August 2, 2026 | A Wake-Up Call From God

Isaiah 30:1-31:9, Wes Ooms

Transcript

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Uh Jason is wrapping up his time of study and prayer. He's been gone for two weeks. He'll be back, Lord willing, this next Sunday. So we look forward to that time. Last week he asked his son Elijah to speak. And Elijah opened up, if you're with us, he opened up Mark chapter five in dealing with the demoniac from the garrisines and how Christ delivered him from thousands of demons who then possessed pigs that ran off a cliff into the ocean and obviously created quite a stir within the regions around. It's an exciting story. In fact, I'd argue it's one of the most dramatic stories of deliverance you find, not only in the book of Mark, but throughout all of the New Testament. And Jason then asked if I would speak going back into the book of Isaiah and speak on chapters 30 and 31, a section of Isaiah that Martin Luther, the great reformer of the Protestant Reformation, referred to as somewhat repetitive and tedious at times. Thanks, Jason. I appreciate that. If we're honest with ourselves, as we look at a book that's 66 chapters long, there's a lot going on in this book. And it can appear somewhat tedious as we work our way through it chapter by chapter, verse by verse. And there does seem to be some repetition going on. And I think before we dive into it, it would be good to kind of back up and get a bird's eye view of the book as a whole, just ever so briefly. The book of Isaiah is much like all of the Bible, the Old and the New Testaments, because you can take the book of Isaiah and divide it in half, so to speak. The first 39 chapters resemble in many ways the Old Testament because there's a message of warning against sin and the lack of repentance and impending judgment that is about to come if there is no repentance. So it mirrors the Old Testament. But chapters 40 through 66, we have a message of deliverance, of hope, of God accomplishing ultimately his purpose through his people. It's a message of redemption, and it is very much like the New Testament theme that we find. Now, over Isaiah's tenure, you could say, as a prophet, he would speak to and minister alongside four different kings in the southern tribe of Judah. And as we look at chapters 30 and 31 today, we are going to be looking at a time where that very last king, the fourth king, was in charge. Now, his name is not mentioned here in either one of these chapters. So we have to find the backstory for what's going on in this account elsewhere. And to do that, we need to leave the book of Isaiah and go to the book of 2 Kings. 2 Kings chapter 18 fills in the story of what is going on in Isaiah chapter 30 and 31. So let's take a look at this together. 2 Kings chapter 18, beginning in verse 1. Now it came about in the third year of Hosea, the son of Elah, king of Israel, that's the northern tribes, that Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, became king. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Abbey, the daughter of Zechariah. And he did, that is Hezekiah, he did right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done. Now, if you're familiar with the tribes that had split, the country split in half after the death of Solomon. The northern tribes of Israel, every single king they had was wicked. Every single one. To the south, the tribes of Judah, you would run some good, some bad, some good, some bad. The writer here of 2 Kings tells us that Hezekiah is one of the good guys. And he follows the pattern of David. Verse 4, it says, He removed the high places, that is, places where Jews would go to worship God outside of Jerusalem in disobedience to what was commanded by God to worship in the temple. They chose their own places to worship, and they'd go to high places, much like the pagan people did. He broke those places down, and he broke down the sacred pillars. Those would be idols of Baal and altars of Baal. He broke those down and also cut down the asherah. The Asherah was the cohort of Baal, his sexual partner. It was usually a tree or a post of wood, female in appearance, and he's destroying these two because the Jews were worshiping not only God on their terms and not on his, but also were blending in pagan worship. They were synchretinistic in that sense. They were just kind of piling it all in and mixing it all in and pretending it all was the same. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it, and it was called Nahushtem. And all God's people said, What? Where did this come from? Well, remember back in the book of Leviticus, or numbers, excuse me, when God is leading his people out of in bondage, out of out of Egypt, Moses is leading them. They've been they're going through a series of disobedient times, and this is one of those disobedient times, and God brings about poisonous snakes to bite them. And they're being bitten and they're being they're dying because of the poison. And they call out to Moses, they call out to God for forgiveness, and God instructed Moses to make a serpent, a snake out of bronze and put it up on a pole to where everyone could see it, because if they would simply look in faith at that serpent, they would be healed and they would survive that snake bite. And he did and they did. And when that episode was all over, someone kept the snake. And over the next 700 years, this snake would pop up from time to time. And at this time, it is being worshipped. It had become an idol, a tool that God had one time used for deliverance, was now being worshipped. And Hezekiah, as a result, destroys it. And he says, and it was called Nahushton, which literally means that piece of bronze. We're going to get rid of it. Because you've been distracted from the one true God through something that He one time used to deliver you. Verse 5. He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him. For he clung to the Lord and did not depart from the following, from following him, but kept his commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses. So the writer here tells us on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it's not simply his evaluation. God directed him to write this down that Hezekiah was at the top of the heap of spirituality and obedience when it came to all the kings of Judah since the split of the kingdom. He's the number one. He's the best they would get. And he's labeled as such. Verse 7, and the Lord was with him. Wherever he went, he prospered. And notice the next sentence. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. That one sentence opens up a whole new backstory for us. And let's just dive into that for a few moments. Assyria had come down from the north. Assyria was a major empire back then. It was located in present-day Iraq, part of Iran and part of Syria. It was a large country, a large kingdom at this time. It came down and in 722 it conquered and destroyed Israel, the northern kingdom. That kingdom's gone. They withdrew, but they were gaining tribute from all the countries around them. Tribute was basically a form of payment saying, please don't hurt us. Think back to Junior High. You may have been bullied by someone who wanted your lunch money. And if you gave him the lunch money, he wouldn't beat you up. Tribute was lunch money. And what you had here is you had Egypt, Phoenicia, Philistia, and Judah paying tribute to Assyria, saying, please don't hurt us, leave us alone, and we'll pay you on an annual basis. And that position had been in place for a number of decades. Then Sargon II, who was the king of Assyria, died. And all those nations to the south around Judah and the like thought, here's our chance where we can get out from under Assyria because his son Sennacherib is coming and taking over. And we don't think he's as capable. So we are going to just stop sending payment. And they're far enough away, they'll probably just leave us alone now, and they're a little bit in decline. So let's play that card. And that's exactly what they did. The only problem was Assyria didn't like that. And they came down. And they came down with a vengeance. And they swept through Phoenicia and absolutely leveled the place. They came through Philistia and destroyed it. And all of a sudden, Assyria's sights are now set on Israel. On Judah, rather, on Judah, the southern tribes. And Hezekiah sees what's going on, and his advisors get together with him and they decide, according to chapter 30 of Isaiah, that we will send gifts and our delegates to Egypt and see if we can form an alliance to hold Assyria off. Because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And Egypt doesn't want Assyria either, so maybe we get together and do this. That is the backstory of what is going on now in chapter 31 of Isaiah, the passage that we read earlier this morning. But they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord. God is saying through Isaiah that you folks have made a choice, and you've made a bad choice. When you look for resources, when you look for help, when you look for deliverance, you looked to mankind, you looked to Egypt and not to me. And David himself said, There are those who trust in chariots and horses, in Psalm 20, but he says, But we will trust, I will put my trust in the Lord God Almighty. Well, the Judeans had flipped the scripture, and they said, We're going to trust in Egypt. Egypt's our go-to position. And God condemns that. In the second verse, verse 2, he says, Yet he that is God, he also is wise and will bring disaster. He's God is comparing himself to the wise diplomats that had just gone down to Egypt to work out this treaty. And all of a sudden things have changed because guess what? Egypt's not showing up. And Sennacherib is. And Judah's trying to figure out what they're going to do. I got a posting on my phone early this morning about how the president has now declared a pause in the in the military actions in Iran. I've lost track how many times that's happened. It's happened a lot because Iran says one thing and does the other. So the diplomats and the wise men who are trying to bring this all together are trying to figure it out, and they have got to rewrite what they're going to do and how they're going to do it. God in verse 2 says, I'm also wise and I'll bring disaster. And I do not retract my words. I don't change the plan because my plan is sovereign. Man's plans change because they don't know all the facts. Man's plans change because they do not take into consideration the deceitfulness of the human heart. But I'm God. And God never says, whoa, I never saw that coming. He knows he is sovereign. And God is saying, if you had come to me, I would have given you a straight course to follow. But instead you're relying upon the wisdom of others. But I will rise up against the house of evildoers and against the help of the workers of iniquity. Verse 3. Now the Egyptians are men and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit. So the Lord will stretch out his hand, and he who helps, that is the Egyptians, will stumble. And he who is helped, that is Judah, the one who has helped, will fall, and all of them will come to an end together. God is pronouncing judgment not only upon Egypt, but also on Judah, because of the alliance that they have sought outside the will and the purpose and the wisdom of God. So God is telling them through Isaiah what's going to happen, and there's no good news here at this point. Verse 4 For thus says the Lord to me, as the lion or young lion growls over its prey, against a band of shepherds is called out, will not be terrified of their voice, nor disturbed at their noise. So the Lord of hosts will come down to wage war on Mount Zion on its hill. God presents himself now as a roaring young lion who has just made a kill, taken down a sheep or a lamb, and is about to feast on it as lions are wont to do. And who shows up but some shepherds saying, Shoo, shoo, go away, go away. The lion's not going to respond to that. God is the lion, and the Assyrians are the shepherds. And God says, I'm not impressed, I'm not scared, I can just do that to the Assyrians. They're not going to change what my will, what my purpose is. So the Lord of hosts will come down to wage war on Mount Zion and its hill. Like flying birds, verse 5. So the Lord of hosts will protect Jerusalem. He changes the imagery now. He says, Now I'm like a bird that just soars over Jerusalem, the capital. I see it and I protect it. Just like a mother bird would do to its chicks. He will protect and deliver it. He will pass over and rescue it. Then verse 6 Return to Him from whom you have deeply defected, O sons of Israel. Even in the midst of this pronouncement of what is about to transpire if everything continues as it is, God's saying, Return to me. Your hearts have deeply defected from me, but return to me. If we skip over, turn back to chapter 30 of Isaiah, verse 9 and following, we get an idea of what those hearts were really like as they're described. Because these two chapters do mirror one another in some ways. There is some repetition going on here. Verse 9 says this for this is a rebellious people. False sons. Sons who refuse to listen to the instruction of the Lord. Who say to the seers, you must not see visions. And to the prophets, you must not prophesy to us what is right. Speak to us pleasant words. Prophesy illusions. Tell us lies, tell us sweet little lies. That's what we want to hear. We don't want to hear the truth. Verse 11, get out of the way. Turn aside from the path. Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. The rebellious people of Israel are saying to God and to Isaiah, We got this. We don't need any additional input from you. But did they have it? Not hardly, because Assyria is now breathing down their necks. As Sennacherib and his army of hundreds of thousands make their way into Israel, they proceed to destroy forty-six of the forty-seven fortified cities in all of Judah. A fortified city was basically a defensive perimeter built around major cities to protect, obviously, from attack. And forty-six of the forty-seven had been destroyed. Over 200,000 prisoners had already been taken. And there's only one city remaining, and that is Jerusalem. These are bleak, bleak times for them. Hezekiah saw what was coming, and he said, Okay, I'm really sorry for what we've done. How can we make it up to you? I'll give you whatever you want. And Zennacherib says, I want eleven tons of silver and one ton of gold. And Hezekiah cleaned out his own royal treasury, then went to the temple of God and took all the silver out of it. And the scriptures tell us that he stripped the doors and the doorposts of their gold as well. He looted the temple to pay tribute now to Sennacherib so that Sennacherib would go home. Only problem was Sennacherib didn't go home. He took the lunch money and kept coming. Jerusalem was going to be next. Hezekiah is completely out of options at this point. And then he realizes I'm out of earthly options, not heavenly options. And scripture tells us in 2 Kings that he spread himself out on the floor and prayed to God in repentance. Telling God what Sennacherib and his men just outside the city gates, which were now surrounded, were telling them they were going to do to them. And then he calls for Isaiah. And Isaiah then comes to the king, to Hezekiah, to share some truth. We find this truth in chapter 19 of 2 Kings, verse 32 and following. Of Assyria. So God is now speaking through Isaiah here. He shall not come near to this city or shoot an arrow there. He doesn't even begin the attack. He may have surrounded the city, but God is saying he's not even going to the first one. It's not going to happen. He shall not come to this city or shoot an arrow there, neither shall he come before it with a shield, nor throw up a mound against it. In other words, to put up siege machines so they could breach the wall and come up over the top and invade the city. By the same way he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come to the city, declares the Lord. Verse thirty-four, for I will defend this city to save it for my own sake and for my servant David's sake. And how did he do it? Verse thirty-five and following tells us. Then it happened that night that the angel of the Lord went out and struck a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. And when men rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead. So Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, departed and returned home and lived at Nineveh, which was the capital city that he had just created up there. There is a, I find personally, a fascinating side story to this. That here we've got this account in scripture of what happened. But are you aware that the Assyrians also have an account? The Assyrians were great record keepers, and they would put their records in written cuneiform in vessels of clay that were called prisms because they had six sides to them. They'd stand about yet all, be about that big around, and they would keep records of all their conquests. And there are three prisons that exist to this day that tell us about this invasion. One is in Jerusalem at the Israel, Israeli uh mine's gone blank here. There are a museum there. Also the British Museum in London. And then there's one in Chicago at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. And I've seen that one. And Zenacrib records all of his conquests going on in Judah. He records the 46 towns that he destroyed. He lists 210,000 prisoners that he took back to Assyria. He talks about the tribute that he got from Zenacib. He describes Zenacrib as one who is as a bird trapped in a cage as he held on to the citadel city of Jerusalem, awaiting for that final attack. And then the next entry, I went back home to Nineveh. There is no account of his attack of Jerusalem. And that's significant because, in part, the Assyrians love to boast about their victories, but there wasn't one here because the battle never took place. He doesn't say what happened, he just leaves it blank. He just says, I went home. I went home. The account is amazing because we see how God chose to supernaturally deliver his people. Because that's how God oftentimes accomplishes his purpose. Before we close our time out together this morning, there are two verses that are inserted in chapter 30 of Isaiah that we need to look at. Because they have importance not only within the context of the story of this account, but both of these verses I think speak to you and to me today. They go way beyond the context of the trauma that the Judeans are facing at the hands of Zarakim. Verse 15 of Isaiah chapter 30 says this for thus the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said, In repentance and rest, you shall be saved. In quietness and trust is your strength. In the midst of their rebellion against God, God communicates in the midst of this traumatic experience and series of experiences, what his offer is to his people. He says, I offer you salvation, deliverance if you have repentance, and if you rest in me, if you trust in me. And that was the problem. They weren't trusting in God. God was an option way down the line. They had their own way of doing things. They were going to work with Egypt. In quietness, and in trust is your strength. It's not the display of your own strength, it's not in chariots and horses. But you need to be quiet. You need to rest in me. Trust me, that's where your strength is. And then that verse finishes with this daunting statement. But you were not willing. And because you weren't willing, this is why you were in the situation you are in. But God wasn't done with his offer. Look at verse 18. Therefore, the Lord longs to be gracious to you. Therefore, he waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice. How blessed are those who long for him. Look at that again. The Lord longs to be gracious to you. In the midst of their rebellion, and they're basically flipping God off for generations, God is saying, I long to be gracious. I ache to be gracious. I want to be gracious. This is God's heartbeat. As you look at God personally, how do you view God? What's your first impression of God? Do you look at him as I gotta be careful, he's gonna judge me? He's gonna lower the hammer on me. I've got to walk the straight and narrow, or something will happen. That's not God's heartbeat. That's not how God desires to relate to his people. It wasn't how he desired to relate to the Judeans here in the book of Isaiah, and it's not the way God desires to relate to you and to me today. God is displaying his heart, he's laying all his cards out, so to speak. He's saying, I long to be gracious to you. I want to give you grace upon grace upon grace. That's the God that we worship. That's the God of the Old Testament as well as the new. Again, it's the issue. God is not looking to throw a lightning bolt your way. God desires to be compassionate. God knows that we are but dust. He knows our struggles. He knows our failures, and yet his heartbeat is still to be compassionate to us, to draw us in gently to himself, to give us peace, to give us rest, to help meet those deepest heartfelt needs that we can have. And then the third point we see in verse 18, how blessed are those who long for him. God says there is blessing, there is reward, there is purpose, there is benefit to waiting on God, to seeking him, to long for him as much as he longs for us. In that way it's a symbiotic relationship. We benefit from this. And God delights in giving us that compassion. He delights in giving us that grace. And he says, if you long for him, likewise, you will be blessed. And the people of Judah saw it in a most traumatic fashion when they got up that next morning, and there was nothing moving out in the tents of the enemy. And again, in 2 Kings, we're told that a couple of men who were leopards who couldn't live in this city noticed there was no movement. They were closer than the city walls were to the enemy encampment. And they got a little closer and a little closer and are looking around and saying, wow, there's no let's take this stuff. I mean, let's let's plunder the place. And then they felt guilty about it, and they went and told the people inside the walls that, hey, the army's no more. It's an amazing, amazing account. But it demonstrates the love that God has for us and the desire he has to bring about his purpose in our lives. On September 15th of 2001, there was a memorial service, a rural part of Pennsylvania, for United Flight 93 that crashed during 9-11. And during this memorial service, Lisa Beamer was there and she wrote the following. Todd's memorial service had been so uplifting, so inspiring, because the emphasis had been on hope in the midst of crisis. On Monday, as I listened to the well-intended speakers, who were doing their best to comfort, but with little, if any, direct reference to the power of God to sustain us, I felt I was sliding helplessly down a high mountain into a deep crevasse. As much as I appreciated the kindness of the wonderful people who tried to encourage us, that afternoon was actually one of the lowest points in my grieving. It wasn't the people or even the place. Instead, it struck me how now hopeless the world is when God is factored out of the equation. The desperation that Lisa Beamer felt was in no small part the desperation the people of Judah felt as they looked over their city walls and saw an amassing army of 185 soldiers out for blood. And like Judah, they had factored God right out of the equation. And they suffered for it. They went through needless heartache and turmoil because of that. Why is there repetition in the book of Isaiah? I think in part there's repetition because, like the people of Judah itself, many times we don't listen. And God's going to give that message over again and over again. And over again. There are times when we factor God out of our equation, our life. That we pay Him lip service, much like the synchretinistic worship that the people of Judah had during that time. God was one of many. He wasn't their default position. And as believers today, that has to be our default position. It goes against our nature. We want to fix stuff ourselves. And we want to look for our Egypt to help out, oftentimes to the neglect of the relationship that God desires, that God longs to have with us. God's offer that we see in Isaiah 30 is rest and quietness. And it comes through trust and repentance. That God's heart is one that longs to be gracious to us. What an amazing, amazing way to view God. And it's the accurate view. He longs to be gracious. He desires to be compassionate. And he blesses. He blesses those who long after him. That's our challenge. That's our reality. Our lives will be blessed as we see God accomplish his purpose in his time, his way in our lives as we lean into him. Let's go to him in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the repetition that we find oftentimes in your word. It reminds us of our humanity, of our fallenness. Father, of the fact that we we rely on ourselves, we look for our own Egypts to help our situations out instead of looking to the one who longs to be gracious to us. Father, we cling to your compassion, to your forgiveness. Father, help us to long for you. And in doing so, be blessed because you do seek to bless us each day, every day, for your honor and for your glory. In whose name we pray. Amen.