Isaiah 7:18-8:8
Turning your copy of the scriptures
to Isaiah 7, tonight we’ll look at 7.18 through 8.8. So remember, Isaiah is a big,
long book. Remember that chapters and verses
were added later, so we’re picking it apart, maybe in a literary
way, maybe in a section that’s got different themes that pop
up. Uh, one way to look at our, our section of scripture tonight
is it’s sort of a mirror to the previous section. The previous
section had a stretch where it said, um, Hey, Hey Israel, you’ve
been bad. So you’re going to get it. The
Assyrians are coming. And then it gave us a sign. Behold,
the Virgin Virgin shall conceive and give birth. And so there
was hope in a child. Um, so Israel been bad. Syria
is going to come punish them, but there’s hope in a child that’s
the Messiah, which is far off 700 years or so later. Tonight,
there’s going to be four or five images of Israel. You’ve been
bad and you’re going to get it right. You’re in big trouble.
And then another child is going to be born, but this time it’s
a child closer to them. It’s a second child born to Isaiah
and his name, which I do not recommend for either your firstborn
son or your puppy dog, Maher Shalal Hashbaz is his name. So remember the first kid’s name
meant a remnant shall return. This kid’s name, poor kid, means
y’all are easy pickings. Y’all are easy prey. You’re going
to get caught and killed. So that’s the idea behind this
section. Israel, you’ve been bad. Bad
things are going to happen to you as an act of judgment. But
a kid is going to be born. It’s not the Messiah. It’s not
the ultimate savior. But it’s Isaiah’s kid. And his
name is going to mean something to you and your future. And so
think about that as we read together. Chapter seven, beginning at verse
18, it says, in that day, the Lord will whistle for the fly
that is at the end of the streams of Egypt and for the bee that
is in the land of Assyria. And they will all come up and
settle in the steep ravines and in the cliffs of the rocks and
on all the thorn bushes and on all the pastures. Here’s another
one. In that day, the Lord will shave
with a razor that is hired beyond the river, with the King of Assyria,
the head and the hair of the feet, and it will sweep away
the beard also. All right, now there’s a third
one. In that day, a man will keep
alive by a young cow and two sheep. And because of the abundance
of milk that they give, he will eat curds. For everyone who is
left in the land will eat curds and honey. Now a fourth one,
in that day, every place where there used to be a thousand vines
worth a thousand shekels of silver will become briars and thorns.
With bow and arrows, a man will come there for all the land will
be briars and thorns. And as for all the hills that
used to be hoed with a hoe, you will not come there for fear
of briars and thorns, but they will become a place where cattle
are let loose and where sheep tread. Then the Lord said to
me, this is Isaiah, take a large tablet and write on it in common
characters, belonging to Maher Shalau Hashbaz. And I will get
reliable witnesses, Uriah the priest and Zechariah, the son
of Jebuchariah to attest for me. And I went to the prophetess,
that’s Isaiah’s wife, and she conceived and bore a son. Then
the Lord said to me, call his name Meher-shalau-hashbaz, for
before the boy knows how to cry, my father or my mother, the wealth
of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be carried off before
the king of Assyria. The Lord spoke to me again, because
this people has refused the waters of Shiloh that flow gently and
rejoice over Rezin and the son of Ramaliah. Therefore, behold,
the Lord is bringing up against them the waters of the river,
mighty and many. the king of Assyria and all his
glory. And it will rise over all its
channels and go over all its banks and it will sweep on into
Judah. It will overflow and pass on
reaching even to the neck and its outspread wings will fill
the breadth of your land. Oh, Emmanuel. Amen. The word of the living
God for us. All right. In this passage, you’ve
got several, interesting images, so we’ll pick our way through
them. But the big picture is what I mentioned a moment ago.
Israel has not served the Lord. And so an outside enemy is coming
and the outside enemy is Assyria. So you’ll remember your Israelite
history. Uh, just very briefly, they wanted a King after the
era of the judges. Uh, God said, you don’t need
a King. I’m your King, but he gave him
a King and gave him Saul. Saul was a person who looked
good in their eyes. He’ll be a good King. Well, Saul
was a bad King. And so then David, And then Solomon
and after Solomon, the kingdom split. So in 922, you had the
southern kingdom of Judah, and then you had the other tribes
of Israel, which would have been the northern kingdom. And so
mostly what we hear in this passage tonight is against the northern
kingdom, the northern tribes, they’re going to be attacked
and exiled by Assyria in 722. Now remember last fall, we went
through the return of Judah from Babylon. So Judah is gonna get
their due by Babylon in what, 605 and all the way down to 586,
something like that. So about a hundred years later,
Babylon’s gonna take care of business in Judah. But this is
primarily speaking of the Northern tribes, and how Assyria will
invade. And if you remember what we just
read or glance down at your Bible, it speaks of Assyria in several
ways. God is going to whistle and the
bee or Assyria is going to come and there’s gonna be a swarm
in the land that’s big and bad. And then there’s another image. A razor is gonna come through
and shave off all their body hair. And then there’s a third
one. Three times it says in 23, 24,
25, and 26, the land that flowed with milk
and honey is going to be briars and thorns, briars and thorns,
briars and thorns. I don’t know if you caught that
repetition, but by the third time, what do you think about?
Briars and thorns, not good. And then there’s another image.
The only thing there will be to eat will be the milk and the
curds from your goat and from your cow. And then there’s going
to be, at the very end, there’s a picture of the river Euphrates
sweeping in and just flooding every nook and cranny of the
land of God’s people and just wiping them away. So that’s the
idea here. So let’s look at the first image
that pops up in verses 18 and 19. God here speaks not only
of Assyria, but he speaks of Egypt as well. So you’ve got
Egypt on this side of the promised land, and you’ve got Assyria
way over here, and both those formidable enemies can come into
the promised land and really cause them great havoc. And so
God promises, in a sense, a plague. In that day, the Lord will whistle
the fly that is at the end of the streams of Egypt, and for
the bee that is in the land of Assyria, they’re gonna have enemies
from both sides. They’re going to have big enemies
that will come in and take care of them. And it says of these
bees, it says of these flies, they’ll come in every nook and
cranny of the land. There won’t be any place where
these do not inhabit. If you know anything about the
geography or the topography of the land of Israel, there’s all
kinds of nooks and crannies. kinds of desert places and it
says they will come and they will settle even in the steep
ravines even in the clefts of the rocks and even on the thorn
bushes and on all the pastures and so this desert place will
become a place of flies and of bees. Now it’s springtime now
and Maybe you’ve got some of those carpenter bees that are
starting to eat your woodwork, your deck, and if you’re like
me, you get a stick and put it in the hole and they can’t get
in or out. Or you can buy one of those things at the Home Depot
or Lowe’s that’s a bee attractor and it catches and kills them,
humanely of course. But you get the bees and when
those things buzz around your head, it kind of bugs you. My
kids used to get a bad mitten racket and chase those things,
which probably wasn’t real smart. Or maybe you’re cutting your
lawn and you go over a hole unknowing to yourself and there’s a yellowjacket
nest in the thing and it follows behind you and attacks you. So
maybe one carpenter bee, a few bees buzzing around, a few yellowjackets
coming after you is something. But what about the whole land
being filled with them? In fact, so much that the buzzing
is like the Chiquitas. I don’t think the Chiquitas are
here, are they? But if you go towards Mebane and- They’re in
Illinois right now. Okay, they’re headed this way.
They’re here. Okay, yeah, I was in Durham the
other day and I could hear them during the day there. I think
riding up the highway the other night, you could feel the vibration
through the window of the car. Yeah. You got Brood, Nate and
Brood. Okay. Okay. So this is like a double,
um, a double invasion. Well, that’s the picture you
get in versus 18 and 19. Uh, there’s going to be a lot
of flies and a lot of bees. Now it’s figurative, right? This
is the Assyrians. This is the Egyptians. Now, if
you know anything about the Assyrians, they were big, mean, nasty people.
Uh, they usually came in and tore everything up. And then
they hauled you away. And the way they hauled you away
was not like little children on a field trip where you held
onto your piece of the string. They actually put a fish hook
in your mouth. And you walked in great shame
and pain out of your torn up land back to their country, a
thousand mile mark with a hook in your mouth. Not nice people. That’s what’s coming as judgment
to the people of God. Well, you go on in verse 20,
And you get another picture. So, you know, today we live in
a time where haircuts are a funny thing. You know, biblically speaking,
men are to have short hair, women are to have longer hair. That’s
kind of the whole head covering thing of
Corinthians. You know, for men and women both, hair is our glory.
And if you don’t have any and you’re a guy, well, tough luck.
But hair is a big deal. Now, you know, in some cultures,
men growing a beard is a sign of manhood. That’s a thing, right?
You remember when David and his buddies got captured and they
had their beard shaved? What did they do? They waited
before they went home until their beards grew back because that
was a sign of, well, That was a sign of shame. Now remember
several chapters back or a couple of chapters back in Isaiah, God
prophesied even to the women of Israel, you’re going to be
bald. Okay. It’s, that’s a tough one, right?
I remember mom going through chemotherapy, losing her hair
and you know, she had that beautiful head of silver hair and that
was tough for her to lose her glory in a sense. We get the
picture here that Assyria is a razor that’s going to come
and not only cut the hair of the head, but it’s also gonna
cut the hair of the feet. And that’s a euphemism, and y’all
are all big boys and girls, they’re gonna cut all the body hair off.
I mean, you’re gonna be completely bald, he says, and then the beard
also. So you’re gonna have a bald people.
And that’s not a good thing. And that’s the second image that
is given here. Baldness, no hair, no glory,
no honor or respect. Then in verses 21 and 22, you
get another picture. In that day, a man will keep
alive a young cow and two sheep. And because of the abundance
of milk that they give, he will eat curds for everyone who is
left in the land will eat curds and honey. So there’s two things
in this little passage that we just read that are helpful. One
is there will be some left behind. Not everybody’s going to get
hauled away. So some will get left behind. They’ll live in
the devastated land. They’ll live among the thorns
and the briars. They’ll live among the, The Samaritans are
the people that repatriated the land. They will live in that
barren place, a land that used to flow with milk and honey,
that no longer does. And God will sustain them with
just a cow and a couple sheep. And you can imagine what it’s
like to eat milk and curds. Probably a lot like eating manna
every day for 40 years, but God will sustain those who are left
behind, but there will not be grapes. There will not be wheat,
there will not be an abundance for the land has been trampled
and let go of. And so that’s how they will get
by. Well, then there’s a fourth image,
verses 23 to 26 or 25. In that day, every place where
there used to be a thousand vines worth a thousand shekels of silver,
it will become briars and thorns. So a couple of times it’s going
to say briars and thorns, briars and thorns. And nobody will go
into this desolate land unless they go with a bow and arrow
because it’s a place where it’s kind of scary. It’s wilderness.
You don’t want to go there. It’s not inhabited. It’s the
wilds. And as far as the hills that
used to be hoed with a hoe, you will not come there for fear
of briars and thorns. And it’s only a place fit for
cattle and for sheep to tread. So remember a couple of chapters
back when God said, you know, Israel is my choice vine. I went
to a land, I picked the right hillside, I hoed it and tilled
it, got rid of the rocks. I put the choicest grape plants
in, and I thought, boy, I’m gonna have a big harvest, so I put
a fence around it, I set a watchtower over it, and I built a vat. And when the grapes came due,
I was gonna press it out and have some really good, wonderful
wine to drink. But what does God say? That’s
not what I got, I got sour grapes. So what shall I do with my vineyard?
Well, I’ll let it go. I’ll let the walls break down.
I’ll let the tower fall. I’ll let the vat go dry. And it will become again a place
of brambles and thorns and briars, sort of as we hear tonight. It’s
a reminder, isn’t it, of what we lose when we disobey God.
We lose his blessings. We lose his benefits. And just
as Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, from paradise,
so Israel is going to be banished from the promised land. And so
when we disobey God, one of his often given punishments is exile. It’s removal from paradise. It’s
removal from his blessings and his graces. For a couple of weeks
now, I’ve neglected my yard. And with springtime here, the
weeds have come. I still haven’t figured out why
it is that when we want something to grow somewhere, it won’t grow.
When we want something to grow, not grow somewhere else, it grows. But the flower beds are getting
the weeds in them and all these little poke weeds are popping
up among the azaleas and it’s kind of looks bad. And that’s
just with a couple of weeks of neglect. Can you imagine what
the land of Israel would look like when it’s people who tended
it and loved it and were blessed by it? It becomes an unkempt
and even degenerate land, unfit to live in. And that’s the big
image there. So you’ve got those four images
and now, After hearing the trouble that’s going to come when Assyria
comes, there’s the announcement of a child. So God says to Isaiah,
write on a tablet that long name of your son, Meher, Shalau Hashbaz,
which means easy pickings or speedy spoil or hasty prey. And then he says, when you write
it on the scroll, let’s get two witnesses. Let’s get the priest,
Uriah and his father, Zechariah. Now these two guys weren’t so
hot on obeying the Lord. They were the ones who conspired
with King Ahaz to build an altar or a high place that was just
like one they had in Syria or in Damascus. And that displeased
the Lord, but here he still calls on them to be witnesses, the
priest, two of them, father and son, and they’ll attest what
is written on the scroll. And so he goes home to his wife,
the prophetess. She conceives, she bears a son, and the Lord
says, call his name, that big long name that means speedy spoil.
And before the boy knows how to say mom or dad, the wealth
of Damascus, the spoil of Samaria will be carried away before the
king of Assyria. So Assyria is going to come in
and just haul everyone and everything away. Now, a little background. And it comes up in the next verses,
verses five, six, seven, and eight. God had been good to Israel,
remember that. He rescued them from Egypt. He
brought them to the promised land, a land flowing with milk
and honey, gave them all kinds of things. But the northern tribes,
after the reign of Solomon, rejected God. They rejected his goodness
and his grace. And so in verse five, you get
a reference to that, or verse six, the Lord spoke to Isaiah. Again, because this people have
refused the waters of Shiloh, that flow gently, and they rejoice
over Rezan and the son of Remaliah. So two things they’ve done. They’ve
rejected the waters that flow from a spring in Jerusalem that
nourish the people. Israel’s a barren, dry land,
and so to have a spring that flows plentifully is a wonderful
thing. So they’ve rejected the waters
of Jerusalem. Don’t you think that’s kind of
symbolic? You reject the waters of the church. And then they’ve
rejoiced over Rezan, who’s one of the kings, and Pekah, who
would be the son of Remaliah. We’ve heard about him before.
And so the Lord, because they’ve rejected him, because they’ve
rejected his provision of the waters, he’s going to bring up
the waters of the river. And notice it has a capital R.
Again, just like the razor. just like the bees, just like
the briars and thorns. Now we’ve got the waters of the
river, mighty and many. The king of Assyria, like the
river Euphrates, is going to sweep in, and it’s gonna fill
up every nook and cranny of the ravines and the valleys of the
land of Israel. And it’s gonna rise over all
its channels, it’s gonna flood its banks, and it’s gonna sweep
on into Judah, it’s gonna overflow, and it’s going to reach up to
the neck. They’re going to be up to here
in the floodwaters and it’s outspread wings will fill the breadth of
your land. God is reminding them of past
days, perhaps 200 years past when they had it really good.
They had Solomon, they had David, they had God’s man on God’s throne
and the land was stretched out to the farthest points of its
borders. The temple was built. They had
rest from their enemies. Everybody was in their tribal
possession of the promised land. And for the most part, things
were good, but people quit. They ceased to worship God. They went after the other gods.
And here’s a really good reminder, kind of by two ways. When Israel
didn’t get rid of all the ites in the land, remember all the
Canaanites and the Hittites, Hivites, Jebusites, all that,
and they let them live, those people were a thorn to them. Their daughters married their
sons, their sons married their daughters, and they became a
snare to them. And that’s why the high places,
even in Solomon’s day, began to be raised up. David was faithful
to God, but Solomon followed after all the gods and even built
high places and married foreign wives and they stole his heart
and all that. they had it really, really good.
They had a really sweet time living in the promised land.
And he’s reminding them, you’ve refused everything I’ve given you. You’ve
refused all the good things. You had it good. Now you’ve rejected
it. Now you’re going to get the flood. You used to have peace,
the waters of Salome, and now you get the flood of a foreign
nation. You get Euphrates, you get the
big river. And so God is reminding them
of their history. I’ve done really nice, good things for you. You
prospered, you’ve rejected it. And so now, not good. So that’s
one reminder. When we don’t deal with sin in
our lives, when we don’t deal with the ites in our lives, and
we sort of coddle them, and we see sin as precious instead of
something to be killed and put to death, it will come to bite
us. And that’s our own fault, isn’t
it? But what about when a king or a leader, and in this case,
such as Ahaz or all the other kings in succession, or perhaps
maybe equate us to our country today, we get a wicked king or
a series of wicked kings or political leaders. What happens when they
sin? Who gets the brunt of it? You
know, who’s getting the brunt of the economy now? I don’t mean
to be political, but it’s just something you see and something
that’s logical to conclude. Are the politicians the ones
suffering under the bad economy they created? No, they’re still
winning in the stock market. I mean, that’s a generalization,
and probably not everybody is that way, but it’s the people
living boots on the ground that are suffering. And that’s exactly
what happens here because of Ahaz and his stupid choices,
his foolish choices, his wicked choices, and the other kings.
It’s the people who suffer. It’s the people who get the hooks
in their mouths. It’s the people that get led
off to another land. It’s the people who suffer spiritually
and physically and in other ways. But isn’t it wonderful to remember
the big picture, the whole picture? Yes, in this life, we do suffer
temporal judgments for our foolishness, even for the foolishness of others.
But all those are met. in the person and work of Jesus
Christ. He does pay for our sins. He does fulfill all righteousness
and all promises. And yes, we may suffer in this
life. We may suffer under wickedness. We may suffer for our own foolishness.
But in the end, when God returns and takes us home or we go to
glory, those things will be made right. But this ought to point
to us the two sides of Yahweh, the
two sides of God Almighty. He is a God of wrath and his
wrath can sweep like a river through the promised land or
through God’s people and can wipe them away or bring water
up to the neck. But he’s also the God that sends
his Messiah. He’s also the God who sends his
own son. He’s also the one who pours out his wrath, a greater
river than Euphrates on his son so that we don’t have to experience
that great torrent of judgment. And so the encouragement for
us is to put our faith, our hope in Jesus Christ, remembering
there are consequences for sin in this life, but there are none
in the life to come for they have been paid for. And we give
thanks to God for that. Let’s look to him now in prayer.
Lord, we thank you for the chance to think on these strong images
of judgment, justly deserved, and yet in them, there’s great
mercy. Could have been worse. Could have been full and final.
And we thank you that in Christ, we do not suffer the ultimate
pains and penalties for our sin, but it was poured out on Christ
at the cross, and that in him, we find redemption and forgiveness
of sins. We do pray that we would take
sin seriously, I know that’s something we heard today in Sunday
school. It’s something we see in the sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper. And now for sure, it’s something we see as you deal
with it in the Old Testament. And so thank you for Christ and
help us to put to death what is earthly in us and to live
for you. We pray and hope for that with
all our hearts. In Christ’s name, amen.