Isaiah Lesson 46

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Isaiah: Prophet of the Suffering Servant Lesson 46: Isaiah 36 Pastors Jeff Kliewer and John Lasken

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So I want to say hi, I'm here with you guys, Jeff is at home, he's just a little under the weather but he's okay, so I'm here without a wingman, but that's okay too because I got all of you here and for those of you watching on video.
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We're in another little section, it's called a pericope if you would, that means it's a section of scripture that has a specific content to it.
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Isaiah frequently is identified as having the first 39 chapters equating to the first 39 books of the
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Old Testament and then the rest of it, the 27 books of the New Testament. And Jeff last week took us through chapter 35 which concludes a lot of what's in those first 30 books by giving us a vision of the millennial reign.
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And so if you go into the book of Isaiah, and especially the first 35 books, you're going to learn a lot about the sovereignty of God, you're going to learn a lot about the righteous judgment of God, you're going to learn about Israel's inability to remain true, the sin, and how
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God judges and proclaims against them. You're going to learn about how God uses nations to implement his judgment,
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Assyria. You're going to learn then how God does hold these nations accountable for what they've done and they will be judged because of it.
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Then you learn about all the future promises. We have passages about the coming
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Messiah. We have passages about the millennial reign. That pretty much has come to a conclusion at the end of chapter 35.
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Chapter 36 through 39 is an ability to take a look at things from the perspective as told by the story of King Hezekiah.
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Okay, and so these four chapters are going to focus on King Hezekiah.
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Tell me anything you know about King Hezekiah, and I know, Rich, you've got a ton to tell me, but anybody, tell me anything you know about King Hezekiah.
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He did not act very wisely because when they came from Babylon, the visitors, he showed them everything he had.
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Wow, that's really good that you noticed that and you picked that up because that's a true statement and he's going to be judged because of it, but then he's going to confess and he's going to get a reprieve out of that too.
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So he is the king who tore down the high places.
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A lot of stuff about Hezekiah. This book is going to superimpose Hezekiah and Sennacherib, king of Assyria.
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It's going to tell the story about what Sennacherib has to do.
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Did Hezekiah act as a priest and develop leprosy? One king did, I don't remember if it was
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Hezekiah or not. I don't know that he did. I don't know that he did that.
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He was to the point of death, though, and prayed to God that he was restored.
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You're absolutely right, and it's because of what Bob had mentioned. If you want to take a look at what's going on here in chapter 36 and then beyond, there's the arrogance of the world in opposition to the sovereignty of God.
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If we look through the book of Isaiah, you go back in things like Genesis 12, 1 and 2, where he tells
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Abram, I will make you a great nation, and all the nations will be blessed through you.
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There is this promise given to him, and then in Deuteronomy 28, we have the blessings and the cursings.
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If you do these things, all these blessings will be yours. If you don't do all these things, these curses will be yours, and then it says, but if you do not obey the
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Lord, all these curses will come. That shows up so strongly in the book of Isaiah.
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Jeremiah 50, 17 to 20, tells us even though God sent
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Assyria, and he used Assyria to accomplish his will, and then
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Babylon in the captivity to punish the sins of Israel, his purpose is always to restore
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Israel. It's not to destroy, it is to restore
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Israel so that at the end of time, when we get to the millennial kingdom, when we get to the end of time, his remnant is brought back.
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So we have a God who has made a covenant promise to his people, to the people of Israel.
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We have a nation that has been disobedient and rebellious, and so now they're being punished.
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And then we have Assyria, and we have this guy, King Sennacherib, and one of the questions that filters through this chapter is
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Sennacherib thinking he's all that, and that who is this
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God of yours, all of the other gods of all of the other nations haven't stood up against me.
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And so the question we're going to ask at the very end of it is who is this King of Glory? Who is this
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King of Glory? Let's turn in prayer before we actually go into the chapter. Dear Lord God, your word is true, you are sovereign, you are holy, you are a just God.
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Sin needs to be addressed, and sin deserves punishment, and Lord you have acted righteously, but yet your covenant promise to draw people back to you are the
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King of Glory. The world finds comfort in believing that they can be the
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King of Glory, they can be their own gods, but only you, only you are God, and King Sennacherib is going to learn some difficult lessons, and King Hezekiah is going to be tested.
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We pray that you show us what you have to say for us, that we draw closer to you, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
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All right, I'm going to go over, Ralph, you're going to be my Isaiah 36 person, if you don't mind, all right, and 2
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Kings 18, Rich, I'm going to ask you to go there, and there are several passages in 2
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Kings 18, I have them listed there, that we're going to look at. This is the time of King Hezekiah, and he is the king, he's in Judah, not
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Israel, but in and around his time, lots of things are happening to the northern kingdom and to Israel, and King Hezekiah comes in and he is really described as a righteous king.
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Now, that doesn't mean he's perfect, as Bob has identified, but he is described as a righteous king.
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Give me just verse 1, if you would, Ralph. Okay, in the 14th year of King Hezekiah's reign,
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Sennacherib, king of Assyria, attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.
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Okay, now, let's go to 2 Kings, the first five verses of 18, if you've got that,
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Rich. Now, it came to pass, in the third year of Hoshea, the son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign.
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He was 25 years old when he became king, and he reigned 29 years in Jerusalem.
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His mother's name was Avi, the daughter of Zechariah, and he did what was right in the sight of the
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Lord, or according to all that his father David had done. He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image, and broke in pieces the brown serpent that Moses had made.
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For until those days, the children of Israel burned incense to it and called it
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Nahashtan. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him.
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Go through that passage, you can just list some accolades that are given to Hezekiah.
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Again, he's not perfect, but some of the things that he did which are of significant note is that he removed the high places.
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What are the high places? Worship. Idol worship.
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Worships outside of where they were supposed to be and idol worship. He tore them all down and he purged this false worship approach out of the nation.
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He's to be commended for that fact that it says, even after him, nobody like him after him.
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He's considered a righteous king. If we move to verses 9 and 10, we're going to see
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Assyria, and it's a different king listed there. They go after Samaria and successfully capture
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Samaria and take them captive. Then when we go into 11 and 12, that same king is going to go into Israel.
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Israel is going to fall and they're going to be taken captive. Then we get to verse 13.
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Read that for me please, Rich. Verse 13. And in the 14th year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.
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What we're going to see, and if you were to follow the campaign for Assyria at this point in time, they're going to run down the western seaboard coming out of Israel and they're going to be taking the fortified cities of Judah.
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One of them is going to be Lachish. That's going to show up in a few minutes.
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Lachish, if you were looking at a map, would be southwest, probably about 40 miles, 30 miles from Jerusalem.
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And they successfully, one after another, after another, they all fall. And then in verse 17, we now have
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Sennacherib. Go ahead. The king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the
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Rapsaris, and the Ratshaka from Lachish with a great army against Jerusalem to King Hezekiah.
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And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they'd come up, they went and stood by the aqueduct from the upper pool, which is on the highway to the
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Fuller's Field. Okay, that's good. So now that takes us into exactly where we are at the beginning of verse chapter 36 here in Isaiah.
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The 14th year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.
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And now he's, in verse 2, he is going to send the Rapshaka. What's a
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Rapshaka? I guess they're officers in these armies. Yeah, it's the field general. It's basically the field general.
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He sent the Rapshaka from Lachish, which they had just taken, and to go.
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Now, Lachish is going to be interesting. I spend time reading,
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I enjoy reading World War II history, specifically the Pacific Theater, how
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Japan believed it was their divine destiny to dominate the entire
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Pacific Rim. They believed it was, and so that's why they came after Pearl Harbor.
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They needed to move over. Well, they had taken that much. In fact, the Philippines had fallen and all this other kind of stuff.
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And if you study the history and how the battles work, we have Midway and then it's highland hopping, working our way back west.
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And each time we would take the next island, we would have the next forward post that we could use as the launching pad to move forward.
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Well, that's what Assyria had done here. They had taken fortified city, fortified city. They set up the next launching post, and Lachish was the last one that they would take before they would come up against Jerusalem.
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So give me verses two and three, please. Okay. Then the king of Assyria sent his field commanders with a large army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem.
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When the commander stopped at the duct of Upper Pool on the road to the waterman's field,
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Elizakim, son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator,
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Shedna, and secretary, and Joah, son of Asaph, the recorder, went out to him.
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What's going to go now is after successfully defeating Samaria, after successfully capturing
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Israel, and after successfully starting a campaign against the fortified cities of Judah, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, is now ready to make the final assault and to take
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Jerusalem. He doesn't know that God is actually in control.
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And so what's going to happen, and we're going to see in the next verses, the arrogance of this king.
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Now he sends, you said the field commanders, that's the Rep Shaka, and I didn't hear yours, but I've got the
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ESV here. It says, from Lachish to King Hezekiah with a great army.
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All right. So the forces of Assyria are going to be coming down on Jerusalem.
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And it kind of reminds me of, is it Elisha? He's in a city and they're being attacked.
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And he prays, open the eyes of my servant. And the servant's eyes are open and surrounding the city is a great multitude of angels.
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All right. But we know how good angels are. We know how good one angel is. We were there. We were there last.
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Angels in five charts. Yes, they do. So what we've got now is from Lachish, he's mustered his troops.
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He's gotten them prepared and they're going to be heading on down. And with the approach of the
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Rep Shaka and all of these, this great army, Hezekiah is going to send his emissaries to meet.
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So the king is not there. Rep Shaka, Sennacherib is not there.
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Hezekiah is there. But we have the meeting of these minds. Isaiah 7, 1 to 7.
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This isn't the first time we've seen an encounter at this aqueduct.
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John, would you get Isaiah 7, 1 to 7, please? And I also want to go to Joshua 10.
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Bob Zellman, if you would get Joshua 10, 31 to 32.
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Go ahead. In the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezan the king of Syria, and Pekah the son of Ramaliah, the king of Israel, came up to Jerusalem.
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Okay, now I need to stop you there. We have a nation aligned with Israel to attack
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Jerusalem at this point in time. Go ahead. Came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it.
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When the house of David was told, Syria is in league with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.
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And the Lord said to Isaiah, Go out to meet Ahaz, you and Sher -Jashun, your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washers' field, and say to him,
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Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands.
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At the fierce anger of Resan and Syria and the son of Ramaliah, because Syria with Ephraim and the son of Ramaliah has devised evil against you, saying,
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Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it.
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Thus says the Lord God, It shall not stain, and it shall not come to pass, for the head of Syria is
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Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Resan, and within sixty -five years Ephraim will be shattered from being a people, and the head of Ephraim is
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Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Ramaliah. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.
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This is the same place that the Rapshaka is coming and standing outside of Israel, outside of Jerusalem, I apologize.
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God's sovereignty, God's omnipotence, although at that point in time we had a nation in Israel trying to attack
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God, it's not going to come to pass. And at this point in time we have Sennacherib sending his
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Rapshaka to Jerusalem, to the same place, and he's going to come with strong arrogance as we're going to see.
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We're going to skip Joshua 10, but I'll mention what that is. In Joshua 10, the nation of Israel coming into the
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Promised Land is attacking and defeating city after city, people after people.
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It's God told them how is to deal. Lachish was given to the nation of Israel, but now
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Lachish has fallen. Lachish has fallen. The sin of Israel has been so great.
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All right, 4 -10 please, Ralph. Okay. The field commander said to them, tell
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Hezekiah, this is what the great king, the king of Assyria says, on what are you basing this confidence of yours.
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You say you have a strategy and military strength, but you speak only empty words.
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On whom are you depending that you rebel against me? Look now, you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff which pierces a man's hand and wounds him if he leans on it.
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Such is Tyrant, king of Egypt, to all who depend upon him. And if you say to me, we are depending upon the
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Lord our God, isn't he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, you must worship before this altar?
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Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you 2 ,000 horses if you can put riders on them.
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How then can you repulse one officer of the least of my master's officers, even though you are depending upon Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
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Furthermore, have I come to attack and destroy this land without the Lord? The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.
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The arrogance, Assyria's believing that they are the source of power. Now, it's interesting at the very end, he does acknowledge that God has motivated his very actions, but the arrogance, a couple of verses,
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Bob, this time I'm going to get you Isaiah 12, 2, if you would get that ready, and Rick, if you would get
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Psalm 20, verse 7. Reshach has said to them, say to Hezekiah, thus says the great king.
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He's all that. There is nobody in the world that has been able to stand up against the king of Assyria, and so his self -assessment, his self -evaluation is that I am the great king.
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John, it's interesting in the beginning, in verse 4, he says, on what do you rest?
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And then in verse 5, in whom do you now trust? Exactly, exactly.
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So this king is now looking at this city. And by the way, he has just had success after success after success.
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Nobody can stand up against him. He set up his forward post in Lachish and now they've come up to the aqueduct and he's mocking them by saying, what do you think is going to, who do you think?
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He says, I'm the great king, you know, and he really, he goes after that. You know, in Samuel 8, 1
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Samuel 8, this is where the people start to revolt against God being their king, okay?
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They want to be like all other nations. They want to have a king. It's the, it's the, it's the feeling that man has that when they can be in control, when man can be in control, things are in better shape than when
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I'm going to be under the sovereign rule of God. And so here's this guy,
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Sennacherib, who has this opinion of himself and his rapshaka, his field general is saying, we got the guy.
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He is the guy. He is the great king. And then they almost poke a finger at him and said, and who do you think is going to deliver you?
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And what do you think is God? Exodus 3, Moses is in the wilderness and he's at a burning bush.
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And when he says, who should I say is sending me? What is he told? I am, but I am.
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He's a self -existent God. He depends on nothing else. He needs nothing else.
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But Assyria is presuming because of what they've been able to do that this
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God of Judah is nothing more than these other false gods of all others.
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And so he says, who do you trust? What do you trust? You're rebelling against me.
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I am the great king. And do you really think there's any way that you can stand up against it?
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He even refers to their failed attempt to find protection from Egypt. Really did not go well.
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He even refers to that. And then he says, if I'm attacking you and you're going to say, we trust in our
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Lord. And then he goes back to them and he says, wait a minute.
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Your own king has torn down all his high places. He doesn't understand what
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Hezekiah has done. From the external viewpoint, Hezekiah has ripped apart opportunities to worship this
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God, almost feeling like he doesn't even believe in them himself.
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He doesn't understand that what Hezekiah has really done is remove false idol worship.
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But why would he think that? Because he's the great king. Anyway. Now, he says,
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I'm going to make a bet with you. He says, I'm going to give you a couple of thousand horses and see if you can even ride on them.
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I mean, he has his arrogance right now. Even if I give you 2 ,000 horses, you couldn't stand up against one of my captains.
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Even if I gave you 2 ,000 horses, my one captain is better than all that.
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Psalm 27. Absolutely.
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And then Isaiah 12 too. I am confident and unafraid for the
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Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song and He has become my salvation.
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There is an ignorance on the part of Sennacherib, which is understandable.
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It's worldly. It's the same arrogance that is fighting against the church today.
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It's the same arrogance that think they can cancel the proclamation of Scripture today.
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It's that same arrogance. What I found amusing as I read this, how can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master's servants?
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Even if I give you 2 ,000 horses and you've got chariots and all that kind of stuff. What has
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God got on His side? Angels. Thousands and thousands of angels.
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Yeah, He really does. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of angels and warriors. And one single angel, what can one single angel do in one night?
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185 ,000. Okay, now let's put this thing in another perspective.
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This is a battle that's going on for worldly control, for power, for taking dominion.
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But this is also a spiritual battle. Everything that Sennacherib is doing and everything that his rapshaka is doing is really being motivated by Satan.
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And Satan's number one agenda is to make himself like the most high God. Finding ways to eliminate
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God's people puts him in a good position. If he can defeat
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Jerusalem, he's got an opportunity here to snuff out this God thing, if you would.
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Daniel expresses a scene where Daniel has prayed and eventually an angel comes.
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But it seems like it's been a long time before he actually came. And the angel expresses why it took him so long.
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What happened? Not you, Ricky, see if somebody else knows. Why did the angel have such a hard time getting to Daniel?
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He was fighting against evil spirits, evil angels. And how did he finally get there?
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Archangel Michael, I think. Yes, yes. Let's be honest about it.
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The powers of the dark force, this is not a Star Wars reference, are powerful.
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And we as mere people are not going to stand up against them. But he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.
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We do have the Holy Spirit within us. But to think that an angel could defeat 185 ,000
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Assyrians in a single night. Demons are that powerful too. And to think that Hezekiah would be able to withstand the attacks without God is a fool's errand.
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And so there's a test here for Hezekiah. This king who has had victory after victory after victory.
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We know as we read in the book of Joshua how quickly the reputation of the nation of Israel spreads throughout the land.
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We've heard what happened in Jericho. We heard what happened across the
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Jordan. The word spreads. Well, I have to believe that Hezekiah is aware of what happened in Samaria, of what happened in Israel.
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Although that's like 10, 12 years before this episode. He has seen the fortified cities fall.
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And not far away from him there's a fortified launching point. And now the troops are coming back to the aqueduct.
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And then this little phrase that he throws in here. Don't you realize that the
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Lord actually sent us? Now that's a little piece of disturbing news.
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But it's true is that God is going to use Assyria.
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But Assyria is not going to succeed in taking down Israel. So what's the purpose for sending
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Assyria up against Jerusalem? Justice. Okay, I would go along with that.
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God knows that they're not going to win. In fact, God knows that Sennacherib is going to hear about bad news back home.
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And he's going to go back home and he's going to be killed by his son, I think it is. He knows that. His two sons.
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Why does Assyria come after Jerusalem? Why does God do that?
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I think you're right. You're absolutely right, Louise. This is a test of their faith.
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And in fact, we're going to see eventually how Hezekiah's faith wanes as he brags about all the riches.
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But eventually it heals as he goes back to them. There is a test of faith here.
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As the king of Assyria is showing the force to the people.
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And then he's going to scorn them. Give me verses 11 and 12, please. Then Eliakim, Shedna, and Jehovah said to the field commander,
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Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Don't speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.
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But the commander replied, Was it only to your master and you that my master sent me to say these things, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who like you will have to eat their own filth and drink their own urine?
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Wow. All right. Let's set the scene. We've got Sennacherib who's coming out and he's going to address these emissaries from Hezekiah.
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And the people on the wall watching what's going on. And why do the emissaries say,
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Speak to us in your language, we understand it. Don't speak in our tongue. Why does he do that?
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He didn't want the people to hear what they were saying. Why not? For fear.
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This is an attempt to bring fear upon the people. If you think you're going to stand up against me,
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I got news for you, you're doomed. And it's kind of graphic how doomed they are going to be.
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And what's going to happen is, he's going to say, speak out clearly.
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Speak out clearly, we're going to get to that. But Joshua 1 .9, as the nation is moving into, getting ready to move into the promised land, there's still that Shittim on the east side of the
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River Jordan, they haven't crossed yet. And God encourages Joshua and he says, Be strong and of good courage.
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And he said, The Lord is with you. This promise does not go away. Now, their disobedience puts them in trouble, but this is a promise from the
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Lord. Be strong and of good courage. I think it was last week, I watched the video,
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I think Jeff mentioned, or was it Sunday morning? How often in the Old Testament, do not fear, do not fear, do not fear, is repeated over and over and over again.
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Once for every day of the year plus once for the leap year day. Yeah, do not fear. We have a power, we have a protection, that although the world says,
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I am the great king, no, we have God. We have God. Psalm 62 .2,
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Barb, I'm going to ask you if you would pull out Psalm 62 .2. From the
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Rapshakas' viewpoint, anybody sitting on that wall is doomed because they're all that, and we have the great king on our side.
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That's from his viewpoint. And so he wants to proclaim it, and the people are saying, let's scare everybody,
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Barb. Do you have 62 .2? Yes, it's a great verse. He alone is my rock and my salvation.
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He is my fortress, I will never be shaken. Put that on your refrigerator and look at it every morning.
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Yeah, that is a great one. So now the scene is getting there, and now we hear how the
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Rapshaka responds and calls to the people. 13 to 20, please.
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Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew, hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.
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This is what the king says. Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, he will not deliver you.
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Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord when he says the Lord will surely deliver us.
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This city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Do not listen to Hezekiah.
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This is what the king of Assyria says. Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own sister.
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Until I come and take you into the land like your own, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
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Do not let Hezekiah deceive you when he says the Lord will deliver us. Has the
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God of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpat?
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Where are the gods of Serapharizalim? Oh, I butchered that one. Have they rescued
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Samaria from my hand? Who of all gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me?
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How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand? Sennacherib believes that he is above and superior to all gods because they're all small g.
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He does not understand, he does not accept Yahweh, but all these other gods, and to be quite honest, he probably is superior to all these other gods because they are nothing more than things that have been created and put in place by mere man, and since they're only put in place by mere man, they're no better than their creator.
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They don't have a creator god. And so he stands in defiance, and so, hear the words of the great king, and I go back in my mind to the wilderness,
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Mount Sinai, hear the words of the Lord. And he believes that his total authority, his total wisdom, his total power, hear the words of the great king, replacing hear the words of the
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Lord. Now, as the rank -and -file Jew sitting on the walls, listening to what's going on right now, there should be this feeling of that's not right.
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I've got Yahweh, I'm going to listen to his words. When this guy is saying, listen to the words of the great king, back in Lacashire, listen to what he has to say, because this is what's important.
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In Genesis 3, we have the account of Satan approaching
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Eve. And basically what he says is,
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God didn't really mean that when he said that. Did he really say that you were going to die?
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He knows that if you eat of the fruit, that you will be like a god.
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He challenges the very authority of God, takes Eve's mindset into believing this lie.
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And so here you have this rapshacka saying, listen to the words of the great king.
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Listen to the words of the great king. In Matthew 4, verses 1 -11, we have
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Satan tempting Jesus three times in the wilderness. And he tempts him with food, and he tempts him with pride.
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If you throw yourself, God will send thousands of angels to protect you. You're so big, you're so important.
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And with glory, just bow down before me and I will give you all the kingdoms of the world.
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Every step that way is to undercut the authority and sovereignty of God. And so here you have the rapshacka saying, hear the words of the great king.
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Now this is really cool what he does. It's frightening what he does. Because he promises them some really nice stuff.
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Make peace with me. And each of you will eat of your own vine.
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Each one of you will have his own fig tree and drink water from your own cistern.
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This is, I'm going to give you everything you could possibly want until I come and take you away to a land like your own, of grain and wine and bread and vineyards.
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If you only listen to me, life will be good for you. That's what he's telling them.
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Now I would love at that point in time to have somebody go interview somebody from Samaria or Israel who's just been taken captive and say, how's it working for you?
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Right? And again, this is so directly applicable to today.
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Whether it's a personal temptation or whether it's assertions from the government or whatever, just listen to us and be at peace with each other and things will be fine.
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Quit hating each other. Just forget all of this myth. And he's saying, if you just make peace with me,
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I can almost feel like the serpent. Just make peace with me.
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You know, it's like... I like the way you said that. Then everything will be fine. You'll have all the food, all the wine, all the water, the fig trees.
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The land is going to be great. Just make peace with me.
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Thus says the king of Assyria, who among the gods of these lands has delivered their lands out of my hand that your
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Lord should be able to deliver you, deliver Jerusalem. I really would expect that this rabshakeh would have believed what he was saying because that's the experience that he has, not having any experience of knowing the true
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God. And so the temptation is now there and how are the people going to respond?
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We get into it starting next week, but give me 21 and 22, please. But the people remained silent and said nothing in reply because the king had commanded, do not answer him.
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Then Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator, Shednu, the secretary, and Jo, his son,
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Basav, the recorder, went to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told him what the field commander had said.
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There's very strong wisdom in this. Trying to argue with the world with your own knowledge and your own wisdom is not going to succeed.
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You've got to go to God. And he told the people here, just stay silent. This is all going to be taken to the counsel of the
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Lord. That's where it's going to be resolved. But just don't try to fight against them.
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Wait, wait, wait for the Lord. Gene, I'm going to ask if you would get out
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Psalm 24, verse 10 for me, please. The threat is real.
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I mean, you cannot deny that the Assyrian army is powerful and strong. And if Israel is going to try to stand up against them on their own might, they're probably not going to make it.
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We know this for a fact as we looked at Ai, the first battle. It was a disaster.
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They didn't turn to God. They didn't rely on God. Ai, the second battle, a resounding success.
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They do trust in God. Do you have that, Gene? Okay. Psalm 24, verse 10.
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Yes. Who is He, the King of Glory? The Lord Almighty.
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He is the King of Glory. In the midst of all of these claims, of all of these arrogant statements that are coming from Sennacherib through his rapsaka,
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I am the great king. Just make peace with me and I'll take care of you.
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None of these gods can... All of these truths are on one side. And on the other side is this question.
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Who is the King of Glory? The Lord of hosts.
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He's the King of Glory. Now, I want to encourage you to not let this be a general question.
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Jesus is walking with his followers. And he says, who do men say that I am? Some say
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John the Baptist. Some say Elijah, okay? And then Jesus looks right at Peter and he says, but you, who do you say that I am?
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And that's when Peter confesses you're the son of God, you're the Lord, son of the most loving
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God. This is a personal question for each one of us in this room, each one of us on the camera.
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Who is this King of Glory? There's power in the world.
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There's fearsome power in the world. Sennacherib and his king, the
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Reb Shaka, they were powerful and they promised all kinds of finery.
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And then they claimed, your God can't do it. Well, yes, your God can. So who is your
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God? Because every other God is just a counterfeit. Yeah, Rich.
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Sennacherib also tried to claim God spoke to him. And that's pretty arrogant on his part, you know, with all the other gods.
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He says, go up against this land and destroy it. That was what he said
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God had told him to do. That's a really interesting insight, Rick. I'm glad you bring that up because I do believe that God motivated, we know that God used
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Assyria to punish Judah. How did he hear that?
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How did he feel that lead? We can speculate. Yeah, Bob. Actually, I've been mulling this over ever since we went through that passage.
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And I thank you, Rich, for bringing it up because it's been bothering my mind because the only other instance where God gave someone approval that I can recall is in heaven with Satan giving him approval to attack
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Job. So I'm thinking this whole time that it is really referring to the
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Satan who got the approval from God to attack them and now unplanted that into...
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And then if you go down to verse 18, it says, Beware Hezekiah, he is only deluding you when he says the
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Lord will save us. And I think back to the Garden of Eden when Eve was tempted by a partial truth.
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Absolutely. So I think it's Satan, well, I'm thinking Satan's behind all this and not really man.
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In God's sovereignty, Assyria does only what's within their nature.
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Jeff Teak talks about this compatibilism because they're still held accountable for what they did.
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But I think that's a really good insight on how the parallelism of those thoughts.
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We're going to close in prayer. We're going to shut that off and then we can continue to talk. Dear Lord God, You are the
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King of Glory with the world attacking and the world threatening and the world making promises.
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You alone are the King of Glory. Let our focus and our dependence and our reliance and our worship always, always be to You.