I want us to talk about two things this morning: Terror and trust. What do you fear? And what do you rely on in life?
We’re baptising three children this morning. I don’t need to tell you that they will grow up in a world that can be a frightening place. To be honest, adults can find it frightening, too.
And against that backdrop, the Bible passage we just heard asks us those two questions: What do we find frightening? And in a world with much to frighten us, what will we lean on for support?
It’s always good to have visitors joining us, so I’d better explain: This autumn, we’ve been looking together at the opening chapters of the book of Isaiah. Isaiah was a prophet in ancient Israel, in the late 8th century BC. And this morning, we reach chapter 10.
Historical setting
Chapter 10 was written with a very specific historical situation in mind. To make sense of this chapter, I’m going to have to remind us of that historical setting. We met it in chapter 7.
Ahaz was king over the nation of Judah, a small state. To the north, the superpower of Assyria. To the south, the superpower of Egypt. In between: Judah, and a number of other nations, that relied on sticking together to survive.
Two of those smaller nations were Israel and Aram. They had formed an alliance, hoping to see off the aggressive Assyria. They wanted Judah to join their alliance, but Judah wouldn’t play ball. So they turned up the pressure. They prepared to invade. Force Judah to sign up. At which point, Judah panicked.
So God sent his prophet, Isaiah, to go and talk to King Ahaz. God’s message was this: “You’re not to worry. Aram and Israel won’t last 5 minutes. I’ll look after you. Trust me.”
What does Ahaz do? Does he trust God to look after him? No. Instead he decides to form his own alliance, with the mighty Assyria. Here’s the proposition: If Ahaz sends Assyria regular gifts of silver and gold, will he come and deal with the two upstart nations who are trying to blow his house down?
It works, in the short term. Assyria comes and sees off Israel and Aram. The trouble is, Isaiah explains to Ahaz that he’s just grabbed a tiger by the tail. There’s teeth at the other end. God is not pleased that Ahaz rushed to Assyria. He should have trusted God. And so God will punish them. He’ll do this using Assyria. God had a great sense of irony. After Assyria have dealt with Israel and Aram, she’ll come back and overrun Judah as well.
That was chapter 7. And ever since then, Judah has got very mixed feelings about Assyria. On the one hand, she’s her ally. She’s her security. She’s her bodyguard. On the other hand, Assyria is very scary, and the thought that Assyria will turn to invade Judah is very worrying.
Which is why, in chapter 10, they were asking those two questions. The two questions that feel very contemporary to us: What do you fear? And what do you rely on in life? For Judah, the answer to both questions was – the nation of Assyria.
So God turns, in chapter 10, to talk about Assyria.
Woe to Assyria
God is going to judge Assyria. Look how our passage starts. Verse 5: “Woe to the Assyrian”.
It’s Assyria’s turn. In chapter 5, God told his people that judgement was coming. He was not pleased with the way they were living. Chapter 5 was full of woes to Judah. Chapter 10 starts on the same track. Verse 1: “Woe to those who make unjust laws.”
But now it’s Assyria’s turn. Chapter 10, verse 5: “Woe to the Assyrian.”
Why is God going to judge Assyria? Because what God is doing, and what Assyria thinks she’s doing, don’t match.
What’s God doing, first? He’s using Assyria as a tool, an instrument, to judge his people.
Look at verse 5: “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath! I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets.”
Yes, Assyria will attack Israel and Judah. But they’ll do so in order to advance God’s purposes. God’s own people have become godless. God needs to discipline them, to punish, and the Assyrians are simply his chosen instrument to do this. Instruments in God’s hands.
That’s what God is doing. What do the Assyrians think they’re doing? Verse 7: “But this is not what he has in mind; his purpose is to destroy, to put an end to many nations.”
Assyria is empire building. Annexing nation after nation, making them part of her mighty empire. A foreign nation once had a strong, independent king. Now, that person is simply leading the latest Assyrian franchise. “Are not my commanders all kings?” he says.
Assyria’s confidence comes down to two things. Religion and ability.
Religion first: Assyria thinks her gods are more powerful than those of the nations they’ve conquered. Those nations had many gods, and they were pretty too. An elaborate pantheon, with countless statues and images. Compared to which, Judah should be a pushover. They had no statues, no artwork, in images at all. The ten commandment forbade it.
And then there’s sheer ability. Their superior intelligence, and their military might. Verse 13: By the strength of my hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, because I have understanding.” Plundering national treasures is as easy as bird-nesting.
Picture a company that’s on a takeover spree. Buying up smaller firms left, right and centre. They do it by dazzling the boardrooms with hugely generous cash and share offers. They’ve got lots of money set aside for these acquisitions. Everyone has their price. All they have had to do is offer enough money, and one by one the companies have agreed to be taken over. And their latest target is a tiny firm, three employees, and a negative bank balance. They’ll be a push-over.
That’s Assyria. Only it wasn’t money. It was their army, their brains, and their gods. Given their success so far, Judah should pose no problem.
The trouble is, this amounts to thinking thinks Assyria is more powerful than God himself. It all boils down to pride. Verse 12: “I will punish the king of Assyria for the wilful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes.”
The king of Assyria has a higher view of himself than is justified. He thinks he’s the great one, and the God of Judah, the Living God, is putty in his hands, a bird that can’t defend its own nest.
I love the image of the axe, the saw, the rod and club, look at verse 15: “Does the axe raise itself above the person who swings it, or the saw boast against the one who uses it? As if a rod were to wield the person who lifts it up, or a club brandish the one who is not wood!” An axe is lifeless. Lying on the ground, it can do nothing. Only when a wood cutter picks it up can it do anything; it only does what the person holding it wants. God is using Assyria as a tool, an instrument. But she has the arrogance to assume that she’s the one controlling God.
So God will pick up his axe. God’s sense of irony again. The axe picture has changed in a terrible way. Assyria is no longer the axe. Now, she’s a great forest, that will be cut down and burnt. Forest, fields, people, will be utterly destroyed.
Assyria will invade Judah. But it will be the last thing she does. For her sheer arrogance, God’s anger will turn next against Assyria. It will be her turn to feel the heat.
A Remnant of Israel
And so that will be the end of Assyria. Assyria will be reduced to a tiny remnant, so small that a small child could write them all down.
Not the end of Israel, however.
Israel will be reduced to a tiny remnant too. But one day God will keep his promise that they’ll be as numerous as the sand on the seashore.
Isaiah says that remnant will return. The start of the next episode of their history. They’ll return to their land. Crucially they’ll also return to the lord, verse 20, to the Mighty God, verse 20. They’ll come back to God in repentance. They’ll stop leaning on Assyria. They’ll put their trust wholeheartedly in God.
All the people can see is Assyria. The Assyria they once relied on, now coming to finish them off too. God is trying to open his people’s eyes to see things as they really are. To draw back the curtain, show his people what’s really going on.
Assyria is just a club in God’s hand. She’s about to be punished for thinking that she’s more powerful than the God who was wielding her. Once the people see that this is the reality, they’ll stop seeing Assyria as someone to rely on. They’ll stop seeing Assyria as a terrifying, unstoppable force. And they’ll start to see God as the only one they can truly rely on. They’ll see God as the only truly unstoppable force. They’ll rely on him. They’ll lean on him, put all their weight on him.
For us
What about us, though? We are not the nation of Judah in the 8th Century Before Christ. We are not faced with the Assyrian army. So how does this passage help us as we ask who we are afraid of? As we ask who we are to rely on?
Let’s start by talking about Paris for a moment. We’ve all got lots of questions about what happened in Paris, and no single Bible passage addresses all of them, but this one certainly does have a bearing.
We have to say that Paris is different. The Assyrian invasion of Judah was unique. God had announced in advance why it was happening. His people had not trusted him. This was his discipline for that. There are no modern situations where we are privy to God’s mind to that extent. Indeed, we need to tread very carefully. The Assyrians were God’s way to discipline his people. The Bible is also quite clear that lots of suffering in the world is not a direct pay-back for anything. God may have his purposes, but there’s no crass one-to-one explanation.
But nevertheless, there are similarities too. When Assyria invaded, was it good? No. They were acting out of their sinful desire to build their own empire. And yet, God shows that he was in control. Like a rider who is able to ride a wild and energetic horse, God is able to take Assyria’s selfish and proud actions, and ride them to accomplish his own purpose – the discipline of his stubborn people.
And yet, the Assyrians do what the Assyrians do. They are the ones who are responsible. And God will hold them responsible. They are not excused for their barbaric actions, just because God was able to accomplish his purposes through them.
In that sense, it’s a bit like the death of Jesus. There has never been a miscarriage of justice like it. Whichever way you look at it, it was wrong. The crowds, the Jewish leaders, and the Roman governors did something dreadful that day. God used that to accomplish his purpose to save the world. Like the Assyrian invasion, he even foretold it in Isaiah’s prophecy. Yet that doesn’t excuse it. It remains wrong, and does not let those who killed him off the hook.
What happened in Paris was wrong. Awful. Appalling. There is no other way to dress it up. And yet God is in control. Unlike with Assyria, we do not know why God allowed something like that to happen. He hasn’t told us. We’d want to be very careful before we speculate. But God is always in control, and he knows what he’s doing, even if we don’t.
And yet, none of that remotely excuses what was done. What was done was truly awful. They remain the actions of those who did them. And because God is in control, God will hold the perpetrators to account for what they did. Of that we can be absolutely sure.
The alternative is to say that God is not in control. That would be a far more terrifying world to live in. That would mean that evil can run amok, and God is not able to reign it in. If that were the case, we’d be living in a world where evil might possibly triumph at the end of the day. But we’re not in that world. We’re in a world where evil things happen, and yet God is still in control, and yet evil things remain the responsibility of those who do them.
For us Christians, things are even sharper. It’s not just that God is in control. Jesus is in control. He’s risen from the dead, and he says that all authority, over all nations has now been given to him. He is reigning at God’s right hand.
As far as I know, nobody here was in France this weekend. Many of us will never face a situation as terrifying as that. But all the same, the world is a frightening place, and as the stories of our lives unfold, we all face situations that are terrifying for us.
We need to orientate ourselves correctly. What do we fear? And what do we rely on?
Like ancient Israel, we need God to draw back the curtain for us. We need him to show us what’s really going on behind the scenes. In our own day, allow God to draw back the curtain. Jesus is fully in control. He works all things for the good of his people who love him. And he can reign in the chaos whenever he wants. But when bad things happen, the people who do them are responsible, and will be held responsible.
Conclusion
Let’s end, then, with the questions we started with. What frightens us? And what do we rely on in life.
They’re big questions that we all have to think through. And when you have to bring up children, the questions come into even sharper focus.
There is a lot in the world that has the potential to be frightening. And there are lots of plenty of leaning posts we can turn to for support to live in a world like that.
The Christian has the immense privilege of seeing things as they really are. Jesus Christ is the one running this world. He will hold every wrong action to account. But once we know that he’s in charge, he calls us not to be afraid. Not to be frightened. But to return to him, to come back to him, and to put all our weight on him to see us through.