Let's hear God's word from the book of Isaiah chapter 21, beginning with verse one. The burden against the wilderness of the sea, as whirlwinds in the south pass through, so it comes from the desert, from a terrible land. A distressing vision is declared to me. The treacherous dealer deals treacherously and the plunderer plunders. Go up, O Elam, besiege Omedea. All its sighing I have made to cease. Therefore, my loins are filled with pain. Pangs have taken hold of me, like the pangs of a woman in labor. I was distressed when I heard it. I was dismayed when I saw it. My heart wavered. Fearfulness frightened me. The night for which I longed, he turned into fear for me. Prepare the table. Set a watchman in the tower. Eat and drink. Arise, you princes. Anoint the shield. For thus has the Lord said to me, go, set a watchman, let him declare what he sees. And he saw a chariot with a pair of horsemen, a chariot of donkeys, and a chariot of camels. And he listened earnestly with great care. Then he cried, a lion, my lord. I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime. I've sat at my post every night. And look, here comes a chariot of men with a pair of horsemen. Then he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen. and all the carved images of her gods he has broken to the ground. Oh, my threshing and the grain of my floor, that which I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I have declared to you. Amen. We'll end our reading there in Isaiah 21, verse 10. Let's once again ask for God's help in prayer. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we look to you today to enlighten us, to help us to understand, and not just to understand, But we look to you also to open our hearts that the burden, the thrust, the import of the message would reach our hearts. May we not dismiss it because it is directed against Babylon, because it is from a long time ago, or because the language in it is strange to us, but may we rather press in to listen, to hear closely, to understand that this word of God is living and powerful for us today. And in this way, Lord, may we receive all the benefit You have designed for us from your word this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. This passage is certainly a little odd to us. The wilderness of the sea is not a geographical term that we're mostly familiar with, and then the content of what the watchman sees is mostly horsemen, donkeys, camels. A lion comes from somewhere, and then you're back on the threshing floor with wheat or barley or something like that being processed to remove the husk, so it's ready for eating. So it may surprise us. We may not be sure what is going on here. Well, remember this whole section in Isaiah from chapter 13 and following, really through chapter 23 you could say, but you could push it. You could say all the way through chapter 27 depending on how you want to break it apart. It's taken up largely with these oracles against the nations. You've got the burden against Egypt, for instance, that we've been looking at recently in chapters 19 and 20. Well, now there's another burden. It's the burden against the wilderness of the sea. But towards the end of this, you find out what is the wilderness of the sea. It's Babylon. Babylon is fallen, is fallen. Now, you might remember Babylon was the first nation against whom a burden was pronounced, and now we're back. We have another burden against Babylon. Well, there are reasons for that, as there's also a reason for this figurative description of Babylon at the beginning. But as Isaiah continues, as he puts together prophecies that originally were maybe given in their own specific situation, that were maybe not given in the order in which they appear in Isaiah, but as he organizes various individual processes thematically, he's aware of what he's doing. He's deliberately coming back to Babylon again. He's also going to give a figurative description of Jerusalem, chapter 22, when he says the burden against the valley of vision, that's another title for Jerusalem. So this is something that he's doing in this section. In chapter 21, he's dealing especially with a figure of a watchman who's going to be relevant to more than one of these burdens. But our starting point as we come into this is Isaiah is pronouncing a burden against Babylon, another one. He's describing Babylon figuratively, and yet he hasn't located it after chapter 13, where you had the main oracle against Babylon. He's located it after chapters 19 and 20, where you had the burden against Egypt. So we wanna know why, what is happening here? And to that end, we're gonna need a little bit of historical background. Now, this has been true throughout Isaiah, right? He's preaching to his generation, so it's not a surprise. It was sort of a surprise when he preached against Babylon right at the beginning of this section, because during Isaiah's lifetime, Babylon was not the problem. I'd kind of like to put people to the test and see if they remember who was the problem, because I feel like I've said it many times, but I'm not sure to what degree it has sunk in. The problem right now is Assyria. That's the main threat. That's the main enemy. Now, Because Assyria is such a threat, Judah and other nations have looked for help against Assyria. They've looked for help to Egypt, and so the uselessness of Egypt was set before them, chapters 19 and 20. There's more than that in chapters 19 and 20, but that's a big part of it. However, I don't know if you all remember from your Old Testament reading, there was a time when Hezekiah was sick, the king Hezekiah was sick, and Isaiah came and told him, get your house in order, you're gonna die. And Hezekiah rolled over in bed and turned his face to the wall and cried and prayed to the Lord and God sent Hezekiah back and said, okay, you can have 15 more years of life. And they made a plaster out of fig paste and put it on Hezekiah and he recovered. And he lived for 15 more years. When Babylon, because Babylon is not a powerful empire, but it does exist. When the Babylonians heard about that, their king, Merodach-Baladan, sent messengers to Hezekiah to congratulate him on his recovery. But it was probably more than that. They were looking for an alliance. They were figuring, well, if he could be healed, maybe the God who healed him could do more than that. Maybe these people will be useful in the fight against Assyria. Well, there was a fight against Assyria in the year 689 before Christ. Sennacherib of Assyria massacred the Babylonians. He specifically records that he threw down their idols, which you have in this passage, and afterwards he flooded the place. Babylon is low-lying. There's lots of rivers and canals. Getting it to flood was not that much of a feat of engineering. The Assyrians were pretty good engineers, and they could pull that off. That one was not too difficult for them. So a lot of commentators, if you start looking up the background to this, a lot of commentators will think that this is about the defeat of Babylon by the Persians in the 500s, the time that you have recorded in Daniel chapter five. But one of the better commentators on Isaiah, and I agree with him, He thinks this is about the year 689 when Sennacherib overthrew Babylon. Now, Babylon recovered, Babylon bounced back, ultimately Babylon did defeat Assyria, but Assyria beat them first. I think that's the background that Isaiah has in mind here, and so it fits in very well if you think about the time frame. The Judeans have been warned, do not trust in Egypt. Egypt will not help you against Assyria. Well, now these messengers from Babylonia have come. Hezekiah has welcomed them. He's received their congratulations. He's shown them his treasures. They're establishing friendly relationships. And Isaiah protests, do not trust in the Babylonians. The Babylonians can't deliver you from Assyria either. Only the Lord can deliver you. That continues to be such a huge part of what Isaiah preaches to the people because what happens? Every time the crisis is renewed, you have to go through this. Are we going to trust the Lord or are we going to look around for some other kind of help? You've probably seen this. Maybe you've experienced in your own life or you've seen this in the life of somebody who's close to you. If there are people who are bouncing from crisis to crisis with employment, with situation, with health, with whatever it might be. You talk to them on Monday, and you encourage them to trust the Lord, and they feel better, and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna trust the Lord, and it will be okay. Well, then Tuesday, there's some new wrinkle, right? You know, Monday they lost their job, Tuesday their car got impounded. You have to go through the same thing all over again. And I mean, if somebody's having that kind of a hard time, I'm not trying to be hard on them. I understand if I were going through that sort of wave after wave after wave of problem, you would probably have to talk to me multiple times, right? You'd have to remind me that I need to trust the Lord. I'm not trying to be hypercritical here or anything like that. I'm just explaining why does Isaiah have to say, don't trust Egypt, and then he has to say, don't trust Babylon. Because people keep going through the same process where they're looking around for something to help them, something where they can place their hopes. And you sometimes have to come out very specifically against the different things if they're substitutes for the Lord. Now, just in case anybody's wondering and thinking, yeah, how do you know it's not the overthrow of Babylon by the Persians under Cyrus? How do you know it's the overthrow of Babylon by Sennacherib and the Assyrians in 689? Well, one of the evidences of that is the mention of Elam in verse 2. By the time the Persians overthrew the Babylonians, the Elamites were just a memory. They were not an active power anymore. So that would be one good indication that this is an earlier prophecy. Okay, so everybody's clear. The big enemy is Assyria. The problem Isaiah is addressing is the tendency to put your hope in other people, here specifically Babylon under Merodech-Baladon. And what does he have to say about that? Well, he has this burden against Babylon, but he calls Babylon the wilderness of the sea. Why does he do that? I think a big part of the reason is Isaiah understands that his prophecies are not just for this one specific situation where they arose. They're wider. They're bigger than that. And so he gives a kind of a symbolic title to Babylon as he puts together the book, and he's putting together the book after these things have happened. So it remains relevant even though it was already fulfilled. And the change of name, the use of the symbolic name, helps us to see Babylon is not just this political entity. Babylon is a sign of organized resistance to the kingdom of God. It's the outstanding example of that. Obviously, believers in the Lord should not put their trust in organized opposition to the kingdom of God, that's siding with the enemy, ultimately. However friendly Babylon appears, however nice the messengers from Merodach, Baladon are to Hezekiah in his recovery, you cannot have a friendship with the world and be God's friend. 1 John is very clear about that. Whoever will be the friend of the world will be the enemy of God. looking to organize resistance to the kingdom of God to help you in your troubles and distresses is siding up with them against the kingdom of God, against the Lord. And so you can't possibly do that. Well, Babylon was not known for its uprightness, for keeping promises, for honoring its commitments, and so there's a distressing vision. It's distressing for those who wanted to trust Babylon. For them, it's bad news that the treacherous dealer deals treacherously, the plunderer plunders, and gets this response, that it's overthrown, that it's conquered, that Elam and media go up against it. If you were trusting in Babylon, then you would have this pain, this anguish, like a woman giving birth. Of course you're distressed and dismayed. Now your heart is wavering. Fearfulness frightened you. The night you were hoping for, things did not work out the way you hoped. Now it's all fear. This is what happens when believers put their hope in the world. They are bound to be disappointed. Like Jeremiah says about the people, they've forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters, and they've carved out broken cisterns that can't hold any water. They're disappointed. They don't have anything to drink. Here, Isaiah puts it in terms of security. They're disappointed. The one they were looking to for protection has been conquered, has been overthrown. So Isaiah has had the call or has issued the call to keep watch, to keep an eye on this situation and see how it turns out. Now, the princes, the messengers who have come to visit King Hezekiah, they're eating and drinking, anointing the shield. That could be a reference to more than one thing. It could be a reference to preparing the shield for battle, like we're ready. The shield is slick. When a spear or a sword hits it, it'll just slide off. It won't get a grip there, continue to cause damage. Or it could be a reference to a religious ritual. We're anointing the shield. We're preparing for battle with this little religious ritual. We know that everything will go well. So when he gives those commandments, it's a little ironic, right? The Bible often does that. It tells you to go on in sin and see what happens. It's not seriously commanding you to do that. It's saying, well, if this is what you wanna do, this is going to be the outcome. Well, what the watchman sees is a well-prepared military coming against Babylon. They have plenty of horses. They have donkeys. They have camels. They have come. And the outcome is Babylon is fallen, is fallen. If that cry sounds familiar, you might remember that it comes up in the New Testament. It's in Revelation chapter 18, where it's applied to sort of the ultimate Babylon, Babylon in its purest expression of opposition to and hatred for the kingdom of God. And there's added the note that all the carved images of her gods, he has broken to the ground. The religion of Babylon was worthless. The way in which Babylon existed was an offense to the Lord. What insanity for the people of God to set their hopes there, to put their confidence there, to say, these are the people who will help us. Of course, whenever you do that, which we all have a tendency to do. Whenever you do that, whatever specific shape it takes in your own life, what's going to be the result? Well, you'll feel good temporarily, and then you'll be dismayed, distressed, your heart will waver, and you will be afraid. Putting your trust in something or someone other than God is the highway to this kind of anxiety and distress. Whereas we haven't gotten there yet, but in a few chapters, chapter 26, Isaiah will say, you will keep him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed upon you because he trusts in you. There's the contrast. For some temporary security, for means of support that we can see and understand, sometimes we're like Esau. We sell our inheritance for some lentil stew. We give up our confidence in the Lord in order to trust in something or somebody else, and it doesn't work out. It's a very short-term solution, and it's not worth it. So Isaiah turns now in verse 10 and addresses not Babylon, not the Assyrians going against Babylon, but he addresses the people at home, so to speak, the Judeans. And in the name of God, he calls them, my threshing and the grain of my floor. And he just lets them know, what I'm telling you, it's not me, I didn't make this up. This is what I've heard. from God. Now, there's a couple of things here that are very interesting that might require some explanation. Oh, my threshing and the grain of my floor. Well, the people of God are often compared to grain, right? For instance, in Psalm 1, we're compared to trees that are planted, whereas the ungodly are like the chaff, what's pulled off of the grain. that the wind carries away. Or you have the parable of the sower in Mark chapter four, Matthew chapter 13, where we're compared, the harvest is compared to grain. You have the Lord Jesus talk about how God will send out his angels and they'll gather the elect ones as in a harvest, right, where we're compared to grain. So there's lots of different comparisons for the people of God. This one is familiar in that it considers us grain, but notice in what condition the grain is. The grain is being threshed. Now, there's different ways of threshing different kinds of grain. Sometimes you whack it with a flail. Sometimes you roll a wheel over it or other things like that. But the threshing process, if grain could feel, grain would mostly not enjoy the threshing process. That's part of the imagery that Isaiah has here. And this is a theme throughout the Bible. You'll have it, for instance, in Psalm 44, which Paul quotes in Romans chapter eight, where the people of God lament and say to God, for your sake, we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. They are lamenting their difficult condition. They are lamenting the danger, the hardship, the sorrow, the suffering that they undergo. The Bible never hides that. In fact, the Bible emphasizes that. There were people who wanted to follow Jesus. A man says, I'll follow you wherever you go. And Jesus doesn't say, yeah, that sounds good. You'll have treasure in heaven. He says, I don't have a place to lay my head. I'm homeless. He challenges the man, first of all. He tests the depth of commitment by saying, in this concrete situation, following me means embracing homelessness. Are you sure that's what you wanna do? Well, the Bible always, one way or another, with a variety of images, is setting before us the Christian life is a life that is characterized by some amount of hardship and suffering. The exact amount of suffering will be very different from one person to another. The ingredients of that suffering will be very different from one person to another. But as Christians, Suffering is not a surprise. Now, don't misunderstand me. I didn't say it's not hard. I said it's not a surprise. We expect it, and then it hits, and it's harder than we thought. But we shouldn't be rattled by the existence of suffering. Why does Isaiah speak to them in this way? Well, their hopes are being disappointed. Their allies are being overthrown. There's no help there from Assyria. So they are experiencing some hardship. And we've already talked about the Assyrian invasion in chapters seven and eight of Isaiah. The country was overrun and just Jerusalem was left. And obviously, that was a hardship situation to be besieged in that way. The people of God experience suffering. That is a part of God's message. And any preacher, any church where you are not told from God's Word to expect suffering is a sermon, a preacher, a congregation where they have failed in the mission, that which I have heard from the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, I have declared to you. We must, through many tribulations, enter into the kingdom of God. That was what the apostles, Paul, Barnabas, told the churches that they had just started. When they went back through visiting them for the first time, that was their message. There's gonna be suffering. You gotta be ready for it. It's not our favorite message, is it? Not what people want to hear. Honestly, it's not the kind of message that's going to fill a stadium or bring in 10,000 people to hear the word every Sunday morning. People don't like that. but it's what's right here in the text. It's the responsibility that we have from God to say what God has said, to pass on the message we have received. Now, that's not the end. We don't just say, you're gonna suffer, get used to it. Life is tough, stop crying. We lament. We recognize we can come before God. We can use the words of Psalm 44. We can say, we are killed for your sake all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. And then we can go on to do with that what Paul does with that in Romans chapter eight. He can say in all these things, we are more than conquerors. But I want you to notice how Paul says that. He doesn't say, over all these things, we are more than conquerors. We get away from them, and that's how we conquer them. They become a thing of the past, and we don't have to deal with them anymore, and then we're conquerors. He says, in all these things, we are more than conquerors. Well, Paul demonstrated that with his own life. Shipwrecks, beatings, imprisonments, persecutions, slanders, and ultimately his head chopped off with a sword. Was Paul not a conqueror when they chopped his head off? Was Paul not a conqueror when he was chained in between a couple of Roman soldiers? Was Paul not a conqueror when he's sitting in the Philippian jail with his back on fire from the beating? He was a conqueror. You could see that when he's in the Philippian jail. He's singing. He's praising God. In that situation, he's bearing witness to his jailer. That's conquering. You can see that when he's imprisoned between Roman soldiers. He says, the whole household, the whole Praetorian guard has heard the word of Christ. And of course, he was a conqueror when they chopped his head off. He was with the Lord. There was nothing more they could do. He had run the race. He'd kept the faith. He'd fought the fight. And there was laid up for him a crown of righteousness. People of God, you will suffer. But in your suffering, God is with you. Christ has gone before. He has endured a deeper depth of suffering than any you will ever attain. and in your suffering, he makes you more than a conqueror as you persevere, as you bring your sorrows before the Lord, as you pray and sing and praise and bear witness, even if you were to die for Christ. Very clearly and explicitly, somebody puts a gun to your head and says, renounce Christ or I will shoot you. and you follow the path of so many martyrs, including that young lady from the Columbine High School, not that long ago, 1990-something, you're more than a conqueror there. But you're less than a conqueror, of course. You're defeated if you turn back, if you don't seek first the kingdom of God, if belonging to the Lord is less important than finding worldly comfort. The only way for a Christian to be defeated is to give up. As long as you keep the faith, you are more than a conqueror through him who has loved you.