Word of Salvation – February 2025
Providence In Practice
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp on Isaiah 10:5-12 & W.C.F. 5:1 & 3
Reading: Isaiah 10:1-19, Westminster Confession – art.5:1 & 3
Singing: BoW.095 Now with joyful exaltation
– BoW.535 In life and death, my comfort is
– BoW.358 God is the Lord, just let Him guide you
– BoW.356 God moves in a mysterious way
Theme: The Providence of God in Assyria’s disciplining of Israel did not excuse Assyria’s abuse of power.
Introd: Christians believe nothing happens by chance. There is no such thing as luck… or fortune… or fate.
We believe that the God who created all things also upholds and guides all things.
He directs all human affairs and governs every creature in this world.
He guides and leads all things to fulfil His plans and purposes. We call that God’s Providence.
There are many practical examples of God’s Providence in the Bible.
There’s the story of a Jewish girl who became queen.
She was instrumental in saving her people from an enemy wanting to destroy them.
Esther did not just happen to become queen by chance… God directed it that way.
There’s the young man sold as a slave by his brothers who ends up in a prison in Egypt.
But it’s so that his family survives seven terrible years of drought.
Joseph did not accidentally become a prince in Egypt… God so guided events.
We could also mention examples of God’s Providence since Bible times.
In the 1500’s there was a monk who struggled with the issue of his eternal salvation.
And he just happened to become Bible teacher… who by chance taught from Romans.
At least that’s the way it seemed to work out for this man.
But God directed the details of Martin Luther’s life so that he became the great Reformer.
Or think of another example that flowed on from that.
At that time the Pope and the Emperor decided to unite forces to wipe out the Reformation.
But it just so happened that the Moors, the Muslim forces, were pressuring Europe.
So the Emperor needed the help of the Protestant princes to keep Islam at bay.
So under God’s direction the momentum of the Protestant Reformation continued.
In Isaiah 10 we have another practical example of God’s Providence.
A] GOD’S INSTRUMENT USED IN HUMAN AFFAIRS (vss.5,6).
- In verse 5 God talks about the Assyrians… but he gives them a strange name… an odd sort of label.
He says that the Assyrian is ‘the rod of my anger’.
And that he carries God’s ‘club of wrath’ (or the ‘staff of wrath’)
Here is a mighty world super-power, bent on conquest.
Other nations feared it. Country after country fell before it’s mighty war machine.
It seemed that no one could stop this world power from invading and taking over.
But Scripture says that this super-power is God’s instrument in human affairs.
A rod is used for giving someone a beating.
A club (or a staff) is for giving someone an unforgettably heavy whack.
And then surprisingly… that rod is God’s rod… the rod of his anger.
And that staff is God’s staff… the club of his wrath.
So God is punishing and disciplining other nations.
But He is doing that thru the armies of the Assyrians.
God is behind this military might that no one seems able to stop.
Assyria, is a mere instrument in God’s hand doing what God ordains it to do.
We see that very often on the O.T. – for example, in the book of Judges.
God brings in hostile nations, like the Philistines… as His instruments to discipline His wayward people.
- In the previous chapter leading up to our text we have a lengthy catalogue of Israel’s sins.
It mentions the pride and arrogance of Israel… the ten northern tribes.
Their prophets teach lies… their leaders lead the people astray.
And then over and over – four times – there is a refrain about God’s anger.
Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.
They make widows their prey and they rob the fatherless.
So the day of reckoning will come when they will cringe among the captives.
Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.
And now here is the disciplining hand of God who wants to correct and restore His people.
But God is going to do that with a hefty whack from the Assyrians.
The language is that of corporal punishment – the cane applied to the seat of learning.
As God tries to knock some sense into His people.
And God does that through the instrumentality of the Assyrians.
That’s a sobering picture that we find so often in the Bible.
We are often hard of hearing and we don’t listen to God very well.
We are proud and arrogant and we go our own way.
But God doesn’t just let us go… He deals with us… He disciplines us.
Often in such a way that thru the school of hard knocks we return to our heavenly Father.
Today I’m focusing on the negative side of Providence… it’s not hard accepting the positive side.
God sends us sunshine and rain… and many other good things.
But God’s hard ways with us… that too is the Providence of God.
And so often it happens through certain means.
It might be through sickness or bereavement that God is moulding and shaping us.
Sometimes God does that with a whole nation – like the Bali Bombings.
When the whole nation gets a wake-up call from the Lord.
Here for Israel it is Assyria… the rod of God’s anger.
Sadly… they didn’t learn from it and eventually Israel was destroyed by Assyria.
- So what we have in this chapter is the seemingly arbitrary rise and fall of nations.
Syria had its day in the sun… and now it is Assyria’s turn.
Nations come and nations go: Egypt… the Philistines… Syria… Assyria.
Later it will be Babylon… then Greece… then Rome.
Yesterday it was the United States of Soviet Russia… tomorrow it may be China… who knows?
Today we can even give logical reasons as to why nations rise and fall.
When Rome became decadent it lost its military power and edge.
And so we’re not surprised that eventually Rome was sacked by the barbarians.
One nation grows lazy and loses its military advantage.
Another nation is disciplined and becomes superior. We have our human explanations.
But notice in vs.6 that God very specifically states that this is His doing.
It happens under His guidance and direction: He ‘sends’… He ‘dispatches’
I send him against a godless nation… that Israel has become.
I dispatch him against a people who anger me.
This happens under the Providence of God. The Lord is in control of these things.
The Bible repeatedly shows God working out His plans, even in what we would label as ‘evil’ events.
Like Israel being destroyed by the Assyrians.
We even see that in the gospel story of Jesus’ death for us on the cross.
There too God is control, guiding that event… even through the betrayal of Judas.
And even through the jealousy of the Pharisees and the Chief Priests.
God is sovereignly in control of all things working out His plans and purposes.
B] THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF THOSE GOD USES (vss.7-11).
- People often have trouble linking God’s Providence in with our responsibility.
If God rules and directs… if He controls and regulates everything then it’s not our fault.
God raised up the Assyrians… He sent and dispatched them.
That must mean that they are not blame for the damage and suffering they caused.
If we’re inclined to think that way then we need to take a closer look at these verses.
Our text does not begin with Assyria being complimented for being the rod of God’s anger.
On the contrary: a woe pronounced against Assyria.
Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger.
And then as God proceeds He spells out the reason for this woe.
Assyria had its own agenda.
God says: I sent him… I dispatched him… but that’s not what he thinks (v.7).
This is not what he has in mind; his purpose is to destroy, to put an end to many nations.
Read these verses and you get a picture of a people who claimed national superiority.
They were greater… and they were better than all the other nations.
But they also claimed religious superiority… their gods were better than all other gods.
By the time we get to vs.11 even the worship of Yahweh God is belittled.
Yahweh is said to be no better than the idols of all the other nations.
We can read some of the history of this period in the second book of Kings.
And in chapter 18 (vs.25f) it seems Assyria had some sense of being God’s instrument.
Maybe they had heard some of the prophecies about their nation.
But the bottom line was that they believed they were in control.
They believed themselves to be sovereign in human affairs.
- We should add that the Assyrians were a cruel nation… they were feared especially for their cruelty.
Archaeology has been able to tell us much about their methods of warfare.
I won’t mention the gruesome ways they invented to put people to death.
And if I listed their cruel deeds this would become an ‘R rated’ sermon.
But you do get a little insight about their cruelty in our text.
From vs.7 it is clear that their intention is to destroy.
There is some more graphic language in vs.6.
They seize loot and snatch plunder.
They trample people down like mud in the streets.
In vss.9-11 we get a list of their conquests… nations that had already been treated like this.
In vs.11 they speak as if Samaria is already conquered.
Again archaeology has recovered many reports with wildly exaggerated claims.
The whole thing smacks of the typical style of the dictator and tyrant.
They are proud and arrogant. Their leader was the Hitler of that day.
And if you have any doubts about that, read 2Kings 18:33f.
There Judah’s godly King Hezekiah has to cope with the arrogance of the Assyrian army.
So we have a nation that God Providentially uses as His instrument.
But it is an aggressive and violent nation that is proud and arrogant.
They are abusive in the extreme.
Their goal was to be ‘Number One’ in the world.
And their brutal policies were designed to keep them as Number One in the world.
- So these verses that teach God’s Providence also teach human accountability.
In fact – that is precisely where the stress lies.
This woe is pronounced – not because God uses a nation as an instrument of His power.
The woe is pronounced because the Assyrians have abused their power.
It is one thing to be wonderfully used by God as an instrument in His hand.
It is quite another thing to do that in an arrogant and proud way.
It is one thing for God to work providentially through us.
It is something entirely different for us to abuse the very gifts God gives us to serve Him.
And the history of the church is littered with examples of that.
In recent times there have been horror stories of sexual abuse by clergy.
Sometimes even by prominent preachers who were wonderfully used by the Lord.
God in His Providence changed people’s lives thru their ministry.
But their position of trust and authority was misused.
They used their power to prey on the vulnerable people.
Woe to those who don’t use their gifts as God intends.
So God in His Providence does overrule all things.
And yet… we are always still fully accountable for our actions.
God governed the political world of Isaiah to use Assyria as the rod of His anger.
But he pronounces a woe on their arrogant abuse of their power.
We see the same thing elsewhere in the Bible too.
Joseph by being sold into slavery is used mightily by God in Egypt
But his brothers are fully responsible for their behaviour.
Joseph said to them: You meant it for evil… yet God meant it for good (Gen.50:20).
The same is true when we come to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
God planned Jesus’ death on the cross and His Providence guided every aspect.
But that never excused Judas or the Chief Priests or the crowd that called for His blood.
Peter put those two things in balance on the day of Pentecost when he said:
This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge;
and you with the help of wicked men put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross (Acts 2:23).
C] THE PROVIDENTIALLY USED, PROVIDENTIALLY PUNISHED (vs.12).
- The upshot then is that God promises to punish the Assyrians for their abuse of power.
That’s another interesting outworking of Providence: God punishes the punishers.
Those who are the rod of God’s anger will feel His anger themselves.
Those whom God providentially used, will now be providentially punished.
Verse 12 spells out that this will happen.
But it also mentions God’s perfect timing.
It’s when God finishes all his work against Mt Zion and Jerusalem.
IOW – in God’s good time; when His purpose for His people are compete.
We’re not told specifically here what that purpose is.
But we know it from other places:
That God was already here preparing for the coming of Jesus.
It was for that reason that he was disciplining His people with the rod of His anger.
It was so that Judah would be refined and purified…a people ready to serve the Lord.
And in that way they would be the people from whom the Messiah would be born.
God’s Providence is ultimately always directed at the glory of Christ’s Kingdom
- Against that background of God’s purpose for Jerusalem God now warns Assyria.
He says: I will pursue the King of Assyria for the wilful pride of his heart.
And a little later in vs.16 the Lord warns that he will send a wasting disease on Assyria’s soldiers.
God will not allow Assyria’s abuse and arrogance to go unpunished.
Being God’s instrument is no grounds for pride.
The fact is that God loathes that kind of arrogance. He spells it out in vs.15:
Does the axe raise itself above him who swings it? Or the saw boast against him who uses it?
As if the rod were to wield him who lifts it up; Or the club brandish him who is not wood.
The Assyrians who are God’s instrument put themselves above God.
So God punished them for it.
This threatened punishment of Assyria was fulfilled at the time of Hezekiah.
When Assyria sent a blasphemous letter to the king, the king presented it to the Lord.
And we read that 185,000 soldiers were slain by God’s angel.
It was an immense blow from which Assyria never recovered.
The point is that God’s Providence never cancels out our responsibility.
God holds people accountable despite the fact that He controls all things.
God demonstrated that by punishing those through whom He punished Israel.
And because of that there is no longer today an Assyrian nation.
- In God’s punishment of the Assyrians we see that God’s Providence operates in different ways.
When God disciplines Israel He uses a normal historical event:
The rise of another super-power.
When God disciplines Assyria He uses a supernatural means:
An angel from heaven – although it’s possible that the angel struck them with a plague.
God often uses very ordinary means to work out His providence day by day.
But because He does as He pleases, He often works without those means and beyond them.
But whichever way He does it, He does it for the glory and honour of His name.
So what do we do with all this? Why was this recorded by Isaiah for Judah’s benefit.., and for ours?
It was so that we might humbly submit to God’s Providence.
So that we might learn from God’s disciplining hand.
We need to understand that God’s Providence always acts in love for His people.
If God had not used the rod of His discipline on His people they would have perished.
Judah would have become like the Philistines and the Assyrians.
We only read about them in the Bible and in bits of stuff dug up by archaeologists.
Without this discipline Israel would have died out like so many other nations.
Instead a remnant was saved and out of that remnant Jesus was eventually born.
Today I’ve focused on the negative aspect of God’s Providence: God brings good out of evil.
An old Puritan preacher understood that well. He was visiting some older parishioners.
They complained that their adult son had gone off the rails and wouldn’t listen to them anymore.
They asked him to pray for their son.
So he prayed: “Lord, please send this young man lots of problems.
Please, Lord, give him financial difficulties and problems in his relationships.”
Those parents were shocked and interrupted his prayer.
He said to them, “You said he wouldn’t listen to God or to other people anymore.
God can still win him back (as He so often does) through trial and hardship.”
Thru pain and suffering, trial and adversity God often brings His wayward children back to Him.
In fact, thru His Providence in hard time He is moulding us more and more into the image of His Son.
He does that for His glory and praise but also for the eternal wellbeing of us, His people. Amen