The entire story is
repeated from Kings and Chronicles, so I will not go through it all again, well
not in detail. A summary will suffice.
Sennacherib came
against Jerusalem. He sent his Rabshakeh to meet Hekekiah.
The king chose rather
to field his own emissaries. Lots of insults and blasphemies ensued.
Hezekiah and his prophet already knew it would not go well with anyone who wanted
to insult the God of Israel. So they just waited for the ax to fall.
Rabshakeh urged them not to listen to Hekekiah’s God, just as Satan once advised Adam and Eve, but the
King had already told his men to shut their ears and not reply.
Hezekiah was duly
offended and rent his clothes and sent his emissaries to Isaiah, but the prophet
assured them that there was nothing to worry about. He promised that a blast, a
wind would blow over the Assyrians and a rumor would send Sennacherib back
home.
Sennacherib was busy
dismantling and punishing Libnah so messages were ferried to and fro in a further war of words.
Sennacherib tried his best to dissuade Judah from looking to God, but
Hekekiah stood his ground and cried to God. You have to believe that Sennacherib had reason to fear God.
Then Isaiah spoke and
assured Judah that Assyria would never enter the city, nor would their arrows. God
assured the Assyrian king that he would return the way he came.
The next morning
185,000 of his men were dead and he departed in haste for Nineveh, where he was
assassinated. So much for their bravado.
Then Hezekiah, who had
held out and even protected Jerusalem’s water resources from Assyria was puffed
up in victory and fell sick. God really does not like competition.
Amoz, another
prophet, came to see him, told him to put his affairs in order and to prepare
for death, but Hezekiah cried to God, repented and was heard.
His life was extended by 15 years, as confirmed by the reversal of the sundial.
Then Baladan, king of
Babylon, heard that Hezekiah had been gravely ill and paid him a visit, but
Hezekiah stumbled again by showing the Babylonian all the treasures in the
house of God.
Isaiah rebuked
him for that and cautioned that all the treasures of the house of God would later be
carried away to Babylon.
In that moment God
confirmed the decline of Assyria and the rise of Babylon, who defied the
Assyrians until they broke the yoke and crushed the enemy of God.
That brief window in
time ensured that Judah left as a nation to be held together as a people for
their 70 years of exile, for God spared them from the dispersion of Assyria.
Prepare ye the way (Isaiah 40)
God invoked comfort
for his people as they lamented their exile in Babylon. He sent assurances that
Jerusalem would stay standing, and yet be restored to her former glory.
He also spoke the
words that Jesus later spoke about John the Baptist about “a voice in the wilderness, crying, “prepare
ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God, for
every valley will be exalted and every mountain shall be brought low” (Mark
1:3).
It’s a wonderful
messianic verse, but it also spoke specifically of the sure and certain path
that God had mapped for Judah’s eventual return to the land of their fathers.
God never promised
that to Israel. The northern tribes were scattered like seeds in the earth, to
take root among the nations, but of Judah, Isaiah said, “her roots will go down
and her growth will go up”.
Isaiah promised that the glory of God would be seen, in part through the reparation of
Jerusalem, but more so through the spiritual awakening heralded by God’s son.
What did the voice
cry? Exactly what Peter said: “that the grass withers and the flower fades, but
the word of God ensures forever” (1 Peter 1:24).
He will surely return
to Zion, with his reward (salvation) and he will gently lead his flock like a
shepherd. That is a picture of the church and the great shepherd.
Who will counsel God
or instruct him? Only Job knew that answer. For God does what he does and his
mysteries defy all reason. He had a plan and that plan would be wondrously
fulfilled in the great redeemer: the son of David. It’s a mystery that Paul marveled
over (Eph 2).
For a moment, the
curtain was drawn aside to reveal what Job saw: that the Lord sat on the circle
of the earth and stretched out the heaven like a curtain and as a tent to dwell
in.
He reduces humanity to grasshoppers and confounds the princes of the earth, who, had they known
what they were doing would never have crucified the Lord of glory.
But he also asks, “have you
not known, has it not been heard, that the Everlasting God, the Creator of the heavens
and earth, neither wearies nor faints, but renews the fainthearted".
It’s a powerful
picture of the inexorable advance of God’s kingdom, but it gives context to the
great refrain: “They that wait on him will mount up with wings as eagles, they
will walk and not faint, they will run and not be weary”.
The highway prepared by God through the march of history, paved the way for the advancing king
who will yet rule in Jerusalem and save her from the nations; but until then
that same great highway will bring the gospel to all nations.
And when we weary of
all that, the impetus of his kingdom will lift us up and carry us onward and upward - towards the glorious culmination of our faith, for we walk a highway of righteousness that leads through the Wilderness (Isaiah 35:8).
This is truly one of the greatest chapters of Isaiah. It is full of hope and it ties in with the deliverance of Jerusalem from Assyria, because that ensured the exile that would bring them back home and ensure the perpetuation of the city of peace. His covenant with David will never fail.
(c) Peter Missing @ bethelstone.com
