Sermon Tone Analysis

Isaiah 20-23

Good evening Church!

We are continuing on in the prophecy of Isaiah, attempting to complete this section where the prophet has been addressing the surrounding nations.

Lots of stuff going on in this section, and I acknowledge that it is a difficult large chunk of Isaiah to get through, but there’s some good stuff I hope to hit tonight, when we finish tonight, starting next week it gets good, and gets better and better as we move through the prophecy so stick it out.

Chapter 20 may seem a bit odd to us, it does to me, but God had a point to make and it seems he used the prophet to act out this point, to live it, so it was a visible message to the people.

God sometimes does that with prophets, real ones at least.

He instructed Hosea to marry a prostitute, for example, to paint a picture of his love for an adulterous people, and we see one of these times in the life of the prophet Isaiah in chapter 20 vs. 1

This actually gives us a bit of a timeline to reference.

See that Tartan here is the Assyrian army who has come and taken Ashdod, Ashdod was a city of the Philistines, you’ll remember that I previously described the philistines and a pain in the butt neighbor to Israel and one that was in constant conflict with them.

We know from secular history that this even occurred in 711 BC.

Remember Isaiah is primarily prophesying to Judah at this point in time in his ministry.

And he knew, and God knew that if Judah witnessed the city of Ashdod and the Philistines fall to the Assyrian army, then they would fear that they were next and rather than reach out to God for help and deliverance, they would make one of their unholy alliances with a pagan nation, in this case Egypt.

So Isaiah is given an odd assignment, to deliver the naked truth to Israel about their circumstances.

Now most of the commentaries I consulted on this, and I listened to several people teach this section, most either ignored it, or were quick to explain that he wasn’t bare naked, but only removed his outer garment the sackcloth, down to his inner linen clothes as a sign of complete poverty and humility.

It’s not the biggest point to be made in this prophecy, but I’m not sure we can know that.

Do you guys remember when David danced before the lord, and his wife Michal saw him leaping and dancing before the Lord and she despised him in her heart?

Well in that scene the bible says, 2 Sam 6:14

It doesn’t say that here, but it says it there, it could have said it here, but here it says walking naked and barefoot.

I only bring it up to say when the Bible doesn’t say something, don’t say that it does, when it does say something, don’t ever exclude what it says, explain it away or apologize for it, but deliver it in the most loving way that you can.

I know there were some people here on Sunday, that were ridiculously uncomfortable with the message, hopefully from the Bible and not from me, but we need to let the truth of the Word speak.

God is intending to send a message here, a visible one to his people, about the humiliation that was about to befall Egypt.

Isa 20:3-4

Again, sounds naked to me.

The point in this we see in the rest of this chapter Isa 20:5-6

Assyria is coming from the north, we can’t place our hope in them, Egypt is no help to us at all…how shall we escape, the hope is that they will see this and turn to the Lord.

Now in chapter 21 we turn away from Assyria and back to Babylon… one of our major themes in these next couple of chapters is judgement, a reminder that our righteous God, our holy God, in order to be those things is also a God of judgement who is just.

This chapter begins with a return to the prophecy against babylon, who again has not yet risen to become a superpower…Isa 21:1-2

Here Babylon is referred to as the Wilderness of the Sea, because the area was made up of marshlands and lakes, it was a desolate wilderness area, we see dessert and wilderness synonomous in the bible, this speaks of a whirlwind that was coming, from the desert…this was a portion of scripture along with passages in Jeremiah and Ezekiel that were hotly debated back in the 90’s when American forces were entering into Iraq, or Babylon, and what was that movement of forces called?

Dessert Storm..we will see that that was not a complete fulfillment of the prophecy against Babylon, there is more to come, but it was an interesting time.

Interesting reference here to Elam and Media these are the ancient names for the people of Persia, modern day Iran....it was the Mead's and Persians that ultimately defeat the Babylonians, who defeated the Assyrians…all of this was prophesied about, in fact they Bible even gives us the name of Cyrus the leader of the Persians in the book of Daniel.

We know from verse two that a vision is coming, we see that starting in verse 3…Isaiah 21:3-5

So again this whirlwind is rising up, they set a watchman, they are fearful, Isaiah is stressed out even giving the vision on behalf of the people, as this is being pronounced it is a great opportunity for them to repent, but they set a watchman and then eat and drink, with the idea of tomorrow we might die…arise you princes, anoint the shield, they would rub oil on the shields before going into battle, like a boxer putting Vaseline around his eyes hoping to deflect blows from arrows or swords.

A lion would have been the most desperate cry a Shepard watching over the sheep at night could cry..then we hear Isa 21:9-10

What is interesting about verse 9, Babylon is fallen, is first it hasn’t risen yet at the time of this prophecy, but this is also exactly what is cried out in Revelation 18 in the final battle with spiritual Babylon is taken down…verses 11+12 are a burden against Dumah, another name for Edom...

The watchman says the morning comes, and indication of reprieve.

Like there is terror in the night with a longing to see the dawning of day, and the watchman says the morning comes, oh, but also the night, so whatever good news the morning brought, it was dispersed again with nightfall.

Whatever good news was found in the pronouncement the morning was coming was short lived, and nightfall came.

Now verses 13-16 is the judgement coming to Arabia Isai 21:13-16

So we have a time frame in the prophecy, he says it will be within a year from the time that he gives this message that all the glory of Kedar will fail.

vs 17 Isa 21:17

Chapter 22, he now begins to speak about Jerusalem.

Isa 22:1-4

This is an interesting name for Jerusalem, we most often think of Jerusalem being up, not a valley.

Usually when the bible talks about going to Jerusalem from anywhere, it talks about going up to Jerusalem, we refer to is as a city on the hill.

Some say it is called the valley of vision here because of the number of prophets God spoke to there throughout history…maybe.

I think more likely being a high place, means there are also valleys, right beneath mountains are valleys, in the context of the prophecy I think the Valley of Vision is speaking of seeing the approaching Assyrians beneath Jerusalem and ready to attack.

We know from Jeremiah that when Jerusalem was overtaken by the Babylonians, many of the men didn’t die bravely in battle but by famine and pestulance, sometimes because they ran cowardly away from the fight.

So big trouble is ahead, your people are fleeing

vs, 3 your rulers have been captured, in verse 4 we see this is breaking Isaiah’s heart.

Isa 22:5-8

God is judging His own people here, it says He removed the protection of Judah, why would God do that?

God gives us opportunity after opportunity, after opportunity to turn to Him the easy way, to repent and be restored.

TO be corrected in a spirit of gentleness, unless we don’t.

Sin, unrepentant sin leads to death, the wages of sin is death, eternal separation from God and everything good.

This should have been a time when they woke up! Sunday I talked about Christians that are sleepwalking.

That should have been a time when some said wait, this passage is talking about me, and they should tell God they are sorry and get back on track.

Here, the protection of God has been removed from Judah.

Rather than turning to God for their salvation this says “You looked in that day to the armor, they trusted in their own weapons, but is says the armor of the house of the forest, the idea being that they were taring down their own houses to fortify the walls, so now they are suffering, and suffering loss…but they are not yet crying out to God…verse 9

They had dug a tunnel for the water in the days of King Hezekiah, started digging at each end and met the two tunnels together, it measures over 1700 feet, I have no idea how they did that.

You can actually walk through there today if you go to Israel.

Isa 22:12-14

No atonement for you even to your death, God says it’s too late!

I don’t want to get into a big debate, but what is it that we call the unforgivable or unpardonable sin?

Refusal to respond to the Holy Spirit all the way to our death…what is going on here?

They are ignoring and ignoring and ignoring God.

Now the prophecy transitions from the nations to actually two men, both of whom served under King Hezekiah.

Isa 22:15-17

This speaks of pulling a very prideful man down, and the next section speaks of lifting a faithful man up.

Isa 22:20-23

That should sound familiar verse 24 Isa 22:24-25

So the end of this speaks of Shebna being that peg that was in place, and was going to be removed and replaced by Eliakim.

But verse 22 Isa 22:22

Some of the commentaries will tell you that this verse speaks of Peter because of Matthew 16:19, you can right that down as a reference if you want, but in the future eternal fulfillment of these, Jesus tells us that Isaiah was talking about Him.

In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, in the letter to the church of Philadelphia, Jesus says Rev 3:7-8

Now chapter 23 we move to another nation, we’ve covered some ground here tonight we’ve talked about Assyria, Babylon, south of Israel to Edom, Saudi Arabia, Persia, a couple of individuals…and now Tyre, the ancient Phoenician people, a seafaring people, if you have been doing our Chronological bible readings with us as a church, on Monday we had our reading in Ezekiel 28-31 and I made the comment there that It is clear from the description that God is not speaking of any human leader here, but rather the one who was the real king of Tyre, Satan.

Tyre was good and bad for Israel depending upon the season.

Some of the lumber used by David and Solomon to build the Temple was obtained from King Hiram of Tyre.

But you know who else came from Tyre? Jezebel, the wicked wife of King Ahab.

King Ahab who is described as doing more evil and all those evil kings before him.

So being a seafaring people they were involved with commerce, they have wealth and pride.....

Not only were the areas of Sidon and Tyre effected but the whole area!

We just lived through probably the biggest blockade of transportation in American history orchestrated by our government and blamed on Covid.

Shipping ports closed, trucking companies unable to deliver.

Here when news reaches Egypt, they are in agony?

What do you mean, they can’t deliver!

It would be like our major delivery companies all crashing at once.

Why did this happen?

Verse 9 tells us.

Isa 23:9

The rich and the prideful are humbled.

verses 10-14 is this pronouncement of judgement.

…Isa 23:10-12

The Chaldeans here refers to the Babylonians, it also mentions the Assyrians, so Tyre is brought down by both

Verse 15&16 give us an interesting and sadly graphic prophecy Isa 23:15-16

So she will be taken out of business and then she will return to her hire, she will go back in business Isa 23:17-18

What is interesting is that when you look at secular history around this time, concerning the Assyrians, is that right around this time, a little before this was written actually, the Assyrians concurred Tyre, and when they did, they installed one of their own governors to rule Tyre, and during that time they were prohibited from participating in trade and commerce around the Mediterranean trade routes, guess for how long?

70 years.

It was from about 700 B.C. - 630 B.C. but then she comes back and is turned right back to committing fornication with the kingdoms of the world, letting money come before everything.

Next chapter, judgement of the world.