A translation and sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church 19 Nov 2006
A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.
The teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human because even though it was a very large mammal its throat was very small.
The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale.
Irritated, the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human; it was physically impossible.
The little girl said, "When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah".
The teacher asked, "What if Jonah went to hell?"
The little girl replied, "Then you ask him".
Here is another case of seeking refuge where it only makes things worse. The teacher was depending upon human logic instead of trusting God’s word, and, as the girl observed, this would not make things better for the teacher, but result in being sent to hell. Whenever we trust in anything besides God, it makes things worse for us – sometimes right away, but always over the long haul through eternity in hell.
Isaiah chapter 20 is about the contrast of here people put their faith. It opens with a remarkable story of a man exercising faith in God.
In the year that the Tartan went to Ashdod,
when he was sent by Sargon king of Assyria, and fought against Ashdod and captured her
(2) at that time
Jehovah spoke by the hand of Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying,
"Go,
and loose the sackcloth from your waist
and take off your thong from your foot,"
and he did so, walking naked and barefoot.
(3) Then Jehovah said,
"As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot
three years a sign and a portent against Egypt and against Cush,
(4) so shall the king of Assyria lead away
the Egyptian captives and the Cushite exiles,
children and elders,
naked and barefoot,
and their buttocks will be bare, the nakedness of Egypt.
(5) Then they shall be dismayed and ashamed
from Cush
from their hope
and from Egypt their ornament.
(6) And the inhabitant of this coastland will say in that day,
'Look, thus is our hope
which we escaped there
for help
to be delivered from the face of the king of Assyria!
And we, how shall we escape?'"
· Isaiah was already wearing sackcloth. Jewish commentators say he was mourning over the capture of Samaria, which had probably happened about seven years before the time of this prophecy.
· Others say it was the garb of a prophet: Mat 3:4 “Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.” 2 Kings 1:8 describes Elijah’s garb similarly.
· Debate over what it meant to be naked. This Hebrew word “arom” is used several times in the Old Testament in the phrase “naked as the day you were born” (Hos. 2:3, Ecclesiastes 5:15, Job 1:21) and is the word used of Adam and Eve in Gen 2:25. The Septuagint, however, translates this word into the same Greek word used of Peter’s state of dress when he was working in his fishing boat in Joh 21:7, which was probably more like underwear than total nakedness.
· Whatever the case, it was shameful, and it was supposed to be shameful because God wanted the Israelites to feel the same blush that they would feel when the King of Assyria paraded the captives of their political ally, Egypt in front of them.
· So this was a test of Isaiah’s faith. Would he do something that could ruin his reputation and his career in order to obey God? Isaiah had no way of knowing or humanly suspecting that Egypt was going to be carried captive in three years. Would he trust God or preserve his reputation?
· V.2 “And he did so.”
· Would you have obeyed?
· Sometimes God guides us to do things that don’t make sense. (Mat 5:44 “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you…” KJV)
· This is the essence of Faith – Heb. 11:1 “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
· “Acting in obedience to God can never be a thing of shame” EJ Young
· Yet Isaiah obeyed and now, what is his reputation? When you think of Isaiah, you don’t think of a gross nudist, you think of one of the greatest writers of the Bible. The preface in Calvin’s commentary on Isaiah calls Isaiah, “the most sublime and elegant of the prophets of the Old Testament”.
· His faith did not result in destroying his reputation; rather, God honored him.
· Joh 12:26c “If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” (This is the verse that spurred Eric Liddel on to victory in the 400 meter race in the 1924 Olympics after choosing to obey God rather than man and not run the 100 meter race for which he had trained when it was scheduled for a Sunday. Eric risked his reputation because he trusted in God rather than man, and God rewarded him.)
Now, let’s look at the contrast - the people of the coastland who were not trusting God:
· Pass around handout with map and relief images of Sargon and captives, and chart the following on a whiteboard:
· A tumultuous 60 years 730-670BC
· Starting when Ahaz, king of Judah saw Ephraim and Syria ally and formed an alliance with Assyria.
· Assyria then came down and conquered Syra and Ephraim, making them pay tribute.
· Then a powerful, new Ethiopian dynasty developed in Egypt which resulted in all the Palestinian peoples realigning with Egypt in order to get out from the threat of Assyria.
· Assyria didn’t like this, so Shalmanezer and his son Sargon came down, conquered Moab, destroyed Samaria (ending the Northern kingdom), and overtook the Philistine cities (putting a puppet king over Philistia), and went home.
· Eulaleus, king of Tyre, who was allied with Egypt, couldn’t let Assyria control the Philistine coastland between Phoenicia and Egypt, so he came down and, together with Hezekiah, re-conquered the cities of Philistia, installing a Greek man named Iaman over Philistia. For that, Shalmaneser, the Assyrian, begins a 5-year siege of Tyre, then pulls back to battle Medes and Persians.
· Not forgetful of the turnover in Philistia, the king of Assyria sends his second-in-command, titled “The Tartan,” go reclaim the cities in Philistia. When the Assyrian army re-enters the area, Iaman flees to Egypt and Hezekiah tries to pay off the Assyrians so they won’t take Jerusalem. Hezekiah fortifies Jerusalem and then gets mortally ill. God heals him and promises to give him 15 more years until the conflict with Assyria is over, and the Chaldeans visit Hezekiah to inquire after seeing the sign of the sun going back.
· The Tartan’s siege of Lachish (aka Ashdod) was taking too long, so Sargon hurries down to join forces with his Tartan. Sargon sends the Tartan to threaten Jerusalem, then together they sweep through Egypt, taking captives, and forcing Pharaoh So (Sobako) to pay tribute. Pharaoh delivers Iaman in chains to the Assyrians.
· Sargon returns to finish conquering Lachish and Azotus (aka Eltekah) and once again send a threat to Hezekiah in Jerusalem as the Ethiopian king, Tirhakah, comes up to engage in battle. After beating Tirhakah at Azotus, the King of Assyria finally besieges Jerusalem. The Angel of the Lord kills 185,000 of the Assyrian army and the king retreats back to Assyria.
· Sennacherib, the king of Assyria (who is also called Sargon), focuses the rest of his reign on subduing the Medes, Persians and Chaldeans.
· Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, succeeds him and reigns a long time in Jerusalem, martyring Isaiah by sawing him in two.
· After a time of civil disorder in Egypt and a reign of 12 regional kings, Psammeticus ascends to power over all Egypt, as the “hard king” of the previous chapter of Isaiah.
· Sources: Holy Bible, Commentaries on Isaiah by Delitzsch, Young, Slotki, and JFB, Ussher’s Annals, and Damien Mackey’s online article “Sargon is Sennacherib”
· V.6 – “Inhabitants of the coastland” include Phoenicia (Isa 23:2), Philistines (Zeph 2:5) and Israel, inasmuch as they were trusting man like the rest of the pagans.
· This war with Assyria was a test of faith for the inhabitants of the coastland. Where would they turn for help?
· As this history shows, they turned to Egypt for help, not to God.
o Isa 31:1 “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help”
o Isa 36:6-9 “You trust in Egypt, that broken reed, that if a man leans on it, will pierce him”
o Jer. 46:25 “I am bringing punishment… upon Pharaoh and those who trust in him.
· They came out of the “frying pan” of intertribal conflict into the “fire” of the Assyrian war.
“How shall we escape?” end of v.6
· Like Isaiah, God may have asked you to do something that defies common sense
· Like Philistia, you may see a danger bearing down on you and you feel helpless about it.
· People look so powerful & we can’t see God, so the temptation is to look to man for help.
· God’s way usually does not look like it will work. You look down the path and you can’t see where it goes past the first bend, and it sure looks like it’s going the wrong direction.
· God sends these faith-testing trials upon us and asks, “How will you escape?”
· If you’ve gotten nothing else out of the book of Isaiah, you should have gotten at least this: God is big!
· God is not to be trifled with, but He promises blessing to those who will trust Him and follow His path!
· He calls us to trust Him. He send His son, Jesus, to be born for us and die for us, taking on the punishment for sin, and rise from the dead for us. This is God’s good news that He wants us to believe and tell others about.
· He calls us to obey Him.
· Compare the shame and confusion of the Jews who trusted in the armies of other nations with the enduring honor accorded to Isaiah. Which do you want? The short-term ridicule for following God or the enduring honor of being faithful? The army of Egypt or the Lord of Hosts?
· QUOTE: "Trust in yourself, and you are doomed to disappointment; trust in your friends, and they will die and leave you; trust in reputation, and some slanderous tongue may blast it; but trust in God, and you are never to be confounded in time or eternity." Dwight L. Moody
· QUOTE: "I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess." Martin Luther
· Go back to the story of The Hobbit, p.98. No earthly power could save them, they had to be rescued from above. This is a symbol of God’s salvation.
· The answer to “How shall we escape?” is “By trusting God!”
· As we will see later on in Isaiah, when king Hezekiah of Judah entrusted himself to God, God miraculously delivered him from certain destruction by the powerful Assyrian army after it had slaughtered Egypt.
· And YOU, how shall YOU escape from whatever fears and threats you face? Trust God!
·
Graphic for Isaiah 20
http://www.churchmedia.net/MXC/data/524/thumbs/footprints3.jpg
·
Map of Assyrian Campaigns
Hammond’s Atlas of Bible Lands, ed. Harry Thomas Frank,
·
Copper relief of Assyrian soldiers from Balawat palace gates
(including driving naked slaves on p. 133)
http://library.case.edu/ksl/ecoll/books/kinbro00/kinbro00.pdf
·
Stone carving of Sargon and Tartan
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Sargon_II_and_dignitary.jpg/200px-Sargon_II_and_dignitary.jpg
·
Article comparing records of Sargon and Sennacerib with the
thesis that they are the same person
http://www.specialtyinterests.net/sargon.html
·
Assyrian copper relief depicting campaign against Samaria?
http://www.bible-history.com/assyria_archaeology/tiglath_army_captives_galilee_mound.jpg
