The Arrogance of the Axe: God's Sovereignty in a World of Thugs Text: Isaiah 36:1-3
Introduction: Two Kinds of Confidence
We live in an age that is drunk on its own bravado. Our political leaders, our media talking heads, our academic guild, all of them speak with a kind of cocksure arrogance that would make a bronze statue blush. They issue their decrees, they make their pronouncements, they cancel their enemies, and they do it all with the swagger of a man who believes he is the master of his own fate and the captain of his own soul. They believe that history is on their side, that the arc of the universe bends toward their glorious, godless utopia. This is the confidence of the flesh. It is the confidence of loud noises, big armies, and bigger egos. It is the confidence of Sennacherib.
But there is another kind of confidence, a quieter and far more potent kind. It is the confidence of a man who knows that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. It is the confidence of a man who, when surrounded by enemies, does not look at the size of their swords but at the sovereignty of his God. It is the confidence that knows that the most powerful pagan emperor is nothing more than an axe in the hand of the Almighty, a tool to be used for His purposes and then tossed into the fire. This is the confidence of faith. It is the confidence of Hezekiah.
The scene that opens before us in Isaiah 36 is not simply a geopolitical squabble in the ancient Near East. It is a collision of these two confidences. It is a spiritual showdown on the world stage. The Assyrian empire, the cruelest and most efficient killing machine the world had yet seen, has rolled over the northern kingdom of Israel like a tsunami of blood and iron. They have now come to do the same to Judah. From a purely human standpoint, the situation is hopeless. The smart money, the pragmatic choice, would be to surrender, to cut a deal, to bow the knee. But God's people are not called to be pragmatists; they are called to be believers. And in this confrontation, we are meant to see the vast and laughable difference between the blustering pride of man and the settled, unshakable sovereignty of God.
This is not just a history lesson. The same spiritual forces are at play today. The world system, with all its threats and all its seductive promises, stands outside our gates and demands our surrender. It sends its smooth-talking representatives, its Rabshakehs, to tell us that our faith is futile, that our God is powerless, and that resistance is pointless. And we must decide. Will we trust in the heavy military force we can see, or in the unseen God who commands the hosts of heaven?
The Text
Now it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.
And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a heavy military force. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway of the fuller’s field.
Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came out to him.
(Isaiah 36:1-3 LSB)
The Unstoppable Force (v. 1)
We begin with the historical reality on the ground, a reality that seems to leave no room for God.
"Now it happened in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them." (Isaiah 36:1)
The text grounds us in history. This is not a fairy tale. It is the fourteenth year of Hezekiah, which is 701 B.C. Sennacherib is not a mythical bogeyman; he was a real, historical tyrant whose own annals, discovered by archaeologists, boast of his conquests. He was the undisputed superpower of his day. And his actions are decisive: he "came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them."
This is a statement of raw, brute force. One by one, the defensive walls of Judah's cities were breached. Lachish, the second most important city after Jerusalem, was conquered in a brutal siege, a fact Sennacherib was so proud of that he had massive stone reliefs of the battle carved into the walls of his palace in Nineveh. The picture is one of overwhelming, inexorable power. The Assyrian war machine is rolling, and nothing can stand in its way. All the external evidence, all the facts on the ground, point to one conclusion: Judah is finished. Jerusalem is next.
But the believer reads this verse and sees something else entirely. Where is God in this? He is right where He has always been: on His throne, governing all things. Isaiah has already told us exactly what is happening. God is the one whistling for the Assyrians to come (Isaiah 5:26). He has declared that Assyria is the rod of His anger, the staff of His indignation (Isaiah 10:5). Sennacherib thinks he is acting out of his own imperial ambition, but he is merely an instrument, a tool, an axe. And as God will later ask, "Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it?" (Isaiah 10:15). Sennacherib is God's pawn, sent to discipline God's disobedient people. God is sovereignly orchestrating this entire invasion. The first lesson in any crisis is this: the crisis is not out of God's control. The enemy's advance is part of God's plan.
This is a hard truth, but it is the bedrock of our comfort. If Sennacherib is acting on his own, then we are at the mercy of a blind, chaotic world where the biggest bully wins. But if God is sovereignly directing even the rage of pagan kings for His own holy purposes, then we are secure. It means that the trouble has a purpose, a limit, and an end, all determined by our good and all-powerful Father.
The Arrogant Messenger (v. 2)
The military conquest now transitions to psychological warfare. Sennacherib doesn't just want to conquer Jerusalem; he wants to demoralize it into submission.
"And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem to King Hezekiah with a heavy military force. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway of the fuller’s field." (Isaiah 36:2 LSB)
"Rabshakeh" is not a personal name; it is a title, likely meaning "chief cupbearer" or a high-ranking officer. He is the mouthpiece of the king, sent with a "heavy military force" to back up his words. The display of power is meant to intimidate. The message is simple: look at our army. Look at what we did to Lachish. You don't stand a chance.
But notice where he stands. "He stood by the conduit of the upper pool on the highway of the fuller’s field." This is not just a random geographical note. This is the exact same spot where, some years earlier, the prophet Isaiah confronted Hezekiah's wicked father, King Ahaz (Isaiah 7:3). At that very spot, God, through Isaiah, had offered Ahaz a sign to trust in Him against an earlier threat from Syria and Israel. Ahaz, in a display of false piety, refused, choosing instead to trust in a political alliance with, of all people, Assyria. Ahaz bought Assyria's help, and in doing so, he put Judah under their thumb and opened the door for this very invasion.
The sins of the fathers are now being visited upon the sons. Rabshakeh is standing on the very ground where Judah's covenant faithlessness was sealed. He is standing at the scene of the crime. The location itself is a sermon. It is a reminder that faithlessness has consequences. When you trust in worldly power instead of God, that very worldly power will one day turn and devour you. The serpent you tried to tame will always bite. The fuller's field was a place for cleaning and bleaching cloth. Now it is the stage for a confrontation that will determine if Judah will be cleansed by repentance or bleached of all life by the Assyrians.
The Anxious Officials (v. 3)
In response to this intimidating display, the leadership of Judah comes out to parley.
"Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came out to him." (Isaiah 36:3 LSB)
These are the top three officials in Hezekiah's government. Eliakim is the palace administrator, the prime minister. Shebna is the royal secretary. Joah is the official historian. They represent the full weight of the Judean civil government. They come out to meet the threat, to hear the terms, to engage in diplomacy.
We see here the apparatus of the state functioning as it should. They are not hiding behind the walls. They are facing the enemy. And yet, we know from the subsequent account that they are terrified, as any sane man would be. They are about to be hit with a torrent of blasphemous propaganda designed to strip them of every last shred of hope.
This is the position the church often finds itself in. We are confronted by a hostile power that seems to hold all the cards. It has the armies, the institutions, the media, the microphone. And we are called to send our representatives out to the fuller's field, to the public square, to the contested ground, and to stand. We are not to cower. We are to face the Rabshakeh of our age. We are to listen to his taunts, not so that we might believe them, but so that we might know precisely what idolatrous worldview we are up against.
Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah walk out to meet the Assyrian. They are walking into a spiritual battle. Rabshakeh's strategy will be to attack their confidence on four fronts: he will mock their trust in Egypt, their trust in God, their trust in their military, and their trust in their king. It is a full-spectrum assault on their faith. And as we will see, their initial response will be a quiet, dignified refusal to get into a shouting match with a blasphemer. They will take his words, not into their own hearts, but into the presence of their king, and ultimately, into the presence of the King of Kings. This is the pattern for us. We face the world's taunts, we listen to its lies, and then we turn and take it all to God in prayer, knowing that the battle is not ours, but the Lord's.