Isaiah 36:7: “But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and said to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar’?”

August 30th, 2024 by Pastor Ed in devotional

Here in chapter 36 of Isaiah, we break into a historical section. The speaker in verse 7, Rabsheckiah, was the leader of the Assyrian army, which was coming against Jerusalem. Jerusalem seemed to be in grave danger of falling into the hands of this arrogant general, or field commander, but he greatly underestimated the God of Israel. The good news was that godly King Hezekiah wanted to do God’s will. This verse records the words of the Assyrian general, exposing his complete misunderstanding of Hezekiah’s motive in removing the high places of worship in Israel. The altars Hezekiah had removed were alters to the Canaanite deities and false gods of Baal, Ashtoreth, and Molech.

Long before, God had told His people that in the Promised Land they were to have only one place of worship in Jerusalem. Hezekiah took that command seriously but Rabsheckiah was ignorant, not realizing that Hezekiah was actually obeying God. The field commander was trying to discourage the people in Jerusalem. He wanted to convince them that they had no chance of success, and so they should just give up. This is a very familiar and common tactic used by Satan against believers daily. Hezekiah handled these attacks correctly, giving us a great lesson for how we should respond to similar attacks in our own lives. First, we need to go directly to God and godly people for help and counsel; and second, we need to refuse to get caught up in Satan’s schemes.

In verse 21, Hezekiah commanded his people not to even respond to the enemy, and in the next chapter, Hezekiah went immediately to the temple and to Isaiah the prophet of God. We would be wise to follow Hezekiah’s example of going to God first and refusing to get caught up in an emotional argument with an ignorant skeptic. When it comes to God, most skeptics are people trying to fit God into their own way of reasoning. Many skeptics usually possess an elevated view of their own intellectual capacities. They assume that what does not fit into their own understanding or isn’t perceivable by their five senses, simply cannot exist. God already confronted that ignorance back in Isaiah 55:8–9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts”

“Thank You, LORD, that Your intellect is far beyond any humans, yet You have still condescended to reveal Yourself to any honest human who will inquire of You in Your Word.”