Before we make a start into the questions, let’s consider the geopolitical context. Geographically, we have Assyria to the North, several nations and cities, including Ashdod, Israel, Assyria, in the sort of middle, and Egypt and Cush to the South. Historically, these events occur from 714 to 711.
At this time, Assyria is one of the dominant superpowers of the day. It was described in Isaiah 18:2 as a nation “mighty and conquering”. During this time, Egypt and Cush were also superpowers in their own right. They had been, for about 4 years before Ashdod’s fall, inciting the western Palestinian states – i.e. the states between them in the south and Assyria in the North – to rise up against Assyria. To do so, they had promised that they would come to the aid of these nations. Ashdod was one of the cities that allied with Egypt and Cush to do so. It was Philistine city, and its name meant “stronghold”.
In the year 711, Sargon II, who is recognized as one of Assyria’s most powerful kings, decided to send his commander-in-chief, the head of his entire army, to stamp out this rebellion. They fought against it and captured it.
This forms the context of our passage today.
(A) The God of Geopolitics: He speaks strategically through events and servants (Isa 2-:1-3)
God tasks Isaiah with the sign against Egypt and Cush “at that time” of the year that the Assyria’s commander-in-chief conquered Ashdod (Isa 20:1-2). In Isaiah 20:2, we are told that Isaiah had to loose the sackcloth from his waist, take off his sandals and walked naked and barefoot. Isaiah appears to do this for three years (Isa 20:3) and when Ashdod falls, the LORD explains this prophetic act.
The fall of Ashdod would have evoked worry in the surrounding nations. They were aware of Egypt’s promises to Ashdod and had probably received similar offers of help if they would rise up against Assyria. When Ashdod fell, they probably would have wondered, “where were Egypt and Cush?” “Why did they not keep their promise to help?” “How powerful must Assyria be to have captured the stronghold Ashdod?” “Can we still put our trust in Egypt?” “If not, who else?” The nations would have wondered if they were next and would be filled with confusion and worry.
From these verses, we see that God observed specific geopolitical details. He knew about the actors, their motivations, the balance of powers. 3 years before a historical event, he set in motion a prophecy that would use the event as a presentational aid, to emphasize a point. Is this your view and understanding of God? Or do you only relegate his sovereignty to “ultimate things” like death, and heaven, and hell? When it comes to day-to-day matters like difficulties at work or school, interpersonal struggles, do you think that God does not see or care and that you, or someone else, is the decision-maker, the sovereign. No wonder such difficulties evoke such shock and worry in our lives when we hold such a view of God and our world.
We often forget that He sees and has ordained each day our lives before we were born, knows the hairs on our head, and our rising and lying down. He has promised that He works all things for our good.
Let’s go back to Isaiah 20:2. God tasked Isaiah to loose the sackcloth from his waist and remove the sandals from his feet, leaving him to walk naked and barefoot. He did so for a total of three years. It is easy to skim past these verses and make a beeline for God’s explanation, but pause and consider how God allowed Isaiah to do something so visual and embarrassing for three years before explaining its meaning.
What would the 3 years have looked like? Now, Isaiah could have been but was not probably not completely naked for three entire years. It is more likely that he would periodically strip and walk around barefoot. Yet, no explanation accompanied this act for 3 long years.
How would his observers’ reactions have changed over time? At the beginning, there would have been some degree of shock, confusion, and even indignation. Walking around without one’s clothes on was hardly behaviour that was expected from a prophet. Perhaps the people eagerly anticipated a prophetic explanation. But as time passed, a month, another month, then six months, a year, two years, and still no explanation in sight, people would have gradually moved on. Perhaps they wrote off Isaiah as a madman rather than a prophet. Perhaps their patience wore thin and they could no longer be bothered.
What if we were in Isaiah’s shoes? Would we have expected to wait for three years before receiving an explanation from God? Friends, we will often not understand why God does what He does, at least not while we are on this side of heaven. When we experience failure, hurt, disappointment, and we do not understand why, our natural reaction would be like that of Isaiah’s observers: we may doubt that He is really sovereign over what’s happening, we may become impatient with Him, we may believe that He is a madman who exercises power capriciously. But just as God had a clear and sound purpose for Isaiah’s prophetic act, God also has a clear and sound purpose for the events of the world and our lives. While we may not understand the multitude of God’s purposes, He has graciously explained the ones that really matter. He means for our good: to make us Christlike, to burn away our dross.
We should also pause to think about Isaiah’s role. In thinking about what it is, it is also helpful to think about what it is not. Isaiah is not the politician making strategic decisions about alliances, military expenditure and organisation, etc. He is uninvolved in the power play between Cush, Egypt, the coastlands, and Assyria. Yet, he ended up communicating a message that had a greater impact on the outcome of these events than any of those we would humanly consider “decision-makers”. He received a command from God and obeyed.
See also that what qualified Isaiah in this instance was not his intellect, connections, or position in society. What qualified him was that God had given Him a message. His response was to faithfully convey that message despite the cost. For three years he would endure the shame of walking naked and barefoot before his community without having an explanation to provide them.
Isaiah’s example could apply to our evangelism today. What qualifies us is what qualified Him: That God has given us a message and commissioned us to bring it to others. What it may cost us is what it cost him: Shame. People may think us silly, or even crazy. We may be rejected, ostracised. Our friends may despise and forsake us. They make take offence at or reject the Gospel itself. Or they may recall our past failures and sins and judge us for thinking ourselves worthy of sharing the gospel.
In the complicated world that we live in with personal, local, and global “geopolitics”, it can be easy to fall into two unbiblical extremes: That we are the captains of our fates, and the fates of the world, and that we are so small that nothing we do ultimately matters. Neither is true. Isaiah shows us that we do not captain the world’s fate, but yet, at the same time, what we do ultimately matters more than the all of the world’s pursuits because the message we bear from God is of eternal importance.
What would our lives look like if we grasped and believed this? How would it influence our academic and career pursuits? Would those A’s and that dream job which took up all waking hours still be as attractive? What about our self-image? Would failures at work, school hit us as hard? How would we spend our time? Would using all our free time to have fun in the here and now still be as exciting when we know eternity looms? How would it influence our relationships with our friends, families, and colleagues? The message we carry changes everything. It frees us from striving for our own achievements and grounds us in true and lasting purpose.
(B) The God of Geopolitics: He graciously warns us not to trust in human plans (Isa 20:3-6)
When Ashdod fell, Isaiah’s observers would have naturally expected that that was the situation Isaiah’s acts prophesied. What a shock it must have been for them to discover that Isaiah was not merely prophesying Ashdod’s fall, but he was warning them about the fall of Egypt and Cush (Isa 20:3-4).
Ashdod’s fall lent credibility to Isaiah’s prophecy. If Isaiah’s prophecy stood alone, his observers may have scoffed at the idea of a superpower like Egypt and Cush being so utterly destroyed. But the fact that Isaiah’s act accompanied Ashdod’s fall prevented them from dismissing him offhand. For Isaiah’s explanation to accompany Ashdod’s fall, God must have known beforehand that Ashdod would fall, revealing that He is a trustworthy predictor of the future and that Isaiah was speaking on His behalf.
This warning through an extended act and surprise revealed that God intended His message as a gracious warning. When the nations turned to Egypt, He could have simply stayed silent or given a verbal prophecy through Isaiah. Yet, He took care and intention to convey His message in a way that would invoke faith.
The surprise subject of the prophecy also revealed that God intended to cut straight to the heart of the matter. The main issue was not what the observers believe: that Ashdod had fallen, or that Egypt and Cush had failed to honour their promise to Ashdod. That would have left the observers wriggle room to believe that they could still put their trust in Egypt and Cush and receive a different fate. Instead, God made it very clear that the real problem was trusting Egypt and Cush at all: Egypt and Cush would be shown incapable of protecting anyone at all, including themselves. They themselves would be utterly defeated. The prophecy addressed the very root of the people’s false hopes, rather than only its fruit.
This teaches us that God’s Word diagnoses our true condition. When life lets us down, a variety of explanations come to mind. We’re sad cause we did not get the grades or job we wanted and we think that problem is that we did not work hard enough. Someone we trusted let us down and we think that the problem is that we were not more careful with who we trusted. And so we strategise, scheme, plan, execute, and AAR. We, like the nations who hope and boast in Egypt and Cush, think it’s a matter of geopolitical strategy. But God our graciously warns us: our problem is not mistaken strategy but misplaced hope and false boasts in things that will ultimately fail.
What happens to Egypt and Cush and how will the hearers of Isaiah’s message react? We see how “… the king of Assyria [shall] lead away the Egyptian captives and the Cushite exiles” (Isa 20:4a). The King of Assyria defeats the Egyptians and Cushites conclusively. They are held captive and removed from their homeland. Both the young and old are taken, highlighting how complete this loss will be as even the vulnerable will not be spared (Isa 20:4b). They will also be “naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered” (Isa 20:4c), showing us how the people will be ashamed, dishonoured, and uncomfortable.
Lastly, God also speaks of “the nakedness of Egypt” (Isa 20:4d). It is not merely that the people of Egypt are naked. It is that the very concept of Egypt – of it being a superpower, a rival to Assyria, a bastion of hope and a reliable ally – has been proven a sham.
The hearers of the message will have their worlds turned upside down, as can be seen in the reversal of the language: Their hope will become dismay, and their boast will become shame. These hearers looked to the superpowers Egypt and Cush as their hope and boast against Assyria. They fled to them for help to be delivered from Assyria’s king.
If Egypt and Cush, who were the superpowers of the day, had fallen, the obvious conclusion was that they had no hope. The modern equivalent would be like if Russia conquered the United States. Ukraine would be utterly terrified.
Such a conclusive, complete, and shameful image of the fall of a superpower must have stunned the original hearers (c.f Isa 20:6)! When we read of the clash of superpowers, we expect to read about the major fights, the D-Days, the heroic feats of personal valour. But God jumps straight to the conclusion — he skips over the strong men charging in to battle to depict the young and old walking away in captivity. We learn that God is ultimately in charge of the conclusion of geopolitics and history. However many fights, alliances, whatever the politicking, whatever the sizes of the armies or the efficacy of the sanctions, it does not matter for God decides what happens. As it says in Proverbs 21:31, “the horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD.”
This should remind us of what the LORD’s day will look like. On that day, all the false hopes and boasts will burn away in a flash as we stand before the Lord of all the Earth and give an account for our lives. All the glorious battles of our lives – our academic and business conquests – will suddenly seem irrelevant in light of the eternal conclusion that we face. If we have hoped and boasted in anything but God, we will be disappointed.
Let us also not overly distance ourselves from the inhabitants of the coastland. Most of us are probably do not think of ourselves as chasing wealth or status as hopes or boasts, and we may think that we are therefore alright. But we are really not too different from the inhabitants of the coastland. They were not chasing status, they were afraid of being conquered by Assyria: afraid of dying, of being exiled, of going hungry. These were rational and serious worries, yet, the fact remained that their hopes and boasts in Egypt and Cush were false.
Do you find it difficult to never hope and boast in the wrong things? When faced with fears, struggles, anxieties, we often turn to hopes and boasts that are not God. In the face of our sin, we turn to good deeds. In the face of failure at work, we turn to avoidance or overwork. We may give ourselves excuses: we are merely avoiding harm and not seeking worldly pleasure. It is ok to do these things because we are sad, we are afraid. But Isaiah warns us that these hopes and boasts will fail us.
For all our lack of trust in God and for turning to manmade things, we deserve to experience our hope turn to dismay, and our boast turn to shame. The natural conclusion for our trust in anything other than God should be to be led away as captives and exiles, naked, ashamed, defeated. God is gracious by telling us in advance that our false hopes and boasts will fail us. Remember how this prophecy was explained in 711, but Egypt was only conquered in 671. For 40 years, this prophecy was meant to remind Judah, and the other listeners, not to place their trust in Egypt because it would fail. The people had ample time to hear, repent, and place their trust in God instead. This warning is also not the first or last warning He gives to His people.
God’s grace goes beyond warnings. He has also provided for our forgiveness and redemption from slavery and shame. He did so through Jesus Christ. Even though Jesus perfectly trusted God from the beginning of His life to its end, He died the death of one who had turned away from God. He was led away as a captive, exiled outside the city gates of Jerusalem, and bore the shame of hanging naked on the cross. Hebrews 12:2 tells us that He endured that cross, despising its shame. He did so that we, who have repeatedly turned away from God to hope and boast in so many other things, might be forgiven, redeemed from slavery, and seen as righteous. When we see Him on that cross, suffering, shamed, we are warned of the cost of continuing to reject God in favour of our own hopes and boasts. We also see His great love.
May we respond to the grace of our God through Jesus Christ with repentance and faith. May He and His cross be our only hope and boast.