Well, today was a better day… I’m feeling quite a bit better, so I’m back to my normal posting schedule. Notes from Isaiah 34-39 follow:
Isaiah 36:4-5 (NIV)
4The field commander said to them, “Tell Hezekiah,
” ‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: On what are you basing this confidence of yours? 5You say you have strategy and military strength—but you speak only empty words. On whom are you depending, that you rebel against me?
Isaiah 36:8-12 (NIV)
8” ‘Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses — if you can put riders on them! 9How then can you repulse one officer of the least of my master’s officials, even though you are depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? 10Furthermore, have I come to attack and destroy this land without the LORD? The LORD himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.’ ”11Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah said to the field commander, “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.”
12But the commander replied, “Was it only to your master and you that my master sent me to say these things, and not to the men sitting on the wall — who, like you, will have to eat their own filth and drink their own urine?”
Isaiah 36:13-15 (NIV)
13Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew, “Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! 14This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you! 15Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD when he says, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’
Isaiah 36:18-20 (NIV)
18“Do not let Hezekiah mislead you when he says, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’ Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? 19Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they rescued Samaria from my hand? 20Who of all the gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me? How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem from my hand?”
Can you sense God’s anger building toward the Assyrian army as their field commander taunts God’s people?
Definitely a bad idea, as we see from the following chapter…
Isaiah 37:33-38 (NIV)
33“Therefore this is what the LORD says concerning the king of Assyria:
“He will not enter this city
or shoot an arrow here.
He will not come before it with shield
or build a siege ramp against it.34By the way that he came he will return;
he will not enter this city,”
declares the LORD.35“I will defend this city and save it,
for my sake and for the sake of David my servant!”36Then the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies! 37So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
38One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.
The results for the Assyrians weren’t pretty. God destroyed their army without requiring His people to even take up arms.
I wonder if, in our culture, we think about the consequences of mocking God? I’m not thinking so much of non-believers… you have to expect a lack of respect for God from those that don’t believe. I’m not even thinking of so-called Christians, that mock God by promoting blatantly false teachings about Him. Both groups are clearly deceived, and the consequences for their lack of real faith and trust in Christ are pretty clear.
But what about us, as Christians who claim to walk closely with Jesus, and who profess to live lives wholly devoted to Him? Do we often just give lip service to God’s commands and expectations, in essence mocking Him? While I’d like to think that none of us would actually go to another believer with whom we have conflict and tell them that God is on our side and they can pretty much eat feces and die (that is what the Assyrian commander told God’s people here in Isaiah, after all)… do we really take God seriously and show Him the proper respect in all circumstances?
The consequences of sin are dire. If we’re not taking God seriously… if we’re mocking Him through continual disobedience to Him… we’ve got to ask ourselves a simple question: “Just what kind of relationship do I really have with Christ?”
If the honest answer to that question isn’t very palatable, we need to spend some serious time in prayer and self-examination in an effort to make right what’s wrong.
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