Isaiah chapter 36, and we'll read some verses together, and as the Lord leads, we may even make progress to the 37th chapter. That will tell you immediately that I'm not going to be doing a verse-by-verse exposition or anything in any depth. This is a prayer talk. This is intended, obviously, to let us understand why we're here. Chapter 36 of Isaiah starts the historical part. It's not to say there's no history in what goes before, there's both history and prophecy in what goes before. But here you have a narrative portion dealing with the invasion of Judah by Sennacherib or as he has been called by a professor who is not here tonight and therefore I will not give the name. I would enjoy doing it otherwise. Send a cherub. But believe me, I think it's Sennacherib and you don't send any cherubs to him. But Sennacherib's invasion with his Assyrian hosts of the land of Judah during the reign of Hezekiah. Now it came to pass in the 14th year of King Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defense cities of Judah and took them. And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto king Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conjute of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field. Then came forth unto him Eliakim, Hilkiah's son, which was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah Asaph's son, the recorder. And Rabshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? I say, sayest thou, but they are but vain words, I have counsel and strength for war? Now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed on Egypt, whereon, if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. But if thou shalt say to me, We trust in the LORD our God, is it not he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall not worship before this altar? Or ye shall worship before this altar? Now therefore give pledges, I pray thee, to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give thee two thousand horses, if thou be able in thy part to set riders on them. How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? And am I now come up without the Lord against this land to destroy it? The Lord said unto me, Go up against this land and destroy it." Verse 15, Verse 14, Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver you. Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us. This city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria. Hearken not to Hezekiah, for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me, and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arfad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who are they among all the gods of these lands that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand.' But they held their peace and answered him not a word, for the king's commandment was saying, Answer him not. Then came Eliakim the son of Hilkiah that was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes wrapped, and told him the words of Rabshakeh. It came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, went into the house of the Lord, and he sent Eliakim, who was over this household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, unto Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz. And they said unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy, for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth. It may be the Lord thy God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria, his master, hath sent to reproach the living God, and will reprove the words which the Lord thy God hath heard. Wherefore, lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left.' So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say unto your master, Thus saith the Lord. Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will send a blast 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. Amen. The Lord will add his blessing to this unusually lengthy Wednesday night reading for his own name's sake. I read these verses from these two chapters because of the very evident similarity spiritually between the days in which we live as the people of God and the days in which Hezekiah sought to serve the Lord. I was particularly struck with the initial question that Rabshaker hurled at the representatives of King Hezekiah. In chapter 36, verse 4, he said, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest? That's a theme that recurs again and again throughout this man's speech. The next verse, On whom dost thou trust? Verse 7, if thou say to me, we trust in the Lord our God. He goes on to argue against that. Then he says, let not Hezekiah, verse 15, make you trust in the Lord. Beware, verse 18, lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, the Lord will deliver us. Try and get the picture simply and clearly in your mind. Assyria was the number one power in the ancient world at that time. Her armies were undefeated and apparently undefeatable. We have had a list, verses 19, of some of the nations that had fallen. Ravshaka is able to mock the might of Egypt Say, who is Pharaoh? He's a nobody, he can help nobody, not even himself. So here we have a situation where this undefeated army is coming against Judah and has already taken most of the cities of the kingdom. Now with a large body of troops, Rabshakeh, the mouthpiece of his king, comes to blaspheme God and to mock Hezekiah right outside the walls of the capital city of Jerusalem. What confidence is this wherein you trust? God has sent me here to overthrow this city, and overthrow it I will. And neither the king of Egypt nor the Lord God Jehovah is going to stop the Assyrian victory. So you would be far better not to let Hezekiah fool you or deceive you, but simply make a league with me and you'll be the better off for it. If you think that oily political promises belong to 20th century America in presidential election time, Never forget what Rav Shaka said. Make an agreement with me. Come out to me. Every one of you will eat of his own vine. You'll have your own fig tree. You'll drink of the waters of your own cistern. You'll never have it as good as when you make a league with me. Until. There's always an until. And then there's always an afterward. until I come and take you away, make you slaves." Of course, even when you're slaves, it's a land of corn and wine. If it was such a land, you'd wonder why this rascal was wanting to share it. But here's the spiel. Don't let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord. Now, Hezekiah felt his weakness. Leaving aside the references to the Lord, everything that Rabshakeh said was true. No other God had been able to stand up. No other nation had been able to stand up. The king of Egypt, who apparently was hoping to give some help to Judah, so that in combination they would be able to thrust back this foe, could really deliver nothing. All that was true. And when Hezekiah comes to lament and send the word to Isaiah the prophet, he was saying something that was a heartbreak for him. Most of the land is in the hand of the enemy. We have very little left. And now our very capital, our citadel, is under strong attack. And we have no power to defend it. It is only a matter of time before we fall unless God works a miracle. So he sends to Isaiah the prophet, this day is a day of trouble. The word trouble may here be actually too weak a word to express what was in his heart. The idea is such trouble that it is heart-rending anguish. This is a day of anguish. It's a day of rebuke or of reproach. Commentators are divided as to whether this is referring to the reproach that Rabshakeh has just heaped upon the people, or whether it's the reproach of the Lord giving them up to this because of past sins. Probably indeed a combination of the two. It certainly was a day of reproach. A day of rebuke and of blasphemy. He's calling to the prophet's attention and to God's attention the blasphemies of Rabshakeh against Jehovah. It's one thing to threaten Judah. It's another thing to mock the living God. And he's saying this is a day of blasphemy. Then there is this picturesque description. The children are come to the birth and there is no strength to bring forth. The anguish, the pain is as the labor of a woman in childbirth when she has no physical power to bring forth and now she is prostrate and totally dependent on the help of others if there be any help. They are saying to Isaiah, bring this to the Lord. This is the condition of the land. Hear their reproach. Hear the blasphemy. Look upon our anguish and see us prostrate as a woman lying at the door of death. By the intervention of God, there can be a mighty deliverance. As a child being born, there could be the miracle of life. But if God does not intervene, we have no strength to bring forth. There will be a terrible death. And Isaiah was told, Lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left. What a testimony to Isaiah, by the way. Not a professional prophet merely, but a man that the king could depend upon to get hold of God in an hour of need. And God gave Isaiah an answer. It doesn't seem to me that it took very long to get the answer. Now, this is one of the things we've got to come to terms with. There are times in Scripture when God answers instantaneously. There are other times when He keeps people waiting for weeks, as Daniel, three whole weeks. There are other times when He keeps people waiting for years, as the parents of John the Baptist. There are other times when He says, as He said to Paul, My grace is sufficient for you. I'm not going to remove the trouble. I'm going to broaden your shoulders to bear the burden. But there are times and sometimes demand such an intervention when God immediately answers prayer. And that's what happened. And God's word was, be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard. I'm going to turn him back, as indeed he did, and he'll die by the sword in his own land, as indeed he did at the hands of his own sons. I said that there are very apparent similarities. We look at this as the Church of Christ. We have got to confess in the world in which we live, well let's not broaden it out to the world, that's so big that we really can't come to terms with it. But in the land in which we live, already most of the land is in the hand of the enemy. There's no getting around that. There was a time when that was not so openly the case. But today, most parts of the nation, whether you speak geographically, or morally, or culturally, most parts of the land are in the hand of the enemy. I'm not satisfied with that. The enemy, the Assyrian, I don't want to get away off onto prophecy, for all you amillennialists would get worried about me again. But the Assyrian happens to be one of the particular titles of Antichrist. He is called, specifically, the Assyrian. So I'm not pressing it too much here to say, here we have a picture of the forces of Antichristianism and Antichrist himself. coming against what is left, the remnant, and that's the very term that Hezekiah uses, the remnant that's left of the witness of God's truth in the land. Having conquered most of the land, having taken most under his control, now he's setting his sights on what is left on the very citadel of the faith. Now for us, the heart of the faith, we would say, speaking in American or British terms, would be evangelicalism of one kind or another. Evangelicalism today hardly exists anymore and it is a decreasing constituency in this country. What is called evangelicalism is not evangelicalism. You get Christianity today, the magazine of the evangelicals. And you will find that evangelicalism now is constituted by conservative Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, even many brands of liberalism. You have liberal evangelicals and you have evangelical liberals. If you go into the whole thing of the various branches of claimed evangelical belief, you have the young evangelicals, you've got radical evangelicals, they're not evangelicals at all. But what you have under all these titles and under all these guises is a growing thrust against what is left of the old biblical, reformed, protestant faith in America. That's what's happening. This is a day of anguish. Anybody in Jerusalem who didn't feel anguish when he looked outside and saw the gathered hosts of the Assyrian had to be half mad or entirely lunatic. And any Christian today who can look at the situation with complacence and can simply shrug it off and not feel any of the anguish that Hezekiah is describing. It's certainly not a Christian who's walking with God. The picture of the agony of a childbirth without power to deliver that will lead to a death unless there's outside intervention is, I think, a very graphic picture of the position that now obtains in the Church of Christ. So, what do we do? Well, first of all, we pay attention to the question that the mocker asked. What confidence is this? We're in thy trust. What are you trusting in? And that is a very, very far-reaching question. What are you trusting in? What are the churches of America trusting in? I get the impression that more and more are trusting in mere bigness. The Bilhebel's phenomenon. the Willow Creek type churches. Tell us what you want and we do our best to supply it. Cotton that will catch on to just about any gimmick that will pull people. So many are trusting in that sort of nonsense. What are we trusting in? I'm not going to develop this because I may well, from a different text, develop this theme Sunday morning. It's actually a message that was in my mind greatly for the last Sabbath morning. For one reason or another, I think the Lord displaced it. Whether it will finally be what's preached Sunday morning remains to be seen. But if it does, I'm not going to do it twice, so I'll not get into this in any detail, but what we have here is certainly the suggestion that there are many Christians who are going down to Egypt for help. Looking for help in all the wrong places, Billy Graham admits that he was conned and fooled to become the close, as he thought, personal friend and confident of Richard Nixon. In his old age, confessed to his biographer, I feel like a sheep led to the slaughter, probably a lamb led to the slaughter. Just manipulated, looking for help in the wrong places. I mentioned Heibels. He had an interview at his association. sort of a love fest with Bill Clinton, the great penitent. I'm not Mr. Clinton's judge and I would sincerely pray that God would give him true repentance and eternal salvation But even the Willow Creekers found it rather strange that their pastor would be looking for help in that quarter. What are you confiding in? Bring it to ourselves. I think that very easily we can reach the place where we sit back in a sort of a stupor and we think it's faith, but all the time it's just deadness of heart. that, well, it'll all come out right in the end. It'll all happen somehow. We don't see how, but it'll all happen somehow. What are we trusting in? There's a challenge there also to say, really, as you're facing this situation where most of the land's already in the hand of the enemy, and he's now concentrating an attack on what's left, to destroy the witness of Jesus Christ out of the earth completely. And let us not forget, that is the issue. And that's going to be the issue more and more and more. What is it that anti-Christianity right up to the final Antichrist is all about? It is the driving of gospel truth out of existence. Dilute it, poison it, or remove it. It matters very little to the devil, as long as he gets rid of it. Now the question that's The challenge that's prompted by this question is, when we look out at that situation, do we have any strategy for confronting it? Do we have any idea what to do in the face of it? What are you trusting in? Have you anything to trust in? Have you any hope? Our answer has to be what Hezekiah's was. In ourselves, no. But there's a way to the throne of God. He had an Isaiah. I would to God that people in trouble, the nation in trouble, could depend on you and me to be able to get through to the throne of God, just as Hezekiah could depend that Isaiah would get God's answer. But as I read that, I have to say, as it strikes me, it has a much greater message. Hezekiah had his Isaiah to get in touch with God. Thank God we have a much greater than Isaiah. For at the right hand of the majesty and high, there sits our Prince and our Redeemer." We can come to Christ tonight, and this is why we're here. We can come to Christ tonight and cry to Him to pray for His remnant that is left to pray for us. Is He interceding? Thank God He is. Can He present our need through the merits of His precious blood and get an answer? Thank God He can. We have our greater than Isaiah. As we come to pray, let us keep one thing before the Lord. I don't want this to sound offensive. It just happens to be true. Your natural inclination will be to look at what's happening in America today, and with a love for your country, pray for the good of America. There's nothing wrong with that. Not a thing in the world wrong with that. To desire the good of your nation should be in the heart of every Christian. But you know, God owes nothing to America. Not a thing. I pray God it will never happen. But if God allowed it to be wiped off the face of the earth, He wouldn't have done it. An iota of injustice. The good of America is not the final, full or great reason for praying. Remember this, lift up the prayer that God would hear the reproach that has been brought on His name. In other words, that we come to the Lord tonight and say, Lord, this is not merely a contest between the world and us as Christians. That's important to the heart of Christ. But there's something more important. This is a reproach against the name of the living God. This is an attack on the Lord Jesus Christ. This is hell against our Redeemer. This is Genesis 3.15, in operation before our eyes, with the old devil bruising at the heel of Jesus Christ. This is the hatred of the serpent against the Son of God. Now, let's lift that up to the Lord. Insofar as it serves the glory of God, Lord, intervene for our deliverance. That's the cry. That's the prayer. The enemy can't understand that. You see, Rabshakeh in all his vituperations is saying, don't trust in the Lord and all the rest of it. Don't let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord. Don't let him persuade you. He's saying, look at these other gods. Didn't their kings make them trust in their gods? Where are they today? You see, what he's saying is, and this is what the world is saying, that Jehovah, Jesus Christ, intrinsically, are not any different, unless they be worse in the eyes of the ungodly. They're not any different from the idols and the fetishes of the heathen. And they're just as powerless And especially in this scientific age, the God of Christianity is just as powerless as the gods of the heathen. That's the challenge. That's the reproach that's brought on the name of the Lord. I have to stop there. I have to bow my head in shame. And I have to confess, I understand quite well how the ungodly could come to that conclusion. You look at the Church of Christ today and where will you see the power of God? Where will you feel the power of God? You look at individual Christians' lives, how many Christians do you know who are living in the power and the blessing of God? How many churches know what it is to pray and never get any answers to their prayers? The proof of what I'm saying is very easily mustered. Just look at all the attempts of man. to make it look as if God is moving, when all the time it's as obvious as the nose in your face that this is something drummed up by man. When a charismatic evangelist has to, and I don't want to be unnecessarily harsh here, but has to stoop to the trickery of the music hall stage has to stoop to mass hypnosis, mass hysteria, to produce psychological effects that will ape what he has read in some book, has been produced by the moving of the Holy Ghost. What is that but a confession that the real thing is absent? But we don't need to stick this to the charismatics only. Look at ourselves, look at the Orthodox. The Charismatics could never have got a toehold except that Orthodox Bible-believing churches, be they Reformed or Fundamental, Presbyterian or Baptist or whatever you want to call them, have for the most part been dead and powerless. Manufacturing results, manufacturing revivals, planning. They can even tell you in advance nowadays how many converts they're going to have in the next year before it happens. One denomination has just made it known that in the next 14 years they're going to triple their size. And they're already one of the biggest denominations in the world. But they're going to triple their size. They can tell you that in advance. Up in Canada, Just a few years ago, there was an evangelical, charismatic movement there that announced the actual numbers in thousands and hundreds of thousands, the actual numbers of people who were going to be saved before they'd ever done a thing. Now what is that? That is manufactured religion. That's manufactured results. Go back in your history. You see, the sad thing is most Americans don't know American history. Oh, you know a wee bit about what you learn in school. With all due respect to your history teachers, what you learn in school has very little to do with the real history of the country. You learn a wee bit about political history and battles and all the rest of it, and all you're learning is the mountaintops and the valleys of man's badness. But it scandalizes me as a foreigner. I have asked so many Americans, what do you know of Asahel Nettleton? And they look at me as if I'm cursing. I've never heard of him. Arguably the greatest evangelist America ever had. And he's not known. Not read. Why? Because we don't know our history. And it's not just Americans, it's true in Ireland, it's true in England, true in Scotland. You go to most Scottish people today and ask them who John Knox was, they'll tell you John Knox, he was the founder of Scottish Presbyterianism. Now tell me a wee bit about John Knox. Haven't a clue in the world. What do most Germans know about Luther? A little bit. Even the Lutherans don't know that much about Luther anymore. And the Calvinists certainly know nothing about Calvin. We don't know our history. But go back in history and find out what did our forefathers do in a similar situation? What did they do? They did exactly what Hezekiah did. They went to mourning. That's the meaning of the sackcloth. in the rounding of the clothes. They went to mourning. In other words, they were mourning not just the situation, they were mourning not just the enmity that was coming against them, they were mourning their own sin, their own impotence. They were mourning. And then they prayed. Then they prayed. I've spent a good part of today reading again about the English Puritans and some of the early American Puritans and how they faced the situation when the enemy came against them. Fasting, prayer, agony of soul. until God was pleased to answer. And by how He answered, how He answered. The history of this nation is very largely, the history of its progress is very largely the history of the gracious revivings that the Spirit of God gave to His church. You should read the story of those movings. Again, I'm not going to berate you about this because this is one of the best reading congregations in the world. There are very few congregations read better than this and read more widely than this. So I'm not berating you, but even here I wonder how many Christians have really read about the great awakenings in America. You've heard of the revivals under Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards before him. If you haven't read the stories of those men, then go to the Bob Jones Library and get the books out and read them. Or better still, get your rich wife to buy you one. Read them. They're thrilling. They are thrilling, what God did. Get Bonner's Life of Asahel Nettleton and read it. It's thrilling what God did. This is what we need today. Can you imagine? Instead of just lamenting, the devil's got most of the land and we can do nothing about it. And Nettleton would go into a town in which the church had closed down because nobody was interested in going to church anymore. And would preach. And the whole town would be moved. And just about everybody in the town converted. And twenty years later, they might report that there were two or three backslidings. And the backslidings were counted to be such because they weren't attending prayer meeting. Can God do that again? That's what He did. That's what He did. And then the neglected revival. Most preachers know little or nothing about it. That is the second Great Awakening. From the last few years of the 1700s, the last few years of the 18th century, right through the first 30 or 40 years of the next century. One of the longest running movements of the Holy Ghost in history. Right here in this country. Who knows anything about it? Well, we have all heard of Finney. He was the great revivalist. Yeah, he was the great revivalist. He was the nail in the coffin of the great revival. Had nothing whatsoever to do with the great movings of God on whose coattails he came to prominence and some position of power. God has done great things when his people have done what Hezekiah did. Now, the message from God to us tonight, and I'd better quit for my time is gone, so I forgot to look at my watch and that's always a dangerous thing, is be not afraid of the words that you've heard. Don't be afraid of the words of the Antichrist. Don't be afraid of the mockery of the world. Don't be afraid of all the apparent power and learning and the resources of the world. Don't be afraid of them. You have a God in heaven. The trouble with us is, as I've indicated, the world can mock our God because we have not demonstrated His power. I'll close the book before I go any further. But let me say this to you, there is such a thing as spiritual power. There is such a thing as being filled with the Holy Ghost. There is such a thing as the power of God resident in the life of a Christian to enable him to live above the world in sin with heart made pure and garments white and Christ enthroned within. There is such a thing as being constantly, continually filled with the Holy Ghost so that we are living under His influence. And let me tell you, if you are living daily under the influence, under the government of the Holy Ghost. It is impossible, but the people will see the difference. And then there is crowning that. That's something that we can plan or manufacture or obey our way into. There is something that God gives in His sovereignty to those who live under the control of His Spirit. And that is the mighty effusion of special power to drive back the Assyrian. And when it's done, it will be just as clear as it was in the days of Hezekiah. It wasn't the army of Judah that did it. They didn't do it by numbers. They didn't do it by military strategy. They didn't do it by sword or spear. They did it by contacting God in prayer. My, our God is able. Be not afraid, but pray. That's the message of these chapters. Be not afraid, but pray for the glory of the Lord Jehovah that our God will visit His people reclaim the land from the enemy and give us to see the victory of grace. We're here to pray. There's much need, so don't let's miss the opportunity now truly to pray.