2 Kings 18–20

0:01 Well, if you've been keeping up, you know that we have quite a story to tell today. It's about a group of men who were facing a foe by whom they were completely outmatched. And anyone keeping an eye on the situation would have thought it was inevitable that those men would be completely and absolutely routed. And why was that? Well, it's because their enemy was bigger than them. Their enemy was more powerful than them, and their enemy had already racked up an impressive and long string of victories.

0:35 But as it turned out, it was the enemy who was routed, and with a thunderous exclamation point at the end of the story. But enough about the Louisville Cardinals' victory over Clemson. Last night, we're here to talk about Hezekiah and the Assyrians. I was playing around with that little thing last night with the new AI, artificial intelligence, the chat bot, whatever it's called, chat GPT, and the chat could not sort of figure out what I was trying to do there.

1:11 I had to like define the meaning of a double meaning for it, and I had to explain to it and give it a couple of examples. It was just thoroughly confused, and it kept just sort of slamming the two stories from Second Kings and from the Louisville beating Clemson together. And eventually it just got so thoroughly confused by what I was trying to get it to do that it told this story and ended it at one point by saying, but enough about God's amazing victory over Assyria. The true victory was the Louisville Cardinals' victory over Clemson. And that's when I realized that at least for a while, we humans are probably safe from the artificial intelligences.

1:49 Anyway, we're continuing our study of the book of 2 Kings today. So if you've got a Bible, take one and turn over to 2 Kings chapter 18. That's where we're going to be starting. If you're using one of these red pew Bibles here like I am, which you can find in your pew rack, or if you're sitting in the chair sections, you can find it underneath your chair. We're going to be looking at three chapters of 2 Kings today, 18, 19, and 20. We're going to save 21 for next week because it fits better with what's going on there. If you're new to Third Avenue or new to Second Kings, then you need to know that we've been studying this book, which is about 2,500 years old, and it's telling about events that were happening, 2,700 to 3,100 years old, something like that.

2:31 You need to know that we've been studying this book not just because of its historical value, though it does have historical value. You could study it just as a historical document, but that's not why we're doing it. We're studying this book primarily because of its spiritual value to us. In other words, 2 Kings and all of these historical books of the Bible, in fact, don't just teach about what happened and when with regard to these various kings of this ancient nation of Israel. More importantly than just those events, what happened, when, and where, this book teaches us about God.

3:06 It teaches us about these kings' response to God and God's word. And so in the process of studying it, hopefully we're learning not just the names of some of these kings and sort of filing them away in the back of our minds so we'll kind of know better the story as we read our Bibles. But we're also learning about God and about ourselves and about how we should respond to him. So let me briefly get you up to speed on the story, especially if you haven't been here. The reason I do this every week is because I really want to try to take these books and stitch them together in your mind.

3:36 So we back up a little bit and then move forward. That's how we're doing this. And hopefully what that's doing in your mind week after week after week is sort of cementing these stories into your brain. So that when you open up 2 Kings in the future, you'll at least remember, oh, this is that time when there's two kingdoms and the north is getting crushed and the south is hanging on by a thread. You'll at least kind of have that in your minds. So let me bring you up briefly to speed on the story. For most of the book of 2 Kings, we've been watching the collapse and fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. You remember there was a civil war about 200 years prior and the kingdom of Israel, the 12 tribes, split into two.

4:14 Ten of them broke away from the throne of David and became the northern kingdom that's called Israel. Two tribes, really just one actually, Judah, stayed with the Davidic throne and they became the southern kingdom that's called Judah. Well, at any rate, we've been watching the collapse and fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. So the first thing that happens is the destruction of the dynasty and house of the wicked king Ahab. Remember him? And then last week we saw not just the fall of that king's dynasty, but the fall of the entire nation as it was invaded by the Assyrian Empire and dismantled.

4:47 Its people were exiled, scattered into towns up in the north of Assyria, and other exiles were brought into the towns and cities of the Israelites themselves. Now why did Assyria do that? Well, it's because it was Assyrian policy, not just to subjugate the peoples that they conquered, but to absolutely wipe the memory of them out of history entirely. And that's exactly what would have happened to the northern kingdom of Israel. We never would have heard anything else about them after Assyria conquered them and scattered them if it were not for these books that we're studying right now.

5:20 I mean, this is kind of it. This is the history of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the Assyrians, well, failed to wipe out their memory. But they did wipe them out as a nation. As brutal as the destruction was in the north, though, it wasn't a surprise. There was nothing surprising about the fact that the northern kingdom got destroyed. Why? Because God had been prophesying that that was going to happen for quite a while now. So when you're reading along in 2 Kings and you see that the northern kingdom of Israel falls, it's not too bothersome to us when that happens.

5:52 You kind of read it, yes, that's been prophesied since the middle of 1 Kings. Like 1 Kings 10 is the first time that God says he's going to wipe out the northern kingdom. And so it's not a huge problem. The southern kingdom, though, is a different story altogether. They're like the heroes of the story because they're the original Israel. They're not the breakaway, right? They're the one that stayed on the tree when the north sort of broke itself away. They're the ones who have the original Davidic throne and Davidic dynasty from the great King David, right?

6:24 And so because they have the Davidic dynasty, the Davidic throne, all of the kings of Judah are sons and descendants of David. They're the ones who have the promises of the Davidic covenant from 2 Samuel chapter 14 or 7 when God says, listen, I am going to give you, David, a man to sit on your throne for all eternity. So what happens throughout the books of kings is that that promise to David actually sort of holds the southern kingdom in place. And over and over again, when you get wicked kings in the south, there's this mention that the Davidic covenant is still holding.

6:59 Despite the wickedness of the kings in the south, at times, the Davidic covenant is still holding. In the last few chapters, though, that certainty that the south is going to be protected, that the Davidic promises are going to hold, has been shaken a bit. Remember how? Well, last week we saw a man named Ahaz take the throne of Judah to the south, who is arguably the worst king in the history of both kingdoms so far.

7:30 He's worse than Ahab, the worst king that ever reigned on the throne of the north. He's worse than anyone who's ever sat on the throne of Judah. He sacrifices his son to the Baals and to Molech. Ominously, too, in chapter 17, when the author lists the reasons that the northern kingdom was destroyed, he throws in some reasons for that destruction that the Bible never says the north did. It only says the south did them.

8:03 So let me just show you a quick example of that. Flip back a little bit to end of chapter 17 and look at verse 17. 17, 17. So this is in the middle of the paragraph describing all the sins, all the reasons why the north was destroyed. But look at 17. And they burned their sons and daughters as offerings. Now, they may have. The north may have done that. But the text of 2 Kings never says that. The only person it ever records as burning his son in the fire to Molech is Ahaz, the king of the south.

8:39 So as a reader, what that's supposed to make you do is go, Oh no, even the south is in trouble. And then to top it all off, the sort of last thing that shakes our confidence that the south is going to make it through is that we also saw that the only reference to the Davidic covenant is weird. Because usually when you have a wicked king, you get some promise that the Davidic covenant is holding. But in Ahaz's story, the only reference to the Davidic covenant is when he basically abandons the Davidic covenant and offers his faith and loyalty to Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria.

9:12 But he uses the same words that God used in the Davidic covenant, only he uses them now for Tiglath-Pileser and puts Tiglath in the place of God. I am your son. I am your servant. Come save me, he says to this Assyrian king. So by the end of chapter 17, there are a lot of questions about what's going to happen in the south. The camera has focused squarely on the southern kingdom. It has to because there is no north anymore. things in the south are looking very very shaky and then this happens look with me in chapter 18 in the third year of Hosea son of Elah king of Israel the north Hezekiah the son of Ahaz that awful king king of Judah began to reign in Jerusalem in the south he Hezekiah was 25 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem his mother's name was Abid the son the daughter of Zechariah.

10:12 And Hezekiah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that David, his father, had done. He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the asherah, and he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made. For until those days, the people of Israel had made offerings to it. It was called Nehushtan. He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him.

10:44 Wherever he went out, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and wouldn't serve him. He struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory from watchtower to fortified city. I mean, all of a sudden, when everything is shaky in the south, it's a new David. I mean, you've got to understand how crazy this is. We're like, what, 400 years removed from David, something like that? And yet none of these things that are said in 18.1-8 have been said about any other king since David.

11:15 I mean, yeah, occasionally you get a king who has said, you know, and he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. But there's often following on the heels of that this note that, yeah, he did right, but not like David did right. And then there will be some other note that says, you know, he may have restored worship in Jerusalem, but he didn't cut down the Asherah poles, he didn't destroy the altars of Baal, he didn't do this, he didn't do that. He wasn't as good as David. But here's Hezekiah. And all the things that were said about David, Hezekiah does. He does everything right.

11:47 He restores the worship of God in the temple. He tears down the Asherah poles and the temples of Baal. He even destroys the bronze snake from the book of Numbers that some people had begun to worship. Remember that story, right? There's snakes that come into the camp and the people get bit. And they're all dying from snake venom. And God says to Moses, I want you to build a bronze snake and put it up in the middle of the camp. And anybody who looks on that snake will be healed from the venom. And so Moses makes the snake and he sticks it up. And apparently it's lasted for like 800 years now. And people have started worshiping it.

12:19 You ever wonder why God doesn't leave us a whole lot of relics of his work? It's because we will worship them. We are like little zombies. We just love to worship and so we do. Then you go over to Europe, to some of the Roman Catholic churches in Europe, and you're going to find all kinds of relics that people venerate in various ways. The bones of James, the fingernails of Thomas, pieces of the true cross. At one point during the Reformation, Martin Luther said that there were enough splinters of the true cross scattered across Christendom that we could build not just a cross, but also Noah's Ark.

13:01 We're little worship zombies. It's what we do. We see something that has a little bit of meaning and we want to worship it. Same thing with that snake. Well, anyway, Hezekiah takes care of that. He's the real deal, right? He's the real deal. He's the new David. And the fact that he's the new David sets up one of the most dramatic stories in the entire Bible. A story so intense and so captivating that it is told in full detail three different times in the Bible.

13:32 You get it here for two chapters. You get it in Isaiah, almost word for word. And then you get it also in 2 Chronicles 32. And it is the story of Hezekiah and the Rav Shakeh. So we're looking today at three chapters. This story of the Assyrian invasion of the south, which is told in chapters 18 and 19. And then we're going to look way more briefly at two other shorter stories about Hezekiah in chapter 20. We're going to read parts of it as we go. We're not going to read the whole thing. But here's the main idea. So the main idea that God was trying to teach his people at the time, main idea that he's trying to teach us now through this story, your trust belongs in God alone, for he will judge and he will save.

14:14 Your trust belongs in God alone, for he will judge and he will save. We're going to do this in two points. The first one way longer than the first one, as if that surprises anybody. First chapters 18 and 19, the God who will not be mocked. And then chapter 20, the God who calls us to trust. The God who calls us to trust. So point number one, looking at chapters 18 and 19, this story that runs all the way through that, the God who will not be mocked. Here's the background. In about 705 B.C., so 700 or so years before the birth of Christ, a man named Sennacherib rose to the throne of Assyria and was greeted, it's an empire up in the north, north of both the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel, so way up north, right?

14:54 Sennacherib rose to the throne of Assyria and was greeted immediately upon his accession to the throne with a series of rebellions throughout his empire. And he had to spend a considerable amount of time putting those rebellions down. One of those rebellions was by King Hezekiah of the southern kingdom of Judah. So in 701 BC, we use historical documents to date all this stuff. We can figure it out really nicely. In 701 BC, four years into his reign, Sennacherib invaded the southern kingdom of Israel intending to crush Jerusalem and Hezekiah and deport its people and scatter them throughout the nation of Israel or the nation of Assyria just like his predecessor had done to the people of the north some 20 years later. And chapter 18 records that invasion of the Assyrian army into the southern kingdom. If you look on down into verses 13 to 16 of chapter 18, you can see that as Sennacherib invades the south, he has some initial success, right? He came up against all the

15:55 fortified cities of Judah and took them. And Hezekiah in 13 to 16 in the wake of these victories gets scared of him. And so he sends all the treasures of the temple as tribute to Sennacherib to try to get him to turn away. Now let's pause just right there because I think this whole thing is weird. I mean we've just had eight verses of the Bible telling us that Hezekiah is the new David. He's the guy who does everything right.

16:27 And so it's weird that he sends all the treasures, yes, but it's weird that Sennacherib is present in the kingdom of this new David in the first place. I mean, think about it. Isn't Hezekiah the new righteous one? Isn't he the one that God is pleased with now? And if that's the case, if Hezekiah is doing everything right, then doesn't that mean that everything should be going great now for him? Well, that's what we think sometimes, but the reality is that faith in God doesn't work that way.

16:57 It never has worked that way. We're talking about a document 2,700 years old. It wasn't working that way for them. It doesn't work that way for us. The fact is, friend, you need to steel yourself for this reality, especially if you haven't been a Christian for very long. You can be faithful to God. You can pray every day. You can do seemingly everything right, and the Assyrians still may come at you. Things may still go wrong. Way too many Christians treat their Christianity as if it's a kind of rabbit's foot religion.

17:31 As if what we do with our Bible reading and with our prayers and with our singing is cast spells against bad things happening to us in this life. But Christianity is not a rabbit's foot religion. It's not a series of spells that we're casting to ward off evil. Christianity is a relationship with a sovereign God whose sovereign plan sometimes involves things happening to us that we do not like. Even if we've been faithful to him. That's the lesson Hezekiah learned.

18:04 And you just notice too as he sends off all the treasures of the temple in 13 to 16. Just notice, too, that Hezekiah also learned that when those bad things do come, letting your faith in God collapse is not the right move. There's so many people, so many people who in the early days of their Christian faith, and those early days may last for years, will do everything right. Go to church, pray, serve in the nursery, all of it, and everything's going swimmingly. And then something happens, bam, in their life, and it throws their faith.

18:35 It causes the foundation of their trust in the Lord to shatter because deep down somewhere they thought that God owed them to keep bad things away. And so they say, enough with that. I'm out. But Hezekiah learned here that that's not the right move. He turned, when things went bad, from faith in God to faith in Sennacherib. Tried to buy him off, and it didn't work at all. Why didn't it work?

19:06 Well, because you keep reading a little bit further. Instead of turning around like most kings would have with all of that tribute and treasure given to them, the Assyrian armies kept coming, and they got within striking distance of Jerusalem. Well, at that point, Sennacherib sends one of his field commanders, whose title was the Ravshaka, to taunt. It's a really fun word to say, and you should all try it as often as possible. The Ravshaka, and his job is to taunt Jerusalem and try to convince them to surrender. I think this guy, the Rav Shaka, is a fascinating character.

19:36 He probably wasn't like the supreme commander of the army. He was probably a high-ranking commander, third in line to the, you know, under the king, whatever. But he's not the supreme commander. But he does seem to be highly educated and highly skilled in diplomacy as well. In other words, he's really good at talking. And oh my goodness, if you've read this story, you know that that's what he does. He talks, and he talks, and he talks, and he talks. In my mind, he is the mouth of Sauron. That's that great king. You know, that's how I see him all the time.

20:09 I'm sure he wasn't like that, but man, he seems like it. Look at verse 19 of chapter 18. Here's what he said. And the Rav Shaka 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 now 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, well, is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah in Jerusalem, you shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem?

20:50 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. But you can't, that's his meaning. 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, is it without the Lord that I've come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, go up against this land and destroy it. The arrogance just oozes out of him, right? But it's not what he's saying there. It's not unreasonable.

21:20 It's not crazy. This guy is a shrewd politician, and he's trying to put locks in the keys of the gates of Jerusalem to get him to surrender. Look what he does. I mean, first he presses on Hezekiah's foolish decision to trust in Egypt to save him. He says, look, they're a reed that will pierce the hand of anybody who tries to rely on them. I mean, just imagine a walking staff that's been broken and splintered and all the splinters are coming out. And you try to lean on it and it'll stab you, right? That's exactly what happened. He was right. Egypt had made a half-hearted effort to honor the alliance, had been defeated before they ever really made it to the battlefield.

21:55 And then they decided that there's no place like home and they took off for home. Second, he tries to divide the people there. You see that? He says all of these high places have been broken down by the king. Hezekiah, as we said, had cut all those things down and centralized worship in Jerusalem. And he knows that there will be people in Jerusalem who are not happy about that. And so he tries to play them off of each other. Third, he makes fun of their military strength. We can give you horses, but you don't have anybody to ride them. Fourth, he just says he has divine authorization. It's the Lord who said to me, come and take this land.

22:27 Now that's super interesting. I mean, was it a lie? Is he just lying there? Just making it up? Maybe. It's also possible that he had some spies in Jerusalem who heard the preaching of Isaiah saying the Assyrians are coming and they're going to get really close to conquering us. And those spies came back and gave him the good news and now he's repeating it. I mean, if that's what happened, he missed some really important parts of what Isaiah was saying. Anyway, Hezekiah's officials asked him to speak in Aramaic instead of Hebrew. The Rav Shaka comes out, he's a multilingual guy, and he's speaking in Hebrew, right?

23:01 It's the language of the people. So he's standing out in the desert, the sand's blowing, the walls of the city are there, the archers are up on top of it with their shields and helmets and their bows maybe knocked and pulled, we don't know. But he speaks loud enough in the language of the common people so that the people on the walls can hear what he's saying. And Hezekiah's envoy who's out there says, look, Rav Shaka, don't speak in the common language. Use the higher language of Aramaic that we use for diplomacy so that the people on the wall won't hear what you're saying.

23:32 They won't understand you. And the Rav Shaka laughs. And he says, why do you think I came here? I came here so that the people on the walls will hear what I have to say. And he calls out even louder in Hebrew. Look what he says, verse 28 of 18. Then the Rav Shaka stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus says the king, don't let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. Don't let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying, the Lord will surely deliver us and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Don't listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, make your peace with me and come out to me. And then each one of you will eat of his own vine, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern. Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, catch that, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live and not die. And do not let Hezekiah, do not listen to him when he misleads

24:32 you by saying, the Lord will deliver us. You see what he's doing? He's calling on the people to trust in the king of Assyria and the king of Assyria's kindness instead of trusting in the Lord. That's what he wants them to do. So right there, they're faced with a choice. Are they going to be marked by faith in him, the Lord, or are they going to run to the security of the king of Assyria and take what he was promising? And when stuff gets choppy, that's always the question.

25:05 It's always the question, where is your faith? Where is your trust? Where is your sense of security? Now, I wonder what kind of faith marks your life, especially when things get dicey. Do you find your sense of security, your sense of well-being in God, in his promises, in the gospel of Jesus, or do you tend to run elsewhere? It's not always the easiest question for us as Christians, us as human beings, to answer because we're pretty quick to take a really quick glancing look at ourselves and say, yep, I trust in God.

25:38 When in reality, our hearts are actually subtly looking for safety and security and a sense of well-being in other things. it's worth taking a moment to stop and think about it when things in your life get dicey where does your heart go does your heart have a natural tendency to go to the lord in prayer or does your heart have a natural tendency first and maybe exclusively to go somewhere else do you naturally incline toward trust in god peace in his sovereignty joy in his power or to other things. Worry, anger, panic. I mean, that was the crisis the men on the wall, these officials in the city were brought to by the rough shaka taunting them. And it's a crisis we are brought to when crisis comes into our lives. Where do we look for security? Well, had he stopped right there, and the weight of the story would have just been on the response

26:40 of Jerusalem. You know, how is Jerusalem going to respond to this taunt from the Rav Shaka? You know, trust in the king of Assyria, not in God, not in Hezekiah. If he had stopped right there at verse 32, the wait would have been on the response of Jerusalem. But he got carried away. And in 33 to 35, he makes a fatal mistake. Look what he does. Middle of 32. Do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying the Lord will deliver us. Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?

27:12 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sefervayim, Henna, and Eva? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their lands out of my hand that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hands? He taunts the Holy One of Israel. Not just the people on the walls, but he taunts the Holy One of Israel. He equates the Holy One of Israel with all the pagan gods of the other lands.

27:45 And he says, if that God and that God and that God and that God couldn't stand before Sennacherib, then there's no way the God of Israel will stand before Sennacherib. I mean, you can feel the tension. You can almost feel the air being sucked out of the desert because this is not something you do. Well, Hezekiah hears all this. He sends word to Isaiah who tells him that the Lord has said not to be afraid.

28:17 He actually shows him his sovereignty. Look at chapter 19, verse 7. Just a little peek that he gives him right here of his sovereignty. Verse 7. This is Isaiah talking for the Lord and he says, Behold, look, look, I will put a spirit in Sennacherib so that he's going to hear a rumor and return to his own land. And I will make him fall by the sword in his own land. And then look what happens. The Rabshakeh returns from Jerusalem and found that the king of Assyria was fighting against Libna, for he heard that the king had left Lachish.

28:56 Now the king had heard concerning Terhaka, king of Cush, behold, he has set out to fight against you. Do you see what's happened there? Do you see what's happened there? he heard a rumor of this king of Ethiopia who's coming up to fight against him and he flees. He heads back toward Assyria. Just like Isaiah said he would. He's gonna hear a rumor and he's gonna head back toward his own land. This is not the end of the story. This is not the point. This is just the Lord showing Hezekiah, look what I can do with this man. He's like leaves blown around by the wind.

29:30 And he moves just at the breath of my mouth At the sound of a rumor, a whisper, I moved this man. It's just a down payment on what the Lord would do. Anyway, the rumor of Cush coming up to fight means that the Assyrian army needs to hurry. So the king renews his taunt in a letter. Look at chapter 19, verse 9. So, having heard about this king of Cush coming, Sennacherib sent messengers again to Hezekiah saying, Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah, king of Judah.

30:06 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 lands, devoting them to destruction. And you shall be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, the people of Eden who are in Tel-Hassar? Where's the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Seferviim, the king of Hinnah, or the king of Eva? Again, he's insulting the God of Israel. Those other gods couldn't stop me, and your God is not going to stop me.

30:39 So the die is cast, and you can almost see God on the throne looking down and his eyes narrowing as he looks at the king of Assyria. But before it happens, there's something else that happens first. Hezekiah receives this letter. There you see that in verse 14. And he immediately goes to the house of the Lord to pray. Now that is an extraordinary change in him. He's not panicking. He's not running to Egypt or to other powers for help.

31:09 He's not even suing for favorable terms of surrender from the king of Assyria. No, he runs for safety to where he should have run in the first place, to the living God, and he prays. It's an amazing prayer because basically he appeals to God's own reputation and just throws the whole thing at God's feet. There's no bargaining, there's no weaseling, there's no offering of excuses. He simply appeals to God's own name and asks him to save. I mean, I love how in verse 14 there, he takes the letter that Sennacherib had sent him and spreads it before the Lord.

31:45 He just takes the letter and just lays it on the altar. It's as if he's saying, look at this, God. I'm going to get out of the way now. This is between you and him because he's taunting you ultimately. Look at this. So for the sake of your own name, save your people. It's an amazing prayer that he prays there. Let's just look at it, 14 to 19. Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it. And he went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. And he prayed before the Lord and said, O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth.

32:21 You have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O Lord, it's true. The kings of Assyria have laid waste to the nations and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire because they were not gods. But the work of men's hands, wood and stone, and therefore they were destroyed. So now, O Lord, our God, save us, please, from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.

32:52 There are finally so many things right in this prayer. So many things are right. I mean, first he acknowledges that God is the maker of heaven and earth, that he's enthroned over all the kingdoms of the earth. We talked about this last week. It is always so tempting to relegate our God to being just one among many. Well, not Hezekiah, not right here. These are universal claims of sovereignty, and he's even placing the kingdom of Assyria under God's feet. The second thing he does there, look at it.

33:23 He calls attention to the situation. He says, Lord, please save us because this is bad news. This king really has killed off all these other nations. He really has destroyed all these other armies and cities. So he calls God's attention to the situation. And it's wonderful if you think about it. We don't have a God who is uninterested in his people's plight. This is not just a sort of deistic God that wound the world up like a toy and then sort of let it go and is off in heaven by himself. No, Hezekiah knows that this is a God who is intimately concerned with his people.

33:55 Even that he'd hear the words of this trumped-up, like, 12-year-old boy king who had stuck his neck out too far. He says, God, help me in this situation. And he knows that God will because God cares. And look, too, he notes the difference this time. Yes, it's true, the kings of Assyria have thrown other gods in the fire. But that's because they were not gods. You ever heard it said of a basketball team? Well, they ain't played anybody yet. That's the king of Assyria.

34:27 He hadn't played anybody yet. But now he's chesting up against the God of the universe, and it is not going to go well for him. God's response to Hezekiah's prayer is swift and terrifying. You get this prophecy, that poem there at the end of chapter 19. Just look at 27 and 28. This is what God says to the king of Assyria. But I know you're sitting down, and you're going out and coming in, and you're raging against me. I've seen it all from you, Sennacherib.

34:59 Because you have raged against me, and your complacency has come into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose, and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came. You're leaving my land. You're leaving my people alone. I want you to notice here that this is not just, this is not the sovereignty that acts only in the moment. Right? I mean, there is a kind of sovereignty. that can act just in a moment, like you always know what to do. You're just a good chess player in the moment.

35:31 There is that kind of sovereignty, but this is not that. This is not just God being really good on his feet when he's confronted with a problem. No, every bit of this, he says here, was planned from the beginning. When you look at verse 25, you can see that. Have you not heard, Sennacherib, that I determined all this long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins while they're inhabitants, short of strength, they're dismayed and confounded and become like plants of the field, et cetera, et cetera. He's saying all those victories that you think you have, I did that.

36:05 I planned all of that. And he says in Isaiah, it goes into a little more detail what God says to Sennacherib. He says the reason I did it all was because I was sharpening you up as a sword to use as a judger against my people. You're just a tool to me. I'm sovereign. Not you. So God promises because Sennacherib has exalted himself. Because he's taunted the Holy One of Israel. Because finally he's facing up to a God that actually exists.

36:36 God promises to punish them and destroy them. And that's just how it happens. Look at verse 35 of chapter 19. That night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when the people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. And then Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed and went home and lived at Nineveh. And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch, his god, Adrammelech and Sherezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat.

37:09 And Ezerhaddon, his son, reigned in his place. 185,000 men in a night. Now, some historians have looked at that and doubted whether this really happened. And the reason they doubt it is because, believe it or not, Sennacherib himself actually kept really detailed records of his conquests. As you read them, they are very self-exalting, arrogant records. But we have them. We have these 2,500, 700-year-old records.

37:41 And Sennacherib, in his recounting of his exploits, never mentions getting whooped at Jerusalem. So historians see that and they say, well, I suppose we can trust this arrogant king. It never happened. He never got beat at Jerusalem. But there are a couple interesting things to think about in that regard. One of those things is this. In the British Museum, like right now, you can go see it. I have seen it when we were in London a few years ago. In the British Museum right now, there is a series of reliefs.

38:14 You know what reliefs are? They're like carvings on a wall. So a series of reliefs that were uncovered in the 19th century from the palace without rival, it was called, that Sennacherib lived in. They were on the walls of this one particular room in this palace. And it shows the conquering of a city, and then the people of that conquered city bringing tribute to Sennacherib. And the inscription on those reliefs is this. Sennacherib, king of the universe, king of Assyria, sits on a throne and the spoils of Lachish are paraded before him.

38:47 End quote. Lachish. What's that? What's Lachish? You remember? Look back at 1908. 1908. The Rav Shaka returned, found the king of Assyria fighting against Libna, before he heard that the king had left Lachish. He conquered Lachish, and he went after Libna, and he's waiting on Jerusalem. That's interesting, right? And then he made this whole room of his palace a trophy to his glory in conquering Lachish. Second thing to keep in mind. Hold that in mind, right? He's celebrating his victory in Lachish, even as he's waiting on the one in Jerusalem.

39:19 Second thing, Sennacherib's records do mention that he laid siege to Jerusalem. He mentions that. He laid siege to Jerusalem. He even says in his records that he had King Hezekiah locked up like a bird in a cage in his own city. But then after he mentions that, the story just goes strangely quiet and continues by saying that Sennacherib decided to return to Assyria. Okay, so what do you have there?

39:54 You take the reliefs, you take the record. What do you have there? What does that mean? It means Sennacherib got his tail kicked at Jerusalem. And he tried to salve his own wounded ego by making a huge deal of his conquest of Lachish, this little two-bit town down the road. That's what it means. And here's the thing, nobody would have expected this. He has this huge army, he's crushing enemies, he's destroying cities, left, right, and center. He's boasting in his power to subdue gods under his feet.

40:26 But then he exalted himself against the God of Israel, and in one night, his entire power was wiped out. In 1815, a man named Lord Byron wrote a poem called The Destruction of Sennacherib. I know it's kind of a cliche that preachers do poems near the ends of their sermons, but I think you can cut me some slack because I'm pretty sure that in 13 years of being the pastor here, I've never done a poem. We're going to do one now. Here's what Lord Byron said. Here's how he described the whole situation.

40:57 I think it's haunting. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold. And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea when the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, that host with their banners at sunset were seen. Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, that host on the morning lay withered and strown. For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast and breathed in the face of the foe as he passed.

41:33 And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, and their hearts but once heaved and forever grew still. And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, but through it there rolled not the breath of his pride. And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, and cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider, distorted and pale, with the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail. And the tents were all silent, the banners alone.

42:04 The swords were unlifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Asher are loud in their wail, and the idols are broke in the temple of Baal. And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord. Friends, that's the God with whom we have to deal. And if you were to walk around that camp and feel the silence and feel the cold, you would feel small under the gaze of that God.

42:48 And we should. We see God's judgment of the nations. We see his destruction of a tremendous army in a single night. We stand in the presence of all of that and we do and we should feel tiny. And friends, even those of you who are brothers and sisters in Christ, there is something good in that feeling of smallness. So often we can get so myopically focused on the things of our own lives and our own problems that we lose a universal perspective.

43:21 And then, you know what happens when we lose a universal perspective of our own tininess? We lose humility. So there is something profoundly good in being reminded sometimes that God is judge. And he is our judge. There's something good in knowing that even though God is your father, if you're a Christian, even though he's made himself your friend, he is also the master and judge of nations. We need to know that when we sing.

43:53 We need to know that when we bow our heads and pray. We need to know when we pray that we are praying to the one who moves the nations. We're stepping into the presence of the one who killed 185,000 men in a single night. If you're not a Christian, a friend, you need to know that too. You need to know that whether you recognize him or not, whether you bow to his authority or not, whether you, like Sennacherib, want to give him the backhand and ignore him, whether you want to mock him, whether you want to taunt him, he is your God.

44:30 And he will be your judge on the last day. But the beautiful thing about it, the beautiful thing about it is that that judge also longs to be your friend. The judge longs to be your friend. Now can you imagine, can you imagine looking into the face of the one who's going to judge you and you know you're guilty before him and he says, I want to be your friend, I want to give you mercy. And you turn away and say, no, no, I won't have it. What kind of arrogance does that take?

45:00 What kind of pride does that take? The God of the universe wants to be your friend. He gave his only son to live the life you ought to have lived from the beginning, to die the death that you deserve for your own sins, and then to rise again and sit at his right hand with his hands outstretched in mercy to you. Why won't you take it? Come to Jesus, put your faith in him, and you'll be saved. God will be your judge, but the judge will be your friend on the last day. And he'll say, well done, good and faithful servant.

45:35 Enter into the inheritance of the kingdom. Well, that's point one, and that's basically the sermon. Here's point two. It's going to be real brief. The God who calls us to trust. We just don't have time to spend a whole lot of time on it. The events of chapter 20, here's what you need to know, actually take place chronologically before the destruction of the Assyrian army. The author flags you to that in a couple of ways. There in the very first words, he says, in those days. So he doesn't say after this or after these things.

46:06 It's in this time, right, in those days. So that flags you that this is happening during this era. In verse 6, also God promises to save Jerusalem from the Assyrians. So that flags you that, you know, this is happening beforehand. It's not a problem, right? Everything in the Bible doesn't happen chronologically because a whole lot of times the Bible authors will often put things out of chronological order in order to make a theological point. And here the theological point seems to be that in light now of knowing the power of this great God, as revealed in chapters 18 and 19, everybody who reads this book now, including Hezekiah himself, is presented with a choice.

46:43 Are you going to trust in this God or are you going to put your faith in other things? That's the big question. And so here we get two stories from Hezekiah's life that present us with two possible answers to the question. I don't have to go into a lot of detail on them because they're both really straightforward. There's not a whole lot to explain. In the first of them, the first half of the chapter, you get the story of Hezekiah's illness. Initially he's told he's going to die, but then he reaches out to Isaiah and says, you know, I don't want to die. Isaiah says, okay, in three days you're going to come to the temple and then the Lord is going to extend your life.

47:17 And so he says to him, okay, there's a shadow, right, of some kind of monument or something. We don't exactly know. But there's a shadow that's being cast by the sun and it's moving down some steps on a building as shadows do as the day goes on, right? And Isaiah asks him, okay, here's your sign. Do you want that shadow to get longer by 10 steps or do you want that shadow to back up by 10 steps? And Hezekiah thinks it through, smart guy, and he says, well, it's no big deal for it to get longer by 10 steps. That's just kind of what happens every day. So make it go backwards. and then it does the thing goes backwards and god says that that's a sign of hezekiah's life being extended by 15 years you know how how did that happen no idea how that happened did god like stop the earth's rotation and spin it the other way maybe we don't know the text doesn't say whatever happened though it was miraculous and the point is that here in this first story hezekiah trusted god that's the story that's the point second story is exactly the opposite it's

48:21 the story of hezekiah getting visitors from babylon people hear that he's healed from this sickness visitors from babylon show up and hezekiah is overjoyed to see these visitors from from babylon he takes them into the storehouses of the temple he shows them all the treasure which he apparently hasn't yet sent to the king of assyria it's all there they see all the gold isaiah comes in and says, hey, why did you do that? What have you done? What did they see? Hezekiah says, everything. I showed them literally everything. And Isaiah is not happy about it and says, well, because of that, things are going to go badly for your kingdom in the future as well. So that's kind of the story of that. Why, though, was it so bad for Hezekiah to show off the treasures?

49:02 You ever think about that? Why was it so bad? Well, look at verse 12 of chapter 20. I'll show you why it was so bad. And then we'll end. At that time, Merodach Baladon, the son of Baladon, king of Babylon, sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah. For he heard that Hezekiah had been sick. So we don't know what the present was. What were those letters that the king of Babylon sent? What were the letters? They were not just get well cards. They were offers of alliance.

49:34 That's what that means in ancient Near Eastern literature. When a king sends another king letters, it's an offer of an alliance. It's a treat, right? You're treating with one another. You're talking about creating an alliance. And so when Hezekiah goes into the storehouses and goes like this to the envoys of the king of Babylon, he's not just showing off. He's saying, here's what we have to offer in this alliance. So how about you and I get together and we'll stand against the king of Assyria? Which if you know your Bible at all, you know that is a bad thing.

50:04 Because what it means is that Hezekiah is turning away for security from the Lord and toward now the king of Babylon. He doesn't here trust the Lord. You know, given everything that we've said about Hezekiah, that's a sobering thing, isn't it? That here at the end, at the end of his story, he doesn't finally trust the Lord. It's sobering because you've got this hero king here, the new David. but his commitment to God failed.

50:39 And it's almost shocking when it happens. We're not expecting it. We have high expectations of Hezekiah by the end of this story, and he fails them all. Friends, you and I can often have undue high expectations of ourselves too and our own ability to remain faithful to God, But we need to be sobered at the thought of just how fragile we are. You remember this past fall when we studied Peter and his denial of Christ.

51:12 What was Peter saying just a couple of hours before he denied Christ? Even if everybody else falls away, I will never, Jesus, fall away from you. And Peter learned that lesson. So did Hezekiah. And so we've got to learn it too. No matter how strong we think we are, our faith is fragile when it's pressed. You squeeze any one of us just right and we snap like a twig.

51:43 Our faith in the Lord, our commitment to the Lord, if we're squeezed just right, it becomes bitterness and lashing out and anger and fear and defensiveness. Which means that when the squeezing comes, we need grace. We need the Lord's strength. We need him to sustain us. It's not like we don't know that. I mean, our whole lives are built on the understanding as Christians that we need grace. We need the Lord to save us. We need the Lord to sustain us. We can't do it ourselves.

52:15 But we need to know that not just about our salvation in Jesus, but we need to live that truth every single day of our lives. Our God is a powerful, majestic God. But he is also a God who calls his people to trust him, even when they're squeezed. Let's pray. Our Lord God, it is good to stand in just the awesome majesty of this story and of your action in destroying the Assyrian army.

52:57 Our God, we praise you for your power We praise you for your sovereignty We praise you for your justice Lord, we ask that Even in the light of all of that You would help us to know you as our God Our Redeemer and our Savior And trust in you Every day of our lives We ask all of that in the name of Jesus Our Redeemer and our Savior Amen