Episode Transcript
Good morning.
It's 10 o'clock and time to begin.
Nella, did that sound like command presence right there, the way I said that?
We learned that in the Highway Patrol.
We have to be very careful about using it indiscriminately around others.
2 Kings chapter 19 verse 24 is our text this morning, and I am so glad you're here or have tuned in.
2 Kings 19.24.
King Sennacherib of Assyria is the foe of the nation of Judah and Israel as well.
And as Isaiah spoke and wrote in this part of the Bible, he told us what Sennacherib said as he railed against the Lord.
And as he railed against the Lord's people.
And as he railed against Judah, so he railed against the church today.
He just never has stopped railing.
In the first part of verse 24 there in our text, we noted that Sennacherib said, "I have digged and drunk strange waters."
And this he said as his army stood by the conduit and the and the pool, the upper pool, whose water supply Judah had already cut off.
They weren't about to let the enemy have that.
And now we continue with Sennacherib's words as told to us by Isaiah looking there in verse 24.
He said, "And with the soul of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of besieged places."
So we learned this about Sennacherib.
He digged, he drank, and he dried up.
And boy, if this doesn't describe the destructive attitude of Satan, I don't know what does.
Satan goes about digging up that which God's people enjoy, taking it all for himself.
And then he leaves the place all dried up so nobody else can have any.
In short, he leaves places dry because sin leaves places dry.
Did you know that?
Sin brings drought.
Sin never does bring blessing.
God didn't tell Israel, "Oh, Israel, you've been terrible.
I'm going to cause it to rain on you."
Sin brings drought.
And it's not just from the lack of water on the earth.
That's the drought we think of.
And we're hoping to recover from that in North Texas with the next few weeks having some rain.
But it brings drought in the lives of people.
So let's learn this well.
You've probably heard of the word "dirth," D-E-A-R-T-H.
And that's another word for drought.
It's used in the Bible.
Sin leads to dirth.
Jeremiah 14, verse 1.
Jeremiah 14, verse 1 says, "The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the dirth."
Now, dirth is just another word for drought.
And Hebrew origin tells us that the word "dirth" means "restraint."
Restraint.
And that's what happens during a dirth.
The rain is restrained.
Now, who's the only one who can hold rain back?
It's God, isn't it?
And when Elijah prayed and it rained not for the space of three and a half years, that was God who held it.
And when he prayed that it would rain, it was God who caused it to rain.
And so in the case of Jeremiah, who prophesied quite a few years after Isaiah was gone, and we're reading about a time when Isaiah lived, when Jeremiah came about 150 years later, roughly, and once again fallen into sin.
And they were being punished by the Lord.
I'm going to continue reading from the 14th chapter of Jeremiah, verses 2 through 4, where it says, "Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish.
They are black unto the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up.
And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters.
They came to the pits and found no water.
They returned with their vessels empty.
They were ashamed and confounded and covered their heads, because the ground is chapped."
Now, we know what that means, don't we?
The ground is chapped, "for there was no rain in the earth.
The plowmen were ashamed.
They covered their heads.
Now, right there, you learn that Judah's drought, their dearth, was directly tied to their sin."
They didn't have this argument, "Well, that's climate change.
Too much rain or too little rain, or if it's too hot or it's too cold, it's man's fault for climate change."
No, there is actually something to that.
It has to do with man's sin.
It's not that man is driving cars that have combustible engines or anything like that.
It's that man has sinned.
So sin was tied directly to Judah's drought.
And none of Judah's enemies, the Gentile nations, such as Babylon or Chaldea or here Assyria, could cause a drought.
But Sennacherib claims to have done this.
He said, "With the sole of his feet, he's dried up these waters."
So he made himself like God, didn't he?
He said, "I can do what God can do.
In fact, I've done it."
Jeremiah 14.7 says, "O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, do thou it for thy name's sake, that is, deliver them.
For our backslidings are many.
We have sinned against thee."
And you get that?
In Jeremiah's day, Judah's drought was a testimony against Judah's iniquities.
They said, Jeremiah wrote, "Our iniquities testify against us."
Our iniquities are on the witness stand saying, "Yes, they're guilty.
They did what I am."
They committed iniquities, and there's a testimony against them.
Sin brings dearth.
It brings drought.
And God is the one who dries it up when he punishes man.
But he's also the one who pours out the rain, the blessing, when man obeys.
Now think about whatever Satan has for you.
Whatever Satan has for you, now he'll promise you rain, won't he?
He'll promise you the good stuff.
But what Satan has for you will dry you up.
It dries you up.
And yet, Christians, too, have often chosen life paths that brought them dearth or drought.
They just don't have much to show for their time here on this earth.
You know David was a Christian.
There's no doubt about that.
The Bible testifies that he was.
But oh, how he knew dearth as well.
He knew the drought that sin brings.
He was speaking to the Lord there in Psalm 32, verses 4-5, Psalm 32, verses 4-5.
And in this Psalm he wrote, "For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me.
My moisture is turned into the drought of summer, sea-ligh.
I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.
I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgave us the iniquity of my sin, sea-ligh."
Sin brought drought to David, but God brought deliverance to David.
Sin acrob intends to bring drought to Judah, but he's not going to deliver them from the drought.
God has to do that.
Not only does sin bring dearth, but sin also brings death.
That's very familiar to us, isn't it, as we study the Gospel.
"Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."
That's Romans 5-12.
It says death by sin.
Sin brings death.
In the Garden of Eden sin brought death, didn't it?
And ever since then sin has always brought death.
James 1, verses 14-15, James 1, 14-15, "But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death."
Sin brings dearth, sin brings death.
And sin acrob's boasting because that's what he's doing.
It can be broken down into these two things.
Wherever sin acrob went, he brought dearth and he brought death.
That's what he did.
Now why would anyone ever follow such a person?
And yet most of the world does today.
As pastors and teachers, we've asked many people, and some of you have too, if you witness in person to people, if you have that desire and you've done that, you ask people, "Are you saved?"
And most people give you an answer that tells you they're not.
Now they're not going to come right out and say, "No, I'm not saved."
They'll say, "Oh yeah, yeah, I am."
And when you ask them, "Well, how do you know?"
Then they give you some answer that has nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
They'll give an answer such as, "Well, I've prayed this prayer, or my priests sprinkled water on me, or I took the sacraments, or I'm a member of this church, or I'm really sincere in my faith, or some other work."
But they either believed in a false gospel or they've not believed in one at all.
They had no religious leanings at all.
What did they choose?
They chose the way of sin.
They chose the way of dearth and death.
Dearth and death.
And many of them continued in it.
But thankfully, some of them, who had gone in the way of dearth and death, just like I did before I became a Christian, they realized that sin had dried them up.
It hadn't blessed them.
And sin brought them condemnation unto death.
They were dried up, and one day they were going to die, and their death was going to be eternal.
They were going to be separated from God.
So they abandoned the one who brought them dearth and death, and they accepted the one who brought them deliverance and life.
In the next verse, verse 25 in our text, we're in 2 Kings 19 if you've just joined us.
It appears that we now see the Lord speaking to Sennacherib through Isaiah the prophet.
So let's look at that.
This is God speaking.
"Hast thou not heard how long ago how I have done it?"
"Hast thou not heard long ago how I have done it?"
Now what would Sennacherib have heard at this point in history?
Because that's who God's talking to.
He's saying, "Sennacherib, have you not heard long ago how I have done this?"
Well, here's what he would have heard at this point in history.
He would have heard how long ago God delivered the children of Israel out of the hand of Egypt and Pharaoh, and how he destroyed Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea.
Sennacherib would have heard that.
He would have no doubt as a king of Assyria, been a student of history.
In fact, even today, we go back to that same account in the Bible because it teaches us about the deliverance we have in Jesus Christ, that deliverance from bondage, the bondage of our sin.
When Stephen evangelized the Jews there in the book of Acts, he didn't start at the cross.
No, he listened to the first words of his message in Acts.
It's Acts 7, verse 2.
And he said, "Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken, the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia before he dwelt in Haran."
Wow, he went way back, didn't he?
Where did Stephen start?
He started his message to those Jews with God's appearance to Abraham.
And then skipping all the way down to Acts 7, 36, he'd been preaching a while by now.
He said this about Israel's deliverance from Egypt.
"He brought them out after that he had showed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for years."
And near the very end of his sermon in verse 52, Stephen said, "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?
And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the just one, of whom ye have now been the betrayers and murderers."
Do you know what Stephen was telling these Jews?
He was telling them what God was telling Sennacherib.
"Hast thou not heard long ago how God has done it."
He took them all the way back to Abraham.
He took them to Moses, and Jesus had already been crucified.
Stephen could have just said, "Hey, Jesus was just crucified not long ago, and that's your Savior."
No, he went all the way back.
He said, "If I may, hast thou not heard long ago how God has done it?"
And if God delivered his people his way back then, then he will deliver his people his way today.
Listen, God has offered plenty of historical evidence of his deliverance of people from bondage.
It's throughout the Bible.
Adam and Eve were in the bondage of sin, and he put those coats, animal skins on them to show us what he does to deliver us from our sin.
And God just kept delivering people from bondage over and over and over.
They would sin, and they would earn their bondage, and he would deliver them in an earthly sense.
And he delivered sinners from their bondage as well.
So when people refuse to believe what he's declared about how he's done it long ago, it's not because they're without evidence.
And furthermore, Sennacherib would have heard by now how the Lord delivered the many nations into Joshua's hands.
After Moses was dead.
And now he gave the Promised Land to the children of Israel.
He would have heard about David's many victories, Solomon's peaceful reign, and so on.
God continues there in verse 25, He said, "And of ancient times I have formed it."
Of ancient times I have formed it.
Meaning, of ancient times, even before time began, God formed this very thing the verse addresses.
So let's learn about that.
Our first look at the Hebrew word translated "formed" is found back in Genesis 2, verse 7.
It's the same as the word "formed" in our text.
Genesis 2, 7, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul."
So get this, God forms things first in his own mind where they have always existed.
It's a hard concept to grasp, I know, because God never does learn anything and He never forgets anything.
But He has formed these things in His own mind before they ever came to pass.
And secondly, God forms things not only in His mind, but He forms things in time, like He did when He formed Adam.
Let's read the rest of the verse and then we'll come back to the word "formed."
It says, "And of ancient times that I have formed it, now have I brought it to pass."
Now that's an interesting phrase right there.
God said He had actually formed something before it came to pass.
He formed it just as surely as He formed Adam from the dust of the earth.
Adam was the visible representation of what God had already formed in His mind.
And by looking at Adam, you would be certain that God formed Adam.
The Bible tells us He did.
But what is also certain is not just when God forms a man or forms something that we can behold with our eyes, but what is also certain is that when God forms something that has not yet come to pass, it is just as certain that it will come to pass as if it had already done so.
And this is important because this is the basis of our faith in God's promises.
Before time began, God had already formed Adam in His own mind, and He brought that to pass when He literally formed Adam from the dust.
And if that's the case, then whatever God forms in His mind will come to pass.
Psalm chapter 22 is a foretelling of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
And in that Psalm, you'll see David referring to himself, and then you'll see the psalmist speaking as the Lord Jesus Christ is actually speaking.
And it's a beautiful Psalm.
It's foretelling of the crucifixion of Jesus, which was an event that was about a thousand years after David was on this earth.
Yet I want you to listen to the tense of the verbs in verse 16.
Psalm 22, 16.
"For dogs have come past me, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet."
Now, there are three verbs used in that verse.
This is the Lord Jesus Christ prophesying of His death on the cross.
The dogs of the Gentiles, the assembly of the wicked, those are the Jews.
He said, "They've come past me, they've enclosed me, they've pierced my hands and my feet."
Those are the three verbs, "compassed," "enclosed," and "pierced."
And all of them are used in the past tense.
Do you know why?
Because as God told Sennacher of ancient times, I have formed it.
Jesus spoke through that psalmist and used the past tense, even though his crucifixion was a thousand years away.
He said, "This is what happened to me."
You know why?
Because it was already formed in the mind of God.
The proof that Jesus' crucifixion was formed before it came to pass is further bolstered by 1 Peter 1, verses 18-20.
1 Peter 1, verses 18-20.
Where Peter wrote, "For as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest," that means shown in these last times for you.
God didn't need for himself, he did not need to manifest his Son.
He had no need to do that for himself.
He was always one with his Son.
He did that for us.
Jesus was foreordained that he would die for our sins before the world was ever formed.
And his crucifixion surely came to pass just like God's Word said it would, but just as God had formed it of ancient times.
You know it's really awesome that God lets us in on many of the things he has formed in his own mind.
And we get to see some of those having already come to pass in the Bible.
There's a prophecy and then there's the fulfillment of the prophecy.
How many times did Jesus quote the Old Testament and say, "This date is fulfilled in your ears."
Thus the Scriptures are fulfilled, meaning the thing that God formed in his mind long ago has come to pass before you.
And just as surely as he formed Adam, Jesus will gather his people to be with him.
And just as surely as he formed Adam, God will raise us from the dead.
And he will just as certainly pour out his wrath on the wicked earth that remains because of ancient times he has formed it.
He's purposed to do it.
Now in our text, what is it about Sennacherib that God formed in ancient times and brought to pass?
Well let's look at it.
He said, "Thou shouldest be to lay waste fenced cities into ruinous heaps."
Now that sets the record straight about Sennacherib.
He was so haughty and prideful as to think that his successful conquests were the result of his own power and will.
And God's telling him here, "Before you were ever born," Sennacherib, "I ordained that I would have a purpose for you.
I knew you'd be a wicked king, that you would be against me and my people, and so I used you to lay waste to these fenced cities."
That was your purpose.
God used Sennacherib as an instrument to punish Israel, just like he did a lot of their, well, all of their enemy nations.
But Sennacherib did not defeat God, as he would imagine that he had.
He was used by God.
And this truth is the springboard for the remainder of what God says to Sennacherib in these upcoming verses.
Now why would God use Sennacherib to lay waste to fenced cities as opposed to all cities?
Why the fenced cities here?
Well, there's something about a fenced city we need to learn.
The word fenced means walled, W-A-L-L-E-D, or restrained.
So we're not talking about a three-strand barbed wire fence.
Now you know why I don't like those?
Because I always have to put cattle up in my job.
I get loose livestock calls every day.
And we're always having to put cattle up because of these little cheap three-and-four-strand barbed wire fences that won't keep anything inside.
But that's not what this fenced city is.
This is a walled city.
Picture the walls of Jericho around, or the walls of Jerusalem, or the Great Wall of China.
That's what these cities are.
Fenced cities are fortified walled cities.
And the problem with walled cities is not the wall, but the people's perception of the wall.
Let's look at that perception from both sides of the wall, the outside and the inside.
First, we see the people's perception of the wall when they're outside of it.
In Numbers 13, there were 12 spies who had been sent into the Promised Land.
Two of those spies were Caleb and Joshua.
And here was God's assignment as he told it to Moses there in Numbers 13, verse 2.
He said, "Send thou men that they may search the land of Canaan which I give unto the children of Israel.
Of every tribe of their fathers shall you send to man, every one a ruler among them."
So God said for the spies to go into a land where they'd never been, but one God had already given them.
He said, "Not which I will give unto you, but which I give unto you."
I'm giving this to you.
It's yours.
Go in and possess it.
But here was how 10 of those spies described what they saw.
They're speaking to Moses and Aaron and the rest of the children of Israel.
They're in Numbers 13, and this is verses 27 through 28.
And they told him and said, "We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it."
They brought some with them.
"Nevertheless, the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled and very great.
And moreover, we saw the children of Anac there."
Those are giants.
The word "walled" in that passage is the same as the word "fenced" in our text.
Remember, these spies weren't just a random bunch of guys who happened to wander by.
You know, if you've ever worked in a place that has a hallway and the boss catches you in the hallway and says, "Hey, what are you doing right now?
You had it.
You should not walk in the hallway."
You just happened to be the first person.
I asked me how I know that.
Well, anyway, that wasn't what these guys were.
These were the heads of their tribes.
These were supposed to be leaders who trusted in the Lord.
But 10 of the 12, yes, they saw the strong people, the children of Anac, but they saw the wall.
They saw that fenced city.
So in our first look at the problem presented by the fence or the wall, 10 of the spies saw an earthly wall as an impediment to a mission from God.
God said, "I gave you the land."
They said, "Oh, you can't.
The wall's too big.
The people are too big.
They're strong, insinuating that all of those hindered and would hinder what God promised to do for them."
You know why they thought that?
Because they didn't remember that of ancient times he formed it long ago.
He'd already given them this land and time was catching up with truth right now.
And then they communicated, these 10 spies communicated to the people that God's assignment was impossible.
And to those spies, a fenced city, a walled city, represented an impossible situation.
Now that's the wrong attitude to have, isn't it?
That wall was no wall to God.
That Red Sea was no wall or barrier to God.
He made it.
So he divided it and then he closed it back up.
But two of the spies saw the wall as God saw it.
Listen to Numbers 13, verse 30.
"And Caleb stilled the people before Moses and said, 'Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it.'"
He's talking about that whole city, walls and all.
Now what would they possess?
They'd possess what God gave them.
He said, "I give this to you."
He gave them the land.
He gave them the fenced cities.
All the riches that were there, that land where milk and honey flows, that was already there.
He didn't say go and fight for it, he said go and possess it.
Now you have a choice when it comes to standing outside the fenced city.
You can either fix your eyes on that wall or you can fix your eyes on the Lord like Caleb and Joshua did.
And when it came to how God used Sennacherib to lay waste to these fenced cities, we learned that it was God through Sennacherib, not Sennacherib apart from God, who defeated those walls.
And now we learn a second thing about the fence or the wall of these fenced cities.
This time from the perspective of those inside the wall.
Judah had a good king named Aza and we studied him.
And in 2 Chronicles chapter 14, which parallels 2 Kings in some places, one of the things King Aza did is told to us in verse 6 of that chapter.
It's 2 Chronicles 14 verse 6.
It says this about King Aza.
"And he built fenced cities in Judah, for the land had rest, and he had no war in those years because the Lord had given him rest."
Now I want you to catch that right there.
King Aza built fenced cities.
From a worldly perspective you might say why?
Why would he need walls around his cities?
God's taking care of them.
God gave them rest.
And that's true.
But the building of the fenced cities came after the Lord had given them rest.
Those walls were nothing more than a sign of protection.
But those walls were no good unless the Lord had given them rest.
And over time, the Jews who built these walls under King Aza had children and they had children.
And those Jews supposed that their enemies could not conquer them as long as they remained inside the walls, yet they were in sin.
While they were inside those walls, they sinned against the Lord and thought, well these walls will protect us.
And that's why God used Sennacherib to lay waste to fenced cities.
To show the children of Israel, the children of Judah, those walls won't do anything for you when I punish you for your sins.
They won't protect you from the enemy.
I've got a king, a wicked king, who I called long ago.
I purposed that he would be an instrument I would use to lay waste to fenced cities.
And he's already done it in the nation of Israel, the northern kingdom, as we've read before.
And just as the people outside the fenced cities thought the walls made it impossible for God to do what he promised, the people inside the walls of the fenced cities thought the walls made it impossible for their enemies to touch them.
And that was a grave mistake because it was the Lord's rest that saved them from their enemies, not their walls.
I'm going to give you an example.
I know of men who have built their bodies and hardened their bodies to keep trouble away.
They want their adversaries to look at them and say, "Ooh, I don't want to mess with that guy.
He looks like a beast."
Some of those men take anabolic steroids, cover themselves in tattoos, and walk around with a mean look on their face, keep people away from them.
They've made themselves into fenced cities.
Yet, a microscopic bacteria can take that fenced city and destroy it.
It's done it, and it'll keep doing it.
A minuscule cancerous tumor can reduce that fenced city, that great big fella, down to skin and bones and put him in the bed where he'll never get up.
Friend, our walled cities do not keep the enemy away.
It's the rest we have in the Lord that keeps our enemies away.
When you throw that to the side, then God may send a Sennacherib to lay waste to your fenced city.
Whether your fenced city is, as these men I described, or maybe it's your money, your position, your power, your fame, your ego, whatever it is, God will send a Sennacherib to tear that fenced city down.
You know, we can't pretend to know when God may be chastening a Christian in this way, but we know that he does chasten his people because he loves us.
He chastens us when we sin.
And our fenced cities are no hindrance to his sovereign will.
Verse 26, back in our text.
"Therefore, their inhabitants were of small power.
They were dismayed and confounded.
They were as the grass of the field and as the green herb, as the grass on the housetops and as corn blasted before it be grown up."
We won't get to all that today.
But let's look at the phrase, "Therefore, their inhabitants were of small power."
Now, what is the "therefore" referring to?
It's referring to God using Sennacherib to lay waste to fenced cities.
And because he used Sennacherib to lay waste to fenced cities, that's why the inhabitants of these fenced cities were of small power.
They weren't rendered powerless by Sennacherib's power.
They were rendered powerless because the Lord used Sennacherib just like he would use a hammer.
The hammer has no power until it's put in the hands of the carpenter and skillfully used.
And when it is, it's a mighty striking instrument.
And Sennacherib would do well to heed this word here, "Therefore, this is why, Sennacherib, the inhabitants of the fenced cities were of small power."
Of small power, let's look at that.
The Hebrew word for "small" means "short."
And power is almost always translated as the word "hand" just about every time in the Old Testament.
Thirteen hundred and some odd times, it's actually translated as the word "hand."
In other words, the inhabitants of these fenced cities were short-handed when it came to their ability to deal with Sennacherib.
And if it were Sennacherib alone without God's authority and power, then Assyria might be short-handed against a larger enemy.
It's just a matter of numbers.
But when God fights against a nation, that nation's short-handed.
It doesn't matter how big they are.
It says they were dismayed.
That means they were broken down, discouraged.
From an earthly perspective, it is a discouraging thing to be short-handed.
And it's a foolish thing to stand against the Lord because when you do, you will always be short-handed.
Matthew 7, verses 13 through 14.
Matthew 7, 13 through 14.
Jesus said, "Enter ye in at the strait gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in there at.
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."
Now, they have the word "many" and "few" there, and I wanted to use that to illustrate this point.
Many is more than few.
We would all agree, right?
Many is more than few.
But the many are short-handed.
They're short-handed against the few.
Why is that?
Because the many went the way that leadeth to destruction.
Destruction means waste in the Greek language.
You see, God's math is different than ours.
You would think if you were just going to choose the way people choose, through popularity, through likes and hits and views and all that.
Well, look at there.
That one has a whole bunch of likes.
I think that's what I'm going to get.
I'm going to buy one of those.
Well, that's the wrong way to treat eternity.
Because if you do that, there's a lot of people who hit the like button for the broadway that leads to destruction, and that's where they're headed.
And so if you say, "Well, I'll go with them.
They're not short-handed."
Then you've chosen wrong.
So God's math is different than ours, isn't it?
We see the few as short-handed against the many, but the many are like fence cities that are laid away.
They're of small power that's short-handed, and they will be dismayed.
Look back in your text.
It says they'll also be confounded.
That word means ashamed.
God has clearly said in His word that He will bring this to pass against His enemies and the enemies of His people.
Isaiah 41, 10-11.
"Fear thou not, for I am with thee.
Be not dismayed, for I am thy God.
I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded.
They shall be as nothing, and they that strive with thee shall perish."
Notice in that passage from Isaiah that God told His people, "Be not dismayed."
The ones who are to be dismayed are the ones who are short-handed against God.
And God further told His people, "All they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded."
God is consistent as our text shows us.
And only those who set themselves against Him, no matter how great their numbers, will be confounded and ashamed.
And we'll stop right there and look at if they were as grass of the field next week.
Father, thank You for the time You've given us to come together and study Your Word.
Thank You for the people who have attended in person, online, those who will watch later on.
Thank You for Your faithfulness to teach us by Your Spirit through Your Word the things You'd have us to learn.
We pray for the next hour, for the singing, the preaching, the praying, that our minds would be stayed upon Thee, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
