Gary Gleans

Finishing well is a very hard thing to do.  Hezekiah was one of Judah’s best kings.  He tore down idols, called out to the Lord in times of trouble and worshiped God in times of deliverance; but he did not finish well.  His legacy would have been far greater had he died instead of living the extra fifteen years.  No matter how old we are and no matter how many victories God grants in our lives, it only takes one failure to mar a reputation and scar ones legacy.  God calls us to lean on Him for our direction and to honor Him in all circumstances of our lives from the start to the finish.  Starting well is normal, finish well is supernatural. HEZEKIAH FALLS INTO ARROGANCE: When Hezekiah recovers from his illness he receives a delegation from the land of Babylon that supposedly came to congratulate him on his recovery.  The reality is they were more than likely coming to spy out the land.  Hezekiah is so relieved by his prolonged life and his victory over the Assyrians that he takes

Death is a blessing for believers but we are not in a hurry to experience it.  We know that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.  We long to be reconciled with God and leave this sinful world behind but all of us would rather experience that kind of transformation through the rapture instead of death.  Death is an unknown experience and we all tend to fear the unknown.  There is also a certain amount of pain associated with death and most of us would prefer to avoid pain.  King Hezekiah became ill and Isaiah was told by God to go inform him of his impending death.  It must have been a hard message to deliver and an even harder message to receive.  God illustrates in this narrative His sovereignty over death.  He has the power to grant and take away life.  Our lives will be lived more effectively and our deaths will have more tranquility if we always remember God’s sovereign control over both life and death. HEZEKIAH’S PRAYER AND PROMISE FROM GOD: Hezekiah rec

Responses to circumstances are very important to God and will determine a great deal about the final outcome of our lives.  God also responds to us based on our trust in Him.  When we are faced with difficulties in our lives we must be careful to respond in ways that show our faith in God and bring glory to God.  The circumstances of our lives are often out of our control.  How we respond to those circumstances is a great responsibility and completely within our control.  ISAIAH RESPONDS TO HEZEKIAH’S PLEA WITH PROMISE: Hezekiah has received the threats from Sennacherib with great distress.  His response to those threats is to tear his clothes, cover himself with ashes and send the priest to plea with Isaiah concerning this matter.  This shows genuine concern for the nation as well as God’s reputation.  Isaiah responds to Hezekiah with a promise from God guaranteeing defeat for Sennacherib. God is faithful to give us assurance when we seek Him in our times of need and look to Him

Intimidation is one of Satan’s greatest tricks.  Lies and twisted truths are the key tools that he uses to cause intimidation.  Isaiah is now relating historical events instead of speaking prophetically of the future.  Sennacherib, the king of Assyria is on the march against the nation of Judah.  All of the fortified cities of Judah have fallen so the king, Hezekiah, the prophet Isaiah and all of the leadership and military might that has survived to this point are all isolated in the city of Jerusalem.  Their food and water supply has been cut off so from a human perspective, there is no hope of victory.  Sennacherib sends out a commission of leaders to dictated Judah’s surrender and Hezekiah sends out his representatives to hear what is being offered.  The content of this chapter is this commission’s intimidating message for Hezekiah and the people that have taken refuge with him in the city of Jerusalem. NO NATION CAN DELIVER YOU: Judah’s initial reaction when they heard of the

In a world marked by chaos, sin and the consequences of sin it is easy to think that things are out of control.  As believers, we can be assured that nothing is out of God’s control.  He is at work in the history of mankind and has a plan for being glorified by the inhabitants of the world He has created.  Isaiah has foretold the destruction of Israel as well as Assyria.  There are time of desolation and destruction in store for the land and all who live in the land, but the story does not end there.  God has a plan of hope for His children and the land. GOD’S PLAN OF RESTORATION FOR THE PLACE: It is easy for us to lose hope when things go wrong or are not in accordance with our idea of how things should proceed.  It is clear from the previous chapters that there will be a time of great hopelessness in store for the children of Israel.  However, the story does not end in this way.  The land will be destroyed, desolation will cover the land but God has a plan of restoration for the

There are things about God with which we are not comfortable.  It is hard for us to comprehend the gravity and totality of the coming judgment upon the earth and all of the nations of the earth.  We are comfortable with a loving and forgiving God but an angry and vengeful God does not sit well with us.  The truth is that God is both loving and angry, forgiving and vengeful.   In reality, our difficulty to understand should be much more about how He could save any of us and not about how He will judge some.  All of mankind has rebelled against God and despite His repeated warnings and attempts to reconcile men to Himself the multitudes have continued to reject Him and preferred their sinful lives.  God’s delay in judgment should surprise us much more than the severity of His judgment. GOD WILL JUDGE ALL THE NATIONS: Just as there will be representatives from every nation that will worship God in heaven for all of eternity; there will be representatives from every nation that will b

God is never surprised because He always knows what will happen.  There are many things that worry us and cause us stress because we do not know how the circumstances of our lives will play out.  God has chosen to reveal certain things about the future to us in His Word so that we do not become over anxious.  However, there are many things about the future that have not been revealed and that is where trusting God is essential.  Israel is under the threat of invasion from Assyria, the people and the leaders are stricken with fear.  God sends Isaiah to reveal God’s plans for the future in order to help the people find relief and place their faith in the Lord.  We too face many distresses in our lives and must remember to go to the Scriptures so that our hopes can be anchored in the promises of God instead of our hearts being troubled by the circumstances of life. THE DEFEAT OF ASSYRIA: The Lord has determined that He will deliver Israel from the Assyrian invasion.  They have been p

God has a plan for this world and His people.  His plan is a wonderful plan with a happy ending, but the path to the fulfillment of that plan is far from easy.  There will be great pain on the way to the gain that the Lord has planned for His people.  God has been gracious to reveal His plan to His people so that they will not lose hope in the midst of trials and so they will understand that there are consequences for disobedience.  The times of prosperity and punishment are both ordained by God and are orchestrated by God in order to accomplish His plans for His people. THERE WILL BE A RIGHTEOUS REIGN: There will be a time in the future when there will be a righteous reign.  A king will rule over the children of Israel in a completely righteous manner and all of the princes will reign with Him is such a way that will bring refreshment to the inhabitants of the Land.  The people will experience the protection of God and His provisions in their lives will be abundant.  Most signifi

We all have a choice to make every day when we wake up in the morning.  Are we going to trust in God or trust in man?  It sounds like an obvious choice, but when we come right down to it, the choice is not as simple as it sounds.  Our problems are usually related to men, so we have a natural tendency to look for solution amongst men.  None of us have ever seen God so it is much harder to trust that which we have not seen.  This is why faith is so crucial to being able to please God.  He asks us to trust that which we have not seen based on His Word and that which we have observed of Him in the past.  It all comes down to recognizing the power and sovereignty of God and the assurance we have of His love for us as well as His faithfulness to us.  GOD DENOUNCES THOSE WHO TRUST IN MAN: Israel is under the threat of attack from the Assyrians.  The problem is man related so Israel follows her natural inclination and looks for man related solutions.  God denounces this misplaced trust an

The relationship between God and the children of Israel is a very interesting one.  Like any relationship it has its highs and its lows.  God is unchanging in His character but He does respond to the attitudes and actions of men.  In these responses we learn valuable lessons about who God is and how He relates to His children. GOD IS A JEALOUS FATHER: Israel was under threat of attack from the Assyrians.  Humanly speaking there is no way that Israel could come away from this confrontation victoriously.  However, God had demonstrated time and time again that He is not limited to that which is humanly possible.  Time after time God has delivered the children of Israel using supernatural means.  God’s expectation is that they would trust Him in the midst of this threat and cry out to Him for deliverance or at least for direction as to what He would have them do.  Instead, Israel turned to the nation of Egypt and sought to form an alliance with Egypt so that she would fight the Assyri

The Lord works in mysterious ways.  We have a hard time understanding how God is working through the events of this world because we have such a limited view.  Our view is limited to our earthly perspective and limited to our generation.  God’s perspective is celestial and eternal.  What seems to us illogical makes perfect sense from God’s perspective.  In our minds sin and judgment are always and only bad, but God has an unfathomable way of, in all His wisdom, taking our sin and His judgment and turning it for His glory and our good.  All of us have personal experiences of which we are ashamed.  In many ways we wish that we could erase those things from history or go back and live those moments again in a much different way.  However, when we look at those things in retrospect we can see how God used them to bring us closer to Himself.  God works in these wonderful ways in each of our lives and He is working in this way in the history of Israel.  Isaiah predicts God’s judgment on the

God wants His people to trust in Him.  That statement is at the heart of our relationship with God.  Faith is the key to our relationship with God and the only means by which we can be rightly related to Him.  Due to our sinful and rebellious nature, our tendency is to trust in ourselves or in other men instead of trusting God.  This attitude of pride and misplaced trust will bring us into condemnation and judgment before the Lord.  We must learn to trust God, obey His Word and rest in His provision if we are going to please Him.  Israel is being threatened by the Assyrians, but instead of trusting God and turning to Him for deliverance; Israel proudly things she is too important to fall and Jerusalem places her assurance on an alliance that has been made with Egypt.  When we face trials we must learn to depend on the Lord instead of ourselves and others. GOD WILL JUDGE ISRAEL FOR HER ARROGANCE: Israel, in this passage called Ephraim, is marked by pride and drunkenness.  God has m

One of my favorite words in all of Scripture is the word “but.”  The classic example is found in Ephesians 2 where Paul says that we were dead in our trespasses and sin … “and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others BUT God who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”  This chapter of Isaiah gives us another demonstration of God’s love and mercy to bring back to spiritual life the nation of Israel who has suffered under the wrath of God due to sin for so many generations.  They may be disobedient, displaced, deceived and destroyed BUT God’s love for them remains steadfast and He plans to redeem them unto Himself and restore them to spiritual greatness. GOD WILL RESTORE ISRAEL AND REDEEM THE NATIONS THROUGH HER: Satan has had his way in deceiving Israel and leading her in the path of destruction.  The nation that God separated in order to bless all the nations of the w

God is at work in this world to accomplish His will.  His purpose in the world is for the nations and all inhabitants of the world to worship Him.  No matter how far we may seem from that purpose, we can be assured that God is at work to bring about that reality and He will not be thwarted.  One day we experience the joy of living within that eternal purpose of God.  In fact we can experience a taste of that on a personal basis in our lives right now.  God’s future purpose of perfection may not be our present reality in a complete sense of the word, but we can certainly live with assurance of that hope and taste of that joy on this very day.  Our future must have an impact on our present.  These are the promises of God in which we should hope and by which we should live our lives. THE PROMISE OF PEACE FOR ALL WHO TRUST GOD: We all long to experience peace in our lives.  The world is constantly at war with nations rising up against other nations and a constant flow of crime within

The history of this world is full of injustice and pain.  Sin has taken its toll on the inhabitants of the earth and the consequences are drastic.  Individuals who have no fear of God prosper and nations that have turned their backs of God reign over and destroy nations who fear the Lord.  There is no individual and no nations that has escaped the ravages on sin.  Even those individuals and nations that know God and seek to serve God suffer under the corruption of sin that too often becomes a part of their own personal experience.  This disobedience on the part of believers has brought on additional suffering and an appearance of even more injustice in the world.  There is a sense that things are out of control and that sin will win the day.  However, there is great promise in Scripture about the plans and purposes of God.  He has a far different plan in mind and we can be assured that there are far different times that lie ahead. A TIME OF RESTORATION: There will be a time when G

If there is one truth that we must always remember from this section of Scripture, it is that God knows how to judge the nations and the people of the earth.  God has demonstrated throughout history that He is willing and able to judge men and nations.  It does not matter how big the nation is, how numerous the population might be or how important its inhabitants are; God will judge.  He has judged nations, individuals and even the entire planet in the past and He will continue to do so.  The day is coming when every man woman and child on the face of this planet will experience the judgment of God.  We must make sure that we are prepared for that day. GOD’S JUDGMENT WILL BE COMPLETE: God will judge this earth in the most complete fashion that has ever been experienced.  He will call all men to account independent of their position or prosperity.  The slave and his owner will stand as equals before the Lord.  No class of people and no nation will be exempt from the judgment that i

We have all heard about stories of people who have gone from rags to riches.  Today’s is a story of a nation that would go from riches to rags.  Wealth and prosperity are very dangerous because they tend to foster pride and independence from God.  The key to our well-being is humility and dependence upon God so it is easy to see why prosperity can be very dangerous.  I find it very ironic that there is so much teaching today about the blessings of prosperity when the Scriptures know nothing of this doctrine.  TYRE WILL BE FALLEN: Tyre was a wealthy and powerful nation.  Her relationships with the surrounding nations were great and notorious.  Isaiah foresees the fall of Tyre as well as the lament of the nations who were trading with her and prospering with these trade agreements.  There are many people and nations that are affected by the prosperity or the demise of another nation.  Our lives and the decisions that we make in our lives have consequences that are far beyond ourselv

Jerusalem has always been a special city in the history of Israel and the history of the world.  There is a sense in the hearts of the people that Jerusalem was too important to fall.  Isaiah is about to make it abundantly clear that this sense is very wrong for Jerusalem will indeed fall.  No person and no place is above the judgment of God and all should be aware of this truth.  A false sense of security is a very dangerous thing and will make us vulnerable to the sin of pride.  Our only source of security is in the Lord and submission to His will. JERUSALEM WILL BE JUDGED: Isaiah laments the news that he must share concerning the city and the nation that he loves.  He sees a day when the leaders of the nation will be lead away in captivity without so much as a fight.  There will be no power in the people to stand and defend the city.  It is hard to imagine Jerusalem reaching this point but it is the direct result of the nation abandoning the worship of the God who created and c