(Through the Bible) 2 Kings 17-25 — Chuck Smith

Kings 17. In the 17th chapter, we come to the death of the northern kingdom, the nation of Israel. In the twelfth year, when Ahaz was the king in Judah, that's the king of the southern kingdom, Hosea began to reign in Samaria over Israel.

He reigned for nine years. He did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and so unfortunately, Israel did not have one single king of which it was not testified that he did evil in the sight of the Lord.

Not one king of Israel followed after the Lord from the very beginning of Jeroboam, when the kingdom was divided into the northern and southern kingdom. From Jeroboam onward, all of the kings did evil in the sight of the Lord.

It is interesting that as the king goes, so went the nation so often. And the nation's following after God or turning from God was largely dependent upon the influence of the king. And so, the Assyrians came up against them.

Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, and Hosea became a servant. He began to pay tribute unto Shalmaneser. But the king of Assyria found them conspiring, for they had sent to the king of Egypt for help. They had taken the money that they were supposed to send for tribute, and they sent it to the king of Egypt to hire mercenaries to come and to fight against Assyria.

So the Assyrians came again, and they circled the city, and they captured it, and they bound him up and placed him in prison after sieging Samaria for three years. And in the ninth year, Hosea, the king of Assyria, in the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria and placed them in Hala, in Hebor, by the river Gozan, and the city of the Medes.

Israel’s Indictment: Forgetting God as the Source of Strength

Now God begins to enumerate his indictment against Israel and list the reasons why Israel, a once great and powerful nation, the people who were once known as the people of God, and had been a strong and powerful nation, but God lists his indictment against them, the reasons why they became weak, the reasons why they were defeated and fell to their enemies.

And so it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, which had brought them out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of the Pharaoh, and they feared other gods. The first indictment is their failure to be what God wanted them to be, the missing of the mark.

They sinned against the Lord, and they served, they began to reverence and worship and serve other gods. This was caused partially by a misinterpreting of their history. They failed to realize that it was God that made them great.

It was their relationship to God that made them strong. It was God who brought them out of Egypt. It was God who brought them through the wilderness. It was God who brought them in the land. It was God who caused them to possess the land and to defeat their enemies.

But they began to misinterpret their history, and they began to attribute their greatness and their victories to other things, to other gods. They built the golden calf, two of them, set one in Dan and one in Bethel, and the king said, these are the gods that brought you out of Israel.

And they began to forsake the true and the living God and worship the gods that they had made with their own hands. Now, a man has to worship something. It's just innate within us. I've got to worship something.

There is a void within that I am seeking to fill. It is a spiritual void. I've got to fill it with something. And if I don't fill it with the true and the living God, I'm going to fill it with garbage, the garbage of nonsense.

I will, as the humanistic philosophy says today, I will take my leap of faith. I must take the leap of faith, for they say the lower story of reality is only despair and man can't live in despair. So man must take the leap of faith into the upper story of a non-reasoned religious experience.

And the world today is filled with non-reasoned religious experiences. I read in this month's issue of the Reader's Digest of this Scientology and how the whole thing started. Some guy was a writer and he was writing for a penny a word.

And he said, writing for a penny a word, you'll never make any money. And so he said, the only way to make money is to develop a new religion. And so he developed Scientology with the purpose of making himself wealthy.

And he succeeded because there's a bunch of stupid people who are willing to let their minds be bent to become the robots and the merchandisers for these purveyors of ignorance and Dianetics and all of these kind of things and his supposed stories and all.

And Reader's Digest really has quite an article on the background and all of Scientology this month's issue. You might find it, I did, very, very fascinating indeed. But it only helps point out how when man forsakes the true and the living God, he is an open sucker for anything that will come along.

He'll believe in stupidity. He'll believe in nothing. He'll worship and serve the creature more than the creator. He begins to worship his body needs and body appetites and the fulfillment thereof. So the children of Israel sinned against the Lord.

They turned from God, but they sought to fill the void in the worship of the other gods. They misinterpreted their history and they began to attribute the greatness to characteristics of their own nationality.

We're tough people. We're hardy people. We're smart people. We have a democratic system of government. We have a free enterprise system. This is what makes the nation great. This is what makes the nation strong.

And we begin to attribute the greatness and the strength to these other things rather than to the fact that we were a nation founded in God and that God was the strength because God was the heart of the nation.

And thus there was strength because of the moral strength that was in the heart of the nation because the people worshiped and served God. But when the planks that hold the people and the nation together, when these moral planks begin to decay and begin to rot, then the nation surely cannot stand much longer.

And the planks have become so rotten. The moral decay has become so great in Israel that the nation could no longer stand. And so the children of Israel did secretly those things which were not right in the eyes of God.

They built the high places in the cities and the towers in order to worship the strange gods. They set up images and they burned incense in all the high places until the Lord carried them away captive.

They served the idols where the Lord said, you should not do this thing. The Lord testified against them. He sent His prophets unto them to warn them, but they failed to listen to the prophets of God.

They did not hearken to the servants. The prophets said, turn you from your evil ways. Keep God's commandments and statutes. But they would not hear. They hardened their necks like the necks of their fathers that did not believe in the Lord, their God.

And they rejected His statutes and His covenants that He had made with their fathers and the testimonies which He had testified against them. And they followed vanity and became vain. That is always the effect of following vanity.

You become vain. The word vanity is emptiness. Following emptiness, you become empty. Now, it is interesting that people today are following after emptiness in their pursuit of happiness. It seems that the goal of man today is to be happy.

And we all have in our own minds that mental concept of what it will take to make me happy. Happiness is, you know, and each of you can finish that sentence yourself, because each of you have in your mind that which you think it would take to make you happy.

Happiness is a million dollars in the bank. The bank may fold tomorrow. Happiness is a yacht. Happiness is a house on Little Island. Happiness is, you know, happiness is an experience that results from a right relationship with God.

The rest is the pursuit of happiness. But in our pursuit, we are oftentimes pursuing after things that in themselves are empty and unfulfilling. They may bring us moments of excitement and moments of pleasure, moments of joy, but no true lasting happiness.

Through my mind races the college years and all of the things that we used to do for excitement and to have an exciting evening. And I would hate to share them because some young kids might get things in their mind they hadn't thought of before.

We used to grease the streetcar tracks at an incline and just sit on the sit on the side and just laugh and roll as the thing just was there spinning its wheels. You know, I only say that because the kids don't have streetcars anymore.

When it's parked downtown, just run up behind it and pull the thing off the wire. You know, hear the bell ringing and the lights go out in the street car and all that. And you just, you know, run up the street.

They can't do anything. And you just laugh and big joke, you know. Oh, it was fun. But the next night you're looking for something else. You know, it doesn't last. It's good for 10, 15 minutes, but there's nothing lasting to it.

The pursuit of the world following after emptiness, they become empty. And they went after the heathen that were around about them concerning whom the Lord charged them. You should not do like them. Now, here is one thing that we've got to be careful about because there is strong pressure today for us to do exactly this, to do like the world around us.

Moral Absolutes Versus Cultural Relativism

Today, the world around us is governed by a humanistic philosophy, which declares that there is nothing really evil or wrong in and of itself. For there is no absolute good or bad. It is all relative to your culture, to your background, to the area where you live, to the mores of the society.

And the mores are always that which determines what is right and what is wrong within a society. And so the sociologists point to the mores of the New Guinea culture or the mores of some South American Indian tribe or the mores of the Eskimos and so forth.

And they can prove that any kind of a relationship is accepted and is good in particular societies. So it all depends upon your society, whether or not a relationship is right or wrong. There are absolutes as far as morals are concerned.

God has laid down the absolutes. But the men of Israel, the people of Israel, had made the mistake of following the mores of the society around them. And following the mores of that society, they became corrupted before God.

And being corrupted before God, they were destroyed. And the greatness and the strength of the nation was sapped. And they became weak morally, weak spiritually. And then it only followed that they were to be destroyed as a nation.

For the true strength of any nation lies in the moral planks upon which that nation stands. God sent His servants, the prophets. They cried out against the way the people were living. But they were accused of being bigoted, narrow-minded, old-fashioned, prudent.

And the people would not hearken. And thus, the nation fell. Now, God had given them other warnings. God had allowed them to fall, really, in the battle even against small nations. Not totally defeated.

But they were once ruling over Moab. And the Moabites rebelled against them. The Moabites were not a big people. They were not a strong people. They were just a little nation. But Israel had become so weak, they could not subdue Moab and bring it back under their control.

And seeing that Moab had made a successful incursion against them, then the Edomites decided to rebel from their control. And the other small nations, one by one, seeing and being encouraged by the weakness of Israel, began to pick on Israel, began to battle against them.

And they were unable to win a decisive victory over them. And even then, they didn't recognize their weakness. Even then, they were deceived as Samson, who once his hair was cut off and his vow before God was broken, knew not that he was weak as other men.

And when Delilah said, Samson, the Philistines are upon you, he said, I will shake myself as at other times and go out against them. And he did not know that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him.

And he fell before the hands of the Philistines. Because without the power of God's Spirit, he was weak just like anybody else. And without God, our nation is weak just like anybody else. And our nation has turned from God.

We have turned from actually having God at the heart and the center of our national life. And though we still print on the coins, in God we trust, it seems almost a travesty. And though the Bible was the first textbook and the only textbook in the first public school in America, yet now because of the decisions of the Supreme Court, we cannot even have a Bible class in a public schoolroom that the children can attend at their own discretion.

Nor can there be public prayers offered within the schoolroom. Of course, the kids violate that every time a test comes along. The nation has become weak. And now the little nations are beginning to pick on us.

North Korea, unable to defeat them. South, in North Vietnam, they defeated us. They are mocking us. They're taking advantage of us. They know we're too weak to react or respond. And it'll be some other nation next.

And after that, another. Because we have proven our inability to react or to respond. And it is only encouraging the enemy. And it is only a matter of time until Russia makes her move. And believe me, if we can't defeat the little vassals of Russia, how in the world do we ever expect to defeat Russia?

We can't. Again, the Reader's Digest this month's issue has another very interesting article concerning the policies of our President Carter, which has led us into this dilemma and how impossible it is for us to get out of it, even with our greatest efforts, until at least 1985.

You'll find that another very fascinating article this month's Reader's Digest. I don't get a commission on that magazine either. And so the death of a nation. It's always sad. It's always tragic. To see a nation that was once strong, once mighty, once glorious, to see it die, to watch it in its agony of death, to stand helplessly by and know there's nothing you can do.

We see our nation today in the agony of death. The same conditions that prevailed in Israel prevail in our nation today. We have turned our backs upon God. We have made materialism, pleasure, intellectual pursuits, the master passions of our lives, and we've turned in the true and the living God, and we've become weak.

We failed to realize that it was God that made us strong, that it was God's grace that was shed upon us that made us a mighty nation. And we've begun to attribute the greatness to other things and to declare the praises of the free enterprise system or of the democratic system of government and all, rather than to praise and thank God for His strength and what He has done.

And I am convinced that unless there is a great spiritual revival and a turning to God in the United States, that we will fall before 1985. And so, God gives His indictment against them. And in verse 23, He concludes, Until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said by His servants the prophets, so was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day.

721 BC, the northern kingdom fell to Assyria. And the king of Assyria had a practice of taking the people, all of them out of the land, and taking them to other places, scattering them, and then repopulating them in strange places.

It would be like if Russia should defeat us now. And they move all of the people out of the United States to various provinces in Russia, down into the area of the Caucasus and down through the areas of Estonia and up through Latvia and into Siberia.

And all of a sudden, you're living in a city where maybe there are only three other Americans, and there's 100 ,000 Russians. You can't speak their language, and everything is strange, a strange culture.

You're completely alienated. You're demoralized. There's no way you can get together to rebel against this kind of power. And thus was the practice of the Assyrians, so subduing their enemies that there is no recovering from it, as they repopulate them into other areas where they have no chance of getting together and forming a united kind of a rebellion against what has happened to them.

And so thus happened with the nation Israel by Assyria, and they became scattered, the ten tribes of the northern kingdom. Now, the Assyrians then took other nations that they had conquered, and they brought the people from those other nations, and they established them in this strange area to them, the area of Samaria.

Totally uprooted them, brought them into an area that they were totally unfamiliar with, and they set them in the area of Samaria. And so it was when these other people first began to dwell in the land of Samaria, the land of Israel there, the northern part, that they feared not the Lord.

Therefore, the Lord sent lions among them and began to destroy the people. And so they came to the king of Assyria, and they said, hey, we don't understand the ways of the gods of the land, and lions and wild beasts are killing our people, so send someone to teach us the ways of the gods of the land, so that we can live in that land.

And so the king got one of the priests, and he sent him back unto Samaria, and the priest taught them the ways of the Lord. And then there's a very interesting scripture. So it said, and they feared the Lord, but served their own gods.

Oh, what a picture of so many people today. They respect the Lord. They acknowledge the Lord. They give obeisance to the Lord. But they serve their own gods. They may even sing praises unto the Lord. They may listen to records about the Lord.

They acknowledge the Lord, that He exists. But when it comes down to their life and their lifestyles, they're actually serving other gods. Now, Jesus said, no man can serve two masters. You're either going to love the one and hate the other, or hold to the one and despise the other.

And you cannot serve God and Mammon, which was, of course, the other god of those days. The god of power, represented by money. How many people today reverence, fear the Lord, but yet they serve other gods.

It's like Bob Dylan saying, you've got to serve somebody. And it isn't the one that you really are reverencing so much as the one that you're actually serving that really counts. Who are you serving? Are you serving the gods of your own creation, your own lust, your own desires?

Or are you serving the true and the living God, obedient unto His word and to His commands? And so, a real paradox here. Fear the Lord, serve their own God. In chapter 18, we now move back to the southern kingdom of Judah.

Hezekiah’s Reform and the Removal of Idolatry

In as much as the northern kingdom has now been destroyed from the rest of the second kings on, we'll be dealing actually with now the southern kingdom of Judah, which still remains. And as we move south, we find that Hezekiah is coming to reign over Judah.

He was 25 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for 29 years in Jerusalem. And he did that which was right. In the sight of the Lord, according to the Lord. And all that David his father did.

And thus he removed the high places. He broke the images. He cut down the groves. He broke in pieces the brass serpent that Moses had made. For in those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it, and he called it Nehushtan.

So, as he took over as king, the first thing he did was to start removing the false idols and gods and worship centers that the people had created in Judah. Destroying them, getting rid of them, in order that he might turn the people back to the true worship of the true and living God.

And one of the interesting things, one of the things that the people had made an idol out of and were burning incense to, was this brass serpent that Moses had made in the wilderness. You remember when the children of Israel have murmured against the Lord, the Lord sent serpents in the land.

And the serpents began to bite the people and they began to die from the result of the bites of these serpents. And Moses cried unto the Lord, and the Lord told him to make a brass serpent and to put it on the pole in the midst of the camp.

And whoever was bitten by the serpent, if he would look on the brass serpent, he would be healed of the bite and live. Now, Jesus uses that as a remarkable illustration to answer the question of an earnest Jewish leader who said to him, how can I be born again when I am old?

Can I return the second time to my mother's womb? And Jesus, in answering the question, how can I be born again, said, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

So Jesus made reference to this brazen serpent in the wilderness that it was going to be sort of like Him, actually. Even as Moses raised up the serpent. Now, of course, brass is always a symbol of God's judgment, and the serpent was a symbol for sin.

The people sinned against the Lord in murmuring against the Lord. So the brass serpent there on the pole in the wilderness was a symbol that their sin had been judged. And if they would just look at the provision that God made, the brass serpent on the pole, and believe in that provision, they would be healed of the bites of the serpents and live.

Even so, Jesus Christ on the cross is a symbol of God's judgment against our sins. And if we'll just but look to Jesus Christ, the crucified Lord, we will be forgiven our sins and we will live. So I am born again by believing on Christ, the fact that He bore my sins upon the cross.

But the people had taken now this brass serpent, and they made a little shrine and an altar, and they had begun to worship it and burn incense to it. Now, whenever a man sets up an idol and begins to worship an idol, it tells us a couple of things about that man.

Number one, it tells us that he has lost the consciousness of the presence of God. Whenever I have to have an idol, a worship center, that means I have lost the consciousness of God's presence, and I need something to remind me of God's presence.

That's a sign of spiritual dullness. Paul the Apostle said, I know that you men of Athens are very religious people. I've seen all of your gods that you have through town and all of the altars that you have built.

And I saw this one altar. I was interested in it because it had the inscription to the unknown God. He said, that's the God I want to talk to you about. For He is the God who made the heaven and the earth and everything that is in them.

And in Him, we live, we move, we have our being. Paul didn't need any idols. He was so conscious of God's presence that he realized that he was totally surrounded by God. I live in Him. I move in Him.

I have my being in Him. I cannot escape Him. He surrounds me all the time. That kind of consciousness, you don't need a reminder. You don't need some little idol, some little trinket to remind you of His presence.

Man is so prone to want something to worship, something I can see, some object. And it is a sign that he has lost the consciousness, something vital in his relationship with God. The consciousness of God's presence.

But the second thing that an idol tells us is that somehow that man is longing to regain that which he lost. I want to be conscious of God's presence. And so I need this as a reminder because I'm longing for something that I have lost.

The consciousness and the awareness of God. And so the children of Israel had made an idol out of this brass serpent. They made it an object of worship. They were burning incense to it. Again, that folly of worshiping and serving the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forevermore.

Hezekiah, when he came into the throne and as he's a king, as he began to destroy all of the false worship centers, he took this brass serpent and he broke the thing in pieces and he said, Nahushtan. Now the word Nahushtan means a thing of brass.

It's no God. It's a thing of brass. Oh, how we get attached to things. Oh, I always like to sit in that particular portion of the church because there one night I felt the presence of God. Don't ever remove that pew, you know.

And I'm only letting you know that the first of the month the pews are to be removed. We'll sell it to you if you want it. But it's Nahushtan. It's a thing of wood and cloth. It's not a God. It's a thing of brass.

It's no God. Nahushtan, thing of brass. It is interesting if you go to St. Ambrose Cathedral in Milan, Italy today, you'll find in a beautiful case what they claim to be the glued together portions of that brass serpent.

That's right. And again, prayers are being offered before it. But it's Nahushtan, a thing of brass. It's important that we recognize these things for what we are, that we don't put some kind of a magical, you know, spiritual aura around the things.

Oh, you know. That's the place. That's the pulpit. That's the spot. So Hezekiah initiated a tremendous religious reform and he trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that after him there was none among all of the kings of Judah that were like him.

For he claimed to the Lord. He stuck with the Lord and departed not from following Him, but he kept his commandments which the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him. You know, and we get into 2 Chronicles when Asa had come back from his victory over the huge force of the Ethiopians.

The prophet met him and said, The Lord is with you while you'll be with Him. And if you seek Him, He will be found of you. But if you forsake Him, He will forsake you. Now, Hezekiah was committed to the Lord.

He obeyed the commandments of the Lord. He claimed unto the Lord and thus the Lord was with him. The inevitable consequence of commitment to the Lord. Not only was the Lord with him, but the Lord prospered him wherever he went.

And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him. Now, the king of Assyria had come down to the area of the Philistines and he had actually smitten the city of Gaza and all of the little intermediary cities around there.

Assyrian Threats Against Jerusalem

And it came to pass in the fourth year of King Hezekiah that Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, came up against Samaria and besieged it. And at the end of three years, they took it, which was the sixth year of Hezekiah.

And the king of Assyria did carry away Israel, as we've already covered, into the captivity because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed His covenant. And in the 14th year of Hezekiah, this Shennekerib, the king of Assyria, came against the fenced cities of Judah and took them.

And Hezekiah the king sent to the king of Assyria and saying, I have offended, return from me that which you put on me I will bear. In other words, he was offering to surrender unto Shennekerib. And so he laid upon Hezekiah a tribute of 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold.

And Hezekiah gave him the silver that was there in the house of the Lord, the treasures of the king's house. And at that time, he cut the gold from the doors of the temple and from the pillars, which had been overlaid, he gave it to the king of Assyria.

And the king of Assyria then sent a couple of fellows, emissaries, Tartan, Rabserus and Rabshakeh to the king Hezekiah. And they came with threats from the king of Assyria. They came to the wall and Hezekiah's prime minister went out.

And these guys began to call up unto them. And he said, they said to the Rabshakeh said unto them, speak unto Hezekiah and say to him, thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria. What is this confidence wherein you're trusting?

You say, but they are vain words. I have counsel and strength for the war. Now on whom do you trust that you're rebelling against me? Now behold, you're trusting upon the staff of the bruised reed upon Egypt, which if even a man will lean upon it in his hand, it will pierce his hand.

So Pharaoh, the king of Egypt and all of those who trust in him. But if you say to me, we trust in Jehovah our God, is it not he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away and has said unto Judah in Jerusalem, ye shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem.

Now that shows how, of course, little the people understood Jehovah God. He thought that all these high places and altars that were actually pagan altars that were built throughout the land were built into Jehovah.

How much people outside really misunderstand often our devotion of Jesus Christ, our worship of Him. And this guy is saying, you know, you say you trust in Jehovah, but Hezekiah tore down all of his altars and all and said you should worship only at this altar in Jerusalem.

Wrong. He did not tear down the altars of Jehovah, but only the false pagan altars that were there in the land. Now he said, I'll tell you what we'll do. Pay us some money and we'll give you 2 ,000 horses and see if you can find enough riders to put on them.

And we'll send the weakest captain that we have and he'll wipe you out. I mean, you know, he's really boasting and really threatening these people. And he said, tell you what, I've come up against this place to destroy it because Jehovah told me to come.

And so the guy is there blaspheming God and threatening the people. And these two guys on the wall said, hey, fellas, don't talk to us in Hebrew. We understand the Assyrian language. Talk to us in Assyrian language and we will relay the message to Hezekiah.

And oh, Rabshakeh said, no, the king didn't send me to talk to the king, but to these men who sit on the wall. And he continued to talk in Hebrew now, threatening all these guys that were sitting up there on the wall in their Hebrew tongue and saying, hey, don't listen to Hezekiah.

He tells you the Lord's going to help you. Don't believe it. You think that God can deliver you out of our hands? Where are the gods? You know, all of these nations, we've conquered all them. Their gods were no value to them and your God will be no value to you.

And really began to threaten the people there that were on the wall. And yet the people did not answer them because Hezekiah the king had commanded don't answer them anything. So Hezekiah sent a message to Isaiah the prophet.

Now, at this point in the kings, it would be well, if you want a good side assignment to read the book of Isaiah in conjunction with these few chapters, because Isaiah was an influential prophet at the time that Hezekiah was king.

And thus, to really put it together, you need now to really get background on this period of history by reading Isaiah. And you'll understand better the prophecies of Isaiah with this particular background, realizing that Hezekiah was a good king and he was reigning at the time that Isaiah was a prophet.

And Isaiah had a great influence and Isaiah was really the prophet to whom Hezekiah sought for advice. So it came to pass when Hezekiah heard the words and the threats and the blasphemy that he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth and went to the house of the Lord.

And Eliakim, which was over the household and Shibna, the scribe and the elders and the priests, they covered themselves with sackcloth and they came to Isaiah, the prophet, the son of Amoz. And they said unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah, This is the day of trouble, of rebuke, of blasphemy.

For the children are come to birth. There isn't enough strength for them to be delivered. It may be that the Lord thy God will hear all the words that Rabchecha, whom the king of Assyria, his master, is sent to reproach the living God and will reprove the words which the Lord thy God hath heard.

Wherefore, lift up thy prayer for the remnant that is left. And so the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah. And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall you say to your master. Thus saith the Lord. Don't be afraid of the words which you have heard, which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

Behold, I will send a blast upon him. He'll hear a rumor. He'll return to his own land. And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land. And so Shalmaneser heard some rumors that the king of Ethiopia was coming out to fight.

And so he sent messengers to Hezekiah saying, Don't trust in God and don't be deceived, saying Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hands of the Assyrians. You've heard what the Assyrians have done in destroying the other lands.

Where are the gods of the nations of the lands that have been destroyed? And Hezekiah received the letter and he took it into the house of the Lord and he spread it out before the Lord. He said, Now, Lord, look at this threatening letter.

Look what this guy is saying. And Lord, there's a lot of truth to this. These people are strong. They've conquered over these other nations. And he laid the whole thing out before the Lord. You know, that's the best place to bring your problems.

You know, you may get some mean, threatening letter. Best thing to do is just lay it out before the Lord and say, Look, Lord, what they're threatening to do to me now. And he just laid the whole thing out before the Lord.

His burden poured out his heart before the Lord. And the Lord answered Hezekiah through Isaiah and He said, That which you have prayed to me against Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, I have heard. And God gives this prophecy against him, saying that actually he is blasphemed against the Lord and against the God of Israel.

And thus the Lord said, I'll put my hook in the nose and my bridle in your lips, and I will turn thee back by the way which you came. And this will be the sign you shall eat this year, such as the things that grow of themselves the second year, that which springs of the same.

And in the third year, you're going to sow and reap. The people have been shut up. There was a famine. God said, I'm going to deliver you this year. You'll just eat what grows wildly next year the same.