Ok, this is an awesome chapter, and remember that it is part of the larger section from 7-12, dealing with the prophecy of the Assyrians coming up against the people of Judah, because the people of God are not living into their relationship with the Lord. The people are repeatedly living in disobedience, forgetting God, and failing to repent despite God’s many efforts to gently turn them around. Remember that the Lord is not just arbitrarily saying, “You broke a rule, so you must pay!” The truth is that God has sent prophets and spoken again and again to these people, trying to call them to humble repentance, but they have refused.
Now, just as the Lord used the Israelites with Joshua to deal with the sin of the people who once occupied the Promised Land, now the Lord is going to use the Assyrians to bring about a severe mercy to His rebellious people.
There is also in this chapter another shadow of Jesus in verse 14. This is a prophecy that is fulfilled in Jesus, which is awesome considering that this was written hundreds of years before Jesus was even born.
Again, we have a dual prophecy. On the one hand, God is going to deal with His people for their rebellion. But on the other…, there is the warning to other nations in verses 9-10 that they must not make the mistake of thinking that they can wipe out God’s people to achieve their own goals, “for God is with us.” The key phrase we see again and again is in verses 8 and 10: Immanuel, for God is with us. Because God is with us, we should have that holy fear, and we should wait for the Lord, we should seek Him (not our dead ancestors), and trust Him, for He is the one who controls nations, and they rise and fall at His will.
However, the part that sticks with me more than anything else today is verse 14. God will be our sanctuary, not the king in his power, not the mediums and the necromancers, not the strength of alliances—God alone is sufficient simply because God is immeasurably greater than any other power.
That was true for the people then, and it’s true for us now, even more so because of Jesus. In Jesus, when we entrust our lives to Him, we have a personal relationship in which we find our ultimate outcome through Him. Trust in the Lord. All things fall under God’s will, and we rest in the sanctuary of His strong and reliable hands. My favorite example of such trust and faith is found in the account of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (
Daniel 3: click here to go to the passage).
Where do you need to rest in the shade and sanctuary of the Lord’s strong and reliable hands? Is it with a relationship, a work situation, your marriage, your family, or perhaps with your own health?
Know that the Lord is with you.
Matthew 28:20And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. John 10:28I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. Psalm 121:5–65 The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. 6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. God bless you, and know that I’m praying for you constantly.
Scott
