"God's Sword" Sermon: Isaiah 31:1-9

“God’s Sword”

[Isaiah 31:1-9]

June 30, 2019, Second Reformed Church

What do you trust?  If you were in serious trouble, who would you call on – where would you go for help?

As Christians who tend to be in worship on Sunday, we might quickly answer, “God” or “Jesus,” but do we go to God -- always? 

Let’s ask this another way:  do you worry?  Do you get afraid of things or people that shouldn’t make you fear?  Do you think, “I’ll be ok, I have a house, and money in the bank, and relatives and friends who will stand by me.  I get my check from the government.  I have my health.  I have little or no debt.”

What if you house burns down or is taken by the bank?  What if the federal government collapses and our money becomes worthless and you no longer get a check?  What if you offend your relatives and friends, or they die?  What if everything goes wrong that could possibly go wrong?

It’s easy to say “God” or “Jesus,” but do we trust God to the very core of our being?  Do we seek Him first and pray to Him for guidance and strength in everything?  Do we pray that God will help us to manage our homes and our finances, that we will use them in a way that glorifies Him, that we will relate to our family in friends in a way that makes them understand that our belief in Jesus is not just a t-shirt slogan, but something that affects every part of our being?

“Well, God knows I trust Him, I don’t have to show it – I don’t have to pray.”

Let’s get in the practice of praying – of affirming our trust in our God and Savior – of aligning our minds and wills with Him.  Before we go to the Center or to a restaurant – pray that God will help you to carry yourself as a Christian – that you would be safe, that you would act in a righteous manner, that you would eat well and within your budget – that you would be respectful of others and be ready to tell them about Jesus.  If you go shopping, ask God to keep you safe, to help you make wise purchases that you can afford.  If you go on the Interweb – that you would use wisdom in going from site to site, that you would not waste time, that you would not lust over scantily clad people, that you would not be taken in by scams, and so forth.  As we look at the candidates running for President – that God would give us wisdom as we choose a woman or man to vote for – and that it would be God’s choice and someone who will do good for the country and be pleasing to God.  We could spend all morning listing things to pray about, get it?

But let’s turn to our text:

First, if we trust in anyone or anything over God, we will fail.

Isaiah is speaking to Jerusalem about the coming attack of the Assyrians, and he gives them God’s judgement about the actions they are taking to secure the city.  And we might think like Jerusalem did, “This is the City of God, God would want us to make alliances with everyone possible, to build up the military for the fight, to have lots of weapons on hand.”  And they could be right.

But….did they pray?  Did they ask the prophet to pray?  Did they receive any instruction from God?
            “Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again’” (Deuteronomy 17:16, ESV).

“And say to him, ‘Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remaliah. Because Syria, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has devised evil against you, saying, “Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,” thus says the Lord GOD:  ‘It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass” (Isaiah 7:4-7, ESV).

So, God tells Jerusalem, “Don’t fear.  Don’t make an alliance with Egypt.  The Assyrians will never conquer Jerusalem.”

“Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation” (Psalm 146:3 ESV).

“Thus says the LORD: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD’” (Jeremiah 17:5, ESV).

Is that clear?

            King Hezekiah’s advisors go down to Egypt and broker an alliance, and get a promise of military support in the form of people, weapons, horses, and chariots.

            And God is furious:

            “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the LORD!”

            Why do we find it hard to listen to and to raise our prayers to the Lord?  Why is it hard for us to trust Him?  Has He failed us before?  Do we find humans more trustworthy than God?  Do we doubt God will really do what He has promised – that He will always provide what we need for this day?

            And so God will stop the Egyptians – they will not help Jerusalem – and Jerusalem will be punished as well:

            “And yet he is wise and brings disaster; he does not call back his words, but will arise against the house of the evildoers and against the helpers of those who work iniquity. The Egyptians are man, and not God, and their horses are flesh, and not spirit. When the LORD stretches out his hand, the helper will stumble, and he who is helped will fall, and they will all perish together.”

            And yet, Jerusalem – Israel & Judah is the people of God – and God will not totally leave her to be destroyed.  God keeps His promises.  God will come down with the strength of the lion and the love of a mother bird and save the remnant that He has chosen to make His own eternally.

            Is that you?  Now, can He be trusted?

“For thus the LORD said to me, ‘As a lion or a young lion growls over his prey, and when a band of shepherds is called out against him he is not terrified by their shouting or daunted at their noise, so the LORD of hosts will come down to fight on Mount Zion and on its hill. Like birds hovering, so the LORD of hosts will protect Jerusalem; he will protect and deliver it; he will spare and rescue it.’”

            As Jesus says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37, ESV).

            The love of God for His people.  The remnant will be saved.  We will receive from our loving Father’s hand all that we need for this day.

But, if we trust in anyone or anything over God, we will fail.

            Second, God calls us to repent of our sin and put away our idols.

            “Turn to him from whom people have deeply revolted, O children of Israel. For in that day everyone shall cast away his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which your hands have sinfully made for you.”

            Every time we sin, we commit idolatry, because we have submitted to something or someone other than God.  Jerusalem – the children of Israel – made for themselves gold and silver idols – physical idols to worship with – or alongside of – God.  We do not tend to make physical idols, but we are idolaters nonetheless.

            Paul tells the Corinthians that we commit idolatry when we partner with – date or marry someone – someone who is an unbeliever, because we are the Temple of the Holy Spirit.

“What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst,          and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty’” (II Corinthians 6:16-18, ESV).

John Calvin writes in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “Hence we may infer, that the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols” (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.iii.xii.html).

Any time we value something more – whether it be a person or a thing or an opinion – if we value it more than God and what He has revealed in His Word, we are committing idolatry – and God says to throw it away.

Jerusalem is committing idolatry as they think their way to protect themselves from the Assyrians is a better way than God’s – they have made an alliance with Egypt, with their soldiers, and horses, and chariots  -- that is what they have their confidence in.  But God told them to wait, to trust, to be quiet, to do nothing, and God will stop the Assyrians from conquering Jerusalem.

What do you have confidence in?

            In God’s Grace, He saves Jerusalem, as we read:

“’And the Assyrian shall fall by a sword, not of man; and a sword, not of man, shall devour him; and he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be put to forced labor. His rock shall pass away in terror, and his officers desert the standard in panic,’ declares the LORD, whose fire is in Zion, and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.”

God’s sword came against the Assyrians, and they fled.  This may be the account we have mentioned before when 185,000 Assyrians died overnight, and the remaining soldiers and their king fled to Nineveh.

However, since the oracle of God says that their young men shall be put to forced labor – this is not merely the immediate deliverance of Jerusalem – the defeat of Sennacherib was the beginning of the end – this likely refers to the fall of the Assyrian Empire that happened when the Babylonians conquered Nineveh in 612 B.C.

            And notice – the fire of God is in Zion and the furnace is in Jerusalem.  God’s sword takes out His enemies and ours, and the fire of God is in Jerusalem.

            Hear what the author of Hebrews writes:

            “For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.’ Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’ But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

            “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:18-29, ESV).

            The author of Hebrews makes a comparison of God on Mount Horeb when Moses received the Ten Commandments – and the Law – and God on Mount Zion – in the eternal Kingdom. And he points out that anyone who even touched the mountain while God was speaking to Moses was to be put to death, but we will be welcomed into the Kingdom before God forever.  But that is not because God has changed – God is still a consuming fire – God is still dangerous – but now, as believers, we come to Him through Jesus and receive His Love.

            God has a sword against our enemies and His enemies, and He is a consuming fire for all those who never believe.  And so, not out of fear on our part – but out of love, out of thanksgiving, out of awe for Who our God is and the salvation He grants us by the Holy Spirit and through Jesus, again and again and until that final day when we are glorified, we ought to quickly repent of our sin and put away our idols.

            Let us pray:

            Almighty God, we thank You for the witness to what You did for Your people in Jerusalem.  We thank You for reminding us that Your place is above all, and we are not to sin against You by putting anything in Your place – by choosing to sin against what You have clearly taught us.  Lord, we ask that You would keep us amazed – that we would seek to know You in all that You have revealed, and we ask that You would keep us faithful and obedient – striving after holiness.  For it is in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.