that afflict us from those sources. I'll give you some examples.
Think of Abraham when he'd gone out to rescue Lot in the Battle
of the Kings in Genesis 14. You know, there were several
kings that lined up against one another, and in the process,
Lot, who lived in Sodom, was captured and taken away. And
when, and this is such a picture of Christ, when Abraham heard
that his brother, I know he was his uncle, but you know, effectively,
that was the relationship. When he heard that his brother
had been captured, Abraham went out to rescue him. Isn't that
what Christ, the brethren of his people did? He went out to
rescue his people who were captured. It's a picture, all through the
scripture there are pictures of Christ saving his people. Abraham heard that Lot, his brother,
had been captured and he went out. He got some forces together
and he went out and he defeated those kings. And he rescued Sodom
from that situation. And the king of Sodom said, let
me reward you, let me pay you all sorts of things. And Abraham
said, I'm not going to have it said that Abraham got rich because
the king of Sodom gave him anything. No. No. The children of God,
the saints of God, do not seek comfort or strength or help from
those who are inherently his enemies. And in the same way,
the church, the church, the body of Christ, in this day, those
who truly believe him and seek to honor and proclaim his gospel
and to live by it, that church does not need worldly assistance. We don't need it. We really don't. Oh, wouldn't it be good if such
and such an organization could give us a lot of money? Then
think of the thing. No, no, no, no, no. We don't need it. We
don't need it. God will do his work in his way,
in ways that will totally surprise us. We don't need that assistance,
that worldly assistance. And in the same way, the gospel
of God's grace stands as it is, and it doesn't need the assistance
of human psychology to make it more palatable. It stands as
it is. The gospel and preachers of the
gospel don't need the help of God's enemies to tell them how
to persuade men and women in the high street in Nebworth that
this is the truth of God. We don't need that help. And
likewise, we don't need that help in all sorts of ways. When
believers are truly going through times of trial, where should
we seek for help and assistance? from our brethren, from the word
of God, from prayer. This is where we should go. Honestly,
I know that there's some that there are some very helpful resources
that we can make use of through our health service and other
social services. But look, in general, the children
of God seek help from the Word of God, from the Spirit of God,
by prayer, from their brethren in the things of the Gospel of
Grace. Because what's the greatest What's the greatest cure or remedy
for anxiety in this world to the child of God? The greatest
cure for all of the world's problems that come at you in this flesh,
the greatest comfort is the gospel of grace. And knowing where you
are. Isn't it? You know, you think
of the martyrs who were being martyred. The torch was being
put to the bonfires. They were being put through dreadful,
dreadful situations. What was the greatest help to
them was the knowledge of the gospel of grace in that situation.
So God's saints don't need and must not seek the help of this
world in the prospering of the kingdom of God. That's the truth. Second thing we learn from this
is God had said to them over and over again what the situation
was and the second thing therefore is that doubt and unbelief is
completely unreasonable. It really is. Doubt, you know,
I have doubts. I have unbelief. There's an evil
heart of unbelief in my flesh which wells up from time to time.
And I doubt God. And the more and more I know
of this God and of this word and of this truth, the more and
more I know that that heart of unbelief truly is evil. You know, you say, oh, it's only
natural, we all have doubts. Yeah, it's an evil heart of unbelief.
This flesh with an evil heart of unbelief disbelieves what
God has said. God has said he will preserve
his people. God has said he will do all that
his people need. God has said this. And doubt
and unbelief is unreasonable. You see, Judah had absolutely
no reason to fear Assyria. If they'd only read what the
God of the universe had promised them, in 2 Chronicles 32, 7 and
8, we read this. Be strong and courageous. Be not afraid nor dismayed for
the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with
him. For there be more with us than with him. With him is an
arm of flesh, that's all. But with us is the Lord our God
to help us and to fight our battles." God had said that to them. They
were terrified of Assyria. And they were about to go down
to Egypt to get some help from Assyria because they thought,
what can we do? We're about to be overrun. There'll
be lots of people killed. We'll have all of our situation
taken away from us. Let's go down to Egypt and get
some help there. Let's go down to the things of
this world to get some help from there. And they forgot what God
had said, be strong and courageous. Be not afraid nor dismayed for
the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that he's got,
for there be more with us than with him. Why are them? What
does it say? If God be for us, who can be
against us? If God be for us, who can be
against us? And ask yourself this, has God
ever broken a promise that he's made? Everything he's promised
in this book has come to pass. Everything he has promised has
come to pass. There isn't one thing that hasn't
come to pass except one thing that he's yet to come to pass,
and that's for him to return. to this earth to take his people
to be with him. That's the only thing, that's
the only prophecy yet to be fulfilled is that he come again to take
his people to be with him. Then thirdly, thirdly, God is
an unfailing protector. Why are you fearful of Assyria? Why are you running down to Egypt?
And you can translate that into whatever way you want to apply
it to your situation today or to any situation that might arise,
right? Why are we fleeing to those things
when it's clear from the scriptures, and the scripture is the word
of God to his people, that God is an unfailing protector. Psalm 125, verses one and two,
say this. They that trust in the Lord shall
be as Mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth forever. As the mountains are round about
Jerusalem, So the Lord is round about his people from henceforth
even forever. God is an unfailing protector. He protects. Here are four ways
in which God protects his people. Look at verse four. For thus
hath the Lord spoken unto me. Like as the lion and the young
lion roaring on his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called
forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor
abase himself for the noise of them. So shall the Lord of hosts
come down to fight for Mount Zion and for the hill thereof.
Imagine the scene, there's a Middle Eastern shepherd, and he sees
that one of the lions in the area has come and grabbed one
of his lambs, and it's going to be dinner. That's, you know,
sorry, curtains for the lamb, it's going to be dinner for the
lion. And there's the lion. over its prey. And so the shepherd
goes and gets his friends, the other shepherds from the village,
and they come out and they make a great big noise, and the picture
is, that lion's going to look and, yeah, you and all your mates,
come on, bring it on. He's not frightened, is he? The
lion isn't frightened. Those shepherds are not going
to scare the lion away. The lion couldn't care less about
them, they're not going to do anything. So the picture is,
the Lord protects his people. The Lord preserves his people.
It doesn't matter who. The Assyrians coming are just
like a lot of shepherds coming to try and scare the lion off.
It's not going to happen. Here's another way, verse five.
As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts defend Jerusalem.
Defending also, he will deliver it, and passing over, he will
preserve it. Have you seen, there are certain
species of birds that go through huge rituals to protect their
young. You know, they all do things normally to protect their
life, but have you seen the ones that do the decoy to take the
the predator away from the nest. They pretend they've got a broken
wing and they stagger off so that the predator thinks, ah,
he is easy prey. And then when it nearly gets
him, the bird flies off, but he's distracted. The bird has
distracted the predator from the nest that he's being protected.
And this is the picture as a mother bird protects its young. Christ has given his life for
us. Look what it says in verse 5, defending also he will deliver
it and passing over he will preserve it. Is there an echo in there
of the Passover? Christ our Passover? Passing
over he will preserve it. Didn't God pass over when he
saw the blood? in Egypt for his people? Didn't
God pass over and protect them from the angel of death? Isn't
that what he does in Christ? He passes over. Christ has given
his life for us. Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed
for us. And passing over, he preserves
his people. As a mother bird protects her
young, so God protects his people. And then, we don't see it explicitly
here, but by legions of angels, by legions of angels, he defends
his people. Psalm 91, look this one up with
me, Psalm 91 and verse 11, which I think is what Satan quoted
to Jesus in the temptation early in the gospel. Psalm 91 and verse
11, for he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee
in all thy ways. God protects his people with
angels, with spirits that we cannot see, but he protects his
people. You, I'm sure like me, you love
that account of Elisha. and the young servant in 2 Kings
chapter 6. And again it was the Assyrians
coming and they were absolutely terrified, they were surrounded.
And the young man said to Elisha, oh father it's all up for us,
we're finished, we're done for. This is it, this is the end.
And Elisha prays, oh Lord open his eyes that he might see. And the Lord opened his eyes
and he saw what the truth was. Not just the physical things
that we see with physical eyes, but that he saw all around the
mountains, all around them, were multitudes of angels protecting
them. Show him that those that are
with us, he said, are more than those that are against us. Here
we are, tiny little company, And God's people in every place
seem like such a tiny little company, an irrelevance in the
sight of the world. And yet there are more with us
than there are with them. That's the promise of God's word.
More with us than with them. And then God protects his Israel
as a wall of fire. Look at verse 9. He says, verse
8, the Assyrian shall fall with the sword, not of a mighty man,
and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him. But he
shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be discomforted,
and he shall pass over to his stronghold for fear. He's going
to run away. Assyria will run away. If you really trust God,
Assyria will run away. says the Lord, whose fire is
in Zion. It's a wall of fire, you know,
we talk about firewalls with computers to protect the computer
from outside attacks. So it is, God is a firewall to
his people. He's a fire, he protects his
people. He protects his people. You know, as when Israel came
out of Egypt and the Egyptians came and they were terrified
and the Lord stood between them and the Israelites as a wall
of fire to protect them. He led them as a pillar of fire
by night and a pillar of cloud by day. He's a protection for
his people. Zechariah 2 verse 5 says this,
For I, saith the Lord, will be unto her a wall of fire round
about. A wall of fire round about. God
is an unfailing protector. And then fourthly, The believer's
strength and blessedness, what is it? What is this strength,
the true strength and blessedness? It's quiet confidence in God.
Again, look back at those two verses in the previous chapter,
chapter 30, verse 7. There's strength at the end of
it. The strength of his people is what? To sit still. You know
what Moses said when they thought it was all up for them about
to cross the Red Sea? Stand still and see. Don't do
anything. Stand still and see the salvation
of the Lord. Their strength is to sit still.
Verse 15. In quietness, in returning and
rest shall ye be saved. In quietness and in confidence
shall be your strength. Don't stubbornly resist it. Don't
do that. Don't stubbornly resist it. That's
where the strength is. To look anywhere else will make
misery, because the arm of flesh will fail. You don't trust your
own strength because it just isn't strong enough. Trust God. Trust Him. You see, it's impossible
for the child of God to have too much confidence in God. It
really is. You cannot have too much confidence
in God. Turn to Romans 8. And let's just
look at these questions. Let's look at some questions
in Romans 8. And they're very familiar questions
to us, but it's worth reminding ourselves in this context, you
see, because trouble comes. And what are we going to do about
trouble? And where are we going to hide from trouble? Well, look
at verse 31 of Romans chapter 8, having established the absolutely
solid position of the children of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. What shall we then say to these
things? Here's a question. I'm bothered
about things overwhelming me. I'm bothered that we're not going
to be able to afford to live. I'm bothered that illness is
going to come. I'm bothered that I'm going to
end up not being able to live in my own home. I'm bothered
that they're going to persecute us so much that we'll have to
shut the church down. I'm bothered that we're going
to have to stop meeting together because of all the... No. If
God be for us, who can be against us? Oh, all of these people,
what are they? They're just the arm of the flesh.
They're just Assyrians. They're just like a bunch of
weak, feeble shepherds trying to scare a big roaring lion off.
It isn't going to happen. He that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also
freely give us all things? Oh, we need to go to the world
to get some help for this, that and the other. We need to go
to the world to get some help with our sanity, our psychological
state, our material well-being, our welfare. No. He that delivered
up his son, how shall he not with him also freely give us
all things? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies. You
see, what's gonna come and take that comfort away from us? God
has justified. Who is he that's going to come
and condemn us? And to use the words of the old
King James translation, discomfort us. Who's going to come and do
that? It is Christ that's died. Yea, rather that he's risen again,
who is even at the right hand of God. Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? The Assyrians? or their modern
equivalent, the trials that we face in these days, who shall
separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril,
or sword? No, no, not at all, because in
all these things we are more than conquerors through him that
loved us. For I am persuaded that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. You see this
faith and trust in God, this inspires gratitude in us and
faith and gratitude promotes faithfulness to God fidelity
to God you see Paul said this in in Acts 20 verse 24 he said
but none of these things move me neither count I my life dear
unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy in the ministry
which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel
of the grace of God he's been given a ministry he's been put
in that place he's a child of God All of these other things
that would seek to derail him and cause him problems, none
of these things move me, he says. Can we say that? None of these
things move me. I have faith in God. I trust
him. I lean on him. I won't lean on
the arm of flesh. I won't seek help from Egypt.
I'm not going to go down there and seek help from Egypt. You
look at the history of the church. Whenever the church has gone
down to Egypt, I could give you examples. The Baptist Fellowship
was in very good heart in the mid-1600s, 1644, 1646, when they
wrote those two confessions of faith, absolutely gospel-based,
based on the scriptures. And then they started to fear
that they'd be crushed in the persecution. And so they joined
forces with the legalists They joined forces with legalists,
and the legalists persuaded them to amend their confession of
faith so that they'd have a common basis, and they called it the
1689 Confession, which you will find this day, the vast majority
of Reformed Baptist churches in this country say what they
are is they're based on the 1689 Confession, which has got all
the good things of the 1644 and 1646 in it, but because of fear, Of the arm of the flesh, they
added to it that which is not the gospel, which is legalism.
And that's what's in there. We don't need to fear these things.
We don't need to go down and seek comfort and seek strength
in numbers. We don't need to go and get the
horses and the chariots because they're just flesh. They're not
spirit. God is spirit. He protects his
people. Let's trust him. Let's not be
afraid. Let's not turn aside to these
other things. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we pray
that above all, you would give us the mind of Christ, that we
might understand your word and that we might hear your spirit
speaking to us, that we might know what it is to trust the
living God and not to turn in any way to the arm of flesh.
We know that this world has nothing for your people, for your children,
for the good of your church, Heavenly Father, cause us to
know your truth. Cause us to rejoice in your eternal
purposes. Cause us to be faithful to your
word in everything. Cause us, we pray, keep us on
that straight and narrow path, and not to turn aside to one
way or the other, but to keep looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith, the word of God, By your Spirit's
guidance, Lord, speak to us and keep us, and bless us, and may
we be used for your glory in this world. And cause there to
be a great harvest, cause there to be a great gathering in of
those whom you chose in Christ from before the foundation of
the world, to the glory of our God and Savior. In his name,
amen.