Dennis Tuuri

in the past, can we bring it into our time of rejoicing? And that song is so appropriate for our text today, as you’ll see as we develop it. The text today is found in Isaiah chapter 8. The handout you may be confused—there are two sermon outlines. I’m not preaching two sermons. Well, not these two sermons. Today’s maybe as long as two, but I don’t know. Hopefully not. But the second sermon outline is from some months back.

And you’ll see as we read through the text that once more, as it is so often focused on in the scriptures, the fear of God is to be what we’re really to be fearful of, not the fear of man. And so, I thought it’d be good, you know, I know some of you take these outlines home, use them in your family worship times or personal devotion times, and might be good to review the psalm that we talked about in terms of the fear of the Lord.

So, that’s why it’s there. But the first page is the actual outline for today’s sermon. I’m going to read in Isaiah 8 beginning at verse 11 and then read a little further than the actual text, verse 15, to sort of fill it out a little bit more. So please stand for the reading of God’s word beginning at Isaiah 8, verse 11.

By the way, before I get started here, as you’re turning to Isaiah 8, I’m actually in Isaiah now in the King’s Academy Bible class. This year we’re looking at the Old Testament prophets and then Revelation. And a reminder to everyone that class is free for kids—it’s from 10:05 to 10:50, Tuesday through Friday. And a new term starts up after the first of the year, which would be a particularly good time to join in.

But the book I’m using is useful and so this stuff from Isaiah is fresh in the minds of the King’s Academy students and in my mind as well. So in Isaiah 8, verse 11:

For the Lord spoke thus to me with a strong hand and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying, “Do not say a conspiracy concerning all that this people call a conspiracy, nor be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.

The Lord of hosts, him you shall hallow. Let him be your fear. Let him be your dread. He will be as a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the house of Israel, as a trap and snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble. They shall fall and be broken, be snared and taken. Bind up the testimony. Seal the law among my disciples, and I will wait on the Lord who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.

Here am I and the children whom the Lord has given me. We are for signs and wonders in Israel, from the Lord of Hosts, who dwells in Mount Zion. And when they say to you, “Seek those who are mediums and wizards who whisper and mutter, should not a people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony. If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for your word. Thank you, Father, for the wondrous times in which we live this side of the coming of Jesus Christ and his enthronement as Son of God, ruler of all the worlds. And we thank you, Father, for the history and progression of the Christian church for the last 2,000 years. And we look forward with great anticipation to see your wondrous ways work themselves out in our personal history and on into the generations to come.

We bless your holy name, oh Holy One of Israel. And we pray now that you would help us, Lord God, by this word and by your Spirit to rejoice in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Turn us from the fears that are improper and turn us back to a proper fear of you. In Jesus’s name we ask it, and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated.

So I’m kind of popping out of the frying pan into the fire. Today I have decided to talk some in the next couple of months about this cross of life that I mentioned from Peter Leithart’s ministerial conference talk and how we’re sort of stretched on a cross and what God wants is a mature people.

Immaturity focuses either on the past too much or on the future too much. It focuses inside our family, inside the church too much or outside of the families, outside of the church too much. And what we’re trying to do is have a proper balance as we move into the new year between past and future, between inner and outer. And so a church must have a vibrant community life. It must also have a strong outreach to the community and invite others into the feast that is Lord’s Day worship, to the wonderful celebration of life.

And in the context of our community, I’m trying to address some issues, all tenderly, gently, hopefully carefully, pastorally, that have a possibility of troubling us. And there are different perspectives in the context of our church on a whole wide range of issues. And that’s a good thing. That’s my point. The point about inside and outside, past and future, is that a mature church has lots of perspectives on lots of issues, all of them godly, all trying to bless God.

And last week, we began by talking about a specific issue—that relationship of our currency. Is it sin to use something other than gold-backed currency? And I made very clear, I hope, that it’s my view that it is not sin. But I also want to make quite clear today that what I’m talking about is not saying you shouldn’t care about currency. I’ve listed some books here.

Couple, one of these I mentioned last week: Economics, Money, and Banking by E. C. Hebdon Taylor. In the early years of this church, most of the men read it. It’s a very good book and you will find in Taylor’s work strong encouragements to a gold-backed currency. So, I hope nothing I said last week tries to prejudice the discussion of whether we think it’s wisdom or not to have a gold-backed currency. What I tried to say is that when we say it’s sin for someone to have something other than gold-backed currency, I cannot make a case for that in the scriptures.

I can make a case for the description of the use of money in the scriptures being gold. That’s the case Rushdoony makes. But he then goes on to make some assertions about how that should be what we do always and I simply can’t make that case. And there’s good reasons to think that maybe things will change. But I want to recommend Taylor’s book to you. I think there’s a sense in which, as we live between past and future, there is to a certain degree a privileging of the past that’s necessary. We don’t cut all ties to the past and in a way, modern forms of currency and particularly even after going off the gold standard, fractional reserve banking is certainly way out there in the thin ice somewhere in terms of the past and what’s happened to economies that have done this.

So I’m not trying to prejudice debate. I think in certain circles this is an important topic. But you know, that’s probably a more important topic for men who actually apply themselves to dominion, get education, get placed in the halls of government and can make more decisions about these kind of things. For the rest, it’s okay. So I didn’t want to unnecessarily say or have you think somehow that these conversations shouldn’t go on.

They must go on in a proper Christian way. But immaturity tends toward legalism—taking what seems good to me and making it a law for everybody else. Maturity lives in this crosslike tension between past and future, inner and outer, and accepting a wide variety of methods of getting at the same end. And in this case, it’s to honor God with our finances.

I also mentioned this book by William Silber: When Washington Shut Down Main Street. This is a book, a modern book, that explains the origins of the Federal Reserve system. So, those of you that are interested in Federal Reserve system particularly, this is a book that will be in our library.

This is E. C. Hebdon Taylor’s book, Economics, Money, and Banking. I knew a man once, years ago, said that there are only three men in America—T. Robert Ingram, R.J. Rushdoony, and E. C. Hebdon Taylor—who knew how to rebuild a culture if the whole thing went down overnight. You know, I’m sure that’s not the case since all these men are now dead. It better not be the case. But having said that, these were great men. These were giants and these men’s work should be read. And while we may not agree with everything in them—I don’t agree with everything Taylor says—his book is excellent, and I want to commend it to you.

Today I referenced this book and this is kind of a segue. This book is to today’s topic: This Is a Conspiracy: A Biblical View. I think it was “None Dare Call It Conspiracy” at one point in time, but in this version it’s “Conspiracy: A Biblical View,” by Gary North. He talks about what he thinks is the great problems with gold-backed currency—the failure to have a gold-backed currency—and he talks about the Federal Reserve system in the context of conspiracies.

So, but still, it’s a good book. North brings some very good balance to an understanding of conspiracies of men and how they work and how much we should fear them and how much we shouldn’t fear them. And that’s what today’s text is about. He references in this book a little booklet called What Has Government Done to Our Money? written by Murray Rothbard, published by the Foundation for Economic Education.

Now, these were Austrian hard money economics guys who weren’t particularly Christian. And North’s basis for this is not necessarily a Bible-based admonition that we must have gold-backed money, but it’s a particular economic perspective. And if we understand that, then we can have conversations about it hopefully in an adult and mature way, without saying it’s sin not to have gold-backed currency. It is certainly not based on the scriptures—certainly not the laws that we looked at last week.

So we want to talk today about another issue and I want to talk about this issue because in any church today I think you’re going to have a subset of the population of the church who are pretty given to conspiracy theory thinking. And that’s because in our country at large, I think somewhere 15–20% of the people, I think, believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy.

I’ve heard that 50% of the people in New York City want to reopen the 9/11 commission to look into various kinds of conspiracies as to what was really going on. And there’s a reason for this.

The historical context for Isaiah’s admonition to not get hung up in the panic or terror of the moment in terms of conspiracy theories—I’d list on your outline point number one: the historical context of Isaiah 8.

We always want to see the context, and in Isaiah 8, there’s particular things going on and I’d list them in reverse order here. So, in 587, the Babylonian captivity will begin. The temple will be taken apart. The articles of furniture will be taken into captivity. Daniel will go into captivity in this period of time. The fall of Jerusalem happens in 587 BC. But prior to this, the Assyrians—the Babylonians are later—they conquer, but the Assyrians had also besieged Zion. That’s number two: had Zion surrounded.

And as you read the Old Testament prophetic books, many of them talk about this period of time, particularly Isaiah, when Jerusalem is left as a hut in a cucumber field—in other words, all of Judah—Sennacherib will basically conquer and he’s at the gates of the city. And the heart of Isaiah is the prayers of Hezekiah in the temple that turn away God, who then miraculously delivers them from the Assyrian Sennacherib’s army. And the Assyrians are turned away and they’re saved. But God will then come along, you know, some years later, and take them away through the Babylonian Empire.

So this is described in Isaiah 36 and 37, and 2 Kings 18–19. So in 701, much of Isaiah points to that period of time—Sennacherib’s invasion and surrounding Zion. But prior to this was the death of Israel 20 years prior to that. The northern kingdom had died. The prophetic books—we can look at them for calls of reformation and sort of turn and repent and “you’ll live” and that kind of stuff. But the primary message I believe of the Old Testament books is that Israel will die, Judah will die, and then God’s people will be resurrected in the restoration—all pointing to the death of Christ, the true Israel, and his resurrection.

And so the northern kingdom is taken into captivity by the Assyrians. They threaten the southern kingdom, surround the city. God delivers them. They’re later taken into captivity by the Babylonians. So, these are times of judgment—the point. Massive judgment. We’ll see all of Judah, even the holy city on Mount Zion, taken into captivity by the Babylonians and nearly taken into captivity by the Assyrians. And even prior to this, the death of the northern kingdom in 722 are events that this text addresses in Isaiah 8.

Prior to those things happening, we have a Syro-Ephraimite federation in 735 to 733. The Assyrians are in control and Syria will join in confederation with Ephraimites—which is another name for the northern kingdom. So basically, Israel in the north will become confederate with Syria and try to shake off Assyrian rule from the north. And God’s head is in Assyrian rule. And so he doesn’t take kindly to this.

And what they do is they also invade Judah. They also invade the southern kingdom. And that’s what he’s talking about here. So there’s this conspiracy—a federation that’s formed in the north between Syria and the northern tribes, essentially. And they will make war upon Judah for skirmishes at least, in their attempt to get them to become part of the confederation against Assyria.

So these are very difficult times. This entire period of time is one of great judgment, trials, people being killed, villages ravaged, women raped. You know, it’s wartime. It’s life in wartime and it’s life under great judgment. And what happens in periods of time of great judgment is real conspiracies are plotted.

So there are real conspiracies, and on your outline I list a couple of places that talk about real conspiracies—conspiring against people. So conspiracies are real. The point of Isaiah 8 is not, you know, “forget conspiracies are not real.” The fact is they are real, and in the time of judgment there are a lot of conspiracies afoot. A lot of people are conspiring and making plans together.

The word for conspiracy here means most basically to bind together or tie something together. It can be used—the same word—of any kind of human federation. But in Isaiah 8, the word is definitely a federation of men with treasonous intent. And it’s used this way in other texts and I list them on your outline here. We won’t bother to look up the texts. But the idea is that there are real conspiracies in these times of judgment and men are conspiring together with treasonous purposes and they are real in the scriptures. And the scriptures go out of their way to describe various conspiracies to us.

In Jeremiah 11:9, for instance, we read: “The Lord said to me, ‘A conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah, among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They have turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers who refused to hear my words and they have gone after other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers.’”

So ultimately, one of the conspiracies that God describes is that in these times of judgment, the judgment is there because men are in essence conspiring against Yahweh. And specifically in these times we’re describing, that leads them to seek help from Egypt or from the Assyrians, form alliances and federations that really God wouldn’t want them to form.

So conspiracies are real. They’re real things. Gary North in his book on conspiracy—A Biblical View—says, you know, well, of course there are conspiracies. The beginning of the fallen human race is a conspiracy on the part of Satan to get people to follow him and not God. It’s treason against God the Father that Satan tries to spawn. And so the world, North says, of course, is one long conspiracy being hatched by Satan and by various men.

In Romans 1, men suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. They form conspiracies to describe what’s going on in ways other than seeking a godly explanation for them. So we have real conspiracies going on, and in a time of judgment there are also imagined conspiracies that may not be going on.

Bernard Lewis’s book on Islam—What Went Wrong?—I think it might be at our church library. It’s an excellent book. You know, if you go to a Muslim state, if you go to Egypt or Saudi Arabia and you pick up their version of the New York Times or the Oregonian, you would be amazed because what you’ll find within a few pages and frequently on the front page are various conspiracy theories about what the Mossad, what the Israeli intelligence, the Americans are doing. And usually it’s the Israelis—talking about the Mossad, the secret service and the secret spies of Israel.

And of course, they probably did do some things. But the Muslim world in the Middle East is awash in conspiracy theories. It is—it’s comical, were it not so sad and dangerous. It’s almost comical. And Lewis says, “You’ve got to understand the historical context. The Ottoman Empire was great. And when the Ottoman Empire is broken up in the context of World War I and goes into decline, and now the Muslims have been in horrible shape for a long time—actually going back way before that—the Muslims ask themselves, ‘What went wrong?’ And rather than saying, ‘We went wrong,’ you know, rather than that Pogo moment where ‘I met the enemy and it’s us,’ they say, ‘Somebody else did it.’

Rather than point to God judging them, rather than accepting responsibility, the human tendency is to say, ‘Somebody else did it to me.’ And so the Muslims say, ‘Somebody else did it. The Shia did it to the Sunnis. The Sunnis did it to the Shia. The Jews did it to all of us. Now the Americans are doing it.’ Conspiracy theories—imagined ones, not real.

But the paranoid mind is what develops in a time of judgment. And Lewis in his excellent book talks about that in terms of the Middle East. And as I said, in Romans 1, men suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.

There’s a movie on the internet, big in the patriot movement, called Zeitgeist. And this is a conspiracy theory movie. The middle third of it is all about how 9/11 was a conspiracy. The last third is all about the Federal Reserve system, the international bankers, World War I, World War II. The reason why we have perpetual warfare is because that funds the international bankers and it’s a conspiracy to enslave the entire world through debt and to increase their holdings. And so this is a conspiracy theory movie. It’s very popular amongst patriots.

Why? Well, what they do in the middle section on 9/11—they say, “Well, look at these strange coincidences. This happened and this happened and building 7 went down and wasn’t attacked and this thing happened. And isn’t this odd?” This man said he heard several explosions. And they put together a few unrelated events and they look odd, and the human mind says there’s some intelligence behind this.

And now a Calvinist would say, “Yeah, duh.” You know, God is the great conspirator. He’s predestinating everything for the well-being of his people and for judgment to nations that ignore him. And so we would see that. But if you—but if you’re suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness, and bad things happen in your country because you’re moving into judgment, you’re going to tend to have a rapid growth in conspiracy theories.

And so this is common in America. And unless America turns and repents, judgment will increase—God’s judgment upon us. It seems obvious that’s still going on. And as judgment increases, conspiracy theories will abound.

Each of you, many of you have already been contacted by something or somebody or some internet site trying to tell you that it’s all a conspiracy by the American government—9/11 or by somebody else. And if you haven’t had that conversation yet, you will in the course of your lifetime because we live in similar times to Isaiah 8. We live in times of actual conspiracies and we live in times of judgment from God that men ascribe conspiracy theories to, to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.

You see, we don’t want to admit that God is judging us. So we say men are conspiring against us. And of course, when we do that, when we assign the cause to the wrong entity, our cure will be wrong.

Amen. We ascribe it to men. Well, how are we going to fix it? We’re going to work in terms of men. If we ascribe it to God, then Isaiah 8 does say that—ascribe it to God. Then we know we got to get it right with him. So we’re working indirectly against the real conspiracies by linking up with God and seeing what he’s doing in our lives and responding in repentance to him.

I have a quote here that my brother Mike first told me. I thought he had made it, but I looked it up on the internet. There’s a guy named Brian—well, there was a guy. He died in a car crash in 2003. Brian Downing Quig. He said that “paranoia is the cutting edge of the realization that all things are connected.” Paranoia is the cutting edge, the beginning cutting edge, the realization that everything—all things are connected.

And you know, in a time of judgment, God is writing in pretty big letters: “Dorothy, go home. Repent.” He’s connecting dots for us. But we don’t want to recognize that. We begin to realize that all things are connected. And instead of ascribing them to God, we ascribe them to men’s conspiracies. And then we become like Brian Downing Quig, who was like that character in the Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory.

And in fact, the notice of his death—let’s see where—the Arizona public, December 5th, 2003. The title on the newspaper article: “A Simple Car Accident or Was It?” That’s the name of the article describing his death. So see, and that’s kind of so—he promulgated this idea that everything’s connected and conspiracy theories, et cetera.

Found another interesting quote by William Lyon Phelps: “The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century.” Fear of life—the favorite disease of the 20th century. As men reject God and life in him, they become subject to death and then they ascribe that death to various conspiracy theories.

So I’m preaching this sermon today both in light of our own community here in peace and in the community and also to prepare you for the broader community as it continues to evidence conspiracy theories.

God says in a time when you live in a time like Isaiah 8—and you don’t always, but we do—in a time where real conspiracies and a panic and a fearful looking at all kinds of imagined conspiracies, God says it’s quite important to get things straight. Get things straight.

Zeitgeist is causing quite a commotion. You can see it on YouTube. I think it’s also a website called zeitgeist.com. It’s all over the place. It’s very high production values. And I’ve mentioned already the last two-thirds of the movie. And there are people—many people in the Christian church, conservative, patriotic types—who will watch Zeitgeist, the last two-thirds, and say, “Well, that makes pretty good sense. That makes sense linking these things up.” And they’ll look for real conspiracies.

And the interesting thing about Zeitgeist is that the first third of the movie applies the same analysis techniques that they did to 9/11 and Federal Reserve, and they apply it to the Christian faith. And they say that the gospel of Jesus Christ is a conspiracy, and they show you all the Egyptian mythologies—Horus and the sun god. They show all the astrological phenomena. They talk about the solstice and three days the sun is down and comes up after the solstice in winter—resurrection, life. They talk about the similarity of stories between Jesus and his supposed life, which they say is a myth, a fable of conspiracy to enslave people. And they show all the connections back to various other myths and legends.

Now, it’s a helpful thing to watch because that’s where the attack is coming. And it’s important for people that are tempted to go in for the last two-thirds of Zeitgeist to be careful, you know, what systems of lining up facts and data and analysis you’re applying, because the men that produce Zeitgeist turn that sword against you.

Now, and this is one reason why it’s causing some hubbub in the patriot movement because there’s a lot of Christians in that movement. And now what are we going to do? Gee, turns out the whole darn thing is a conspiracy and heresy and Christianity itself is wrong. Interesting.

From our perspective, we’ve got nothing to fear about these movies. I would like to take the first third, edit it a little bit, and present it as a defense of Christianity because we think that the entire created order—including the astronomical signs and astrology and the way the sun works and all that stuff—of course, it’s all connected. Of course, it’s all a revelation of the person and work of Jesus Christ. So, a few changes in interpretation and in the statistics that they cite and it’s a buttress for a faith. It’s not a tearing down of the faith.

So Zeitgeist—all right.

Now, let’s look at the test text. The text itself. What we have in this text is first of all a warning against focusing on real and imagined conspiracies.

In Amos 7:10, we read that Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all its words.” So, lots of conspiracy theories, but God says, “Don’t call everything a conspiracy that these people call a conspiracy.”

And what we know is that the prophets were frequently the targets of conspiracy theories. You know, the people that were saying, “Look, Assyria is in charge because the Lord God’s hand is against us.” They were accused of conspiring—like Amos was—against God’s people when they spoke the truth to God’s people about the sovereign God controlling even the actual conspiracies of Assyria to enslave God’s people.

So Isaiah 8 says don’t call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy. It doesn’t say there aren’t conspiracies. It says don’t get hung up on that and don’t run off in a panic from actual certain coalitions and treasonous things that are taking place to assume there are all kinds of other things. Don’t go into imagined and real conspiracies. Don’t let it take up most of your life and understanding and focusing on conspiracies.

And in addition to this, he says the reason for this—or at least attached to this—oh, by the way, if you look at verse 4, look at verse 4 of Isaiah 8. I didn’t read it, but it says, “Before the child shall have knowledge, to decry my father and my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria will be taken away before the king of Assyria.”

So, he’s already told—before he gets to this—that the conspiracy of Damascus, or Syria, and the northern tribes isn’t going to work. They’re treasonous against the Assyrians and the Assyrians will crush them. So, he’s already told them, “Yeah, there are conspiracies, but my hand is in these things. I’m working it out. Don’t you go in for this kind of stuff.”

So, we have this warning. And the warning then—well, we could read verse 6 and 7 as well: “And as much as these people refuse the waters of Shiloh that flow softly, and rejoice in Rezin and in Remaliah’s son”—a reference to Syria and the northern kingdoms—”Now therefore, behold, the Lord brings up over them the waters of the river, strong and mighty, the king of Assyria and all his glory.”

So you see, God is the conspirator here. He’s got the Assyrians on the march and they’re going to destroy the north and they’re going to destroy Syria. Don’t join in with their rebellion. And in fact, it’s going to be the reversal of deliverance for the northern Israelites, right? They came through the waters—Pharaoh and his whole group were drowned. Now they’re going to be drowned by Assyrians. So God’s conspiring to bring judgment against the people.

He’ll pass through Judah. He’ll overwhelm and pass over. He will reach up to the neck stretching out of his wings. So Isaiah is told that Assyria is on the march. He’ll fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel. Be shattered, oh you people. Be broken in pieces.

So he’s saying bad things are going to happen. Don’t get hung up in conspiracies. And don’t, in addition to that, he says in verse 12, don’t say a conspiracy conspiring all these things people conspiracy, nor be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled or terrified.

Conspiracy theories are related to fear and a terrifying sort of fear. The second term is an intensified form of terror. So there’s a warning—there’s a warning against getting hung up on conspiracy theories and attached to this is a warning against the wrong kind of fear. When you’re focusing on conspiracy theories, you’re fearing men instead of your proper fear, which we’ll get to in just a moment.

So, he says, “Don’t fear improperly here. Don’t fear the wrong things.”

Jeremiah 10:2: “Thus says the Lord, ‘Do not learn the way of the Gentiles.’” And he’s just told that to Isaiah: “Don’t walk in their ways. Don’t learn the way of the Gentiles. Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them.”

God’s people are people that are not given to fear. We are a strong and courageous people. You know, Gary North talks about the fact that in his book on conspiracy that the conservatives are typically kind of ineffective because they’re always focusing on the conspirators in the world rather than a proper fear of God. And as a result, they don’t really have what’s needed in their bellies and in their future. They don’t have the hope that will actually address the real things in the world that should be addressed and so they’re given to fear.

And the conspirators themselves have the same kind of fear. North points out that the conspirators are always divided. Fallen man is always in division. Jesus talks about this. You know, he says a house divided against itself can’t be sustained. Satan’s house is always divided. Stalin—a paranoid man—had conspiracies going on and because of that he feared conspiracies against him. Very paranoid. He trusted Hitler. He trusted Hitler to the day that Hitler crossed over the border and attacked him. And after that, Stalin never trusted one more person in his entire life. That’s the sort of fearfulness that Gentiles have. And it’s related to conspiracy theories.

God says, “Don’t be fearful of men. Don’t let their fear, don’t let these conspiracies terrify you. Don’t get all wrapped up in the wrong kind of fear.”

So, he tells us what to put off: put off the focus on conspiracy, put off a fear and a dread related to man and put on something else. The Lord of hosts.

Now he says the Lord—okay, Yahweh of hosts. Hosts. What does that mean? It means—we just sang about this—that God is a mighty fortress. Everything is God’s host. God’s host specifically is his angelic army. That’s what the word means. We just sang about “Lord Sabaoth,” his name—Sabaoth, Lord of hosts. He’s the Lord of armies, angelic armies. But we find out in the Bible that everything is part of God’s army. The stars in the heaven make war for God. And so God is the Lord of hosts. He’s the Lord of complete universe and every bit of it is his army.

And you’re going to fear a few men over here. You’re going to fear the Federal Reserve system. You’re going to fear somebody that did something to a couple of towers in 9/11. You’re going to fear this or that conspiracy against you. Well, come on. You serve the Lord of hosts. Sanctify him. Treat him with reverence. Make him be your focus. Conspiracies take us off of message. Our message is the Lord of hosts. His judgments are filling the earth. We explain things not by pointing to man-made conspiracies. We point behind men to the great conspirator God himself, right?

And we say, as the prophet said, God’s brought the Assyrians. God’s done this thing. The Lord of hosts. Him you shall hallow.

And then it says, you know, so you’re in one translation—and I don’t think this is proper, but I’ll explain it in a minute. Instead of “the Lord of hosts, him you shall have,” they say “the Lord of hosts, he shall be your conspirator.”

Now, the reason they do that is the parallelism going on here. So don’t be concerned with conspiracies. Don’t be fearful. Don’t be terrified. The Lord of hosts, sanctify him. Him he shall be your fear. He’ll be—he be terrified of. So if you lay these out in parallel, the Lord of hosts—by implication, not by translation, but by implication—it’s being told he’s the conspirator. He’s the Lord of hosts. He’s the Lord of all of the armies. He’s behind everything. He’s the grand conspirator.

So, put off a wrong understanding of conspiracies, but put on a proper understanding of the true conspirator, Yahweh. So, put off this fear, the fear of men, which is a snare—the Bible says—and then begin to layer in a proper understanding of who is really pulling the strings.

And North does a wonderful job of this in his book on conspiracy. Lots of it is about conspiracies and how they’re which ones are going and all this stuff. But he points right at the very beginning that look, you know, God is the grand conspirator. He’s the one that’s behind everything. He’s, you know, his predestination—he’s predestinating everything that comes to pass for the purposes of his kingdom. So their focus should not be the conspiracies of men. Their focus should be Yahweh himself. Yahweh has caused the Assyrians. He’s called them forth as his weapon of choice.

Reading from a commentator—I think this is the Word Commentary: “What was difficult in the situation then lay in decisions and actions not of men, but what was difficult in a time of judgment lay in the decisions and actions of God, not in the rise of Assyria. If one wants to find fault, do not blame Assyria. Question God. Yahweh himself is the conspiracy. His decisions are the stone of stumbling and the snare. If people are trapped, broken, and taken captive, it’s because they cannot accept and relate to God’s judgments and directions for this age and the age to come.”

So behind all these judgments and conspiracies is the Lord God himself. Make him your conspirator. In other words, recognize, hallow him, reverence his name, and understand that he is at work in your midst.

Isaiah 54: “In righteousness you shall be established. You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear and from terror, for it shall not come near you. He’s going to say the same thing in a moment in our text. No fear, no terror. Indeed, they shall surely assemble, but not because of me. Whoever assembles against you shall fall for your sake. Behold, he says, I have created the blacksmith who blows the coals in the fire, who brings forth an instrument for his work. I have created the spoiler to destroy. I’ve created the spoiler. I brought the Assyrians. I’m bringing the Babylonians. Understand that my hand is behind these things.”

And listen to the great promise of Isaiah 54. It’s a parallel text to our text. You know, don’t be fearful. Focus on God as the great conspirator. And then the next verse says, “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.” He doesn’t say most weapons won’t prosper. No weapon formed against you, dearly beloved Christians, in the Son Jesus Christ, the apple of his eye. No weapon formed by the Federal Reserve system. No weapon formed by Muslim terrorists. No weapon formed by an alliance of Schmidt and Putin controlling the natural gas for Russia and against America. None of these conspiracies formed against you. That’s what ultimately all satanic conspiracies are against. Christ and his people—all against the anointed. Psalm 2 tells us this.

None of those weapons formed against you shall prosper. Every tongue which rises against you in judgment—men speak conspiracies—you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. Their righteousness is from me, says the Lord.

So put on a proper understanding: Who is the real conspirator behind things?

And then secondly, an admonition to the proper fear—that is, the fear of the Lord. That’s what he goes on to say in Isaiah 8:12. He says, “The Lord of hosts, him you shall hallow. Reverence him. Have a need to please him. Him you shall hallow. Him you shall consider holy. He’s the one you have to pay attention to. He’s your conspirator. Let him be your fear. Let him be your dread.”

So, we put off an obsession with conspiracy theories of men. Now again, I’m not saying it’s wrong to think about conspiracies and to, you know, to think about these things, but I’m saying it is way wrong if the bulk of your life is concerned with trying to figure out human conspiracies as opposed to pleasing God, reverencing him, sanctifying him, and fearing him.

And God says this to a people—as I said—to a people in which real conspiracies are being formed. And he says, “Don’t sweat it.” It doesn’t say be Pollyannaish, but he does say don’t sweat it. Don’t be fearful of those things, but you had better fear me. You had better fear me. The Lord of hosts says, because whether you can escape the Assyrians and you can go into your house and lean against the wall and a hobo spider bites you and your arm blows up like a balloon—fear God. You got to fear spiders? Trust God. Fear him. Try to get right with him. He’s telling that spider what to do. He’s telling the spider whether that spider should bite you or not.

You’re right with him and he thinks this isn’t going to help you. No weapon formed against you. The hobo spider might even want to bite your little finger. God’s going to be your protector, you see. And if not, then the Lord God knows it’s best for you to have an arm look like a balloon. It’s the way it works sometimes.

So an admonition to the proper fear: Isaiah 51:12: “I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you should be afraid of a man who will die and of the son of man who will be made like grass. Come on. Do we believe these scriptures? You know, the problem is we don’t. The problem is we’re filled with thoughts of men.

Isaiah says, you know, in Isaiah’s vision—the call of Isaiah, Isaiah 6—you remember we use it as a call to confession many times and assurance of forgiveness. Isaiah, what does he see when he goes to church? When he looks at the church, he comes into the church, he goes into heaven, he sees a throne high, lifted up. He sees the immensity and supremacy of God. He sees an exalted, holy God. Shouldn’t we see what Isaiah sees?

And not only does he see that holy God high and lifted up, he recognizes how horribly sinful he is. Yeah, he lives with the people, in the midst of a people with unclean lips. Yeah, they’re all a bunch of pagans at this point. They’ve really rejected God for the most part. The judgment’s coming. But he says, “I am a man of unclean lips.”

Isaiah loved God. But when he sees the holiness and righteousness of God, everything gets straight for him. He recognizes his humility. The big problem in Isaiah is the people are filled with pride. That’s what he says. You’re all prideful. You’re all puffed up. You can do all these things. But Isaiah says, “I saw the Lord high and lifted up.”

And then he sees this angelic host singing, “Holy, holy, holy. The whole earth is full of your glory.” And you know, a better way to say that—a better translation—is “the whole earth is your glory.” Everything going on, the entire created order shouts forth the glory of God. That’s what it means when those cherubs sing, “Holy, holy, holy. The whole earth is full of your glory.” The whole earth manifests your glory. That’s what we’re called to do. We’re called to reverence God and have a proper fear of him who can, you know, bam, and you’re dead. Fear him. Don’t fear these silly men who sit on thrones that they may be somewhat high, but they’re not.

I mean, they put on their pants one leg at a time just like the rest of you men do, right? Don’t fear those guys. Come on, Christian. Who do you fear? That’s the question for Isaiah. Who do you understand is behind everything? That’s the answer.

To a world that’s filled with panic and increasing fear and conspiracy theories, you won’t be drugged into those stupid Zeitgeist movies if you recognize who you have to deal with. It’s God. High, holy, lifted up. Holy, holy, holy. That’s who we fear. Why would you be fearful of a man who will die and the Son of Man who is to be made like the grass.

In verse 13: “And you forget the Lord your maker, who stretched out the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth. You have feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, when he has prepared to destroy. And where is the fury of the oppressor?”

God is saying, you know, if you’re really fearful of those men, understand I am behind everything. Remember the Balaam strategy? No weapon formed against you can prosper unless you’ve taken off the shield of faith. You’ve taken off the clothing of commitment to Christ. If you don’t have a fear of God, if you haven’t sanctified him as your Lord of hosts, if you don’t seek to please him, then, you know, then the weapons formed against you can prosper.

Balak said, “Curse Israel.” Balaam says, “I can’t do it. There’s no cursing people whose God is in the stars. Forget it.” And but Balaam comes up with an idea. The only way to make war against God’s people is to get them to sin, sending them pretty young women. That’ll do it. And it does—it brings down men all the time.

No weapon formed against you can prosper unless you choose to ignore the fear of God, his judgments, his righteousness, and you forget to honor and glorify him and you turn from him. Then God will bring that spider out of the wall and bite your arm and he’ll bring all kinds of judgments upon you.

Deuteronomy—before—I could go on and on. I’ve talked about the fear of the Lord before. I’ve given you the outline today. On and on again, we have over and over again to fear God, tremble before him. This is not an Old Testament truth. This is a New Testament truth as well. Isaiah tells us, and the New Testament confirms it. We’re to be those people who do not fear the conspirators, who do not focus on conspiracies, but who rather have a proper fear of the Lord of hosts, to fear him.

Matthew Henry said, “The believing fear of God is a special preservative against the disquieting fear of man.” I like that. He was good for those phrases. The believing fear of God is a special preservative against the disquieting fear of men. Do you struggle with fear of men? I mean, it’s okay to admit that to yourself—that disquieting fear of men. But the way to get rid of it, Henry says in this text, says you can’t just get rid of it. You can’t just take it out. You got to replace it with a proper fear of God.

In 1 Peter 3:14–15, this text from Isaiah is quoted. Turn to that text, please. 1 Peter 3:14 and 15. This text from Isaiah is talked about.

1 Peter 3. I’m going to begin reading in verse 8. You’ll see why as we go through it.

“Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another, love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.

For he who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. His ears are open to their prayers, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’s sake, you are blessed. And he quotes Isaiah: ‘Do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.’”

Now, we, you know, one of those texts we take out of its context and it becomes a pretext for evangelism. It’s okay. I like the verse for evangelism, but understand what’s going on here. This is the New Testament application of the text we’re looking at in Isaiah 8.

He cites it. And he cites it in similar conditions, right, beloved? Peter’s going to die, crucified. Most of those disciples are—they’re going to be martyred, right? Those Jews are going to kill him. Conspiracies were formed against Jesus. Conspiracies were formed against the church and they actually worked in some cases—to good men. Those are the kind of times that Peter addresses in First Peter. They’re dispersed. He’s writing to the dispersed. Why? Because, you know, the crushing blow of famine and then the persecution has come down in Jerusalem. So he writes to them in light times—as Isaiah 8—and in like times of our time, times of judgment and conspiracies and real trouble. And he tells them some kind of—you know—quicksotic view of what you should do. Don’t be afraid of all that stuff.

He says, “Love each other.” That’s why I started in verse 8. He tells them what it is to sanctify the Lord and to fear him. It means to love his people, to live in community together, to resolve your tensions in biblical ways, to be mature, not be legalistic, not have license, but to live on that cross of life between the past and the future, inner and outer. Talk about things, but talk about them in a godly way. Let love of the brothers continue. That’s what he says.

How do you avoid conspiracies? How do you get what you want in life? You want things badly? Vocation, families, children that are faithful, church—that’s great. How you going to do that in the midst of a world that’s falling apart. Well, he tells you in verse 8: be of one mind, have compassion for each other, love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous, not returning evil for evil, reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing.

See, that’s connected to this text. When we live in community in that way, we have a reverence for God and a fear of him that makes us be careful how we treat his people. That means that when we go out outside into the outer world, we are happy people. We’re confident people, though the world is falling down around us. We’re confident. We know God’s in control. We put off fear of conspiracies and recognizing God’s at work to advance his kingdom. And that’s the way you evangelize. That’s the good news. That’s the yahoo of the blessing of Jesus Christ coming. Everything is working for good for us now. Even our suffering. If they hang us upside down like Luther—he said, “Let goods and kindred go.” He loved his wife. But if they take them, even they’re in heaven. I’ll see them soon enough. Here on earth, the kingdom prevails. God’s hand is not shortened.

That’s a life of hope. And a life of hope set in the context of Isaiah 8 or in America today or in the first century church is an evangelistic tool like you can’t believe. People want hope. People are walking around hopeless more and more.

So, it’s all connected. But what it tells us is that this application of this verse to us means that the way we put on that proper fear and a proper view of the sovereignty of God is to acknowledge the Holy One of Israel—fearful of sinning against him. And by way of application, that means being careful not to sin against one another in community—loving each other, being courteous and tenderhearted. And that’s the way we survive in a time of great fear and contentiousness.

We put on the proper fear. We make God our conspirator, so to speak. We make him our fear and our dread. And if we do that, well, then we’re given some really good promises.

“Let him be your fear. Let him be your dread. He will be as a sanctuary and a stone and a stumbling rock of offense. He’ll protect you.”

First of all, he’ll be a defense for you. He’ll be your protection in the midst of a world coming apart. He’s going to take care of you. There’s a promise of safety. But more than safety, he’s saying the waters of Egypt are coming across the rebels. They’re going to drown. As we talked about earlier, all your enemies will be drowned and overcome by God. He’ll be a sanctuary to you, but he’ll also be a stone, a stumbling rock of offense—deliberately picked up in the New Testament to speak of those Jews who really didn’t believe in God and have relationship with him—to both the houses of Israel as a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

“And many among them shall stumble. They shall fall and be broken, be snared and taken. Bind up the testimony. Seal the law among my disciples. I will wait on the Lord who hides his face from the house of Jacob. I will hope in him.”

Life of hope and a hope that’s built upon a proper fear, proper attention where our lives are all about living in the context of Christian community and recognizing that as we do that, God will be a sanctuary to us. He’ll protect us. And more than that, he will strike out against our foes. He will crush them. He’ll be a rock of offense to them as surely as he’s a stone of stumbling to them.

So, he’ll be a sanctuary to us and we’ll be blessed.

You know, application: I’ve got Proverbs 30. I won’t reference that now, but Proverbs 30 is all about glory and proper glory and improper glory. And as we humble ourselves before God—as Agur did—to know nothing but God, then we’ll indeed become. At the end of 30, there are these wonderful things. A king with his troops—true glory will be ours if we focus on the work of the Lord God.

You know, the pagans have a psychology of defeat. Christians who don’t understand the sovereign, predestinating God have an eschatology of defeat. They’ve got a mentality and a psychology of defeat that’s not to be our mentality. We don’t want to resist conspiracy theories. We want to replace conspirators. The real conspiracies that are there—we don’t want to rebel against the Assyrians. We want to take the rod, trust God, learn to exalt him, and then replace the Assyrians when it’s ready, the way that Daniel replaced the Babylonian rulers.

We’re not fearful. We’re not enclaved up inside. We continue to go outside. We train up our kids to take advantage of higher education, to take advantage of government and economics and public policy issues so that we can replace the decision makers. If there are conspiracies that give us a less than desirable money system, then let’s replace that system by growing up faithful generations that God will bless and exalt the way he did Daniel. That’s the way we take care of our problems.

North talks about this in his book. He acknowledged conspiracies. He said the way to take care of them is to exercise dominion. And we exercise dominion by learning to trust that God indeed is the one who’s over all things.

Psalm 2 is the great conspiracy: “Why do the nations rage? The people imagine a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves. The rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their bonds in pieces and cast away their cords from us.’”

Let’s implement Marx’s fifth policy of his program for revolution in the events of communism. Let’s get an international monetary system apart from gold. That’s what Marx wanted. That’s how we’ll spread universal communism. That’s how we’ll defeat those Christians. We’ll form a conspiracy against them.

What does God say? Verse 4: “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in derision. He shall speak to them in his wrath. He warns them and he warns us. Don’t focus on the conspirators. Focus upon the person and work of God, his judgments. Have your fear be of him.”

We know that Psalm 2 was ultimately, most primarily, focused upon Israel and the Romans conspiring together against Jesus Christ and putting him on a cross. But that’s the conspiracy of all conspiracies.

But listen to the interpretation of that event in the Book of Acts: “Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves also know him being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands. You’ve conspired. You’re doing Psalm 2. You crucified him. You put him to death.”

But see what he says: “You were vessels. You were simply instruments in God’s hands because Jesus is delivered up by the determined purpose and foreknowledge not of the conspirators, but by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God.”

The grandest conspiracy—the most horrific men conspiring against the Holy One of Israel, Jesus Christ himself. The Bible says, not once but twice, we’ll look at another text. This was God’s work actually behind it all.

Again, we read later on, verse 25: “David says concerning him, ‘I foresaw the Lord always before my face. He is at my right hand that I will not be shaken.’”

So, see, we’re not supposed to have that kind of fear, but rather we’re supposed to have a proper fear of God.

And then the conspiracies of men are shown for what they are.

Verse 27—I think this is Acts 4: “Truly, against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together. This is Psalm 2. Gentiles, the people of Israel, the people imagine the vain thing. The nations conspire against Jesus. That’s what he’s referencing. You were gathered together to do what? To crucify Jesus. But how does he describe it?”

Verse 28: “To do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done”—twice we’re told in the Book of Acts that the great conspiracy of Psalm 2 against Christ and his anointed is being used for God’s purposes, his determined foreknowledge. They’re just there doing whatever God has determined beforehand will be accomplished for the well-being of his people.

The fear of man brings a snare. A fear of God brings deliverance. An unfocus on secondary conspiracies brings a snare and a psychology of defeat. A focus on primary causes—conspiracy, the Lord God chastening his people to turn back to him. If God before us, who can be against us? And the answer is obvious. None. None.

May the Lord God grant us not a stupidity, not a simplicity. There are real conspiracies, but there’s a lot more that are being hatched in people’s minds that are being carried out. And the actual ones that are being carried out—ultimately, if we can see in the death of Jesus, we can see it. And we see it in the invasion of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. We can see it in whatever it is you think the conspirators are today. God’s hand is at work bringing his people back to what? To see him high and exalted, to sanctify the Lord God, to trust in him as our sanctuary, to fear him.

And what does it work out as? First Peter says this verse works out as living in community together. That’s the message of conspiracy, fear, and Yahweh to us today.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we bless your holy name for all the things and the majesty and the ways you accomplish them. Help this congregation. Help us, Lord God, in our homes individually and in our families and in this community not to be overtaken with the fearful dread of conspiracy theories in every hand, but to recognize the depravity of man, the depravity of Satan who conspires against you, but beyond all of that, your great power.

Help us, Lord God, more than anything else, fear it out—our sins, our sins of disobedience to you, our fear of men. To replace it with a proper fear of you and help us, Lord God, to live in community together. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.