Isaiah, Chapter 36
Isaiah 36:15 · Vern Peterman · Aug 27, 2006
Isaiah, No. 33
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492600273624

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We'll be taking a look at the whole chapter here this morning. What Wayne read for you was a kind of a high point, if you will. A high point even if it sounds like a threat. But we'll pace our way through the entire chapter. It's the first part of a story. I hope you can handle stories. It is the beginning of a historical section. that most of Isaiah is written in more of a prophetic, or sometimes a poetic, even a song form. This is a historical account, and so we'll be beginning into a part of that. It centers around the city of Jerusalem, and we'll certainly take a look more at that. Now you see this? You haven't memorized, of course, right? All right. Don't need to get out your binoculars, even though we hope to get some blazing insights. We have to begin with a question for you.

Something to think about. Have you ever been faced with a seemingly overwhelming crisis in your life? I know, me getting up here and speaking is probably one of them. But, have you ever been faced with an overwhelming crisis? Something that is a real burden upon you. Maybe even more than one. Could more be coming your way? More crises? So a question for you to ponder.

Isaiah begins this account here by giving an historical section and 36 and 37 are kind of a pair. We'll look at the first half this week, the second half, chapter 37 next week. It's a time of King Hezekiah. He's the one who, of course, wrote First and Second Hesitations. You know that one. Okay.

He brings to head here in this chapter all the things he's been warning about for many chapters about the threat of Assyria coming into Judah and causing great agony and havoc. The events that were recorded here, we're going to point out at various places some interesting archaeological backing and connections to it. I think you'll find it interesting and it'll be helpful for us understanding what's going on. And so we'll proceed through it both this week and next week to point those out for you.

This is a rough time. This is a difficult time because while for years this threat has been mounting, now it's going to happen. We've been seeing it since early on in about chapter 7 of Isaiah, and now it's coming into the picture. Now it becomes raw reality. It's not just a threat, it's happening. And it's happening to much of the nation of Judah, a small nation. Isaiah shifts from his prophetic anthology where he's giving prophecies and he's including poetry and songs.

Here he steps into this historical account involving significantly Hezekiah, Isaiah himself, the nation of Judah, and the huge and massive empire of Assyria. Parallel accounts you'll find in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, and you can take a look at that. King Hezekiah did not look at this threat that was coming and just sit there and shiver and shake. No, he actually worked very energetically and diligently and got people stepping in different directions, taking action to prepare for this attack and to get everybody ready, not only in Jerusalem, but all the various cities scattered throughout Judah.

Here, for example, we pointed out in the past, this is a wall that has been determined to have been one of the the protection walls that Hezekiah built during the preparation for this attack from Assyria. Here's another perspective on it. Here's the wall here, and in the background you can see that gold dome, the Dome of the Rock, and the Mount of Olives in the background. So that's another view of this protection wall that Hezekiah had built.

It was also, because one of the difficulties in an attack is maintaining water supply, there was also a tunnel that he had built. And the tunnel, instead of being straight, follows this circuitous winding route. And we have underneath it, on one side, the upper end of it is the Gahon Spring. And on the other end is Warren's Shaft. I'll give you a little better view. Here's the spring that is there now. And by the way, this was the place where Solomon was anointed king. And here is the shaft also in that same area. This tunnel system had some incredible technology for its day.

They had at the one end this place that's called the Waters of Shiloh in Isaiah, and we may recall it as the Pool of Shalom. And by the way, discoveries even as of recent months, more of that Pool of Shalom area have been uncovered and discovered and documented just in recent months and even recent weeks. There's also the spring of Gihon which is showed a picture of on the other end and so that's on the upper end of that pool. What Hezekiah did was to have this tunnel built underneath so that the water supply for Jerusalem was not anything that the Assyrians could get to because it was all underneath and behind the wall. And so it was a huge project. It was cutting edge technology. It would be another 200 years before any other ancient civilization would do something as advanced as that.

This is inside the tunnel itself and the tunnel winds around. And looking at the tunnel, this is the place they started from each end and met in the middle. This is the place right here where they met. You have the two teams meeting, and where they met, interestingly enough, at this spot, that's where they met, one of the workers wrote down the event of their meeting. He said he could hear the sound of the picks coming through the other side.

And he wrote that down on the wall, inscribed it, and so that's visible, and this is called the Salome inscription. And Bud was not there. But, this inscription was there, okay? All right, and so that inscription is now visible and amazingly tells the stories of that digging of the tunnel, which the figure must have taken thousands of hours of time to get accomplished.

Huge project. The tunnel system was cutting edge in this way. Ordinarily tunnels, if they were not straight, would have vertical shafts at the turning point. This one was done continuously, no vertical shafts, which was an historical breakthrough. Again, nobody else accomplished that, anything like it for another couple of centuries. So it was cutting edge technology for its day.

Another point to make is that 26 of the Dead Sea Scrolls contain records of this event. I would have to point out that some of them are in much better preservation than others. Some of them are down to mere fragments. Nonetheless, over two dozen of the Dead Sea Scrolls have a record of this, generally dating about 200 BC. All right, here's the Great Isaiah Scroll, one that is in good condition, and it's like some of the others are almost to the point of flakes and fragments.

Now, the timeline. Here's Isaiah. He is about seven centuries before the time of Christ, and so he is describing this event here during his own lifetime, and it is not prophetic, as much of what Isaiah has to write is about. but is instead telling things where he was an eyewitness or had very close connection with the actual events. He was in Judah, the southern kingdom. And here is you and me, 2,700 years later. Here is where Isaiah is centering his ministry in Jerusalem, which is in the northern part. To get an idea what this would be like, here you are in northern Judah, It's only 12 miles to the border of Israel, not so far.

The kingdom was divided, and Assyria, the threatening empire, had already, two decades before, hauled off the people of the northern kingdom, and so now the southern kingdom was under this heavy threat. So they saw it as real, this was not some empty threat, it was not hypothetical, a very real threat. Israel here being the Northern Kingdom, already gone. Judah, now the Southern Kingdom, they're the ones immediately under this threat.

Here is a map of the area just to get an idea. Here's Assyria. That's centered in what is now Mosul. That's if you're seeing on the news or maps of Iraq, Mosul is the place. And actually some of the documents and buildings that are part of this event have been found in and around Mosul. And Israel, of course, by this time, 20 years before, had been taken away.

All right, now let's dig into this and we'll just get those blazing insights, OK? So get your binoculars. No, forget that. And, this will also be a moose-free message. So, you don't need to worry about any moose. Let's start with the first verse here.

Now, in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, that's how you pronounce that name, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them. He was having success. So that was one thing. It wasn't like he came up to him and had a bunch of difficulty. He was having success. That's what makes the events we see described here especially ominous. He had been pressing his way from one place to the next to the next.

King Hezekiah is the fourth king that is listed in the series of kings that Isaiah had had contact with and he had his prophetic ministry with. So he was the fourth one. And Isaiah seems to have a particular court prophetic ministry. He is closer to these and seems to have cooperation with Hezekiah more so than the previous kings. There were the kings of Israel, the kings of Judah.

You may not be able to see all this and I didn't put your hand out, but they're color-coded. What you see here is there's a scale of color. Hezekiah is a good king compared to the others. That's what it's intended to show here. Here's Hezekiah in the most intense green color. It's intended to show he is a good king morally and spiritually speaking compared to many of the others.

We'll see more about what that means in a minute. So here we have Sennacherib. Sennacherib ruled over the Assyrian Empire from 705 to 681 BC. He had that period of time a little over 20 years where he ruled, and he ruled cruelly. Very cruel. Here you see a relief of Sennacherib on the one side.

On the other side, I'll show it on a larger scale, is the inside of his palace. This is an artist's reconstruction. Fancy place. Fancy place. What's amazing is the inscriptions on the side are war stories. Those are war stories, and we'll see in a minute, it even has stories about the battle against Judah on the wall. It's the closest thing to videos that you could have in those days. And Bud was not there.

So we look at this passage. Here is the generalized route coming down out of Assyria down along the coast, generally speaking, and then sweeping into Judah, coming inland, and then coming from Lachish, which we'll talk about in a minute, and then up towards Jerusalem from there. So our account takes place between Lachish and then centered mostly upon Jerusalem. So, here's Sennacherib here. He is the king of Assyria, and He said, Robchicka, now we need to explain something. Robchicka sounds either like some sort of a fancy gourmet meal, or it's this guy's name.

Actually, what it is really is more of a royal title. It means cup bearer. And firstly, wait a minute, why are you going to give some guy a royal title of cup bearer? Well, first of all, culturally, that doesn't sound like much to us, but it was a much more exalted title in that day. So you shouldn't think of cups and bears. It's not about that or anything like that. Not about cups and bears. This is a cup-bearer. One who bears a cup. But still it's a higher title and role and rank than we're usually accustomed to think of if we hear the title cup-bearer.

In biblical times it was more like a chief of staff. And so that's the way we would think of it. Here is this fellow Rabshakeh, and rather than a personal name as a lot of our translations carried across, that was actually his title. He was the Rabshakeh. But we'll go ahead and use the name the way it's translated here.

He was coming from Lachish to Jerusalem. Now here's the story. Remember we showed that map sweeping down and then going to Lachish and then sweeping up to Jerusalem to the north. Lachish was Judah's second largest city. It had been one that we know from historical record. Hezekiah had put a lot of work into getting that place reinforced and basically Lachish had fallen. And now they're just doing cleanup work and they sent a bunch of troops with Rabshakeh up to Jerusalem to kind of give the initial warning and threat. As a matter of fact, a great many troops as we'll see here.

To give you an idea, here is an artist rendering of Lachish, and we'll take a closer look at that in a bit. Here's an aerial view of Lachish, and this is a small piece of the stone relief video, if you will, that is in the palace of Sennacherib. Lachish is the second most important city in Judah. There are some interesting records of how it fell. It's recorded that it fell in the Bible, it's recorded In ancient cuneiform accounts, that is those clay tablets, it's recorded by archaeological excavations at the site of Lachish, and it's recorded on the picture reliefs, the stone videos, in the palace of Sennacherib. So all those places it's recorded, and in the Bible it's recorded several places.

Here is the artist's rendering of Lackish. There were two rows of barrier walls and so you had to go up one and then the other in order to be able to get into Lackish. It had that advantage. Every bit of Lackish was raised and then it had limited access through gates that were multiple gates. So it was really pretty well defended but not sufficient to keep everybody safe.

Here's the air photo. And one of the things I'd like to point out, see on this side, that's the Assyrian siege ramp. What did they do? The Assyrians took dirt and they piled it up so much that it's there today. And the Assyrians piled up the dirt so that they could get up and get into the city and take over. So that's what they did. And the building of that ramp and the running into the city is what they have carved onto the wall in the palace.

Lots of it. Massive. It's huge. Bud was not there. Okay, here is some of the larger scale pictures of this attack. You see here, here is the Judeans defending themselves, and then these other things pointing up and down. Let me point these out. These are arrows, okay? And then, over here is hauling off the Judeans to Assyria. Even, you see the little kids? See that? Let me point that out again. There's the little kids.

So the large picture, there's the adults and even taking the children off. So it was a sad story. But that's what they carved in the palace walls in Sennacherib's palace. So now you have King Hezekiah and his royal court in the city of Jerusalem. He had been preparing for this moment with great energy and ingenuity. He had really been putting a massive effort into it.

But at the same time, he had been proclaiming, trust the Lord. Trust the Lord. He kept having people He says, go ahead and get ready, but trust the Lord. Obey the Lord. He kept reinforcing and underscoring that message all the while getting ready. So now, Rabshakeh came up with this large army. We'll find later that number is about 185,000 or even perhaps a little more. And that's recorded in the next chapter. We'll take a look at that next week. He stood at the very same place that Isaiah has stood with Judah's King Ahaz about 33 years before.

The exact same description in Isaiah 7.3.

Some of Hezekiah's court officials, three of them to be exact, came out to speak with Rabshakeh privately. And basically what they're trying to do, Rabshakeh was there not ready to attack yet, But just for psychological warfare purposes, we want to have these people get really scared. And if possible, we want to scare them into just surrendering and we don't even have to fight. So this is to terrorize them. So here are these guys, they're coming up to him, they're trying to talk to him privately and talk him out of talking to everybody.

So now we have this Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shedna, the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder. We've seen Eliakim and Shedna before. That was back when they were studying chapter 22. And Shedna had gotten demoted. And by the way, this is the last time we see him in the picture here. And Joah, son of Asaph, we only see him mentioned here and in 2 Kings 18.

Here, by the way, are four seals with the name Eliakim. And it appears, it's not absolutely certain, it appears that this is the Eliakim that is in this chapter here that we're reading about in Isaiah. And many of the seals with Eliakim's name are found in pottery jar handles. And interestingly enough, it is specifically that that is mentioned in Isaiah 22, that that's one of the things he would do. Why would that be so important?

If you're in a city that's under siege, you don't want to run out of water and other supplies. So where do you keep your water and other supplies in? You keep them in pottery, right? Big large jars and large clay and earthenware containers. In order to make sure it's happened, and they're prepared properly, and it's the right size, you put the seal of Eliakim on those. This, by the way, these are seals on the numerous vessels of his day. Believers today, three times in the New Testament, all at the hand of Paul, believers are said to be sealed with the Holy Spirit. The royal seal. God's special seal. There's also the burial place, we mentioned this when we were studying chapter 22, of the Shebna that's also been found just to the southeast of Jerusalem.

And so the inscription there mentions him. Now, in verses 4 through 6, notice that as Rabshakeh begins to talk, he does not call Hezekiah the king. He'll call the king of Assyria the king, but he'll not call Hezekiah the king. He won't acknowledge that. However, Sennacherib gets called the Great King. That's his way of exalting his king and leaving Hezekiah unrecognized other than by his name. Judah, however, contrary to what Rabshakeh said here, was not actually relying on Egypt. This is military intelligence for you. Okay? All right. Now, verse 7.

But if you say to me, we trust in the Lord our God, Is it not he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, you shall worship before this altar? One thing, it's clear that Rabshakeh had gotten some things mixed up. Now notice he's stepping in, he is speaking to these people, but he is a little confused as to what's actually happened. He's thinking that Hezekiah going and taking all these altars out of the way, the pagan altars, is somehow going to offend God. So he has it mixed up. Hezekiah had actually been taking those high places and the altars away, and we have record of that, that he did that. But it would not be surprising that Rabshakeh got this mixed up. He was, after all, an unbeliever.

2 Kings 18.4-6 records where Hezekiah had all these high places removed, these places other than what the Lord had said was the proper place and the proper worship of him and that they were to follow. And this passage records that Hezekiah did very well among all the kings of Judah in setting things right spiritually.

Now, Rabshakeh Ben says, now therefore, come and make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria, and I will give you 2,000 horses. What's he doing? Give you 2,000 horses, we're going to attack you. What he's doing is he is saying, you guys are so hopeless, I'll give you a head start. Okay? You guys are so hopeless, I doubt you can even put riders on 2,000 horses, but I'll give you a head start anyway, because we're nice. Right.

So, Rabshakeh was not up to speed in a couple of respects. One of those being King Hezekiah was not relying on Egypt. We noted that before. Secondly, Rabshakeh did not understand that the Holy One of Israel wasn't like the other phony gods. The other gods didn't protect the people because they're phony. They're make-up gods. They're gods you've got to carve and carry around. This was the Holy One of Israel and Rabshakeh did not understand the difference.

He was about to find out. Too bad for him. Okay. The next one, verse 10. Have I now come up without the Lord's approval against this land to destroy it? The Lord said to me, go up against this land and destroy it. That sounds odd. Why would he say that?

It was common in the Middle Eastern cultures for an invading army to claim that the God of their people was now on the enemy's side. So that's what he's doing. He's claiming the Lord is on our side and so you guys are in trouble. Because your God is in our favor. Your God is with us. That's what he's telling them. It sounds like that's exactly what he's doing here. However, he was quite mistaken, as he's about to find out.

Now, then Eliakim, Shedna, and Joah said to Rabshakeh, Speak now to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it, and do not speak with us in Judean in the hearing of the people who are on the wall. Don't talk to these people, just talk to us. Aramaic would have been a language that they, as specially trained court officials could speak, but Hebrew would have been the language of the rest of the people. They say, just talk to us in the Aramaic and then nobody else will hear.

Rabshakeh says, nothing doing. Nothing doing. So now, what happens? Rabshakeh, now this gets a little gross, so bear with me. Rājika said, has my master sent me only to your master and to speak these words and not to the men who sit on the wall doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you? Now he's getting gross. He's getting threatening. He is asking a question not to ask a question but to refuse. He's asking a question to cast in doubt and to put into idiocy what they say. and then puts the exclamation point on it with gross language and gross threats.

The idea here would be siege warfare would get to the point where you guys wouldn't be able to get water. He didn't know about the tunnel. And you guys wouldn't be able to get food. He didn't know about all the supplies that Eliakim had set aside. But he was going to threaten it anyway. Here is Rabshakeh. He addresses the people of Judah starting in Hebrew. By the way, God wasn't there. Okay.

Now, then Rabbi Zechariah stood and cried with a loud voice in Judea and said, Here are the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. See, Hezekiah wasn't a king, but this guy was. Thus says the king, and this is what Wayne read for us, Thus says the king, Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, nor will he be able to deliver you, nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us. This city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.

He says, Don't believe it. That's what he's trying to tell them. Why would he do that? He doesn't want them to believe it. And certainly he doesn't believe it. Now, here is where he's standing. That's an approximate location, looking at the artist sketch of Jerusalem in that day, right about there. He's trying to discourage the people. He's trying to divide them and their king. He's trying to make them favor his next offer, rather than what the king has commanded.

He's trying to urge the people, don't trust in the Lord, which is exactly the message, do trust in the Lord, that Hezekiah had been trying to convey. Think about it for our case. Where do we hear, don't trust the Lord? Where do we get that message? Where do we hear that voice? I mean us in the church now. We're not in Jerusalem standing behind the walls expecting a siege.

No, we hear it from the sin nature that remains even in the believer, even though it is offline. even though it is not the nature with which we've been joined, it still remains until we go home to be with the Lord, as I put it here, as we walk through heaven's gates, then it'll be gone. But the sin nature is one place, and Ephesians 2, the first three verses, has places at the beginning and the end where it describes the sin nature's activity. There's also the world and Satan.

Those two are additional voices mentioned in that same passage, Ephesians 2, 1-3, where we would hear that voice, don't trust in the Lord. Those three sources can speak to us today, the same message that Rabshakeh gave to the people who lived in Jerusalem. Now in verses 16 and 17, do not listen to Hezekiah, he wants you to trust in the Lord, I don't. For thus says the king of Assyria, Make your peace with me, and come out to me." How about that? Come on out. I've got 185,000 soldiers behind me, but come on out. Right? Real smart. And each of his own vine.

Basically, what is he offering him here? In verse 17, he says, I'm going to deport you, but at least you'll do it peacefully without any loss of life. You can either have loss of life and go through misery and then I'll deport you or we'll deport you now and we'll do it peacefully and it won't be so miserable. Which one do you pick? That's what he's trying to offer them. So what does he say in 18-20?

Beware that Hezekiah does not mislead you, saying the Lord will deliver us. That's misleading according to Rabshakeh. Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered them? Ah, what doesn't he understand? He's made a serious miscalculation. He thinks that the God of Israel is the same as the others. They didn't help, and they won't help now. The God of Israel is not the same as the gods that he's been accustomed to encountering. He's soon to find out. He assumed that the God of Scripture was the same as all the other pagan gods. Now, in verses 21 through 22, And they were silent. They answered him not a word. Why? That's what the king, Hezekiah, had commanded. Don't answer him anything. Don't respond. Don't answer. Say not a thing. Say nothing.

Then the three guys, Eliakim, Shevna, and Joah, go running in to Hezekiah with their clothes torn. That was the Jewish way of expressing great grief And they told the words of Rabshakeh to Hezekiah. Now, certainly this was not any good news to bring to the king. Notice that the king wasn't there, he didn't honor the presence or the words of Rabshakeh by his own presence. And they came in with torn clothing, but actually you could expect what else was Rabshakeh supposed to say?

We're sorry to bother you? I think not. So really what they had to report was exactly the sort of thing you would expect. This is exactly predictable news. And Bud was not there. Now, we've looked at this chapter, believe it or not, we've stepped our way through it, and we seem amazing. And we've seen some blazing insights, even if you haven't had your binoculars.

But let's take a look at your crisis. How about that? How about your own crisis? Let's ask that question. How about the present crisis that you're in? Okay, if that's not good enough, how about the next crisis you're in? Let's talk about those. You see, one of the things we want to point out, this is certainly scripture and it is written for our benefit. But one of the things that we need to recognize is that Israel as a nation was blessed differently than we are.

God has determined, fitting with His eternal purpose, to bless them differently and to express His glory in and through them differently than with us. And they were to be blessed if they obeyed, if they trusted the Lord. Cursed if they were disobedient. Cursed with trials, if they were disobedient. Christians can sometimes get this confused. Notice, for us in the Church, we've been blessed already. It's not a blessed if.

Ephesians 1.3, we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing. Notice, have been. Done deal. And how many? Every. All. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. In Christ Jesus. There, in the heavenlies.

It's persevering in faith through the trials and temptations, okay? Persevering in the trials is one way in which we grow and the Lord is glorified. It's not saying, if you obey me, you won't have them. It is, you are to persevere in them, through them, trust the Lord through them.

James 1, 2-4 here says, consider it all joy. We mentioned last week, that one could translate this, consider it ultimate joy, which is hard to fathom. Consider it ultimate joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let that endurance have its perfect result. Perfect result. So that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

The trial is there for a purpose. It is not simply a matter of saying, oh, I've got this trial and I can't wait to get past it. No. The trial is there for God's purpose. It's what God is doing in you and through you in the midst of that trial that is going to glorify Him.

See? Very important distinction. It is a distinction in the way Israel was blessed. They were told, if you trust me, I will keep you from the trials. For the church, he says, I will keep you through the trials. Great distinction. Now, farther down in that same chapter, what does James write?

Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial. It's the perseverance under the trial, not the routing around it, not the avoidance of it that the Lord is pointing to here. In verse 13, let no one say when he was tempted, I am being tempted by God. God is not the source of those things. Yet God has a purpose. And his third point there in explanation is don't be deceived.

Being deceived is one of the difficulties in the middle of these trials. We need to see things truly. We need to see things clearly. We need to see things biblically for God's purpose. It fulfills God's purpose and is part of the perseverance that we understand what is true and keep that fixed, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus in the middle of those trials. Now, next Sunday we will get into chapter 37 and I have some questions for you.

Think of this, will Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem continue to trust the Lord? How will it turn out? Will Isaiah and his friends have to learn to grow and eat Assyrian apples? Or how about this? Will Rabshakeh run rather readily within Jerusalem's willing walls while relishing Judah's rapid and ready relinquishment of their royal regent?

What will happen? What's next? You will have to see. You will have to wait. Come and find out about this astonishing outcome. And guess what? Bud will be there, I hope. And yes, we'll talk more about your crises. the present one or the next one, either one. We'll get there, okay? Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you. As we look at this, it's certainly a valuable and precious account of people who are in the midst of a very real situation, very threatening, very dangerous from the world standpoint. And yet it is exactly at those kinds of places where it becomes so evident that you are trustworthy, you are faithful, you are ever faithful. And we thank you for that. Great is your faithfulness. We thank you that we can trust you in and through every single trial. In Jesus' name, Amen.