Isaiah 36-37
Amen. Turn to Isaiah 36 and 37. So we get a little break tonight
in 36 and 37, and then next week we’ll look at 38, 39. This is
kind of a four chapter little interlude. So chapters 1 to 35
are all the judgment, doom and gloom, pre-exile. Then you get
this little four chapter interlude of basically straight up historical
facts, stories, two different scenarios in the life of Hezekiah. And then it’s on to the rest
of the book in chapter 40 on through 66. So let me set the
stage for you. Judah, the southern tribe of
Israel, Judah, which contains Jerusalem, is filled up with
a couple hundred thousand Assyrian soldiers. And prior to this situation,
the northern tribes, the other 11 tribes, plus the Syrians,
so they call it the Syrio-Ephraimite War, it killed a couple hundred
thousand, well, it hauled off a quarter million people from
Judah, and it killed over 100,000 soldiers. So Judah is in a weakened
position and surrounded. So what are you gonna do? Are
you gonna look to the Lord or look to surrounding nations for
help? And so Hezekiah is a bright spot
in a dark patch of Israel’s king. So let’s see what takes place
here. Isaiah 36 and then 37. In the 14th year of King Hezekiah,
Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified
cities of Judah and took them. And the king of Assyria sent
the Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem with
a great army. And he stood by the conduit of
the upper pool on the highway to the watcher’s field. And there
came out to him Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over
the household, and Shevna, the secretary, and Joah, the son
of Asaph, the recorder. And the Rabshakeh said to them,
say to Hezekiah, thus says the great king, the king of Assyria,
on what do you rest this trust of yours? Do you think that mere
words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust
that you have rebelled against me? Behold, you are trusting
in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the
hand of any man who leans on it, such as Pharaoh, king of
Egypt, to all who trust in him. But if you say to me, we trust
in the Lord, our God, is it not he whose high places and altars
Hezekiah has removed saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, you shall
worship before this altar. Come now, make a wager with my
master, the king of Assyria. I will give you 2,000 horses
if you are able on your part to set riders on them. How then
can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master’s
servants when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?
Moreover, it is without the Lord that I have come up against this
land to destroy it. The Lord said to me, go up against
this land and destroy it. Then Eliakim, Shebna, and Joah
said to the Rab-Shecha, please speak to your servants in Aramaic
for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language
of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.
But the Rab-Shecha said, has my master sent me to speak these
words to your master and to you and not to the men sitting on
the wall who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and
drink their own urine? Then the Rabshakeh stood and
called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, hear the
words of the great King, the King of Assyria. Thus says the
King, do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able
to deliver you. Do not let Hezekiah make you
trust in the Lord by saying the Lord will surely deliver us.
This city will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.
Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria,
make your peace with me and come out to me. And each of you will
eat of his own vine and each of his own fig tree and each
of you will drink the water of his own cistern until I come
and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain
and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Beware, lest Hezekiah
mislead you, saying, the Lord will deliver us. Has any of the
gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hands of
the kings of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath
and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharim? Have they delivered Samaria out
of my hand? Who among all the gods of these
lands has delivered their lands out of my hand that the Lord
should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? But they were silent,
and they answered him not a word, for the king’s command was, do
not answer him. Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah,
who was over the household, Shebna, the secretary, and Joah, the
son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes
torn and told him the words of the rabshakeh. As soon as King
Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes. He covered himself with
sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord. And he sent Eliakim
who was over the household and Shevna the secretary and the
senior priest covered with sackcloth to the prophet Isaiah, the son
of Amoz. They said to him, thus says Hezekiah,
this is a day of distress, of rebuke and of disgrace. Children
have come to the point of birth and there is no strength to bring
them forth. It may be that the Lord your God will hear the words
of the Rabshakeh, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent
to mock the living God, and will rebuke the words that the Lord
your God has heard. Therefore, lift up your prayer
for the remnant that is left. When the servants of King Hezekiah
came to Isaiah, Isaiah said to them, say to your master, thus
says the Lord, do not be afraid of the words that you have heard,
with which the young men of the king of Assyria have reviled
me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him so that he shall hear
a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him fall
by the sword in his own land.’ The Rabshakeh returned and found
the king of Assyria fighting against Libna, for he had heard
the king had left Lachish. Now the king heard concerning
Terhaka, the king of Cush. He is set out to fight against
you. And when he heard it, he sent his messengers to Hezekiah
saying, thus, you shall speak to Hezekiah, the king of Judah. Do not let your God in whom you
trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given
into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, you have heard
what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, devoting
them to destruction and shall you be delivered. Have the gods
of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed,
Gozan, Haran, Rezath, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath,
the king of Arpad, the king of the city of the Sepharvaim, the
king of Hena, or the king of Eva? Hezekiah received the letter
from the hand of the messengers, and he read it. And Hezekiah
went up to the house of the Lord. He spread it before the Lord.
Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel,
who is enthroned above the cherubim. You are the 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 all the words of Sennacherib
with which he has spoken. which he has sent to mock the
living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste
all the nations of their lands. They have cast their gods into
the fire, for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands,
wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed.
So now, O Lord, our God, save us from his hand, that all the
kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord.
Then Isaiah, the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah saying, thus
says the Lord, the God of Israel, because you have prayed to me
concerning Sennacherib, king of Assyria. This is the word
that the Lord has spoken concerning him. She despises you. She scorns
you, the virgin daughter of Zion. She wags her head behind you,
the daughter of Jerusalem. Whom have you mocked and reviled? Against whom have you raised
your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights? against the Holy
One of Israel. By your servants, you have mocked
the Lord. And you have said, with my many
chariots, I have gone up the heights of the mountains, to
the far recesses of Lebanon, to cut down its tallest cedars,
its choicest cypresses, to come to its remotest height, its most
fruitful forest. I dug wells, I drank waters,
to dry up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt.
Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned it from
days of old. What now I bring to pass that
you should make fortified cities, crash into heaps of ruins with
their inhabitants, shorn of strength, dismayed, confounded, and have
become like plants of the field, like tender grass, like grass
on the housetops blighted before it has grown. I know you’re sitting
down. I know you’re going out and you’re
coming in and you’re raging against me. Because you have raged against
me and your complacency has come to my ears, I will put my hook
in your nose and my bit in your mouth and will turn you back
on the way by which you came. And this shall be the sign for
you. This year, you shall eat what grows of itself. In the
second year, what springs from that. Then in the third year,
sow and reap and plant vineyards and eat their fruit. And the
surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root
downward and bear fruit upward. From out of Jerusalem shall go
a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal
of the Lord of hosts shall do this. Therefore, thus says the
Lord concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not come into this city. or shoot an arrow there, or come
before it with shield, or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the
same shall he return, and he shall not come into this city,
declares the Lord. For I will defend this city to
save it for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.
And the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in
the camp of the Assyrians. When the people arose early in
the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. Then Sennacherib,
king of Assyria, departed and returned home. And he lived at
Nineveh. And as he was worshiping in the
house of Nisrach, his god, Adram, Melech, and Sherezer, his son,
struck him down with the sword. And after they escaped into the
land of Ararat, Esarhaddon, his son, reigned. in his place. Amen. This is God’s mighty word
for us. What a great God that we can
trust in. Well, remember King David, the
little ruddy youth became king over Israel. Remember, Saul had
been big, tall and good looking. And so Israel probably thought
that’s what the next king is going to be. So they went to
David’s house and they looked at boy number one, boy number
two and You know, no, that’s not him. That’s not him. Have
you got any more kids? Well, there’s the runt, right? There’s David. He’s out in the
field. He’s the one that fights off bears. He’s the one that,
that plays his harp and his lyre and write songs and poetry. You
know, not exactly King material, unless you’re God. And so God
picks David, a man after his own heart. And about the year
1000 BC, David begins his reign about a thousand years before
the coming of Jesus. David takes the throne after
Saul’s failed kingship. David, a man after God’s own
heart, takes the kingdom. He unites it. He stretches its
borders as far north, south, east, and west as they can go.
He gives Israel rest from all their enemies. He even desires
to build a house for God. He says, Lord, I live in a fine
palace, but you still dwell in a tent. And David is told by
God, no, you will not build my house. Your son Solomon will.
You have too much blood on your hands. And so of course, Solomon
later will build the house of God. But David in his kingship,
is the shepherd king over Israel. And he does many wonderful good
and great things. Of course, he’s a sinner. He
does some wicked things and Israel suffers for it. But in his slow
ascent to the throne, as he finally escapes the spear and the wrath
of Saul, he is blessed by God. And God has made a covenant with
Israel. I will be your God. You will be my people. If you
obey me and keep my commandments, I’ll bless you. You’ll live in
the land, you’ll get the grapes and you’ll get the grandkids.
But if you disobey my voice, you follow after other gods,
you put my laws and my ways behind your back and you mock me and
you spurn me and you cast me aside, there will be a day where
I send you into exile. Well, it’s 300 years later, it’s
701 BC with Hezekiah on the throne, and between David and Hezekiah,
there’ve been bad kings, bad kings, bad kings. You know how
it is when you’re reading through those sections of the Bible,
and it says, and so and so did what was evil in the sight of
the Lord, and his son reigned, and he did what was evil, and
his son reigned, and there’s a few bright spots like Josiah,
and Hezekiah is certainly a bright spot in the history of Israel. And so Hezekiah has been sitting
on the throne about 15 years, but there’s been this Assyrian
problem looming at this current stage is 701 BC. There’s about 185,000 Assyrians
surrounding Jerusalem and they have surrounded and overtaken
46 other cities of Judah. Can you imagine that? I mean,
think about maybe they haven’t taken Burlington yet, but they’ve
taken Alamance. They’ve taken Altamahal and Union
Ridge and Graham and Hall River and Saxapahal. And you start
getting up to about 46. And here we are in Burlington
surrounded by enemies. And we wonder, are they going
to lay siege and starve us and eventually crack into the city
and take it and carry us off? That’s the situation Hezekiah’s
in. And actually, his situation is
far worse. Does he take the taunts of the evil one and give in to
human efforts to save Israel? Or does he completely against
all odds, trust in God? Now, you know, the outcome, because
we just read it and that outcome is quite amazing, but you know
how it is in the thick of life and the heat of hardship, you
begin to rely on your checkbook. You begin to rely on your past
successes. You begin to rely on your happy
thoughts or your positive thinking. You begin to rely on things that
will not save you. And sometimes God brings us to
an end of ourselves. We’ve got nothing left. The tank
is empty. The checkbook is empty. The can-do
spirit is empty. And we have to say, Lord, I’m
on my face. And that’s where we see Hezekiah tonight. And
that’s a good place to be. And so, In these four chapters,
we get a picture of Hezekiah trusting the Lord, next time
through sickness, this time through formidable enemies. One thing
to remember is Hezekiah’s name. His name simply means Yahweh
strengthens. Against all odds, God has given
Hezekiah strength. He did what was right in God’s
sight. Yes, he was a sinner. Yes. He
fell short of God’s glory. Yes. He made mistakes. Yes. He
thought about going down to Egypt for help. Yes. He thought about
paying tribute. Yes. He did some wicked, some
things that were wicked in God’s sight, but in general, he was
a good King. He cleaned out idolatry. He cleaned up. the city of Jerusalem,
he reopened the temple after it had been shut. Imagine that.
Let’s board up the temple. Let’s lock the doors. Let’s not
go in the house of God and worship him or offer sacrifices for atonement. So he cleaned out, he cleaned
up. And he got rid of idols and statues
and other things. And so he brought back the feast
of Israel. He opened up the temple and he
brought back the Levites and he consecrated them and said,
get back to doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing. And it
says in second Kings, he followed all the laws of Moses for Israel. And so he is a serious King.
He’s a serious King who trusts in God, who obeys God. He holds
fast to God’s ways. and he follows God in every way.
So you got this guy surrounded by Assyrians, and he’s really
put to the test. What should a king do? Well,
he should defend his people. What should a king do? He should
fight off his enemies. What should a king do who’s just lost a number
of his soldiers in recent years in other battles? He’s got a
low soldier count, a low arsenal at the time. What should he do?
Making peace. with Assyria has not worked.
When we come to the beginning of chapter 36, and it talks about
the, what does it call him? The, the, the, the Rabshakeh. He’s like the envoy, right? He’s
the King’s right-hand man. You know, I guess, you know,
Trump’s building his cabinet. Who would his Rabshakeh be? Who’s
his secretary of state? Marco Rubio. Yeah. So he’s the
Rabshakeh of America. That’s how it goes. So they’re
having these talks out in the field outside of Jerusalem, and
they’re speaking in the language of Judah, not the diplomatic
language of the whole region. And what do the envoys from Judah
say? Hey, talk in Aramaic. You’re
scaring our people. And what do the Syrians say?
Well, that’s kind of the point. We want them scared. We want
them to have you chicken out. So Hezekiah is at a point where
He better do something. He better do something for the
people of God. And yes, he can trust in Egypt.
Yes, he digs a tunnel and has water brought secretly underground
into the city. Hezekiah’s tunnel is one of the
one of the great ancient feats of engineering. He gets water
safely from outside the city into the city where they can
live under siege for a while because they have water. But
God wasn’t happy about that. He could pay the dues or the
back taxes that are owed to the Assyrians. And he even at one
point says, I’ll give you all the gold, silver and stones of
the temple. Just go away for a while till
we can get our wits about ourselves. Well, the Assyrian diplomacy
is weighing heavy on them and their arrogance. I don’t know
if you caught it in the reading of chapter 36 and 37, but there’s
a lot of, thus says the Lord, thus says the Lord to Hezekiah,
thus says the Lord to Isaiah, the son of Amos. But did you
notice what the envoy from Assyria, thus says the King, thus says
the great King of Assyria. And so it’s almost a showdown,
like the proportions of Egypt, and Moses, Egypt, Pharaoh and
Yahweh. And so this arrogance, this language
that comes from the mouth of the King of Assyria through his
envoy is pretty strong. They even use Isaiah’s words
against him when he says, you know, you’re going to trust in
Egypt as a broken reed. Well, remember back, that’s what
Isaiah had said about Egypt. Hey, Judah, you gonna trust in
Egypt? It’s a broken reed. And so the
envoy from Assyria is pretty slick. They use the language
of Judah, and they even use the words of Isaiah against them. Well, how does Hezekiah plan
on going into battle? Well, he can’t. He can’t go into
battle. He has to trust in Yahweh, ultimately,
or give in to the demands of the taunting delegation from
Sennacherib. And so how do we put this into
our own lives today? I mentioned earlier, it’s not
necessarily one-to-one that Pharaoh and Egypt and Sennacherib and
Assyria are like our spiritual enemies, but the Bible does speak
of that from time to time. And so what do we do with the
taunts and the temptations of the devil? Well, you’re not saved. Jesus didn’t die for you. Why
would you want to please the Lord? Pleasing yourself is way
much more better. You know, the slithering serpent
in the garden to Adam and Eve. Be a God, you know, follow your
heart, enjoy yourself. Those are the things that come
our way. Think of Poor Edmund and the
Lion Witch in the wardrobe and the White Witch offers him all
the Turkish delight he can eat. And he says, okay, where’s the
buffet? And he goes and he gets frozen. Remember that? He gets
turned into a stone. Sometimes we are assaulted with
the onslaught of temptations and evil things in our lives. We see it all around us. We feel
it within us spiritually. And we only can look to Jesus.
Hezekiah looked to Yahweh, the God and King, and we look to
Jesus, our God and King, who, when he was reviled on the cross,
or when he was stricken and smitten, spit upon by his enemies, people
said to him, you take yourself down from the cross. You could
save others, save yourself. He knew the will of God, knew
the ways of God, and he persevered in the right things. And we can
run to Jesus, our great high priest. He can sympathize with
us. He’s been tested and tempted like us in every way. Or think
of Peter. in his hour of trial, with all of Satan’s best assaults
hitting him, really through a little servant girl. You’re a Galilean,
aren’t you? You were with the master, weren’t
you? And what did Peter do? Three
times he gave in. I don’t know the man, even swore
an oath. So what’s a guy like Hezekiah
to do? What are we to do when the going gets tough? Well, we
go to prayer and chapter 37 gives us a great picture of Hezekiah’s
prayer. He goes to prayer. He goes to God. He goes to the
temple. Maybe you go to the place where
you pray and hopefully in this busy, noisy world we live in,
you have a space and maybe a time where you spend it in prayer.
You get away from your phone. You get away from your tablet.
You get away from noise. Maybe you take a walk. Maybe
you really do have a prayer closet. You’re welcome to come to the
church and pray, but we come to the end of our own resources
and we look to God and we adore him as Hezekiah did. We confess our sin to him as
Hezekiah did. We give him thanks for his past
blessings, but we go to him in a way even we plead with him. God, this is your name at stake. This is your fame at stake. These
are your people you’ve called by name and made covenant with
whose lives are at stake. You’ve even sworn to David that
he would have a throne and somebody to sit on it. So God’s reputation,
God’s name, God’s covenant, God’s covenant people are all at stake
here. And that’s the appeal that Hezekiah goes to God with. Now God is
no match for the Assyrians. We already know the end of that
story. God is no match for the Assyrians. He knows they’re coming.
He knows they’re going. He’s the one that sent them on
their errand. And he’s the one that will send them back home.
And he’s the one who will raise up two boys 20 years later, is
how it works out, to kill their father by the sword. What an
inglorious way to go. What an inglorious way to take
the throne. But prayer. And sometimes we
think of prayer as a last resort, right? You know, it’s come to
that. We better pray. Prayer is something we ought to be at
daily. We ought to be at often throughout
the day. For we know that by the Word,
by the Spirit and by prayer, God speaks to us. And, you know,
we’re not going to get a voice. Hezekiah is not going to get
a voice that says, Hezekiah, do this. you know, buy that car,
you know, take this job, move to this house. That’s not how
it works. But we, we get settled in our spirit, don’t we? When
we know the word, we know the principles of the word. We pray
about it. We speak to others. We collect
wisdom about it and we get settled in our mind and heart. This is
the thing to do. You know, there’s no big audible
voice from heaven. God doesn’t write in the sand
or in the sky, you know, in the clouds and all the rest. We,
might like him to do that, but he simply speaks his will by
his word, by his spirit. There’s a lot in life that just
happens by being kind of useful and faithful and doing what’s
next in front of you, general principles, God’s revealed will. Those are things that we can
live by and stay plenty busy doing. Now, remember where we
are. Judah, the little tribe of Judah,
the least of the tribes with Jerusalem in it, is all that’s
left. The northern kingdom gone. The
Assyrians took care of them a hundred years before. 15 years ago, 20
years ago at our current time in this story. So Northern Kingdom’s
gone. Most people in Judah have fled. They’re tired of the Assyrians.
We’re out of here. Gone. And so there’s only a remnant.
There’s only a small number left. And you get the promise. God
says, I’m going to do this for my servant, David. I’m going
to do it for my own namesake. There’s only a few left who have
been faithful to stay at Jerusalem and hold out. and worship God,
trust God, pray to God. And remember that’s all that
is needed. God made a promise to Eve, someone
from your body, someone from your line will come and be a
savior to the people. God promised Abraham an offspring,
an offspring who would be a blessing. And so God also promised David,
a man will always from your loins sit on the throne. And so you’ve
got the, redemptive history in the balance here. It’s sort of
like, remember when, is it Herod wants to kill all the babies?
He wants to find Jesus. So he’s just going to kill everybody
two years old and under. And your brain says, because
you know, your Bibles, you know, your covenant, your brain says,
Oh, if they kill Jesus, that’s it. And remember when Abraham
was supposed to kill Isaac? His mind should have said, maybe
from a human level, yeah, that’ll be it. But what did he know?
He knew that even God could bring back his son from the dead and
raise up offspring after him and keep the covenant promise.
So when things seem barren, when things seem dead, when things
seem dark and empty and hopeless, it is not so because God is a
covenant making and covenant keeping God. And these Assyrians,
They’re just chumps, right? They’re just pawns in God’s economy. Hezekiah should, yes, be shaking
in his boots, but he should be confident in God. What does God
say to Hezekiah after he prays? He says, I’m going to put a spirit
in them and I’m going to plant this rumor in this spirit that
says, Oh, Egypt’s over there at your home city at Nineveh.
And they’ve, they’ve gone and, you know, taken your stuff. And
so what’s Sennacherib going to do? He’s going to pack it up
and run home. So Sennacherib’s hanging out at Lachish, one of
the other Judah cities, and they hear of this and got to go home
and take care of the homeland. But before he leaves, what’s
he do? He writes this long letter. Hey, not getting off easy here. Hezekiah not getting off the
hook, Judah and Jerusalem. And so this long letter, long
diplomatic letter is brought to Hezekiah. And what does he
do? He takes it in the temple and he spreads it out page by
page by page before the Lord. That’s a wonderful little phrase,
I think, that pops up. In chapter 37, when we have something,
we should spread it before the Lord. That’s what 37.14 says. What do you have to spread before
the Lord? What worry, what burden, what
hardship, what need, what wisdom, what thing do you have to spread
out before the Lord and to seek his face? I have a fear that
we hardly say a blessing before the meal. I have a fear that
sometimes the pastoral prayer, which most of us think is probably
long, and when you get through it, maybe the longest amount
of time any of us pray, or perhaps the Sunday evening stretch, but
you’ve really got to work at a time and a place and an opportunity
and to seek God’s face for these things. And that’s what Hezekiah
does. He spreads it before the Lord. He lays it out and he prays to
the sovereign God, who is over the not so sovereign Sennacherib. Yeah, Sennacherib’s had some
successes. You go to the British museum
and you’ll see all kinds of artifacts and evidence that Sennacherib
was pretty mighty and did pretty amazing things as he built an
empire, but his empire is no more. The Roman empire is no
more, only the empire of Christ. And so what does God promise
at the end of chapter 37? Well, you pick up in verse 30
and he says, okay, there’s going to be a couple more years of
the siege. And what did Sennacherib say? You’re going to be eating
your dung and drinking your own urine. That was the taunt, wasn’t
it? But God says, you’re going to eat. You’re going to eat what’s
grown, just pops up. And then you’re going to eat
what grows out of that next year. And then the third year you’re going to
plant, reap. and you’re going to eat that. And so, yeah, there’s
going to be a couple of years of trial. And God says to us,
there’s going to be times in your life of trial, the testing
that comes, the fire, the, the, the chiseling, the dross getting
consumed, the gold getting refined, but there’s always an end. And
that end is the glory of God and the good of his people. God
will do this thing. You’ll stay in the city these
couple of years, And not an arrow is going to get flung over the
wall. Not a person is going to break through or lay a siege
work and enter. God will do it. And so what happens? Well, 185,000 are destroyed by
the angel of the Lord, almost like the end of the firstborn
over in Egypt. Now, there’s a little warning
here because what’s going to happen to these survivors, this
remnant in Judah and Jerusalem? Well, they’re going to make it
a little while. And then Babylon is going to rise up and ultimately
Babylon a hundred years later will destroy the city and haul
off the people of Judah to Babylon for exile. But what happens when
Babylon comes a hundred years later? We’re good. God’s taken
care of us before. He’s not worried about our idolatry.
He’s not worried about our pride. He’s not worried about our love
of riches or our indulgence of the flesh. He’s not worried about
all that. And so there’s a great warning
here is don’t get accustomed to God’s rescue and redemption. And when another problem comes
say, well, he was, he was good to me last time. I deserve his
goodness again. No, we don’t deserve it yet.
He gives it graciously, but it’s so wonderful. This passage is
Syria broke camp and left. They went away, 185,000 killed
at some point by a plague, the dead. And so what a wonderful
thing it is to trust the living and true God. So where are you
in your faith? Could you be surrounded by a
couple hundred thousand soldiers and say, God’s got me? Can you
stand a cancer diagnosis without flying apart at the seams? Can
you handle the death of a loved one? Can you handle anything
God sends you? The answer is, at least in our
heads, yes. The answer in our hearts is it’ll
hurt. But God is always good, and we
take these things to the cross where God is sovereign even over
the death of his own son, but it’s for our good, it’s for his
glory, and we can trust him in any hardship and situation. Let’s
go now to him in prayer. Lord, bless us as we think on
Hezekiah’s faith, how he followed you, how he kept your ways, how
he restored what was broken in the people, and how he had no
fear because he looked to you. Give us that same faith, that
same strength. Forgive us when we don’t have it. We pray in
Christ’s mighty name. Amen.