Victory Starts With Humility In Isaiah 37

A threat lands in your hands and suddenly your mind starts racing: what if the enemy is right, what if you’re finished, what if God won’t come through. That’s the moment we walk into today as Pastor Carl teaches through Hezekiah’s showdown with Assyria in Isaiah 37. The Rabshakeh’s message is calculated spiritual intimidation, and it sounds eerily modern: don’t trust the Lord, look at the track record, surrender now and you’ll be fine. We slow down and name the tactic for what it is: fear dressed up as “realism.”

We talk about why some voices are not meant to be debated, why silence can be obedience, and why the first honest step is admitting our weakness. Hezekiah’s response is not performative strength. He tears his clothes, repents, and goes straight to the house of the Lord. We connect that posture to 1 Peter 5, where humility is not self-hate but clarity: God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. We also press into a hard question raised by the text, wrestling with justice, deception, and what it means when God honors a person’s chosen hardness.

Then the episode turns deeply practical: when the threatening letter arrives, Hezekiah reads it and spreads it before the Lord. No denial, no clapback, no frantic problem-solving, just prayer that God’s name would be known. If you’re looking for Bible teaching on spiritual warfare, repentance, prayer in a crisis, and trusting God when the odds look terrible, this message gives you a simple next move you can take today. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s under pressure, and leave a review. What “letter” do you need to lay before the Lord right now?

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_01 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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We have no power against the enemy on our own, but with the Lord, we have victory. And Hezekiah recognized that. He humbled himself before the Lord. He said, Lord, some of this is my doing because I went against what you said to do. But now the enemies are coming. All these other cities and towns in my area under my rule have been destroyed. Lord, I cannot do a thing about this. I lay this before you and I humbly ask that you would work.

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You have absolutely no power to defeat the enemy on your own strength. But with the Lord, victory is already assured. In today's message, Pastor Carl describes how Hezekiah understood this completely when he faced a massive crisis. Instead of trying to fix it himself, he humbled himself before the Lord, owned up to his own mistakes, and admitted that he was helpless against the forces marching toward him. Instead of relying on yourself when trouble comes, you are called to follow that same example. And now, here's Pastor Carl.

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Verse 18. Should you trust anybody that says, Don't depend on the Lord? Should you trust in anyone who says, Don't believe the king when he says the Lord will deliver us? When the truth is the Lord is our only hope. Are we submitting to the Lord? Are we seeking after the Lord? Are our hearts broken before the Lord? Are we allowing the Lord to work in our lives? The enemy doesn't want us to get in that position. Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered this land, its land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hammoth and Arpad? Where are the gods of Serevim? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? Who among the gods of these lands have delivered their countries from my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem from my hand? Look, there are all these gods around. None of them were strong enough to deliver us, to defeat us. We defeated them. And these are guys all around you, Jerusalem. These are nations that were all around, and yet they've been defeated. They're no more. Their gods didn't save them. What makes you think your god's gonna save you? What do we say when we're asked a question like that? Well, sometimes we say nothing. Verse 21, but they held their peace and answered him not a word, for the king's command was, do not answer him. Don't answer a fool in his folly. There are just some people that you just can't negotiate with, that you can't talk sense into, that you can't have a conversation and learn from, and and and and and vice versa. This representative of the king had the heart of the king of Assyria, and that was we're gonna destroy you no matter what, but we'll be nice and give you an opportunity to surrender before you kill you, before we kill you. There was nothing to be done in that situation but to trust in the Lord. Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, Sheba the scribe, and and Joah the son of Asap the recorder came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him the words of the Rabshaka. When you're shaken up by the representative of the enemy in your life, um does that mean you're not trusting in the Lord? I mean, the Lord brings us through situations and the enemy comes and sideswipes us times where we're shaken up. And it's at those times we have a choice to make. Do we run to the king and represent, uh uh explain to him what happened? Or do we give in to the enemy and say, you know you're right. Everything that I believed in was a lie. Uh chapter 37, and so it was when the king Hezekiah heard it that he tore his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord. He heard the threats of the enemy, and he recognized they were serious. That's the first thing we need to do when we recognize sin in our lives, is recognize it's serious. And this is something that we need to turn from, we need to repent from. Our hearts need to be torn as they tore their clothes. And then what? You seek the Lord. Hezekiah went into the house of the Lord. His first thing to do was to repent and then pray. First thing to do was to recognize the danger that was before him and to seek the Lord. So often we want to fix our own problems because we're embarrassed by the Lord that we've gotten into these problems. And sometimes we get into problems because of our own actions. Hezekiah, he got into some of these problems because of some of his actions. Instead of seeking the Lord earlier for protection, he made an alliance with Egypt. And the Lord had been using Assyria to bring judgment against his people during this time. And Hezekiah saw it. And now part of his part of his repenting is recognizing that this is happening because of my mistake. But it's also happening because we have an enemy who comes to kill, steal, and destroy. Whatever the reason we find ourselves in the place of danger that we're in, we need to run to the Lord. And that's what Hezekiah did. And he sent his leaders, the Elochim and he sent Elochim, who was over the household, Sheba, the scribe, and the elders of the priests, and covered with sackcloth to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amos. So he repents. He goes to the house of the Lord to pray, and then he sends his people to Isaiah, who is the representative of God, who will have an answer to the prayers. Today, we don't need prophets to talk to us about the heart of the Lord. Today the Lord has given us his word and he's given us his Holy Spirit. So we repent when we are in this situation. We run to the Lord, we pray, and then we listen and we seek him for answers in his word by the power of the Holy Spirit. Are we listening to what he has to tell us? Because it's so easy to pray and tell the Lord all our problems, but do we slow down enough to listen to what he has to say? To listen to his direction for us. Verse 3, and then they said to him, the representatives to Isaiah, thus says Hezekiah, this day is a day of trouble and rebuke and blasphemy, for the children have come to birth, but there's no strength to bring them forth. This this dramatic picture of a mother that's exhausted in draught in childbirth. She gets to the very point of giving birth and she can't go anymore. And the danger is that the baby might die, and the mother might die. There's no strength, there's no hope, there's no way to overcome this. That's how the situation felt to them. There's nothing that they can do at this point. And the enemy is coming, he's bringing trouble, and he's blaspheming the name of the Lord. They go on to say in verse 4, it may be that the Lord your God will hear the words of Rabshaka, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to approach the living God, and will rebuke the words which the Lord your God has heard. Therefore, lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left. Rabshaka, the number two guy in the kingdom of Assyria, reflecting the words of the king of Assyria, who has already come and conquered the north and has conquered much of the south. They have actually moved south. They went on the west side of Jerusalem and they came south and were just destroying all the towns and villages and cities all around Jerusalem. And they were coming back to Jerusalem to finally conquer it. And Rabshaka was the representative who would come and he would mock the living God. He would say, All these other gods, they couldn't protect all these other cities. What makes you think your God is going to protect yours? And and with this idea of being kind and considerate, we're giving you an opportunity to surrender before we kill you. If you surrender, we're going to give you a good new life. And doesn't the enemy do that to us? There's so much in this world that I want to give to you. If you only give your heart and soul to me. But even in the gifts that he gives us, he's destroying us from the inside out. We need to recognize the work of the enemy and recognize that the Lord is the only one who can give us gifts that are good, that bring life. So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Is to Isaiah. Probably a better way to translate that from the Hebrew would be something along the line. After they came to Isaiah and gave him these words, verse 6, then Isaiah said to them, You shall say to your master, thus says the Lord. It's not just my opinion. This is the word of the Lord, God, the one who created all things, God who is truth. He's saying this that ought to bring us comfort. Thus saith the Lord. When the Lord says it, we can count on it. What did he say? He said, Do not be afraid of the words which you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Surely I will send a spirit upon him, and he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land. This is the kind and compassionate and all-loving God. This is we need to back up and look at this because this is something that may not fit our way of thinking. Kind, compassionate, all-loving God, who's taking this king of Assyria, who's going to bring a false spirit to him to convince him of something that's not happening, and to bring him back to Assyria where he will be destroyed, or he will be killed. Why would a loving God do that? Why would a loving God take the heart of Pharaoh and harden it so that the firstborn of all of the nation would be killed? And so the children of Israel would be let go, and that he would follow them and be destroyed with his armies in the Red Sea when it closed up on them. Why would God do that? I thought God loved everybody. I thought God wanted to change everybody. It's about us receiving the grace of God. It's about us accepting the gift of grace that he gives us. That is faith, grabbing a hold of the Lord and trusting in him, or going our own way and ignoring the ways of the Lord and saying, I don't want it, Lord. And at a certain point, the Lord says, I'm a gracious God. I've created you in my image. I've given you the ability to choose, and you've made a choice. And I'm going to honor that choice. The choice of the king of Assyria was to walk in deception, to walk in the ways of the enemy. And so by walking in deception, he will be deceived. Deceiving, he would be deceived. God would allow the spirit to come to fool him. And he would be fooled, and he would be later killed. By his own sons of all people. Pharaoh. God didn't harden Pharaoh's heart until after Pharaoh hardened his heart a number of times. And he hardened his heart so much to a point where God said, Fine, I'm going to cement that. That's the decision you made. Oh, may we have soft hearts towards the Lord. May we not fight to have our way, our way of how we figured out how life works, how I want things to go. May we have hearts to say, Lord, I'm a wretched sinner. I've been deceived by myself, by the world, by the enemy. Lord, would you show me the truth? Would you soften my heart? These are prayers that he honors and he wants to work in our lives. That's what Hezekiah is doing. That is not what the representative and the king of Assyria are doing. Then the Rabshaka returned and he found the king of Assyria warring against Libna, for he had heard that he had departed from Lachish. Lakish, the word for Lachish, has this idea of victory. I cannot be defeated. These were two towns that were south of Jerusalem where they were fighting. But Libna has this idea of the word means pavement, which may just be a prophecy of what's going to happen to the king of Assyria. He's going to be walked all over. Instead of defeating, he's going to be defeated and he's going to become pavement, I guess. So even the words of these towns that he was fighting in kind of talk about the end that is coming. And so Rabshaka, the representative, went to find him. And the king heard that concerning Tirahakka, the king of Ethiopia, he has come out to make war against you. So the alliance that Hezekiah had made with Egypt, Egypt and Ethiopia are now working together, and apparently, at least word came that they were coming up to attack him. As he's attacking these other cities and getting ready to attack Jerusalem, Egypt is coming up. Egypt, again, the ones that Hezekiah, based on taking the advice of one of his servants, made a pact with. When God says, don't make pacts. So when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah. He wrote a letter this time before he was speaking face to face with the representatives, and they came and they spoke to Hezekiah. Now Rabshaka is writing a letter to Hezekiah and sending messengers with this letter. Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah the king of Judah, saying, Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. These things that are coming against them to start to slow them down from attacking Jerusalem, they're saying, Hey, this isn't going to stop us. And don't think that your God is working right now to protect you because he isn't. Isn't that what the devil does? He questions God. Did he not say, wasn't that the first lie? You shall not surely die. But the truth is, he's trying to deceive you. If you eat this fruit of this tree, you'll be like him. And he doesn't want you to be like him because, you know, he likes where he is, and he doesn't want anybody else to take his space. Lies from the enemy. Lies from the heart of the enemy. That's really what the enemy is thinking, right? We're coming. And Jerusalem's going to be taken. And you could count on that. Look, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to the lands by utterly destroying them. And shall you be delivered? You saw what we did to all the nations around you. Hezekiah, the nations, even in the south, in the in the in the nation of Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel. Those nations, those cities, and those towns have been destroyed. Under your leadership, Hezekiah. And Jerusalem's the last one, and we're coming to get you. Why do you think you will be delivered from that? Have the gods of the nations delivered those whom my fathers have destroyed? Gozan and Haran and Rezpah and the peoples of Eden who were in Telazar, where the king of Hamath and the king of Aphrab, and the king of the city of Saravane, Hina, and Iva, not only the towns in Israel, north and south, but all the neighboring little nations and people groups that worshiped other gods, they were all destroyed. Their gods didn't save them. What makes you think your God is going to save you? And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and he read it. And Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord. When you receive a threatening letter, how do you respond to it? One way to respond to it is just to throw it away. I know I'm doing what's right. I'm doing what God has called me to do. I am safe in the arms of the Lord. Another way to deal with it is start to write back and start to say mean things to the people that are saying mean things to you, right? That's another way to do it. But what did Hezekiah do? He recognized the threat was still real. And he recognized in himself he was weak. If he really looked at his situation, he knows that what the enemy is speaking is true. Do we recognize that? On our own, the enemy will destroy us. We have no power against the enemy on our own. But with the Lord, we have victory. And Hezekiah recognized that. He humbled himself before the Lord. He said, Lord, some of this is my doing because I went against what you said to do, but now the enemies are coming. All these other cities and towns in my area under my rule have been destroyed. Lord, I cannot do a thing about this. I lay this before you and I humbly ask that you would work. This attitude reflects what we're directed to do in 1 Peter chapter 5. It says, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. The pride says, I can handle this, I can do it, I can, I you'll be proud of me when I get this done. But the humble say, This is totally out of my league. Lord, I need your help. And so Peter says, Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. That hand of God that, you know, if you recognize he's the God that's the judge, can crush you. But instead of crushing you, when you humble yourselves before the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. Verse 15, then Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, saying, O Lord of hosts, God of the armies of heaven, God of Israel, the God who chose this people, the one who dwells between the cherubim, the one who comes to the temple, and his presence is there between the two angels in the Holy of Holies on the most holy place, on the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat. You are God, as opposed to all these other nations that were worshiping false gods. You are God. There is no other God beside you. You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth, you have made heaven and earth. God, I appeal to you, the one who has revealed himself to be the one true God. Have mercy. In verse 17, he says, Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. Open your eyes and hear all the words of Sir Senecherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. Senecherib is is just trying to instill fear on his people, and then he and he's won a lot of battles, a lot of wars as a result of being a bully. But Lord, I recognize that he's reproaching your name. He's blaspheming your name. Truly, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste to the nations in their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. Therefore they destroyed them. Lord, these this nation went in and destroyed all of our neighboring uh nations who were worshiping other gods, other gods that were created by their own hands. Not like Israel never did that, right? The problem is they did that a lot. That's why they got into trouble. That's why God was using Assyria to judge the nations and Israel for making their own gods to bring judgment against those who are worshiping false gods, and you've destroyed the nations and the gods. Now, therefore, in verse 20, O Lord our God. Save us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you are the Lord, you alone. Did you notice that? Hezekiah is not praying on his behalf necessarily. His biggest concern is that the name of the Lord would be glorified. His greatest concern is that people would know who God is, and that their false gods weren't him. He prayed that the kingdoms of the earth may know that you are the Lord, you alone. And that ought to be our prayer if we're in trouble or not, right? That's the heart of God, that the nations would know that He is God and He is loving, He is compassionate. He sacrificed Himself on the cross to pay for the sin of the world, that whosoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. They'd move from death to life. They move from doing things their way to doing things God's way. And the only way we could do things God's way is by the Spirit of God living within us. We need the Lord, the one true God. We don't need to be dictating to God how good we are and the things that we've done. Because that leads to us actually just saying, God, I have a different image of you, and this is who it is. And that's who I'm worshiping. That's a false God. We only find salvation in the one true God. Verse 21 Then Isaiah the son of Amos sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus says the Lord God of Israel. Again, God is speaking, God is answering your prayer. This is what he has to say. Are you listening? Because you have prayed to me against Sennecherib, the king of Assyria. Let me just stop right there. The first thing that God tells Hezekiah is, Because you prayed.

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You're listening to Pastor Carl teach through Isaiah on Come On Up. As you may know, the book of Isaiah was written by a prophet who was telling of the coming exile of the people of Israel. They had strayed far from God, and they were about to face consequences for their sinful behavior. However, this exile isn't the end of the story for God's chosen people. Isaiah also shares a message of hope, reminding his readers that God can use even the darkest of circumstances for the good of all humanity. The Israelites may be away from their homeland for a while, but one day they will return. Pastor Carl wants us to learn that we are spiritual exiles, living in a world unlike the one we were made for. We were meant to be in communion with God, but we were separated from his presence by the curse of sin. But just as the Israelites came back to their homeland, we will one day be restored into the presence of our Creator, thanks to the blood of Jesus. Would you like to hear more from Pastor Carl? If so, go to themountaincross.com. There you'll find links to our Bible studies and our podcast feed, where you'll be able to listen to more of Pastor Carl's lessons. But you'll also find information about our in-person services at the Mountain Cross. If you're in Waynesville, North Carolina, you're invited to join us for our Sunday services at the Smoky Mountain Cinema. Thanks for listening 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.