The LORD be your Dread
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Everyone can’t be wrong, right?
In the last passage:
Judah teams up with Syria to attack Judah.
Judah was scared
God sends Isaiah with a message: Don’t be afraid!
King Ahaz looks to Assyria for help.
Assyria does defeat Israel & Syria
Is 8 Is related to those events, and prophesies more details.
Map
4 sections in the text, 3 of which begin with “The LORD Spoke”.
We will work through each section in turn.
The LORD Speaks through a Son
The LORD Speaks through a Son
Our first section comes in light of the sign that God had sent to Ahaz.
Ahaz was an apostate King of Judah. How do we know he was apostate? He sent gold from God’s temple to buy Assyria’s military aid. Then he went and adjusted all the temple furniture to meet his own designs and to copy the Assyrian’s worship.
He sacrificed to other gods, even sacrificing his own son. He did evil in the sight of the Lord.
Despite this God sent him a sign in a child named Immanuel. Before that boy had come of age all of the threats that Ahaz were worried about would be dealt with, in fact there would be a new threat on the scene.
Lets look at our passage, where a new sign child will appear.
Then the Lord said to me, “Take a large tablet and write on it in common characters, ‘Belonging to Maher-shalal-hash-baz.’ And I will get reliable witnesses, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah, to attest for me.”
Write out these words in stone. The point being it will be a permanent record, and when the words are fulfilled there will be no doubting that this was God’s Word and his plan.
What are the words? Belongs to Maher-shalal-hash-baz “The spoil speeds, the prey hastens” - an allusion to a coming invader/attacker.
God get’s two powerful figures in Judah to be witnesses Uriah the preist and Zecariah the king’s father-in-law. Even though Uriah is also not faithful to God (and Zechariah probably not either), they will authenticate the very tablet that will later remind them that they are under God’s judgement.
Next, Isaiah goes to his wife and they have a baby!
And I went to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son. Then the Lord said to me, “Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz; for before the boy knows how to cry ‘My father’ or ‘My mother,’ the wealth of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the king of Assyria.”
Similar to the Immanuel sign, within a year or so the threat of the Syria-Israel team-up will be dealt with, by Assyria the rising power to the north.
Prophetess may just be a refrence to the fact that she is married to Isaiah, or she may have been a prophetess in her own right.
Like Hosea, Isaiah has at least two sign-children, and Emmanuel is likely a third.
This son’s name points to the coming Assyrian invasion from the north.
THE NAMES OF SCRIPTURE HOLD GREAT SIGNIFICANCE.
Isaiah means “The Salvation of Yahweh”
Immanuel
Joshua/Yeshua/Jesus “Yahweh Saves”
Despite all the goings on in the political and miliatry sphere of Israel, God was at work. He is with his people, and he will save them.
He saves them through Jesus Christ, the greater Immanuel who is literally GOd with us in the flesh. He was the greatest “sign son” that there ever was.
The LORD Speaks: Destruction is Coming
The LORD Speaks: Destruction is Coming
The Lord Speaks again! Continuing the prediction of what will happen
The Lord spoke to me again: “Because this people has refused the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, and rejoice over Rezin and the son of Remaliah, therefore, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the River, mighty and many, the king of Assyria and all his glory. And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks, and it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass on, reaching even to the neck, and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.”
Shiloah was a gentle stream that supplied water to Jerusalem. It was steady and continual, just like God’s ongoing providential care for his people. It is not always flashy and exciting, but it is continual and good.
But the Judah was interested in the gentle ongoing provision, and they had turned to Assyria to be their saviour, paying for it with gold consecrated to serve God! They had literally robbed God to bride Assyria to come and save them.
They thought their own shrewdness had saved them. They Rejoiced when Assyria came and attacked Syria and destroyed them!
But God is not mocked. He was the one who did it, despite their machinations. He brought Assyria against Syria, and eventually that flood would overwhelm Judah too! They will be attacked by their own saviours an become vassals.
These nations are described like two alternative water courses - you have the gentle and faithful provision of the Lord, but because they rejected that, he will bring a flood from the Euphrates river (Assyria) to overwhelm them. It’s not a literal flood. Just as Paris and the Sene go hand in hand, as does Melbourne and the Yarra river, so too Assyria and the Euphrates. It is used as a picture of their coming ruin.
This young boy Emmanuel will have his own land overrun by the invaders from the north. Thankfully God is With US, and so they will survive.
Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered; give ear, all you far countries; strap on your armor and be shattered; strap on your armor and be shattered. Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing; speak a word, but it will not stand, for God is with us.
God Foretells the uselessness of trying to stand against the plans of God.
Armour is useless,
Planning is useless,
God is with his people, and nothing will be able to affect his plans.
Do you beleive this?
The LORD Speaks: Fear God
The LORD Speaks: Fear God
For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.
But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.”
Jesus is the stone of Stumbling!
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
Isaiah Speaks: To the Word!
Isaiah Speaks: To the Word!
Bind up the testimony; seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.
And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God, and turn their faces upward. And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness.
So What?
So What?
Don’t fear
Your co-workers and your boss
Lawless-lawmakers and Policy makers
International threats
Trust God and stick to His word!