Jacob's Trouble

[Rick Shabi] Pretty soon, we will be observing the Feast of Trumpets. On that day, we will be talking about the meaning of that day and God’s plan. We will be talking about the triumphant return of Jesus Christ to this earth to establish His Kingdom. We will be talking about the resurrection of the dead and the victory over death that Jesus Christ made possible. We will be talking about things the heavens have been waiting for from the foundation of the world – for the time that Jesus Christ will return, and the age of man would be over, and the Kingdom of God would be established on earth forever and ever and ever.

Leading up to that time, we know there is a time of trouble that will befall the nations of Israel, the nations, and really all the whole world before the return of Christ – a time of chaos, a time of confusion and a time of violence that the world has not seen the likes of. You know the history of the world. They have seen some pretty amazing things, in the wrong sense of the word, as far as what people can do and what dictators can do to people. We have people like Adolph Hitler, Genghis Kahn, and Stalin over in Russia, who were just merciless with people, and had no regard for human life at all. Yet the Bible says, and Christ Himself prophesied, before His return, the world is going to descend into that same type of situation and even worse.

Let’s go over to Matthew 24. Of course, this is the Olivet prophecy, and as you progress through chapter 24, Jesus Christ lets us know the type of things that are going to befall the earth, en route to His return. In verse 12, for instance, He says:

Matthew 24:12 – Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will wax cold. It’s going to be a time – a good time economically and, maybe, even peacefully – there will be a time when people will say peace and safety. But lawlessness will abound, and people will depart from the norms of morality and norms of laws that seem natural, and will gravitate to the unnatural and people will become apathetic and complacent and allow those things to happen to them. So He warns us not to do that. In verse 14, He says:

V-14 – The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations and then the end will come. So we live in an age that, for the first time in man’s history, the gospel really can be preached in all the nations – literally all the nations around the world – through the internet and cable TV set-ups that we have today. It is preached and it is available to everyone through that.

Then He talks about the abomination of desolation, fleeing, and the things that we should do. Then down in verse 21 of Matthew 24:

V-21-22 – For then there will be great tribulation – great tribulation – such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. Everything that you have seen, everything that you have witnessed and everything you’ve read about in history books and seen movies about – worse than that – a worse time that what we have seen, as the world sinks into depravity, sinks into violence, sinks into a state of unnatural – or not even natural – affection for one another. And unless those days were shortened – Christ says – no flesh would be saved, but for the elect’s sake, those days will be shortened. So, He says there is a time coming – a tough time – before His return – a time that we have not experienced, or any generation of mankind has experienced.

Daniel prophesied the same thing, if we turn back to the book of Daniel – in chapter 12 – Daniel 12, and verse 1. As you read through chapter 11, you know at the end of the chapter there, it talks about the king of the north, the kings and the powers that will be at that time, and what they will be doing as they enter a time of war. In chapter 12, verse 1, it says:

Daniel 12:1 – At that time Michael shall stand up – the great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people – and there will be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that time – the very same words that Jesus Christ said. There will be a time of trouble coming. But he says: And at that time, Daniel, your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. For the end time. Down in verse 4:

V-4 – But you Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end. Then He tells us what the time of the end will be like: Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase. We all know we live in that age. We can be anywhere we want. We can hop on a plane and be on the other side of the world in less than a day. We can hop in a car and be literally hundreds of miles away in no time at all, comparatively. We can go wherever we want. We can hit on the internet and find references and information we didn’t even know was available 20, 25 years ago. We certainly live in a time that the Bible would describe as a time of the end. We don’t know exactly when Jesus Christ is returning. We don’t know exactly when the great tribulation will begin, but we certainly live in the time that is defined here in the Bible. Down in verse 7, Daniel writes:

V-7 – I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand to heaven and swore by Him who lives forever, that it shall be for a time, times and half a time – 3 ½ years – length for the great tribulation – and when the power of the holy people has been completely shattered, all these things shall be finished – when the power of the holy people has been completely shattered. Nothing left for them to look at. No where they can look and say, “We have power left here,” or “We can do this, or we can do that.” Completely shattered. Now we know the word holy means set apart. People who are set apart for God’s purpose is usually what holy means. Who are these people? Who are these people that are going to endure a time of trouble – a time of trouble worse than anything the world has ever seen?

We can back up to Jeremiah’s prophecy – Jeremiah 30. As we are turning to Jeremiah 30, I will remind you that Jeremiah prophesied after the ancient kingdom of Israel was captive. They had been long gone by the time he was prophesying. So, when we read in Jeremiah’s prophecies about Israel and Judah – he was prophesying to Judah – but when he was talking about Israel, they were already gone. So, his prophecies are for another time. Let’s look at verse 3 of chapter 30 here. It says:

Jeremiah 30:3-7 – “Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “that I will bring back from captivity My people Israel and Judah, says the LORD. Well, that’s never happened. Israel was taken captive and they’ve never come back to their Promised Land. In fact, they’ve lost their identity. They lost everything. But it says, and the prophecy is, the days are coming when they’re going to be brought back. We know it’s not something that has been fulfilled already. It hasn’t happened, but it will happen in the future. I will bring back my people from captivity and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers, and they shall possess it. Now these are the words that the Eternal spoke concerning Israel and Judah – both nations – one already gone, one already part of history, one already carried off captive and someone else was inhabiting the land that God have given them. Thus, says the LORD, “We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear and not of peace” – dread. Something is going on. It is not a peaceful time. It is an awful time. It’s an awful time, further defined by: “Look and see if a man is ever in labor with child. Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins, like a woman in labor, and all faces turn pale? – when I look and see what is going on with them.” When they see what is going on, all the color drains out of their face. It’s a horrible time. It’s something that is ahead of you and me, whether we stay in the church or not. It is not just upon the spiritual people of God, because God has two people we see that He will be working with. We’ve got a physical nation of Israel that God still loves, and that God still says He will bring back to the land that He gave them. And we have spiritual Israel – you and me – the people that God has called, and we’ve received His Holy Spirit, and He is working with as well – both special to God, both set apart to God. Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins, like a woman in labor and all faces turn pale? For that day is great, so that none is like it. It is a time of Jacob’s trouble. Daniel talked about coming time of trouble. It is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he will be saved out of it. A time of Jacob’s trouble.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the Bible, and let’s look at this people that are called Jacob for just a moment. You know, before the world was ever formed, God knew what the history of the earth was going to be. Jesus Christ was going to come. He was going to die for our sins. He knew that Jesus Christ would return. He knew that there would be a Kingdom set up. Jesus Christ prophesied there would be a great tribulation. He knew what the pattern of man would be under the sway of Satan. Back in Genesis – I’m going to actually go to Deuteronomy 33, but I’m just going to remind you of Genesis 49, when Israel – Jacob – was blessing his sons, he said, “This is what will befall you in the latter days.” Moses also talked about the prophesies for Jacobs sons. Let’s look at Deuteronomy 33. We’ll pick it up in verse 13. He goes through all of them here, but let’s pick up on Joseph, because Joseph is different than the rest of the sons here.

Deuteronomy 33:13-17 – And of Joseph he said. “Blessed of the Lord is his land with the precious things of heaven with the dew and the deep lying beneath, with the precious fruits of the sun, with the precious produce of the months, with the best things of the ancient mountains, with the precious things of the everlasting hills, with the precious things of the earth and its fullness.” We have a picture here of the nations that will descend from Joseph – of a beautiful land – a land that is richly blessed, a land that has everything they could possibly want – the riches of heaven, the riches of the earth. They have wealth. They have food. They have plenty. It all comes from God’s hand – a nice place to live, a pleasant place to live – much like where we live today. They have one more thing that is crucial, to their well-being. They have the favor of Him who dwelt in the bush. And you know who it is that dwelt in the bush? It was Jesus Christ. He dwelt in the bush. And this nation, this people – Joseph – have the favor of God. He has rained down His blessings on them. He has made their country possible. He has given them a rich and full life. Let the blessing come on the head of Joseph and on the crown of him who was separate from his brothers – set apart. He was the one who was sold into slavery.  He was the one who was separated from his family. He is the one who served quite a purpose. God was watching him and blessed him. His glory is like a firstborn bull. His horns are like the horns of an ox. Together with them he will push the people to the ends of the earth. They are the ten thousands of Ephraim and they are the thousands of Manasseh. They will be a force on earth. They will be a power on earth. They will be someone that the nations of the world look up to in the latter days. They will have God’s blessing, which will be the main reason they are so blessed and so well-regarded.

Let’s go back to Genesis 48. Here we have the occasion where Jacob – Israel – is going to bless Joseph’s sons. You remember the story, so I won’t go into the details of it, but let’s look at verse 14 of Genesis 48.

Genesis 48:14-16 – Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head, who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh’s head, guiding his hands knowingly, for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph, and said: “God, before whom my father’s Abraham and Isaac walked, The God who has fed me all my life long to this day, The Angel who has redeemed me from all evil, Bless the lads; Let my name be upon them – call them Israel, call them Jacob – these descendants of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh – and let the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, be on them, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. Let them become a great people.

If we drop down to verse 19, after Joseph tries to correct Israel with the hands that were going on, and Jacob knew what he was doing – in verse 19:

V-19 – His father refused – to remove his hands from one head to the other – and said “I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people and he also shall be great, but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.

So, when you read the blessings on the sons of Joseph and the ones whose Jacob’s name was put on, when you read what the prophecy would be – that they would be a great nation in the end time and they would be a great company of nations – it is like reading the history of the America and the British Empire. In the last few centuries, the world has been dominated by the British Empire and America. No nation ever greater in might and wealth than America, they say. No empire greater than the British Empire. God’s blessings would be on these lands in the end time. Those lads that Jacob blessed, they would endure a time of trouble – a time of trouble. There would come a time when He would take the great blessings that He wanted them to have – the blessings that you and I enjoy now – and they would disappear.

Let’s go to the book of Deuteronomy – in Deuteronomy 4. As Moses is counseling, if you will, the people of Israel as they’re about to cross over into the Promised Land, he has some stern warnings for them. He reminds them of what God has done for them. He reminds them to be mindful of the statutes, commandments, and the ordinances that God has given them. He tells them to be careful to observe them all. He tells them that God is going to bless them. He is leading them into a land of milk and honey – a place that is going to be a great land. But there is a warning. Let’s pick it up in verse 23. He says:

Deuteronomy 4:23-31 – Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God which He made with you and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the LORD your God has forbidden you. For the LORD your God is a consuming fire. He is a jealous God. He wants you to only see Him as God. He wants there to only be one God in your life, and that’s Him – not the chief God with other little gods – one God in your life. When you beget children and grandchildren and have grown old in the land, and act corruptly and make a carved image in the form of anything, and do evil in the sight of the LORD your God to provoke Him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you will soon utterly perish from the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess. You will not prolong your days in it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. He is being very specific. If you go away from Him, if you transgress against Him, if you forsake Him, if you forget Him, this is what is going to happen, Israel. This is what is going to happen, people which I have richly blessed – people who I have separated out and called holy people, and want them to be special to the world around them, and an example to the world around them. I will scatter you – make you few in number, and there you will serve gods – the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. You’ll be scattered. You’ll lose it all – all your power, all your wealth, all your advantages – in a strange land many of you did, but you will still be there. But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.  When you are in distress and all these things come before you – notice – in the latter days – when all these things come upon you in the latter days – when you turn to the LORD your God, and obey His voice, He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers, which He swore to them. Even back in Deuteronomy, God was instructing Moses what was going to happen to Israel, even in the latter days. These things were going to happen to them intermittently – the nation of Israel – because they forsook God and were taken into captivity, but in the latter days, the same things will happen. They will be left few in number. But when they turn to God with all their heart and all their mind – not just in words, but with their heart – all of it – they will find Him, and He will bring them back.

Let’s go forward to Deuteronomy 32. This is called the Song of Moses. It has quite a message for Israel then, as Moses said it, and quite a message for us today, because what God says for one generation, He says for all of us. Let’s look at verse 13 of Deuteronomy 32 – speaking of Israel:

 Deuteronomy 32:13-18 – He – God – made him ride in the heights of the earth, that he might eat the produce of the fields. He made him draw honey from the rock and oil from the flinty rock, curds from the cattle and milk of the flock, with fat of lambs and rams of the breed of Bashan and goats, with the choices wheat. And you drank wine, the blood of the grapes. You had it all. You had all the necessities of life. You had all the comforts of life. You had variety. I blessed your land with all these things. Verse 15: But Jeshurun – another name for Israel – Jacob – but Jeshurun grew fat and kicked. You grew fat. You grew thick. You are obese! Then he forsook God who made him, and scornfully esteemed the Rock of salvation. When he became comfortable with just living life, he forgot God.

You know sometimes, we talk about our trials – and we do have trials that confront us – trials of health, trials of finance, trials of relationships, whatever they may be – and in those trials, it drives us to God. And we realize how much we need Him, because some of them we just cannot fix at all. You know what I think is the greatest trial of all? Good times. Good times – when we have plenty, when our jobs are going well, when we have resources at our disposal, when we have food a plenty. We can go wherever we want and do whatever we want. Life is good and we are at peace. We have no one that is challenging us, no one that is watching what we are doing. We are not getting accosted when we go to Sabbath services or the holy days. People don’t persecute us because of what we believe. When times are good, it is easy to forget God, and just go with the flow and forget about Him. That is what happened to Israel here. “I gave you all these things, but you forsook me. When lawlessness abounded, you just kind of went with it. You just kind of thought, ‘Hey times are good,’ and you weren’t paying attention to what was going on.” Verse 16: They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods – they had other things they began to worship. With abominations, they provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to demons, not to God – to gods they did not know. to new gods – new arrivals that your fathers did not fear. Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful, and have forgotten the God who fathered you. We drop down to verse 28 – God goes on through Moses:

V-28 – They are a nation void of counsel, nor is there any understanding in them. Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider the latter end! – that they would pay attention what was going to happen to them in the latter end. How can one chase a thousand and put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had surrendered them? How could one chase a thousand? How could two put ten thousand to flight? We have seen that, in some cases today, haven’t we? It just takes one man in a seat of fifty thousand people, or a hundred thousand people, that are watching a football game. Let someone pull something out and start firing, and you will see how many thousands of people are running because of one man who was there firing a gun. How many would be running if two were there? We see it on around us. Somewhere along the line when a nation forgets God, forsakes Him, He withdraws His blessings and terror begins to be part of what is going on in that country. God says, “Be mindful of what will befall you in the latter end.”

Jacob – the people of Jacob – have been a success story a few times. They were successful and wealthy during the days of the ancient kingdom of Israel. They did exactly what God warned them not to do. They forsook God and they had to go into captivity, and they lost it all. Then in the latter days, the blessings He said would come upon Jacob again have come. The company of nations and the nation have become the greatest that the world has ever seen. But, He says there is a time coming of Jacob’s trouble. Jacob’s trouble – trouble on those nations – not the whole world initially – on those nations, on those people who have forsaken God.

Let’s talk about Jacob’s trouble. Some of the things we talk about may be a little bit disturbing. Why would we even talk about this? There is a reason God gives us prophecy in the Bible. There is a reason He lets us know why things are going to be the way they are, and it is pretty graphic in the details He provides to us. He wants us to remember to continue to follow Him. He wants us to be aware of what is going to come upon the lands of Jacob. He wants us to enjoy the times we have now, but always remember what is going to happen. You know the man, Noah. He was on the earth at a time similar to ours. The world was violent. It was corrupt in all ways and there was one man, Noah, who was righteous in God’s sight. God told him, “You build an ark. There is going to be a flood. I am going to destroy this entire world. This entire earth is going to be flooded. Everyone is going to be wiped out, except for you.” It took Noah a hundred and some years to build that ark. People jeered at him. People mocked at him. He kept building and he kept building, and nothing happened. He watched what was going on around him. He saw people partying. He saw people getting married and being given in marriage. He saw all those things that were happening around him. It was good times. But you know, Noah had total faith and knew God was going to do exactly what He had said He was going to do. He would bring that flood. And I believe that motivated Noah to have faith, and continue to look to God, and be even more committed to Him, even more closely how he was living, even more closely and carefully observing the life God had called him to, not letting down his defenses, not becoming apathetic, not thinking, “Oh, it is far, far off. I’ve got a long way to go before the ark is finished.” But he was even more careful to observe. He was even more careful about what was going on. So today, we could look at what the time of Jacob’s trouble is, and I hope that it makes us think, “We need to be even more careful. We need to be even more aware that we need to stay close to God. We need to even be more diligent in what we do.

Let’s go back this time to Ezekiel – Ezekiel 7. Remember, as you turn to Ezekiel, he is like Jeremiah. He prophesies to Judah and he prophesies to Israel. Israel was long gone by the time that Ezekiel was alive. The ancient kingdom of Israel was gone. So, when he speaks to Israel, it is to Israel of another time, not the nation that had already passed.

Ezekiel 7:1-8 – The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “And you son of man, thus says the Lord GOD to the land of Israel: ‘An end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land. Now the end has come upon you, and I will send My anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways, and I will repay you for all your abominations. My eye will not spare you nor will I have pity, but I will repay your ways, and your abominations will be in your midst. Then you shall know that I am the LORD!’ You’ll know that what I said stands. You will know eventually that I am God. Thus, says the Lord God. ‘A disaster, a singular disaster – something that just happens. The kind that changes the course of history. The type of thing that we might look back on our history and say – like 9/11 – changed the course – a singular disaster that changed the course of history forever. A similar thing happened to ancient Israel that we will talk about in a little bit. A singular disaster. Behold it has come! An end has come. The end has cone. It has dawned for you. Behold, it has come! Doom has come to you, you who dwell in the land. The time has come. A day of trouble is near, and not a rejoicing in the mountains. Now upon you, I will soon pour out My fury and spend My anger upon you. I will judge you according to your ways and I will repay you for all your abominations. There is coming a time to pay the price for the choices that the nation has made and that we personally have made. The time is coming, and God says, “Here’s the disaster.” There will be more disasters. The day of trouble is near.

Let’s go back to Jeremiah 30, and read about Jacob’s trouble in that verse, and see some of the things that God says is going to happen to Jacob during this time of trouble. Jeremiah 30, and verse 8…we just read in verse 7, that it is the time of Jacob’s trouble – there will be no time like it, but he will be saved out of it.

Jeremiah 30:8-14 – “For it shall come to pass in that day,” says the LORD of hosts, “that I will break his yoke from your neck, and I will burst your bonds. Foreigners shall no more enslave them.” So, in the future, Jacob will be in captivity. Foreign powers will have control of the land. God says that when Christ returns, He will break those bonds. Israel will be free again. Jacob will be free again, but in the meantime, their freedom is gone. The land that they cherished is no longer theirs. It belongs to someone else. They lost it because of their actions, their choices, and the things they decided to do – the way they lived their lives – and the way they have forgotten God. But then in verse 9, if you have any doubt that this is a future thing, it says: “But they shall serve the LORD their God and David their king whom I will raise up for them.” There will be a time, when Jesus Christ returns, the first fruits will be resurrected. David will be resurrected. He’ll be king over Israel in that day – in that day when God breaks the yoke off of Jacob and foreigners will no longer enslave them. “Therefore, don’t fear, O My servant Jacob,” says the LORD, “nor be dismayed, O Israel, for behold, I will save you from afar, and your seed from the land of their captivity. Jacob shall return, have rest and be quiet, and no one shall make him afraid.” There will be plenty of fear. There will be plenty of dread. There will be plenty of quaking of minds and bodies. That is what happens to a land that has departed God. But He says, “Don’t fear.” Know that in the end, it’s going to be terrible during the time, but know that God is there. He will not forsake or put an end to all. And He will bring the people back. When He brings them back, they will enjoy peace and quiet in His Kingdom. Verse 11: “For I am with you,” says the LORD, “to save you, though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you… No they won’t be in the land that they grew up in. They will be taken away, just like in the old times – when a foreign power conquered a nation, and took the people, and moved them to another place. Though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, yet I will not make a complete end of you. Oh, there will be casualties. There will be a lot of casualties, but I won’t make a complete end of you, but I will correct you in justice and will not let you go altogether unpunished. You will pay the price for what you do, and what you have chosen, and the way you have lived, and allowed the nation to respond to God in face of the blessings He has given us. Verse 12: For thus says the LORD, “Your affliction is incurable.” It can’t be cured. There is nothing you can do. If we get a health diagnosis, and the doctor says, “It’s incurable,” that would be a daunting thing to hear, wouldn’t it? It is incurable. There is absolutely nothing we can do. God says to Jacob, “Your affliction is incurable. There is nothing you can do.” He goes on and explains. “Your wound is severe. There is no one to plead your cause – no one is interested, no one cares – that you may be bound up. You have no healing medicines.” There is nothing you can look at. You can’t even go to the medicine cabinet and say, “Make this go away. Can I take this? Can I do that? Can I look back to the things I have done?” God says, “No, there is nothing. You are completely alone. You are completely helpless and completely incurable. There is nothing you can look to, except one thing that can get you out of the mess you put yourself into.” Verse 14: “All your lovers have forgotten you” – you thought they were your friends and they were your allies, but they don’t care about you. They kind of laugh. Look what happened to them. What a silly group of people. They had everything and look what’s happened to them. “They don’t seek you. For I have wounded them with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one for the multitude of your iniquities, because your sins have increased.” “I am chastising you and I am using others to do that. There is no one that can help you” – no one, except God. No one, except God, can deliver Israel.

There is something to be said about a time in our lives when there is just no hope – nowhere to look. We can’t go to our bank accounts. We can’t go to our boss. We can’t go to the government. We can’t go to an attorney. We can’t go to a doctor. Only God and have faith in Him – total faith in Him – that He will provide, and He will deliver. That is what Jacob is going to feel. That is what Jacob is going to endure in the time of Jacob’s trouble. And they will learn a powerful, powerful lesson during that time – a powerful lesson, and a good lesson that you and I would do well to learn, too. Don’t look here and there and everywhere, but learn to look to God, who is the only one who can ultimately deliver us.

You know, it talks here about He will punish them at the hands of a cruel one – and there was a time, in ancient Israel’s history, that they were punished by a cruel one. Let’s go back to 2 Kings 18. The Assyrian empire is largely touted to be one of the most cruel and brutal group of people that ever walked the earth. When they conquered people, they abused them terribly. They made sport of how much they could make people suffer, and the things they did were unimaginable. The history books are full of them. Back in 2 Kings 18, Israel fell pray to Assyria, and they conquered the land, and Israel was taken off to another place. And the King of Judah, as soon as the Assyrians began to look their way, you can kind of see the fear in Hezekiah – good King Hezekiah’s manners here – when he’s confronted with this. Let’s look at 2 Kings 18, verse 11:

2 Kings 18:11-16 – Then the king of Assyria carried Israel away captive to Assyria, and put them in Halah, and by the Habor, the River of Gozan, and the cities of Medes. Why? Because they did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed His covenant and all that Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded. They would neither hear nor do them. Isn’t that interesting? They wouldn’t even listen. When Moses and the prophets would tell them, you need to do this, they just kind of closed their ears. “You know what? We’ve heard it all before. We won’t do it. Our life is good. How has our life changed?” They wouldn’t hear it, and they wouldn’t do it. So God said, “You wouldn’t hear or do, then I will do what I said I would.” And in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. Then Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong. Turn away from me. Whatever you impose on me. I will pay.” Now, there is only one reason we would say that right? “I don’t care. I am scared. I am terrified of what you can do. You name your price. Just go away. I don’t want you in my life. I don’t want you in my land. I don’t want to deal with you. I’ll give you whatever you want.” And the king of Assyria assessed Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. So, Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king’s house. At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria. “Here you can have it all. Everything the Lord has given us, you can have it all. Just go away. We know the history of Israel. We know what you did to them. We can’t have that happen to us.” Sennacherib took it all, but he didn’t just go away. He was right back there at his doorstep, threatening, saying, “What happened to these other cities is going to happen to you.” And he taunted Judah and he taunted Hezekiah. Finally, he gave him a letter.

Before I talk about the letter that Hezekiah received, let me read to you something from a website from hopechannel.com that talks about the history of Assyria, and what kind of people they were, and some of the lands they conquered. This is from the part that has to do with ancient Israel. It talks about king Sennacherib, who we just read about, that ruled between 705 to 681 BC. During his reign he campaigned in Palestine to put down a rebellion by Hezekiah, king of Judah. This campaign is described in great detail in the Bible, which specifically mentions his capture of the fortified cities of Judah, including his attach on Lachish. The biblical account has been confirmed by archeology in every detail. The Lachish walls reliefs from Sennacherib’s palace, in Nineveh, portray the battle of Lachish as do the excavations of the city. According to Austin Henry Laird, the excavator of Nineveh, the wall reliefs of Sennacherib’s palace would stretch more than two miles if lined in a row. Included among those reliefs are those depicting the barbaric fileting. You know what that is right? Skinning alive. Can you imagine that? Being skinned alive. Includes the barbaric skinning alive and impaling of Israelite captives of Lachish. But Sennacharib’s wall reliefs and inscriptions also demonstrate that he surpassed his predecessors in the grisly detail of his descriptions – an indication, no doubt, that he literally took Assyrian ruthless cruelty to a new level, if that were possible. Here is an inscription they found. “I cut their throats like lambs. I cut off their precious lives as one cuts a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made the contents of their gullets and entrails run down upon the white earth. My prancing steeds harnessed for my riding, plunged into the streams of their blood as into a river. The wheels of my war chariot, which brings low the wicked and the evil, were bespattered with blood and filth. With the bodies of their warriors I filled the plain like grass.” He goes on with things that are more descriptive and too graphic to read here. You can go online and see the accounts. They say the Assyrian people were just a terrible cruel people. It was just in their blood.

Christ says the time of the end is going to be worse than that. We all know well Adolf Hitler. Christ says that the time of the end will be worse than what he did. We all know Joseph Stalin and heard of Genghis Khan. It is going to be worse than what they did. A time of Jacob’s trouble.

Well, here in Hezekiah’s case, Sennacherib didn’t back off. As evil people do, they will take your money and your riches, but they don’t go away. They just toy with you. In chapter 19, we find a letter comes to Hezekiah, and he knows what the king of Assyria has in mind. He will do to Judah exactly what he did to Israel, and probably even worse, because his game seemed to be, like all the Assyrian kings, “How can I even make it worse than before?”  Hezekiah knows he is no match. His army is no match for Sennacherib. No one has been a match for them. They have just marched through the area back there. Hezekiah gets this letter – verse 14 of 2 Kings 19:

2 Kings 19:14-19 – And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it. And Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD and spread it before the LORD. Then Hezekiah prayed before the LORD, and said, “O LORD God of Israel, the One who dwells between the cherubim, You are God – You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Incline Your ear, O LORD, and hear. Open Your eyes, O LORD, and see. And hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. Truly LORD, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands-wood and stone. Therefore, they destroyed them. Now therefore, O LORD our God, I pray, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are the LORD God – You alone.” As you read on, you see that God honored Hezekiah’s request. Here his back was up against the wall, he had no where else to turn. He couldn’t look at his warriors and say, “We can battle him and have a chance.” He couldn’t look at his treasury. He had already given that all away, and that hadn’t worked. There was nothing left. He was all by himself, and he had nowhere to turn, except to God. That was the one place he needed to turn. God decimated the Assyrians at that time.

You know, when we look at the Assyrians and read some of the things on the internet, and when you read about Hezekiah, you can see the fear in the people that are there. Up until recently, in our lifetimes, we hadn’t seen that fear. But as this website is talking about, today we have seen some of what the Assyrians were able to do to infest fear in their people. When we look at what is going on in Syria, when we look at what was happening with ISIS when ISIS was about power on earth, people would pale in fear. They would use their heinous acts of terrorism to scare people and to petrify them, and it worked. You can read the stories of Iraq, back at the time when ISIS was going there, and the people just fled. They weren’t even going to try, because they were such heinous, heartless and barbaric people they weren’t even going to try and stand against them. So, we can see, in the earth today, some of these things that are beginning to develop and that are out there. ISIS has been a little quiet lately, but they are still there. and certainly the spirit of the Assyrian is still there.

Let’s go back to Ezekiel 6. Remember, Ezekiel, when he is speaking to Israel, is talking to the future, because the ancient nation of Israel is long gone by the time he alive. Chapter 6, verse 1:

Ezekiel 6:1-10 – The word of the LORD came to me saying, “Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them, and say, ‘O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the LORD God! Thus, says the Lord God to the mountains, to the hills, to the ravines, and to the valleys: Indeed, I, even I, will bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places. Well, they had their high places – places they would look to. Today, we have our high places, too. We might not call them high places, but there are cities we look to. We have Washington DC. That is a place people look to. What is the government going to do? How are they going to bail us out? What are they going to do to make this right? We might look to New York City – a financial center – to the stock market. Oh, that’s a high place. Today, we have our own idols, which may not have names and are not carved in stone, but they are certainly there. God says: I will bring a sword against you and I will destroy your high places. Your altars will be desolate, your incense altars shall be broken, and I will cast down your slain men before your idols. They are going to lay right there in the streets. They will be right there – the things that you counted on and the things you thought would save you and deliver you. Your slain men will be laying right there before them. In all your dwelling places – verse 6 – the cities shall be laid waste and all your dwelling places will be desolate, so that your altars will be laid waste and be made desolate. You know, in ancient Israel, the cities weren’t laid waste. They weren’t laid waste. If you go back to 2 Kings 17, you will see when Assyria conquered Israel, they didn’t lay waste to the cities. He took the Israelites out, but he brought his own people in – the people from Babylon and people from other cities. He wanted to inhabit that land. It was a land that was very rich in resources – a land that produced wealth. It was the land of milk and honey. And he wanted them to live there. You can see how they lived there, and how the settled, and how they combined religion in that place – to appease the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and also serve their own gods. So, in ancient Israel, this never happened. In the future, this will happen. We live in a world where, we know today, cities can be laid waste. We know that from World War II. There were cities that were laid waste there – that won the war. How much more powerful today are the weapons that we have? Why do even these small nations want those weapons? Because they know if they can lay waste to a city – if they could have just one – the enormous havoc that they could wreak on a nation. Your idols – He goes on to say – may be broken and made to cease. Your incense altars may be cut down, and your works may be abolished. The slain will fall in your midst and you shall know that I am the LORD. Yet – He says – I will leave a remnant – I will leave a remnant – so that you may have some who escape the sword among the nations when you are scattered through the countries. Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations where they are carried captive, because I was crushed by their adulterous heart, which has departed from Me, and by their eyes, which play the harlot after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evils, which they committed in all their abominations, and they shall know that I am the LORD. I have not said in vain that I would bring this calamity upon them.” “I was crushed that they responded to my kindness and my generosity in that way. They will be destroyed, and they will pay a price, but I won’t completely destroy them.”

Let’s go forward to the book of Amos. Amos did live during the time of the ancient nation of Israel and he prophesied to that nation. They didn’t listen to him either. They turned a deaf ear. They just went on in their own ways and didn’t think what Amos was saying made any difference, just like Judah turned a deaf ear to Jeremiah. Let’s look at Amos 1, verse 1:

Amos 1:1 – The words of Amos who was among the sheep breeders of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. Two years before the earthquake – a singular disaster that was coming upon the nation of Israel. A singular disaster – just like the process that we saw in Ezekiel 7. And he says, “The Lord roars from Zion and utters His voice from Jerusalem. The pastures of the shepherds mourn and the top of Carmel withers.” Are you going to pay attention? Are you listening to what is going on? Are you paying attention to what is going on? A lion roars. Will you heed? Chapter 3, verse 1:

Amos 3:1-2 – Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O children of Israel – against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth. You’re the holy people. You’re the holy people and your power is going to be completely shattered. Therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquities.” God warns first. He doesn’t just bring it on as a surprise without any warning. In verse7, He says:

V-7 – “The Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets. A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?” He has spoken. He has roared. Pay attention, just like you would if a lion was walking the streets.

Move over to chapter 5. Leading up to chapter 5, we have chapter 4, where over and over God sent calamities to various areas of Israel. And He repeats over and over again, “I did this, but you didn’t return to Me. I did this in this area, but you didn’t return to Me. This area befell that, and this area had this disaster on it, but you didn’t return to Me. You just kept doing the things that you kept doing.” Here in chapter 5, He talks about the thing that is kind of daunting when you look at it. Chapter 5, verse 1:

Amos 5:1-3 – Hear this word which I take up against you – a lamentation O house of Israel. The virgin of Israel has fallen. She will rise no more. She lies forsaken on her land. There is no one to raise her up. For thus says the Lord GOD, “The city that goes out by a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which goes out by a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.” There’s going to be a great price to pay. Ninety percent of your people are going to die. Only ten percent are going to survive – that remnant that will not be completely destroyed – but you will pay the price for what you have done. Ninety percent. Those are staggering numbers, aren’t they? Ahead of us, is the time of Jacob’s trouble, where the numbers will be staggering in a land that prides itself on everything it has today – that forsakes God, and thumbs their nose at Him, and who welcomes the foreign gods and the new arrivals more than the God who blessed them and gave them the riches that they have, a land that continually departs and is becoming very much a world of violence, and corruption, and hatred, and division and everything that God doesn’t stand for. Ninety percent.

You can mark down Ezekiel 5 – I think it’s verses 3 and 4, in there. It talks about the same thing. It says Israel, in the future, a third will die of pestilence and a third will die by famine. A third will be taken captive, but I’m going to send a sword out after them, so there will only be a few left. That is what happens. That is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but God says, “I will save you out of it.”

Again, why do we talk about these things? Why did God send Amos to ancient Israel to warn them? Why did He send Jeremiah to Judah? Why did He send Ezekiel, or have him write these prophesies? Because He wants us to turn to Him. He wants us to see the error of our ways. He doesn’t want those things to happen. He wants His holy people. He knows what is going to deal with the physical nation of Israel, but His holy people – that’s you and me. He doesn’t’ want that to happen to us. So, he warns don’t become part of the world. Don’t become like them. Keep your attention on what it should be on.

In Amos 6, you kind of see a picture of the people the ancient nation of Israel was like at the time their end came. Chapter 6, verse 1 – this may seem eerily similar, as we read through this, to the land we live in today.

Amos 6:1 – Woe to you who are at ease in Zion. Wow to you who take it easy and have such wonderful lives. There is nothing wrong with having wonderful lives. There is nothing wrong with having ease, but you kind of let it go to your head – kind of let it tamper with your mind. Wow to you who are at ease in Zion, and trust in Mount Samaria, notable persons in the chief nation, to whom the house of Israel comes! You trust in these things more than Me. You come to your cities, and to your notable persons, and you look to them, but you don’t look to me at all. Go to Calneh and see, and from there go to Hamath the great. Then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms? Or is their territory greater than your territory? God can bring them all low. Woe to you – verse 3 – who put far off the day of doom. Is there any today that might say, “Christ delays His coming. I look at the world around me and I don’t think He is coming. We’ve got time. There is another 10 years. These things can’t develop as quickly as that.” Peter said the same thing was happening in his day. “Jesus Christ delays His coming. I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime.” And it gives them an excuse to just lay back and develop a complacent and apathetic attitude – to just kind of go through life and think, “You know what? When I see these things happening, then I will get close to God, then I will do what is right.” The problem is, Christ says the day of the Lord – when it all happens – it happens suddenly. There is no time for that. He expects us to be watching and He expects us to be paying attention now. Woe to you who put off the day of doom, who cause the seat of violence to come near, who lie on beds of ivory, stretch out on your couches, eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments and invent for yourselves musical instruments like David. You’ve got all this time. You’ve got all these nice things – all these luxuries and comforts of life, in addition to all the necessities. …who drink wine from bowls and anoint yourselves with the best ointments, but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. You are not mourning for what you see going on around you. You are not sighing and crying, as Ezekiel said in chapter 8, for the sins of the nations around you. You are just kind of going along with it. You are kind of enjoying life and not paying attention to what is going on, and not sighing and crying, and not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. Therefore, they shall now go captive as the first of the captives and those that recline at banquets shall be removed. God says, “I’ve seen enough of it. The heart of this people is far from me.” The Lord GOD has sworn by Himself – verse 8 – the LORD God of hosts says: “I abhor the pride of Jacob, and I hate his palaces.

Those are some harrowing words that you read about what God says is going to happen because of the sins of the people – times that you and I well may live through when we see things that could change oh so suddenly. It all happens before what we will picture on the Feast of Trumpets – the return of Jesus Christ to save mankind from himself. As we live with the realization that this will occur, we have a responsibility. In Revelation 12, it tells us that Satan will be cast down to the earth at some time – maybe he has already been cast down. When you look at what is going on in the nation and the world in the last 3 or 4 years, maybe he is already at work. We don’t know exactly when he will be cast down. God says, “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth. Woe to you people when He comes down,” because He’s come down with great wrath. He is going to wreak fury on everyone. But you need to be strong. You need to overcome him. You need to overcome the world by the blood of the Lamb, with His Holy Spirit giving you the strength, the patient endurance to continue on in the face of all these horrible things that we may see, that we wouldn’t forsake God, but instead, we would draw closer to Him, and be ready to do that, because we have been doing that even now, that we don’t become complacent, we don’t become apathetic, thinking that we have plenty of time, that we don’t become dull of hearing as Christ has said so many times, that we listen and we pay attention. Unlike the ancient peoples of Judah and Israel, we hear the word of God, and we pay attention to what is going on. All throughout the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos, the minor prophets, Christ’s prophecy, what God says is, “Turn to Me. Turn to Me. Turn to Me and be aware.” As we head into the fall holy days, let’s all turn to God fully and completely.