In the sermon 'Don't Fear the Tool of the Lord', Scott Brown explores Isaiah 10:5-23, emphasizing the sovereignty of God in using Assyria as a tool to fulfill His divine purpose. The central message of the passage is that God can use calamity to bring His people to their senses, encouraging them to depend on Him rather than themselves. Assyria, while acting with its own intentions, is still under God's control, demonstrating His ability to use even wicked rulers for His purpose of salvation and judgment. The sermon underscores God's orchestration of history to glorify Himself and ensure the salvation of a remnant. It also addresses how God's sovereignty impacts every aspect of life, from personal trials to global events, and how believers should understand their experiences in light of this divine plan. The ultimate aim is the salvation of sinners and the glorification of God, as all historical events are tied to the progress of the Gospel.

Isaiah chapter 10 verses 5 through 23. Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger, and the staff in whose hand is my indignation. I will send him against an ungodly nation, And against the people of my wrath I will give him charge, To seize the spoil, to take the prey, And to tread them down like the mire of the streets. Yet he does not mean so, nor does his heart think so. But it is in his heart to destroy and cut off not a few nations.

For he says, Are not my princes altogether kings? Is not Calno like Carchemish? Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus? As my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols, whose carved images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, Shall I not do also to Jerusalem and her idols?

Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Lord has performed all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, that he will say, I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the King of Assyria, and the glory of his haughty looks. For he says, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent. Also, I have removed the boundaries of the people, and have robbed their treasuries. So I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man. My hand is found like a nest the riches of the people, and as one gathers eggs that are left, I have gathered all the earth.

And there was no one who moved his wing, nor opened his mouth with even a peep. Shall the axe boast itself against him who chops with it? Or shall the saw exalt itself against him who saws with it? As if a rod could wield itself against those who lift it up, or as if a staff could lift up, as if it were not wood. Therefore the Lord, the Lord of hosts, will send leanness among his fat ones, and under His glory He will kindle a burning like the burning of a fire.

So the light of Israel will be for a fire, and His holy one for a flame. It will burn and devour His thorns and His briars in one day, And it will consume the glory of his forest and of his fruitful field, both soul and body, and they will be as when a sick man wastes away. Then the rest of the trees of his forest will be so few in number that a child may write them. And it shall come to pass in that day that the remnant of Israel, and such as have escaped of the house of Jacob, will never again depend on him who defeated them, but will depend on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. The remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.

For though your people, O Israel, be as the sand of the sea, a remnant of them will return. The destruction decreed shall overflow with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts will make a determined end in the midst of all the land. Let's pray. Lord, you alone are our provider and our shield.

Lord, I pray that you would you would send your spirit amongst us today and fill the preaching of your word and bless it. Lord, I pray that you would convict us of our sin. We're convicts of our pride. Would you turn our hearts? Would you save the lost that are among us?

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. As the Lord is growing us as a people, helping us to understand His will, There's something here that is so helpful to us as we relate with people in the community, as we understand the history of our own lives, as we understand things that are going on in the world. This passage of Scripture is so helpful to us to help us keep our wits about us. And this text, Isaiah chapter 10, 4-23, has many things to say, but I want to try to boil it down here and just talk about it.

I'd like to talk about the passage just for a few moments before we get into it, verse by verse. But the central message of this passage of Scripture is that God sends a calamity to bring His people to their senses. God sends calamity to bring His people to their senses. Now, has that ever happened to you? Well, of course it has happened to you.

It's happened to you and I many times. And God brings difficulty. It causes us to consider our ways. We realize that we were depending on ourselves, and we began to depend on the Lord. Maybe that happened many, many times after you were converted, but that's really how it happened that you were converted, that you began to depend on the Lord and not upon yourself.

And so the message of Isaiah 10 is that God is sovereign in the salvation of the wicked and the damnation of the wicked. He saves sinners, but he does it by bringing external forces upon them to help them to consider their ways. And what this passage tells us is that God does all things for the rescue of his people and it is his zeal that accomplishes it. He'll bring everything in history to bear for this one matter of the salvation of sinners And he arranges all of history for this. He is glorifying himself in the salvation of sinners and the judgment of the wicked, but he uses all of history to do that.

He uses all the ups and downs. He uses every calamity, every trial, every disappointment, every slander, every death, everything. He uses everything for this one purpose. And that's what Isaiah 10, 4-23 tells us about. And so, as it is spoken of here, it's the kind intention of the will of God that He will rescue a people that are caught in the stream of history.

Whatever is happening in that stream of history, it's made me think back to my own history and where I was, where I was born, where I grew up, and all the things that were happening in the history of my city that I grew up in, and how God used various things in the history of Southern California to save my soul, both good and bad. He used it all. He used everything. He wastes nothing. He uses everything for His glory.

And he's not wasting anything on any of us either not a single calamity not a single disappointment He hasn't wasted a thing. He's not wasting a certain a single president a single civil law or anything He doesn't waste anything he uses absolutely everything for His glory. And that's why it was when Isaiah was in the temple, the Seraphim said, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. You cannot get away from His glory.

He will glorify Himself through everything. Even the kinds of things that are happening here in this passage. And He's doing it for one reason, for the remnant, to save His remnant, to bring His people home, to take them to heaven. He does all things in the world for one single reason, for the salvation of sinners. Everything is for the purpose of the Gospel.

There's nothing that happens in the world that doesn't somehow find its trail directly back to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ and God's kind intention to rescue sinners. He doesn't waste a single thing. He never has on you and He never will. He didn't waste a single thing in your salvation. He doesn't waste a single calamity or trial or difficulty for the sanctification of your soul.

The whole earth is full of His glory. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. If you can understand that, then you can understand what's going on around you now. Now I know that many of us have walked into this room and we wonder, what's going on? What's going on with me?

What's going on with people around me? Why did this happen to me? Why did that happen to me? Why am I in this conflict? Why?

For one reason, God has arranged every nanosecond of history to glorify himself through the salvation of sinners and the damnation of the wicked, unrepentant. And in this passage what we see is, we see on the one hand at the very top of it, at the beginning, we have God deploying a wicked ruler to go do his own will. He thinks he's doing his own will. He's not doing his own will at all. But when you get down to the end of the passage, when you get to verse 23, You realize why He did this.

He did this for the salvation of the sinners. That Israel would be as the sand of the sea, and there would be a remnant coming out of that sand of the sea. It's the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. It's justification by faith alone. This passage teaches that every single thing that happens in history is for the justification by faith on behalf of sinners.

So this passage has its center in the gospel. It affirms what Paul said to Timothy, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And every single thing that ever happened in the world is designed to save centers. And if you can't understand that, you can't understand what's going on with you or anyone else or any nation or anything. But whenever you look at anything happening and you can't see the cross through it, you've lost your understanding, you've lost your vision, you've lost a sense of reality.

You've got caught up in your own reality. And you've missed what God is doing. So it really is an important thing, isn't it, to understand what's here. I hope we really can grasp it as we go through it. Now further, maybe push this a little bit deeper.

This speaks of the sovereignty of God in salvation. And we, with this passage, come to what is really one of the Mount Everest's in Scripture on the sovereignty of God. Because it brings to us such a surprising idea that God absolutely controls everything in the world, including the wicked rulers of the world. He is that sovereign. How sovereign is God?

He is very sovereign. You know, A.W. Pink, in his book, The Sovereignty of God, opens this wonderful testimony with these words, Who is regulating affairs on this earth today? God or the devil? That God reigns supreme in heaven is generally conceded.

That he does so over his world is almost universally denied, if not directly, then indirectly. More and more are men in their philosophizing and theologizing, relegating God to the background. But in this text today, God is not in the background. God is in the foreground and He is running everything. That's one of the most powerful statements, that this is your Father's world, that He is ruling affairs on the earth, that He is sovereign over all things.

And it tells you how the world works. You know, as your children are growing up, one of the most important things you ever do is help them understand how the world works. If they think it's as a result of some random force here and there impinging upon them, they'll be like pinballs bouncing here and there. They'll have absolutely no idea why anything is happening. And in this random world, they'll have a random life, unsteady, unable to even understand what's happening to them.

So it's such a critical matter that we understand that this is your Father's world and that there is a way that the world works. Because here in this passage is really a very powerful declaration of the relationship between history and the will of God. You know, it's important to study history, because whenever you do, you're studying the will of God. The Bible actually commands us to study history. And so, it's such a helpful passage for us because it clarifies any confusion that anyone might have regarding why things have happened to you.

It explains your every disappointment. It clarifies the actions of every leader you've ever been with. It sheds light on every typhoon and every drought and the interplay of everything that ever happened in heaven or on earth. And it explains what David said in Psalm 115, verse 3, our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases.

And it exposes the tendency in our hearts to act as if we are sovereign, and to think that we are the primary mover in the world and player. And it displays the self-talk of the arrogant. We're going to hear someone talk, and when he talks, we'll recognize that we talk that way all the time. You know, this passage also takes us into the heart of the Calvinist, Arminian controversy regarding the sovereignty of God. And it strikes a lethal blow against Pelagianism and Semipelagianism, which exalts the power of the spirit of man in all things.

But the whole context needs to be remembered as well. Remember, this whole section began earlier in the previous chapter, and we just exited a section that were marked by four repetitions of the statement, his hand is stretched out still. And we saw that God's wrath is unrelenting. Nothing can hold back the wrath of God at all. And God will exercise his wrath either to destroy sinners, or he will exercise his wrath on his son in behalf of sinners.

And we saw that God would exercise his wrath on those who would ignore their chastisement and just move on. That's in verses 8-12 in the previous chapter. And God says that His hand will be stretched out against those who ignore their chastisement and just move on. And then secondly, that His wrath would be against those who refuse repentance and choose to continue to live in hypocrisy. His wrath will be stretched out still.

And then thirdly, it would be against those who would be devouring one another, brothers devouring brothers, almost like eating your own arm. The way that we tear one another up in the body of Christ. And the way that we also, fourthly, make unjust laws and harm the defenseless. We make little rules that just serve ourselves and not those around us. And God is saying, His wrath, His wrath will not be held back.

His hand is stretched out still. And then the final stanza in this previous section ends with these words in verse 3 in chapter 10. What will you do in the day of punishment and in the desolation which will come from afar? To whom will you go for help and where will you leave your glory? In other words, all your stuff that you love.

So in our text today we see just exactly how He is sending His punishment. He's going to send His punishment by the hand of an ungodly nation, Assyria. And He's going to send Assyria to judge them. And there's so much to say, not enough time really to deal with it all. Thankfully we'll be in Isaiah for a while to explain it all.

But when that ungodly nation arises to attack Judah, God will destroy them in what is probably the most astonishing battlefield victory of all time. It's beyond imagination what happened. The Assyrian army is coming against the city and 185, 000 of them mysteriously fall dead on the battlefield. Some battle. Not an arrow was shot.

Maybe you who are military history buffs, is that the most astonishing battle in history? So in all of it we learn, this is my Father's world. This is my Father's world. He holds it in His hand. So the message of Isaiah 10 is that God is salvation in the salvation of sinners and He does all things to rescue his remnant through his zeal.

And so let's get into the text. As you can see in your outline, I've divided the text into a number of sections. The first section explains how God appoints Assyria to do his work of destruction in verses 5 through 7. And it begins with a foreboding word, woe. And it's woe to those who, it's the same thing that we read earlier, woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees.

We talked about what kind of woe this is. And it's just a statement of how horrible it will be, how horrible it will be for Assyria. Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger. Now, it must have been strange to hear something like this from the mouth of Isaiah, because Assyria at this time is at the absolute pinnacle of its power. It was the greatest empire, the most fearsome empire.

You can see its treasures in the British Museum today. If you've ever been to the British Museum, there's a gigantic section on Assyria. It's astonishing what's there. But so many of the treasures of Assyria were brought back. And you can see what was this kingdom.

And, but from this time on, Assyria will begin her decline. God will use the wicked, and then he will roll the wicked up like a bloody garment and burn it in the fire. And we find that Assyria is a tool in the hand of God. Well, it's a tool of anger, really, and the disposition of the Lord is anger. The term that Isaiah uses is the word for a flaring nose, like snorting, like a snorting and angry exasperation.

And it's wrath and indignation. That's another word that you see there. That means to scold, to hurt, to hurl imprecations against. This is what God is doing to Assyria. Assyria is the rod of his anger.

And he is angry, angry with an ungodly nation. And in verse 6 we learn that he is sent, that he's actually appointed, that God is sending him. You know, we know in Scripture that God sends many things. He sends plagues. He sends pregnancies in the Bible.

He sends prophets. He sends rain. He sends wind. And He also sends nations. Anything that has come to you has been sent from the Lord.

God sends everything. He's no respecter of things. And He can just as easily send a nation as he can a person, or a temperature, or anything. God is using everything to glorify himself in salvation. And God will give him three charges, to seize the spoil, to take the prey, and to tread them down in the streets.

So this is language of a fierce attack. And the Assyrians were bad. They were a bloody people. They were vicious. And they were feared as a result.

Nahum chapter 3, verse 1 says, woe to the bloody city about these people. It is full of lies and robbery. Its victim never departs. The noise of a whip and the noise of rattling wheels, of galloping horses, of clattering chariots, horsemen charged with bright sword and glittering spear. There is a multitude of slain, a great number of bodies, countless corpses.

They stumble over the corpses because of the multitude of the harlotries of the seductive harlot, the mistress of sorceries, who sells nations through her harlotries and families through her sorceries. Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts. I will lift your skirts over your face. I will show the nations your nakedness, and the kingdoms your shame. I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle." Now, this nation is the one that God has appointed.

This bloody nation. And interestingly enough, The king is clueless. He doesn't understand what's going on. He remains boastful. He continues to do what he's always done, to play the bad man.

But verse 7 tells us something that's critical to understand the entire context of this passage here and what it means. It says, Yet he does not mean so, nor does his heart think so. But It is in his heart to destroy and cut off not a few of the nations. Now, this language focuses on the inner workings of his heart. This Assyrian is not intending what God is intending.

He intends to do one thing, he has it in his mind, but God is going to do something different through him and with him. And this is how it is. He sees himself as independent, But he is dependent upon the intentions of God. He thinks he has intentionality, and yet the truth of the matter is he's being ruled by God. Because God is doing all things, as Paul says in Ephesians 1, according to the kind intention of his will.

God is working in the inner man. God is working in the heart. This completely contradicts an Arminianism that says that man's heart is sovereign. Man's heart is not sovereign. It is not independent at all.

It is dependent. You can say that about any enemy that you've ever had, and you can smile at his dependence in the face of his own self-thinking that he is independent. So you see the words here, there's a plan and there's a purpose in the inner workings of a man's heart. And it means that God works in the heart. You know, Isaiah later on says in chapter 55 verse 8, he says, He says, my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. His thoughts reign and rule. Yes, you do have thoughts. You do have them. But recognize there's a greater mind at work.

There's a master mind of all the world who's ruling everything. And we see how he exalts himself. For he says, are not my princes altogether kings? What he's saying is, my princes, they're kings. I'm the king of kings.

The kind of people that I have around me, they used to be kings. And now they're my princes now. But they really were kings. This is the boastful exaltation of those who think they have built such a fantastic empire of leaders. They haven't really.

But he's boasting that way. Are not my princes all together kings? Is not Kalmo like Carchemish? Is not Hanath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus?

What he's saying is that, he's speaking of these six cities that are in pairs here, And he's naming cities from the north to the south. And he's saying, did I not conquer this city in the north, and then just a few miles south of it, another city, and then just a few miles south of it, another city? Did I not conquer the next and the next? It's like he's saying, the nations of the earth are like dominoes before me, they just, you know, this wonderful thing that you can do with dominoes, you set them up close to one another, and you just hit the first, and they all sweep down, they all fall down. That's what he's saying.

Are they just not like dominoes that fall down before me? And he's speaking of his self-confidence. And then he says, as my hand has found the kingdoms of the idols, in verse 10, whose carved images excel those of Jerusalem and Samaria, As I have done to Samaria and her idols, shall I not also do to Jerusalem and her idols? What the king of Assyria is saying is that he's been around. He's seen the idols of the nations.

He's seen the kingdoms of the idols. And he's saying, you in Jerusalem, your idols are nothing compared to some of the idols that I've seen. I have seen grandeur in the great idolatrous palaces and places of worship. I've seen idols far greater than the idols of Jerusalem. And I can take your idols easily.

But what he does not know is that even his thoughts are driven by the God of the universe. He does not know who he's dealing with. And so he names these various conquests. Also just another historical note here. These places that he conquered are not necessarily the conquests of Tiglath-Polizor only.

They were conquests of the Assyrian nation. They happened over many years. Tiglath-Polizor was not the key player in all of these conquests. So he's speaking of Assyria. And you'll find as we go on, there are many times that Assyria is referred to as it.

It. The language shifts a little bit from the king to it, this entity that thinks it's so great. And there's so many things to learn here. Let me just name a few of them. First, number one, Assyria is a tool in the hand of the Lord.

Second, the intention of the Assyrian was self-serving in his own mind only. Thirdly, I think God is saying, don't be afraid of the instrument. In verse 24, Isaiah will say, don't be afraid of the Assyrians. We'll get to that next week. Don't be afraid of the Assyrians.

The fifth thing is that the purposes of this instrument of Assyria are being fulfilled. God does what He does to save the remnant. Everything God is doing here is for the salvation of the remnant. And that's why he says, oh my people who dwell in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrian. None of this happened by some random force of fate.

But God sets himself up as the king of the battlefield. It's like what we read in Isaiah chapter 46 verse 10. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two. In Psalm 46.

In Habakkuk chapter 1 we see the very same thing and it's astonishing. He says, be utterly astounded for I will work a work in your days. Habakkuk chapter 1 verse 11 speaking of the king, then his mind changes and he transgresses. He commits offense, ascribing this power to his God. The truth is, be astounded, it's not his own power at all.

It's not his God's power. He rules the winds and the waves. I was reading last week, the BBC did a report on all the crazy world, crazy weather that's going on all over the world. India has its worst monsoon in 80 years, you know, killing thousands of people. The UK has its coldest spring in 50 years.

You know, there are record low temperatures in the United States. There's, you know, brush fires in Australia and floods and, you know, a 17-mile wide tornado comes across Oklahoma, you know about a year ago and You know all these things we look at we wonder why is this happening? It's because God is ruling all things He rules the kings of the earth and he rules the winds and the waves, absolutely everything. He rules nations, he rules the ungodly. And it shows you how to understand politics.

It just shows you how to see the world that you live in now. What happens to people when they lose a sense of the sovereignty of God? I've been thinking about that all week long. What happens to people when they lose it? Because it is true that the people of God often lose a sense of the sovereignty of God.

We often, we so easily forget. And so here are a few questions, sort of diagnostic questions for all of us. So what happens in your marriage when you lose a sense of the sovereignty of God? Like what happens in your marriage relationship when you lose a sense of the sovereignty of God? What thoughts come to your mind when you lose a sense of the sovereignty of God in your marriage?

Like how does it affect the relationship? Let's just say one of, let's say A wife loses a sense of the sovereignty of God. What characteristically would happen to a wife who's lost a sense of that in her relationship with her husband? What would happen? Can you name?

I'm sure if I took out a pencil and it could write down the things that you're thinking. The list would be very long. Or what happens when a man loses a sense that God is sovereign in the woman that he married? What happens to him? What does he start thinking?

What might he do if he doesn't understand that God was sovereign? How might he treat her? What might he do with his time? What would he do with the thoughts and the intentions of his heart if somehow he forgot that God was sovereign, that God was ruling him when he married her. And he orchestrated it for one purpose, for his own glory.

Or what might happen in your work, in your relationship with those who are an authority over your work, if you forgot the sovereignty of God? What would happen? What would be the thoughts that might come to your mind? What might you do? Would you act rashly?

Would you speak inappropriately? Would you spend your time in a particular way that might not glorify God? Because you somehow lost the sense that God was sovereign. Would you turn and perhaps punish your employer? And maybe not give him all that was due, if you lost the sense that God had actually placed him above you by his sovereign hand?

Or what about with your friendships? If you had a friend and you lost a sense of the sovereignty of God, what might you think regarding that friend? What might you do? What offenses might you cultivate in your own mind and heart? You know, would you be easily offended if you lost a sense of the sovereignty of God?

Would you turn against Him? Would you slander Him? Would you ignore Him? Would you hate Him? Would you take the one who used to be your friend and call Him that?

Because you really, it really came down to one thing. You didn't really believe that God was glorifying Himself in all things. You lost a sense of that. Or what about your church? You know, it's difficult to be in a church because there are so many sinners there.

And sanctification is slow. I mean, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and some of them were elders. Well, but all of us, all of us are sinners. So what would happen, what would happen if you were in a church and you lost a sense of the sovereignty of God? What would you say?

What would you think? What would you feel? What would you do? How would you treat one another? There are so many implications of the sovereignty of God in life.

They're so very practical. And I think this is such a marvelous text. Just these first verses, from verses 5 through 7, They're so marvelous for anyone who might be confused about what's going on in the world or discouraged by events of the past. It's a balm for anyone who's ever been disappointed or angry with the behavior of other people. And by the way, this was spoken originally to a people who were fearful, fearful for the future, because they knew Assyria was outside.

There were threats everywhere. You know, people were full of terror as a result of the threats that were out there. So it was spoken to a fearful people. And Isaiah comes and says, no, Assyria is the rod of God's anger. In other words, God is in control.

In other words, not a nanosecond of this history is uncovered by Almighty God. He is in control. So this first section, verses 5 through 7, it speaks of the whole message of Isaiah, that God is doing all things for the rescue of his people and his zeal will bring everything to bear on this one matter, and that is for the salvation of sinners and the damnation of the wicked. And so we come, now not only do we see how God appoints Assyria to do his work of destruction, in verses 5-7, In the next section, in verses 12 through 14, we see how God will punish Assyria for arrogance. Therefore, verse 12, it shall come to pass when the Lord has performed all this, all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, that he will say, I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the glory of his haughty looks.

Again, what happens is he's speaking of the inner workings of his heart. Why he does what he does. He's doing it to exalt himself. He's doing it out of arrogance, the most dangerous thing around for us. God is judging because of the intentions of the heart.

And dealing with, of course, what He is going to do, but particularly, and most importantly, we need to understand this, why He's doing what he's doing. Why is the big subject here? It's out of the arrogance of his heart. He did it out of the glory of his haughty looks. And it brings us to ask questions.

You know, why, why, why, why did I do that? Why did I say that? Why did I do anything, You know? Why did I come to church today? Why did I have that family over for hospitality?

Why did I plan to say what I was going to say to that person? Why? Why did I do that? Was it out of arrogance? Was it out of self-seeking?

Well, that's what was happening with Assyria. It all came out of arrogance. And the king praises his strength in verses 13 and 14. This is really a remarkable section here. Verse 13, look at it with me.

For he says, by the strength of my hand, I have done it. Now, this phrase, For he says, or he will say, appears all over Isaiah. And it almost always marks the difference between a believer and unbeliever. What you say tells you who you really are. And Here's what he says, By the strength of my hand I have done it, And by my wisdom, for I am prudent.

Also, I have removed the boundaries. The first person verb is used seven times. The first person pronoun is used four times. This is how confident this king is. You can see all the different things that he has done.

He lists them. He says, I have robbed their treasuries, so I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man. Verse 14, my hand has found like a nest the riches of the people, and as one gathers eggs that are left, I have gathered all the earth, and there was no one who moved his wing, nor opened his mouth with even a peep." And so, He's revealing the heart of the natural man. In verse 13, his self-perceived strength, his self-perceived wisdom, his self-perceived prudence, his self-perceived stealth, his self-perceived dominance. In verse 14, his effortless conquering, his self-perceived global power.

And finally in verse 14, his perception that the people are submitted as a result of his own power. Even Christians can fall into this. Moses addressed it in Deuteronomy 8, where apparently people were saying, I've gotten my wealth by the strength of my hand. And God says, no, it's God that gives you the power to get wealth. That's it.

End of story. You have wealth? You know why? It wasn't you. And so the king of Assyria is speaking so boastfully about his hand and how he's walking proudly, really, in the earth.

In verse 12, I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his haughty looks. You know, He's acting like really such a big shot. He says, I'm like a child walking through a chicken house. You know, one of the great things you can do for children is have a chicken house. Because it's work that even a child can do.

A child can go collect the eggs and as they get older they can count them, and they learn how to take care of them, and they walk in the chicken house and they pick up the eggs. It's a fantastic job. It takes time, but it's an easy job. And so the king of Assyria is saying, I'm just like a child in a chicken house. I'm going, I'm picking up the eggs, and the chickens just keep their wings to them.

They don't try to get away, they don't try to peck me. They're submissive to me because I am so great. And so he's overestimating his influence, he's overvaluing his strength, he's over-exalting his wisdom, He's overstepping his significance. Have you ever done that? Overstepping your significance, overestimating your significance in the world, thinking that you are the one who stands by to correct all wrongs, that you are the one.

We talk like the king of Assyria all the time in different ways. We sometimes have a little bit, we hide it, you know, because we don't want to seem too boastful. There's a popular preacher today, speaks to tens of thousands of people weekly. He writes in a book, Becoming the Better You. He has programmed you with everything you need for victory.

That's why every day you can say things like, I have what it takes. I am more than a conqueror. I am intelligent. I am talented. I am successful.

I am attractive. I am an overcomer. He says, dedicating an entire chapter in this book, making your words work for you, every day we should make positive declarations over our lives. We should say Things like, I am blessed, I am prosperous, I am healthy, I am talented, I am creative, I am wise. Joel Oelstein, you can guess who it is.

He says, God wants you to have a little heaven on earth right now where you are. You can accomplish your dreams before you go to heaven. How can you do that? By tapping into God's power inside of you, please understand that all those things from which you have already been set free, You are free, but there's a catch. Start calling yourself healed, happy, whole, blessed, and prosperous.

You know, the words of the King of Assyria are nothing different than the words that we speak to ourselves all the time to congratulate ourselves about how smart we are and how stupid other people are. Whenever you exalt yourself, you're doing just like the king of Assyria. And you don't really understand that God is in control. And yes, He is even in control of that stupid person, in the same way that He is also in control of you, because you're no different. God is in control.

Now that's either a comfort or a terror to us. And it really just underlines the message of Isaiah 10, that God is sovereign in the salvation of sinners, and He does all things for the rescue of His people, even raising up an arrogant voice in the world who thinks he's so strong. And so not only in this whole scheme do we see that God appoints Assyria, first of all, to do his work of destruction in verses 5 through 7. Not only will God punish Assyria for his arrogance, in verses 12-14, thirdly, God mocks Assyria with questions in verse 15. Shall the axe boast itself against him who chops with it, or shall the saw exalt itself against him who saws with it, as if a rod could wield itself against those who lift it up, or as if a staff could lift up, as if it were not wood." So God is now mocking the king of Assyria.

And there are four images that he uses. There's the axe, there's the saw, there's the rod, and there's the staff. Remember when we started out with this whole study, we noticed that Isaiah was used of the Lord to speak brilliant things. And you see it here again, these graphic images. He's very much like Jesus, who tells stories and uses physical and natural things to communicate the kingdom of heaven.

But here, there's the axe, the saw, the rod, and the staff. And he's belittling, he's belittling this mentality. He says, you're just an axe. I am the lumber man, you are the axe. Do we understand that?

And the saw, I am the carpenter, you're just the saw. I sharpen you. I use you. I have a plan. I am the carpenter, but you're just the saw." And then he says, you're the rod.

In other words, the instrument of the punishment. It's interesting how he uses these images here, but a rod is used for punishment, typically. The first two had to do with building things, creating things. Now, he uses the image of rod, something that you correct things with. You use a rod as an instrument of punishment.

And then a staff, that's used for shepherding, for leading. It's interesting that Isaiah uses the same imagery that David uses in Psalm 23. Your rod and your staff, they come for me. Because God uses rods and staffs in different ways. He can use them both for comfort and for chastisement.

God is the one who chooses the use of the tool. And He chooses tools for his own purposes. He uses, he will take an axe, he will take a saw, a rod or a staff. He uses them all. He's no respecter of tools.

He just uses them the way that he desires to use them. But they all need something from the outside. The axe needs a man. The saw needs a hand. The rod needs a hand.

And the staff needs a hand to carry it. And that hand is God, God's hand. But this king does not know. He's clueless. He does not understand that he is just a rod in the hand of Almighty God.

Think of Tiglath-Paleaser, the king of Assyria on the Day of Judgment, when he finds out what really happened to him. When he finds out what was going on, and he's astonished. It takes his breath away that there was a God in heaven. He hated him and yet he was being ruled by him. And now he finds out that because he did not repent, that everything that he stood for would be destroyed and his glory would be wiped away.

And so God mocks Assyria. Later on in Isaiah we learn that God continues to mock the nations. In Isaiah 44 verse 5, we learn that God controls even the babblers. He says, For thus says the Lord your Redeemer who formed you. I frustrate the signs of the babblers.

He drives the diviners mad. He turns the wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolishness. This is what God does. But there are two forces that work in the world. There is God who wields the axe, and then there's the axe.

Now, question. Who is the axe? Who is the saw? Who is the rod? Who is the staff in your life right now, sent by God?

Do you think this just happened one time with the king of Assyria? No, no, no. No, this is given to us to help us understand our own lives as well. It does give us the grand scheme of history and the redemptive purposes of God in history as He rolls through history, that's for sure. But there's something true here about all of us, and that is that there's a rod in your life.

There's an axe in your life. There's a staff in your life. Usually the rods and the staffs and the axes have names. They're usually people in our lives. Well, they could be, you know, impersonal things like the economy.

It could be that. You know, the economy acts like a rod to God's people, that's for sure. You know, there are, you know, things like, You know, we call them accidents. Insurance companies, I don't know why insurance companies call these things accidents. You know, when you get in a car accident, why do they call it an accident?

I mean, the insurance companies don't think it was an accident. They spent thousands of dollars creating actuarial scenarios to understand exactly how it's going to happen. It's not an accident at all. They know what's going to happen. There really aren't any accidents.

It might be the weather. There are many axes in the hand of God that aren't people. They're objects or forces that work in the world. But then there are the axes that have names. You know, it might be that pretty little woman sitting next to you.

She's sort of like an axe in your life. She's been sent to you for a reason. You know, I love this book by William Goosje. He wrote a section on marriage, Domestical Duties. And he talks in that book about, if you have a wicked wife, maybe God is just punishing you for your wickedness in your youth.

And He's showing you how bad it was. Don't despise her. Recognize she is a tool in God's hand to drive you to Him. But is there an axe? Yes, Absolutely.

There's an axe, there's a saw, there's a rod, there's a staff, always at work in our lives, but usually they have names. Here's the question. Have you reconciled to yourself that God sent them because He loves you. Have you made peace with the situation that God is sovereign? That it was Him that sent that person into your life?

And you might feel that you're saddled with all these incompetent people. Guess what? God saddled you with them. If you've ever served on a board of elders, you know that you're saddled with other men. You are.

And each man is saddled in a different way. If you've ever served in any capacity where there are other people, you realize you've been saddled. And you have to ride. Well, you know, it happens that way in your family, too, right? How many of you chose your children?

None of you chose your children. You're stuck with them. God sent them to you. Hey, are you reconciled with that? I mean, Do you see the glory of God in it?

Maybe He sent some of your children to you to chastise you, to correct you, to convict you of your sins. Some children grow up and then when they can start talking, they see your sins and they might actually talk to you about it. That happened to my family. It still happens in my family. But you're stuck with them.

You can't, just because it's going tough doesn't mean that you can get out of it. Churches are like that too. There are all these names of people, all these weird people in churches, you know, who have so much sanctification still yet to be done. And that causes problems. But the question is, do you believe that God threw you together with those people?

Do you really believe that? Was it God that brought you to this town and all the historical matters that are involved in it. Was it God that did that? What happens to us is that we become displeased with the pressures and the things that the axes and the rods and the staffs and the saws ring about, and we just want to be done with it, rather than to recognize that God has brought you here. So if you've ever gotten married or if you ever were born into a family, or if you ever ended up in a church, or you ever got landed on a board of directors, or an eldership board, or anything like that, recognize God as sovereign.

And He desires to glorify Himself through you. But what we want to do, we always want to escape it rather than to glorify God in it. The message of Isaiah 10 is that God is sovereign in the salvation of sinners using every single nanosecond of history to glorify Himself through the salvation of sinners. He saves them. He saves sinners.

And then He sends them an axe and a saw and a rod and a staff, and He does that to sanctify them, to help them, because He loves them, because He's bringing many sons to glory. So we come to the fourth point here that we see in this declaration of the sovereignty of God, that God will consume the glory of Assyria. Verses 16-19, God will consume the glory of Assyria. Therefore the Lord, the Lord of hosts, will send leanness among his fat ones, and under his glory he will kindle a burning like the burning of a fire. So the light of Israel will be for a fire and His holy one for a flame.

It will burn and devour His thorns and His briars in one day. And it will consume the glory of his forest and of his fruitful field, both soul and body, and they will be as when a sick man wastes away. Then the rest of the trees of his forest will be so few in number that a child may write them. Here we have a collapse that is so comprehensive that a child can document what's left. Now verse 16, look at that, the word therefore.

This is the justification of God's, he's going to tell how he is justifying himself in this punishment. And the strong first will be made weak. He will send leanness among his fat ones, and under his glory he will kindle a burning like the fire. So the first thing he does, he makes strong men weak. These pompous, mighty Assyrian soldiers will be made weak.

They'll be made weak in An instant, just like that. How quickly can God bring a strong man down? Very quickly. A flesh-wasting disease, a virus, something. It doesn't take much.

The strongest of men can be taken down in a moment. Any one of us would be so easy for the Lord to make it so that we would not live beyond the end of this service. He can make it happen. He rules absolutely every molecule in the universe. So he will send leanness among his fat ones and then it will be like burning.

His glory will be kindled. You know, a serious glory. His heaviness, His significance, the things that you look at and say, That's amazing! That glory will just go away in an instant. He uses the same word that Isaiah uses in chapter 6, where he says, Holy, Holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory, kavod, heavy, weightiness. His weightiness will disappear. How close are the strongest to frailty? And then he uses this terminology of sickness and weakness, and then he uses the imagery of fire. And notice how the fire starts.

It starts in the underbrush and the briars, and then it works upward into the forest, and then it comes to the tree line, and then it consumes the field beyond it. That's the imagery. You see sort of the logical path of the destruction that's taking place here. And Isaiah chapter 37 gives a narrative of perhaps what this is. I called it earlier the most astonishing battlefield occurrence in all of history, where 185, 000 were cut down in one day.

Isaiah 37 speaks of it. For I will defend this city to save it for my own sake and for my servant David's sake." So this battle that took place where 185, 000 were cut down or fell down was because God was defending His name. He was defending David. He did it for quote, my servant David's sake. That's verse 35 in Isaiah 37.

That battle happened for the name of David, for the spread of the Gospel, to continue on the line of the Messiah. That's why that battle happened. And then he says, then the angel of the Lord went out and killed in the camp of the Assyrians 185, 000. And when people arose early in the morning, there were corpses, all dead. So Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, departed and went away and returned home and remained at Nineveh.

And it was so devastating that a child could walk through the battlefield and count those who are still alive. The message of Isaiah 10 is that God is sovereign in the salvation of sinners. As he rules over every nanosecond of history, he uses everything, every single thing that happens for the purpose of the progress of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything. Even the axe that is in your life, even the saw that is in your life right now, even that person's name who comes to mind and their face who comes up when I say, who is the axe in your life?

It's all for one purpose, for the salvation of sinners, for their progress and their sanctification and their final salvation on the Day of Judgment. And then, and then finally, we see really how this is communicated in the last section, verses 20 through 23, the remnant will depend on the Lord. That's the purpose of all this, so that there would be a remnant who would depend on the Lord. 185, 000 people died. There was a boastful king, for one reason, for the salvation of a remnant.

And the promise of the grace of God in the face of trouble is here, beginning in verse 20. And it shall come to pass in that day that the remnant, And that has to do with salvation. The saved of Israel and such as have escaped. Escaped means that they were redeemed. They were rescued of the house of Jacob.

Will never again depend on him who defeated them. In other words, their whole orientation of life would change and they would not depend on their fears of kings like the Assyrian king. And they would realize that God sends an axe and a saw and a rod and a staff for their salvation. They will depend on the Lord. They will depend on the Lord.

What a wonderful state that is when you finally depend on the Lord. And you recognize that He is sovereign. And you depend on Him for everything. He speaks of righteousness here. To depend on the Lord for righteousness, His righteousness, the righteousness of the Holy One of Israel.

He says, in truth, in verse 20. And this remnant recognizes that God protects them. He is the mighty God in verse 21. And look at verse 22 with me. And you'll see what really holds this whole text together.

Verse 22, For though your people, O Israel, be as the sand of the sea, a remnant of them will return. The destruction decreed shall overflow with righteousness, for the Lord of hosts will make a determined end in the midst of the land." God determines the beginning from the end. He appoints every difficulty, every army, every law, every politician, every husband, wife, friend, child, everything. He appoints it all for one single purpose. Matthew Henry says it like this, not that they might be ruined, but that they might be thoroughly reformed.

The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is that God sent His Son, that God came to save sinners, and that He is using all of history to save sinners. And every single thing that has ever happened in your life is designed either for your salvation or your sanctification or for your destruction. For your salvation if you repent and believe in the gospel. For your salvation if your heart changes and you say genuinely in your heart that you desire to do His will and that you love His kingdom and you want His salvation, you want His righteousness. You realize your righteousness is nothing.

Did you realize that all of history, everything that has ever happened to you in this microcosm of your life, exploding out to everything that's ever happened, from creation to the end, He has determined the end of everything for this one purpose, to drive you to repentance. Every accident, every relationship, every hardship, every difficulty, everything is designed to glorify the salvation of Jesus Christ. Everything. The message of Isaiah 10 is that God is sovereign in the salvation of sinners. He does all things for the rescue of a people.

His zeal will accomplish it. He arranges history for it. Shall the axe boast itself against him who chops with it? No. Rejoice in the Lord.

He's established the beginning to the end. He's taking care of you. He's taking care of His people. He's taking care of the world. It's not spinning out of control at all.

And He has given you everything pertaining to life and godliness through everything that He has provided as a result of His love for you. I pray we understand that as a church. Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord, you have brought to us such remarkable words, how you have determined the end of all things. You are the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

You are the Holy one of Israel, the Lord of hosts, the one who has determined all things for your own glory. Oh Lord, we so need to recognize deep within our hearts the greatness of this salvation and how it is not disconnected from anything in all of history. Amen.