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We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us Notes We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us! God Points Out the Primary Problem for Judah…Judah Isaiah 48: 1 – 22 Scripture quotations are taken from the following translations: ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission. www.Lockman.org Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NET) are from the NET Bible® copyright ©1996-2016 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. The Good News Translation Bible (GNB) text used in this product is being used by permission. Copyright © American Bible Society, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992 Scripture taken from the Holy Bible: International Standard Version® Release 2.0. (ISV) Copyright © 1996–2011 by the ISV Foundation. Used by permission of Davidson Press, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTERNATIONALLY. In Isaiah 48 there are two major themes and a conclusion for the rebellious. • Israel and Judah are obstinate (Isaiah 48:4) but • God will deliver them in His time (Isaiah 48:14) • There is no peace for the wicked (Isaiah 48:22) We also have here in Isaiah 48, what many consider to be one of the more definitive verses in the Bible regarding the trinity. The geopolitical situation as this prophecy is being written by Isaiah is this, Hezekiah is King of Judah. He was a good King (2 Chronicles 29:1 – 4) who loved the Lord, he had some issues with including YAHWEH in all he did (2 Chronicles 32:25 – 26, Isaiah 31), but he followed the Lord. Assyria, the current big and bad on the world scene, has just had their head handed back to them by the Lord when He personally judged them on the hills surrounding Jerusalem killing over 180,000 of their troops in one evening (Isaiah 37:36 – 38). No one is currently threatening Judah, in fact there are some who want to know just how did they beat the Assyrian army including Babylon ( 2 Kings 20:12 – 13), which at the time was just one more city state that went in and out of rebellion to the Assyrian Empire. The northern kingdom, Israel, is gone and in eXile. What is to take place should not be a surprise to anyone in the Judah of the near future, but it will be. Isaiah has made clear who it is that will attack and take Judah into eXile, and he has also been crystal clear about who it is that will deliver them. Knowing this, does it change behavior? Moses said the following. Any similarity to current conditions in some locations is purely coincidental. Right. www.theunsafebible.com ©The UnSafe Bible 2021 1 Deuteronomy 28:15–29 “But if you disobey the LORD your God and do not faithfully keep all his commands and laws that I am giving you today, all these evil things will happen to you: The LORD will curse your towns and your fields. The LORD will curse your corn crops and the food you prepare from them. The LORD will curse you by giving you only a few children, poor crops, and few cattle and sheep. The LORD will curse everything you do. If you do evil and reject the LORD, he will bring on you disaster, confusion, and trouble in everything you do, until you are quickly and completely destroyed. He will send disease after disease on you until there is not one of you left in the land that you are about to occupy. The LORD will strike you with infectious diseases, with swelling and fever; he will send drought and scorching winds to destroy your crops. These disasters will be with you until you die. No rain will fall, and your ground will become as hard as iron. Instead of rain, the LORD will send down duststorms and sandstorms until you are destroyed. The LORD will give your enemies victory over you. You will attack them from one direction, but you will run from them in all directions, and all the people on earth will be terrified when they see what happens to you. When you die, birds and wild animals will come and eat your bodies, and there will be no one to scare them off. The LORD will send boils on you, as he did on the Egyptians. He will make your bodies break out with sores. You will be covered with scabs, and you will itch, but there will be no cure. The LORD will make you lose your mind; he will strike you with blindness and confusion. You will grope about in broad daylight like a blind person, and you will not be able to find your way. You will not prosper in anything you do. You will be constantly oppressed and robbed, and there will be no one to help you.” (GNB) The books of 1 and 2 Kings are a story of failure miXed with the occasional success of a good king. The background though is one of a continual downward spiral. Israel became idolators and failed at a vastly accelerated path over that of Judah. The northern kingdom of Israel was established and immediately became an idol worshipping nation. This upset internal politics within the now two Jewish nations as idol worshippers moved north and YAHWEH worshippers moved south (2 Chronicles 11:13 – 15). All their kings were losers, all of them, so they suffered the consequences first. Judah saw this and had the opportunity to repent. At the beginning of the book of Isaiah, there was still hope for Judah, they could still pull it out of the fire. But they did not. They wanted to have the blessings that began to be poured out on the nation under King David and which continued under King Solomon, but without the obedience to the Lord piece. With a good King, Hezekiah, they are again beginning to see some of those blessings (2 Chronicles 32:27 – 30), but a major round of discipline has just been completed as the Lord did use the Assyrian army to get the attention of His people in Judah. All the nation needed to do is follow what Moses had outlined for them at the same time he told them about the consequences of bad behavior. Deuteronomy 28:1–14 “If you obey the LORD your God and faithfully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, he will make you greater than any other nation on earth. Obey the LORD your God and all these blessings will be yours: The LORD will bless your towns and your fields. The LORD will bless you with many children, with abundant crops, and with many cattle and sheep. The LORD will bless your corn crops and the food you prepare from them. The LORD will bless everything you do. The LORD will defeat your enemies when they attack you. They will attack from one direction, but they will run from you in all directions. The LORD your God will bless your work and fill your barns with corn. He will bless you in the land that he is giving you. If you obey the LORD your God and do everything he commands, he will make you his own people, as he has promised. Then all the peoples on earth will see that the LORD has chosen you to be his own people, and they will be afraid of you. The LORD will give you many children, many cattle, and abundant crops in the land that he promised your ancestors to give you. He will send rain in season from his rich storehouse in the sky and bless all your work, so that you will lend to many nations, but you will www.theunsafebible.com ©The UnSafe Bible 2021 2 not have to borrow from any. The LORD your God will make you the leader among the nations and not a follower; you will always prosper and never fail if you obey faithfully all his commands that I am giving you today. But you must never disobey them in any way, or worship and serve other gods.” (GNB) We tend to make many of the same decisions that Judah made. We have trusted in Christ for our salvation and have begun the process of sanctification, but somewhere along the line we may have decided to sub-optimize the process, because it is hard work. We, like Judah, get drawn away by the big three. 1 John 2:15–17 “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” (ESV) This is the struggle that Judah has as well, but they are under the law where we are privileged to be living under grace. There are only two sides, there is no in-between.
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