Isaiah 20 - Your Only Real Safety Is God

When everything you counted on starts sliding like sand, it reveals what you’re really trusting. We start with a blunt, freeing invitation from God: “Will you give me your sin? I’ll give you the righteousness of God.” Then we get honest about the vows we make after salvation, the moments we say “Yes, Lord,” and the quiet pullback where we add, “Well, except for this.”

Pastor Carl connects Isaiah’s message to modern instability, including the coronavirus era, economic anxiety, and the feeling that human wisdom can’t simply “fix it” on command. We talk about why God’s wisdom matters more than our best plans, how spiritual drift happens when life is comfortable, and how disruption can function as mercy that wakes us up rather than destroys us. Along the way, we ask the personal question that can spark real revival: what am I still trying to control, justify, or handle on my own?

Isaiah’s prophecies about Egypt and Assyria bring both warning and hope. Pride can leave a nation exposed and ashamed, yet God also promises a future where former enemies serve him together, a reminder that the Lord can change hearts on a scale we can’t engineer. The call is simple and challenging: turn back, surrender fully, and let God’s discipline become healing instead of hardening.

If this encouraged or convicted you, subscribe for more Bible teaching, share the episode with a friend who needs steady hope, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s one “except for this” area you want to surrender today?

Come On Up is the radio ministry of The Mountain Cross in Waynesville North Carolina. To learn more about us please visit: TheMountainCross.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, and we shall walk in his paths.

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Welcome to Come On Up, the radio ministry of the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina.

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Will you give me your sin? I'll give you the righteousness of God. It's been paid for, it's done. Will you take it? And we say, Yes, Lord, you take it. And I give you the rest of my life. Now, are we good in keeping our vows? We pull back though that promise at times, don't we? And we say, Yes, have it all. Well, except for this. Or except for this. But then as the Lord moves in our hearts, do we give that back to the Lord? I hope so.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Letting go of something that holds a special place in your heart can be quite the challenge, can't it? Even those little habits that have become part of your routine can be tough to shake off. When God blesses you with a gift of salvation, he desires that all those pesky bad habits of yours will fade away in return. So, are you willing to let those go? Today, Pastor Carl invites you to release those sinful habits for good. Once you take that step, you'll begin to see some amazing transformations in your life. And now, here's Pastor Carl.

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We think we can figure out God's ways and we go our own ways. And that's again one of the dangers with treating this coronavirus. If we just throw money at something, if we just try all this stuff in our human wisdom and we would neglect God, he's gonna say, Where's your wisdom? You've made a bigger problem out of it than it had to be. May we heed that. May we be praying in that direction. May eyes be opened in our nation and around the world that these sorts of things we need God's wisdom for. Of course, we need God's wisdom for everything, right? But may God use this as an eye-opening experience. God sends things, I believe, in his grace. He does not want to send people to hell. He does not want to destroy cultures forever. And in his heart, in his long suffering, he's not willing that any should perish, but that it all would come to a knowledge of him. So he'll send things our way. And this is my theory. He sends things our way to give us a taste of what eternity is like, so that maybe, just maybe, we'd repent and say, Lord, we need you. Isn't that what happened to Israel during their time in the promised land? Time and time again, things are going well, they're worshiping God and they're serving him, and then they drift off because everything's going so well, they don't need God, and then they find themselves in trouble and they turn back to God. That's not a bad thing if we turn back to God, right? If we find ourselves in trouble, let's not condemn ourselves, but let's repent before the Lord, have that conviction, and use it to get ourselves back in the right place, because that's where God wants us. He wants us in his safety, in his wisdom. And so we need it for our lives and our nation and our world needs it. May we be praying that God would use these things that are happening to draw people to himself, to cause people to repent from their ways, the ways of the world, our ways of figuring things out by ourselves, and turning back to God and totally depending on him, saying, Lord, we need your wisdom, we need your direction. We don't want to dry out our own Nile river. We want to experience the blessings because you provided it. It's not us, it's you. So meditate on that. The Lord has mingled a perverse spirit in their in their midst, and they have caused Egypt to err in all her work, as a drunken man staggers in his vomit. Neither will be there will there be any work for Egypt, which the head or the tail, palm or branch may do. In other words, if we keep going after the world's way of thinking, if we keep going trying to figure things out by ourselves without seeking God, neglecting God, ultimately fighting against God, God is going to cause that thinking to continue. And we're going to be messed up in our thinking, because it already is. And if you're heading down this path, it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. And that's what happened with Egypt. And then you get to a place where you can't even do anything anymore. The Lord is gracious to allow us to rebel against him, isn't he? He gives us space to go and go ahead, try it. And I'll be here if you need to ask, which you do. But at some point it just gets really bad, doesn't it? When we neglect his ways, and then we're stuck in a place where no matter where we turn, we can't figure out what to do to get us our ourselves out of this situation again, let alone get us back to that place of prosperity. And I see that happening too. We're shutting everything down. The stock market, all the gains that we've experienced since President Trump came into office in 2016. And all those years, all these gains have been wiped out in the last two weeks. Things can change like that. And we're helpless on our own. We can't just turn it around by lowering the interest rate. I mean, that might be wise and stuff, but we need God's wisdom. We need God's direction. And he loves us so much, he's going to trap us in a corner where there's nothing else we can do except cry out to him or curse him and die. May our nation be at a place where we turn to him. We need a revival. And praise God, this might be the start of it. Pray for hearts to be changed, starting with ours. Is there anything within me, Lord, that I'm trying to do on my own, that I'm trying to figure out, that I'm trying to justify? I need your wisdom. I need your guidance. I once again surrender everything to you, Lord. In that day Egypt will be like women, and they will be afraid and fear because of the waving of the hand of the Lord of hosts, which he waves over it. They're going to be weak. They're going to be scared. And the land of Judah will be a terror to Egypt. Everyone who makes mention of it will be afraid in himself because of the counsel of the Lord of hosts, which he has determined against it. Now this is interesting because some of that happened when Assyria came and took over Egypt and Ethiopia. They took over the Philistines, they took over Israel, and they went right past Jerusalem. Jerusalem wasn't touched. It'd be another hundred years or so before Babylon would come in and take over Judah. Because again, Judah would fall away and not fully trust in the Lord. But there are also things coming in the future that are very interesting, built on this. When God's people trust in the Lord and allow him to work, God makes his enemies to be friends with them, to lay down their arms against them, and so forth, right? You've heard phrases like that in the Old Testament. And in verse 18 it says, In that day, five cities in the land of Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear by the Lord of hosts. One will be called the city of destruction. Destruction of what? Destruction of the old ways. Destruction of the world's way of thinking. There will come a time where God will be the God of Egypt. Where people will freely worship him as a whole society. Now, there is a strong Christian population in Egypt. Egypt and Ethiopia, especially, were very influential in the growth of the church. But I can say Egypt is not fully surrendered to the Lord today. So there is this time still to come where there will be an alliance between Judah and Egypt, and it won't be because they made a deal, it'll be because God is the God of Egypt and Israel. That's to come. Isn't that interesting? In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt and a pillar to the Lord at its border, and it will be a for a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt, for they will cry to the Lord because of the oppressors, and he will send them a Savior and a mighty one, and he will deliver them. Egypt will get to the place where they realize, oh, we've been fighting the real God forever. Lord, would you forgive us? Would you save us? We have enemies coming against us. And the Lord will come in and say yes. Then the Lord will be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians will know the Lord in that day and will make sacrifice and offerings. And yes, they will make a vow to the Lord and perform it. Again, in the prayer that we made from Psalm 71, we make vows to the Lord based on what the Lord has promised to us. He says, Will you come? Will you follow me? Because let's reason together. I'll make your sins that are scarlet as white as snow. Will you give me your sin and I'll give you the righteousness of God? It's been paid for, it's done. Will you take it? And we say, Yes, Lord, you take it. And I give you the rest of my life. Now, are we good in keeping our vows? We pull back though that promise at times, don't we? And we say, Yes, have it all. Well, except for this. Or except for this. But then as the Lord moves in our hearts, do we give that back to the Lord? I hope so. Lord, take it all again. And again, it's yours. And Egypt would be in this place as well. They would be fully in, believing, trusting, following, obeying, and making vows to the Lord. Lord, I will trust you because of you. Not that that's not within my flesh, I can't fulfill this promise. But with you, with the power of your spirit living within me, changing me, giving me the mind of Christ, and empowering me to do your will, I will do it. I'm willing for you to work in my life. Lord, have your way in me. And the Lord will strike Egypt, and he will strike and heal it, and they will return to the Lord, and he will be entreated by them and heal them. Again, this is somewhat hard to understand, but but when we look at it as a child with his parents, and the parents inflict injury on the child, which is called discipline, which is called a spanking. The child has a choice to make. Will he acknowledge the pain that his parents have inflicted on him to recognize that he's in a bad place and they've done it to him for his good and repent and turn back to his parents and say, I was wrong for how I acted? Forgive me and help me to walk in the right way. That's training. And they say, Yes, you're you're you're on the right path now. You walk. Or they can harden our hearts and really become a troublemaker and fight against their parents. Do we do that with God? Do we recognize his discipline in our lives and their whole nations? They will be struck by the Lord, and Egypt will respond in the right way. Is the Lord inflicting our nation with this virus today? I believe so. I mean, not that you know God is all about bringing bad stuff to us, but he uses the things that are happening in this world. He uses the wiles of the devil in order to accomplish his purposes. And this is a great way to wake people up. You think you have it all together. You think you got all the economic planned together, you think you got your life planned out, you're all comfy. The stores are empty. You can't get toilet paper. That should bring people to their knees, shouldn't it? The Lord is our provision. The Lord is our provider. May this be a time where we turn back to him and we recognize that he is real, he is working, he's trying to get through to us and draw us near to him as individuals, as families, and as a nation. May he have his way with us. And this is great. In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians. In that day, Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the land whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed is Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance. Did you get that? The two nations that Israel as a combined country, as a combined nation, was trying to make alliances with during the times of these predictions. The Lord would indeed make alliances with Egypt and Assyria and Israel. But the Lord would be the author of it because he's changed the hearts of Assyria and Egypt and Israel. Serving God together, they become a force for good in the end times. And there are glimmers of that happening today, although more Egypt than Assyria right now. The area of Assyria before they had their big conquest was an area that is in today modern Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. Which is the same area that I believe that ISIS had taken over and now had has been turned around. In that same area, Christians were being persecuted and killed for sport. Very interesting. The Assyrian, again, is a picture of Satan. The Assyrian is a great enemy. There will be a time coming when this area of Assyria will be changed. It will be serving God as well as Egypt, as well as Israel. And with the three of them, there will be an alliance and a strength. But there will be enemies still. There will be Gog and Magog. And if you look into your prophecy, you see there's alliances with Israel and with Russia and with Turkey and with Iran coming against Israel, and by implication, Assyria and Egypt, too. So you have these three nations going against these three other nations in the end times. I usually hear about the others. I haven't heard much about this alliance that God set up between Israel, Assyria, and Egypt. And it's coming. It's coming. Look for it. That should excite you. Because it's the Lord at work and not man trying to make things happen. Not to try to build alliances on his own without the Lord's help. And that brings us to chapter 20. We'll be real quick. Isaiah is saying, okay, here's a glimpse into the future. But let's take it back to today. Even though you want to make alliances with Egypt, uh now's not the time. And you're not the one to do it. When it happens, I will be the one to do it. But right now, it's going to happen. And Isaiah brings a specific time to this picture. In the year that Tartan came to Ashdod, and Ashdod is one of the big cities of the Philistines. The Philistines, by the way, the area where the Philistines lived was an area that was set aside for Judah, but Judah never conquered it, never took ownership of it. So the Philistines had always been a problem to Israel. When Assyria came down and then took over that town of Ashdod and basically the whole Philistine Empire, when Sargon, the king of Assyria, sent him and fought against Ashdod and took it. In that year, the rest of this stuff is going to happen. That's the year of 1711 A.D., I believe. Or BC. B.C. And that was the beginning of the Assyrians coming down and eventually they get down to Egypt. So this is a warning to Egypt again. At that same time the Lord spoke to Isaiah, the son of Amos, saying, Go and remove the sackcloth from your body and take your sandals off your feet. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. The sackcloth he was wearing in repentance, and hoping that lives would be changed, that people would respond favorably to the Lord, but the Lord is saying it's too late. Go and remove your sackcloth. And some commentators say he wasn't really fully naked, maybe it was just his undergarments. But whatever it was, it's a symbol of total embarrassment. Egypt built itself on its pride of what it could accomplish by itself in this world. America built its pride on what we can do and the things that we can do. Everything's being taken away right now. It can happen like that. And it's a symbol of what happened with Isaiah. Then the Lord said, Just as my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years for a sign and a wonder against Egypt and Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians and the prisoners and the Ethiopians as captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt. It's a PG-13 sermon. There's some nudity here. The point is our sin really uncovers us before the Lord. We lay naked before the Lord. There is nothing within us that pleases the Lord. Yet we think we're something. We think as a society we've accomplished great things. But in light of eternity, we have nothing. And Isaiah wandered around for three years with this message. It's a message to Egypt, but it's also a message to Israel. Again, the message to Israel is yeah, I'm correcting you, I'm bringing judgment against you, but judgment starts in the house of God. If I've judged you, my own people, how much more am I going to judge your enemies? And yet, in the grace and the mercy of God, he wishes for the enemies of Israel to repent, to come to faith in him as well. So he sends a prophet to do these really weird things, to send a message out. You think this is weird, you think this is embarrassing. You just wait till Assyria comes and takes you over. It'll be three years. But you could change it right now. If you recognize where you are, it's not a threat. This is compassion. This is the Lord saying, please, do you realize where you are? I'm here to save you. Would you come? Would you be changed? Would you submit fully to me so I can clothe you with garments of white, pure, never have to be embarrassed again. Then they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia and their expectation and Egypt their glory. Who is the day I I believe this is talking now about Israel? Israel, you're trying to make an agreement with Ethiopia and Egypt, and and in that day, when you're still standing, Jerusalem, you're gonna see that Egypt and Ethiopia have no power left. You're going to be embarrassed. And you're going to be glad you didn't make an agreement with them at that time. Surely, uh, and the inhabitant of this territory will say in that day, surely, such is our expectation. Wherever we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria, and how shall we escape? When we come face to face with reality about the world's way of thinking, about our way of thinking. The Lord wants to get us to this place. Where can I go to get away from the enemy? There is no safe place. I can't come up with anything. I can't create anything. I can't make any allegiances with any nations that will fight against them because they're all gone. My only hope is found in the Lord. I will run to him as a fortress. He will save me. And no matter what happens to me, I am safe in his arms. My soul is secure forever and ever in him. But not if I go and do things my own way. Not if our nation goes and does things its own way. Not if the world just, you know, fights with their hands against God and we're going to do things our way. Why do the nations rage? The Lord in heaven just laughs. Why are you trying to fight me? I love you. I've made a way for you to be with me, to be healed, to be changed, to be saved for forever. This is a humbling message for sure. But I think it's perfectly apropos for our time, isn't it? We need the Lord now more than ever. The truth is, we need the Lord just as much as we ever did. It's just our eyes are starting to open up a bit. So may the Lord have mercy on us and may we respond in ways that are appropriate.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

Thanks for listening to today's lesson from the book of Isaiah here on Come On Up. You're hearing from Pastor Carl at the Mountain Cross in Waynesville, North Carolina. Now, the book of Isaiah ends with a section that prophesies a new heaven and a new earth, which will come to replace the world that we currently know as it passes away. All of the promises and prophecies that God has made through the prophet Isaiah will come to their ultimate conclusion in this new kingdom. Death and evil will be no more, and goodness and justice will flow like a river. When we look at the world around us right now, it seems like chaos has already won. We can see live images of war, inequality, and sadness in just a few clicks, and it can seem like things will never get better. But Isaiah reminds us to look past the chaos that is right in front of us and fix our eyes on God's promises. That's how we can stay afloat when everything around us feels like it's collapsing. Well, if you want to join a group of believers who are looking together towards the new kingdom, we'd love to invite you to join us here at the Mountain Cross. We meet on Sundays at 10 a.m. at the Smoky Mountain Cinema. For more information, you can visit us online at themountaincross.com. There you will also find our How to Know God page, where you will learn more about how you can belong to the Kingdom of God. Thanks for joining us today. Come on up to the mountain with us again next time as we seek to learn more from the Lord through His Word. Come on Up is sponsored by The Mountain Cross, a Calvary Chapel fellowship.