Consider Revival III: God’s Response to the Enemy’s Lies

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder. And with me again this week is a special guest, Steve Crampton. Good to have you back, Steve. Great to be back, Jon. We've been looking at the theme of revival, but since that word's been used in so many different ways, perhaps we could say it this way.

Revival as God Drawing Near in Extraordinary Need

In times of extraordinary need, whether it's a nation or a denomination, a church, a family, an individual even, God coming near and manifesting His reality, His work, His concern, in such an extraordinary manner, that the results are extraordinary.

So there is the wonderful norm of Christianity. Perhaps not what we think of as norm, but the biblical norm. What the scripture shows to be, you know, the life that we can expect in the New Covenant. And that is certainly not, you know, a rosy life.

There's a lot of ups and downs, and so we want to be very biblical. But then there is that, you know, that moment in human history where God's people turn to Him and say, the ordinary work just doesn't seem that it's going to be sufficient.

God, can you come in an extraordinary way? For Your name's sake. And so we saw this in Jonah and Nineveh, amazingly, with the pagan people, and then with Hezekiah. And the last time we were together, we looked at the first half of Hezekiah's reign, where Hezekiah is one of those really bright spots as you're reading through your Bible in the year.

It's just one of those, it's an oasis, you know. It's a spring breeze from God, that here is a man with very ungodly influences. Suddenly, we find a young man turn his heart to the Lord and turn the nation toward the Lord.

Removing idols, doing all that we would hope to see him do. So we're going to pick up the second half now. And it's quite a shock. And it really does teach us some very important things about the Christian life.

Hear, hear. And so you talk about those extraordinary times where God draws near and a people is blessed with a time of a particular sensitivity to the things of God. You have, those times are so precious and few, frankly, Second Chronicles 31, I think, is one of those periods where you see what it looks like when a people actually walks in obedience to God.

And their ruler, in this case Hezekiah, is himself faithful in all his ways and soft and tender again toward the things of God. So in verses 1 to 19, you have this glorious description of just a time when the people were sensitive, as they say, and responsive to the commands of the Lord.

And it plays out in a particular way here in demonstrating the willfulness of their giving to the temple and the works of the Lord. So they, not only as we saw last time, destroyed those idols on the outside, but there appears here to be a particular emphasis on destroying the idols on the inside as well.

Verse 5, for instance, in Second Chronicles 31, as soon as the command was spread abroad, the people gave in abundance. It wasn't grudging. It wasn't just the bare minimum. It was this joyful sort of outpouring and responsiveness.

Again, verse 11, Then Hezekiah commanded them to prepare chambers in the house of the Lord, and they faithfully brought in the contributions, the tithes, and the dedicated things. And so all through this chapter, you see these kinds of outpourings and responsiveness to God.

And in verses 20 and 21, a bit of a summary for Hezekiah in particular, Hezekiah did what was good and right and faithful before the Lord his God. And every work that he undertook in accordance with the law and the commandments, seeking his God, he did with all his heart and prospered.

And so you have this kind of, well, isn't that beautiful? This is sort of the way it's supposed to be. Like our children's books and the fairy tales, and they all lived happily ever after. And you look at it and you say, well, there it is, you know, you can kind of close the book now and sum it up, right?

And then you go to Second Chronicles 32. Yeah, let me jump in before we hit that. I want to call attention to just a couple things that you mentioned about Hezekiah. First of all, was that, you know, a real response to the Lord doesn't include just removing those wrong things.

There has to be, you know, a giving of my heart. Yeah, so it's not just I quit doing some bad things or our church put away some unnecessary things. Or our family quit doing this and this and this. But you know, that's phariseeism if it stops there.

But the whole-hearted giving, so Romans 12, 1 and 2, you know, the whole-hearted presenting of my life, the free will offering of my heart. You know, I am my beloved's and he is mine. Or what Paul calls the simplicity of devotion to Christ.

So, wonderful picture. But another thing is that you mentioned is that he did it according to the Word of God. So what sacrifices, what offerings, what things should be given? It's not enough to get rid of some bad things.

We want to add the things that are supposed to be there. But we're not free to kind of say what that would be. The scripture is very clear. So what does it look like when a man or a woman or a young person hoping in Christ wakes up in the morning and gives themselves to their king again afresh?

Well, we have a book that explains a very specific path. So both of those things really encouraging with Hezekiah. But as you said, no matter how encouraged we are with Hezekiah, there is around the corner.

Sennacherib Invades After Hezekiah’s Faithfulness

There's a shocking scene. Yes, so 2 Chronicles 31. This is one of those verses that I think is intended to sort of grip us and really make us sit up and say, what? Did I read that correctly? After these things, 2 Chronicles 32 describes, and these acts of faithfulness, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came and invaded Judah.

So like running into a brick wall in the middle of your devotions and your faithfulness and all this prosperity, boom, Sennacherib. Sennacherib, as some of you all probably know, was the great king of the age, right?

Assyria was now ruling in all the provinces, basically. And so dealing with Sennacherib was one of the things politically that all the nations were sort of jockeying about with. And when Sennacherib comes into your country and invades, that's what you call the really bad news, right?

So he captures dozens of cities in the north of Judah and he's advancing on Jerusalem itself. And again, you've got this kind of question mark, I would say, that we as believers have to deal with too.

Well, wait a minute. I'm following God. I'm being obedient. As best I can tell, my heart is pure. And he's been blessing me and then it appears out of nowhere, here comes this dark cloud, this oppression that just sort of slams into me.

What gives? Yeah, I think that during a time like that, while we are not able always to understand why, you know, so we have the big picture, Romans 8, 28, that God does use all things that occur in this sinful world.

In a fallen world, not all things are good, but all things are used for good. So God uses all things. We know that big picture and we can't lose our grip on that when we enter into kind of a dark tunnel.

Remember what you learned in the light before you entered the tunnel. But even in this passage we talked about before we started the podcast, Hezekiah has made some political decisions. There is this account.

There's also a parallel account in 2 Kings 18 and 19. So Hezekiah has made some political decisions, kind of pragmatism, paying off so-and-so and, you know, and kind of working the system and well, you know, they would be politically expedient.

But when you look at them in light of what God has done before and later, you wonder, was that the best choice? Was that the right choice for God's man? We are not told. Right. There's nowhere in this passage that says, because Hezekiah did such and such, Sennacherib came.

So when you come to a passage where something shocking happens, you know, the worst news possible comes to a godly group of people, and you want to say, well, why? If the passage doesn't explain, then you have to be careful not to kind of inject your opinion.

So where do we go for an opinion on choices that are being made in Old Testament historical narratives when God doesn't tell you what He thinks of it? Well, you go to other portions of Scripture where God describes, this pleases me.

Not only prescriptive, so, you know, God's clear precepts, but also descriptions of God's character. So we could say, has Hezekiah's recent choices, have these recent choices, have they been in harmony with what we know of God?

And in some, and in some cases we think, I think that they weren't. But regardless of that, we find a people that have been pleasing to the Lord and in earnest, and they are now facing this. So that little phrase that you've mentioned, after these things, that's quite an important phrase.

Now, here's the number one temptation I find. When a church or family has attempted to really turn back to the Lord, here's the lie. God no longer is pleased with me because things have gotten very difficult.

And so you can kind of search your soul, and you can find enough there, always, that you could say, well, if God is expecting perfection, I have failed, and I deserve this. But you have to be careful at times like that to stick very close to the scripture, so that you are not led down a wrong path that will lead to despair and disobedience, or to pride and presumption.

Make sure that you guard what you think about your king when you are passing through a dark season, and the enemy is telling you what kind of a king you belong to. Well, what kind of king would do this?

And you begin to form, you begin to adjust your views of God without really knowing it until maybe years later. So it's important. And also, if you take both of these accounts, and you take Sennacherib's messenger, Rav Shaka, which is, that's not the name that the guy's mom gave him, right?

That's a like official title. So the royal messenger. So the mouthpiece of Sennacherib comes, and he, you know, he says a lot of things I think, and they're written for our good. He says some things that have some truth in them, but they're mixed with lies, and that's where it's difficult.

So he kind of says a couple of big, big, big messages. Number one, if Hezekiah tells you that your God will protect you against Assyria, do not listen to him. Right. Because every city we've gone up to throughout the land, not just in Israel, but on my way over here, every city, their priests and their princes said, our God will protect us.

And now that city's destroyed, and their God is in my luggage. Exactly. We're dragging them along behind in a cart. Yeah. So your God will be no different. So that's the first lie. Christian, your hope in Christ is futile, because no one who has hoped in God has ever endured.

No family has survived. No church has really prospered in our wicked age, you know, or in our time of unbelief. So that's a very, that's a very dangerous one. Second, though, and this I think is fascinating, because it shows that Rabshakeh and Assyria know enough about Judah to know what's been going on, but do not know enough about the real God to interpret it correctly.

Yes. So here's the world's description of what Hezekiah's been doing. With, by the way, the brightest advisors, one would assume. He's surrounded himself with these wise men who are going to tell him, we know all about Judah and their ways.

Let me explain it. Right. Yeah. So and what they say is this, and by the way, we know that Hezekiah has removed all the religion out of the land. Yes. Except for a few spots. And so your God is probably pretty offended.

You know, if Hezekiah's bulldozed all the churches, why would you think that your God would listen to you? And what they're talking about is Hezekiah destroyed all the idol shrines. Exactly. But left intact the temple.

And, but to a pagan, they think, you got rid of religion. You only got one building left. Right. So what a wonderful, I feel like sometimes the enemy tips his hand a little too far. What a wonderful picture of the enemy's misinterpretation.

But I find that that is a hard lie to shake, a hard accusation to shake when you're in a hard spell. So let me give an example. If a church has removed all superfluous stuff and determined only to do what the scripture gives us to do, we could sum it up by saying this, all we have to offer the world is Christ.

And we've removed the other things. They weren't wicked, bad things. It's just they were additives and they were not scriptural. And so we felt that we had no right to add them. So we removed them. So in this simplified church approach, what do you do if five years later, things are, you know, are still very difficult.

Right. And the enemy says to you, you know why they're difficult? You took away too much. Or a homeschool family. Steve and I, we both homeschooled. In fact, we homeschooled in the same co-op and we served on the same board.

Yes. Steve's wife was the, was the brains of the co-op. She was the real engine. And so we, we really, I really benefited, our kids benefited from the co-op. But I have seen parents who make the, who, who make the sacrifices required to homeschool.

And so maybe they, they removed a lot of things that I grew up with it, but I don't want my kids to grow up with this. Right. For right or wrong, they did. And when the kids are young, you have, you're full of hopes.

We are raising the generation of godly warriors. When your kids are 19 and they go to college and you notice they do not love Christ at all. Are you going to fall prey to the rabshaka of our day when he says to you, well, you took away all the fun stuff in the world.

And that's why you're being, that's why your children are being carried off. Yeah. So it's a hard lie to shake when things are difficult. One other thing in that speech from the rabshaka that struck me is he comes to the people, he speaks to the people as well as to the king, right?

And they try to get him. Oh, don't, don't speak in the language of Judah. We, we understand you in your language, you know, don't do that. But he says, oh no, we're going to speak directly to the people.

But he proclaims it just as if he were a prophet of another god. Thus says Sennacherib, as distinct from thus says the Lord, right? There's that supreme arrogance that is, I think, manifested in the way that he presents the words of Sennacherib as if he's a god.

And of course, he's not. And we find that out very soon, right? Yeah. And you mentioned earlier when we were chatting that that he doesn't say, don't you listen to your God? He says, don't you listen to that king?

Yes. That king that led you down this path. I'm not so sure about the path. I mean, look, look at the trouble you're in. So don't believe your leaders who have led you to make these, uh, unpopular, hard choices.

Yeah. Because they're leading you in the wrong path. And that really is a temptation when things are hard for you to look at your spiritual leaders and think, I am not so sure you gave us the right advice.

Right. So you have to check it with scripture because they may not have. But if the scripture holds true that what they've told us to do, what they've guided us to do was the right thing, then you, you know, you really have to brace the heart against those subtle whispers.

One other thing that strikes me with regard to this turn of events is no matter how good we may have it for a short while and how right we may think we are with God, I mean, the world is simply a fallen place full of trouble.

Job 14 .1, man who was born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. I mean, how true is that? No matter who you are or how your, your life may, uh, measure up with your closeness to the Lord. It's just the reality that we live in, right?

Yeah. So the rest of, uh, the beginning of that chapter 32 though describes Hezekiah in another, I think, positive and realistic way. He doesn't give in to despair. He doesn't just kind of collapse and whine about, uh, you know, God, how can you leave me?

He takes very practical steps in preparing for war. He, uh, stops up the springs of water in order that the army of Sennacherib will not be able at least easily to water his troops and he made weapons and shields in abundance.

And then he says to his, uh, people, a wonderful little passage in, in verse seven, be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him.

For there are more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles. I hear echoes of King David in that faithfulness and, and looking above the circumstances to say, you know, the, the Lord of hosts is the one who is with us.

It's also a wonderful prayer that, uh, is recorded of Hezekiah in a couple of places. In particular, I'm looking at 2 Kings 19 verses 14 to 19, just such a beautiful thing. But we come back and we, we look at Sennacherib's boasting and ultimately in verse 16, it says he cast contempt on the Lord, the God of Israel.

And there, as you say, kind of tips his hand and goes maybe a little too far. It's one thing to attack Hezekiah and the people of Judah, but now he has gone and directly attacked and cast contempt on the Lord.

And there he has crossed the line, so to speak, that results in a, in a wonderful outpouring, I think, of God in his power to save his people, right? Yeah, if we, I think if we keep the Lord at the center of this, which is he is the center in this account, and he's the center in what's happens, you know, with, with us as believers.

So there is ultimately a great war where this world's way of doing things is in Psalm 2, represented as one thing to throw off all the fetters that Christ would put on us. And we want to be our own king and God scoffingly says from heaven to those who reject his son, I have, it's too late, I have already appointed the king and my son is the king.

And all he has to do is ask and I'll give him the nations and he can do what he wants with them. He can save them, but he can also rule them with the rod of iron. He can crush them. So if we remember that our, our personal struggles are not merely personal, they're happening to us, but they are not primarily about us.

There is a king and there's a king's reputation. There's a king's word to be upheld. There's a king's rule to be spread. So we, we, we cannot become in our pain, uh, wrapped up in ourselves and in our families and in our churches, which it's very hard not to be, we have to kind of step back from the situation and see it from God's perspective.

So a couple of things, if we can do that, it does help in two great ways. One is the prayer that you mentioned. Hezekiah basically takes the mocking words of Sennacherib and just reads them back to God and says, okay, what do you think of this?

What will you do? I mean, he's talking about you, not me. What will you do? Yeah. I think we can take the enemy's most, um insidious, most, most, you know, subtle lies about our God and we can go ahead and just take his lie book and turn it into a prayer book and we bring it to God and say, this is what he's saying about you today.

Um, what will you do? How will you not react? How could you remain seated? You know, will you not take the field? And, and lay him low and shut his mouth and God will. Now he won't always do it in the timing that we ask.

There may be greater purposes at work that we don't understand, but we see all through the biblical history and we certainly see in what is coming that God will shut the mouth of every mocker and exalt his son.

So that's a great foundation to pray from. Just take the lies of the enemy and say, well, this is what they're saying and they're saying about you. What do you have to say about it? Yeah. Another thing I think that keeping God understanding that perspective, this is ultimately against our God and against his name, against his character.

Another thing that helps us do is it does help us in the, in the manner and the attitude with which we respond to hardships that we're undergoing. Yes. So if we're Christians, we can step back from personal hardships.

We see the bigger picture of God and though we sometimes may have to speak strongly or react strongly, there ought to be a Christ-likeness, a Christ-like grief. Yes. A Christ-like boldness, even a Christ-like love for our enemies.

How different it is when I'm the center and this is all about me and people are treating me or my family or my church wrong and, um, and we are personally offended that our personal rights are being trampled and we respond strongly but there is no aroma of Christ.

Yes. You know, we just smell like everybody else that's angry. Yes. And in the flesh, isn't that always what we do, right? It's all about me. Yeah. And we have to remind ourselves constantly that we are the bond slaves of Jesus Christ.

We, we don't belong to ourselves and it changes everything with that perspective. And 2nd Chronicles, uh, gives this wonderful kind of, uh, condensed version here. Hezekiah and Isaiah, who was the contemporary to whom he went here, prayed and, quote, cried to heaven, verse 20 tells us, and then verse 21 in this extraordinary, miraculous response, and the Lord sent an angel who cut off all the mighty warriors and commanders and officers in the camp of the king of Assyria.

The parallel passage in 2nd Kings 18 explains to us in one night, 185 ,000 soldiers were killed. Uh, it doesn't give us a lot of disease or, uh, explanation, presumably a disease, pestilence or something, but you think about the numbers there, right?

We still celebrate or mourn, if you will, and acknowledge, um, the Vietnam War in which we lost some 58 ,000 soldiers. So we're talking more than three times that number in a single night. The Vietnam War, of course, stretched over maybe a dozen years.

And one of the other things that strikes me here, John, is Sennacherib is a king that the skeptics of the world can't ignore was an historical person. He has his own record in his prism. Uh, Flavius Josephus wrote about him.

Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote about him. And so you've got all these sources coming to buttress what we know is true in scripture anyway. But it is an extraordinary description, and interestingly enough, even Herodotus and Josephus both acknowledge that this was a miraculous deliverance.

I mean, this was something just inexplicable, humanly speaking. Just a remarkable response of the kindness of the Lord and his power, you know, in a single night. It's as nothing to him. Uh, you mentioned, um, the prism, P-R-I-S-M, of Sennacherib.

Um, famous artifact that attests uh, to his great deeds, you know, so he kind of leaves behind this monument to myself. All right. So it mentions that he took 46 fortified cities as well as the small towns in the area.

Took 200 ,150 people, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle, and sheep, without number. But when it comes to the part in the history, okay, so yeah, so you march down to Judah.

Tell me what happened next. Yeah. Uh, he says, he says, he caged Hezekiah like a caged bird. I shut him up in his royal city. He does not mention that 185 ,000 of his men died in one night and he returned home and was murdered.

Yes. By his own sons. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, one thing we can kind of pull all this together. One great lesson is, do we, do we live upon the world's perspective? It's very limited. Time, you know, constricted perspective, or do we live upon what God has revealed to be true?

The great, you know, the, the enduring, everlasting, you know, truths that, that don't just work for one people, not just international, but across the universe. What is God doing? What's happening today?

Well, I know, I know the earthly perspective. Okay, I have the news and, and there are, there are true events that are happening. But when I step back, I see these events from God's perspective. And I, I know that there's a, there's another way of describing this.

Um, Ephesians 1, 11. It describes God as the one who works all things according to the counsel of his will. So, in a sense, without ignoring the earthly events that are happening around us, you know, we don't want to put our head in the sand.

Uh, and with not, you know, without being obnoxious and telling unbelievers around us that all that matters is Jesus, you know, when they, when they say, did you hear about the vote yesterday in Congress?

Or, you know, so don't be a jerk about it. But in a gracious way, in a way that is legitimate, real, and attractive, can you find a way to say to people when they say, did you hear about? Can you find a way to say, yeah, actually, I haven't yet heard about that.

But you know, what I have thought about is this, whatever I hear about, he is working out his good pleasure according to his own will. And it, there will come a day when this all makes sense. So let's make sure that we respond to the divine perspective and live on the divine perspective rather than on the very limited human perspective.

And, and one of those marvelous things about Second Chronicles, I think all the entirety of Chronicles is that it does give us God's perspective, right? So when, uh, Sennacherib was making all these claims of, and I took this city, and I, you know, laid siege here, and I did this and that, the prophet Isaiah, and I think in Second Kings also, it actually explains, God says, actually, I set you up to do those things.

I was working through you to do those things. And now that you think you are God, I will put the bit in your mouth and the hook in your nose and send you home, just as in fact occurred there. So, uh, it's easy to forget who's really in charge here.

Yeah, humanly speaking. Yeah. And you know, it reminds us that that has always been the question of humanity. Who's king? Yeah. Or is he really king? You think of Christ before Pilate, and Pilate's mocking question.

Are you really a king? You know, there you are, bound in front of me, headed to a cross. Oh, so you're a king. A real king? King of the Jews, kind of a king? Or a real king? And, um, as believers, we want to guard our heart that we do not join in the world's despairing question.

Is he really ruling? Yes, he's ruling. And he will use bad choices for good, and then he will judge those who unrepentantly hold to that course of, you know, rebellion. But we belong to a glorious king.

Rutherford said, Christ's captives have a prince's life of it. So I think one great difference between a Christian who's grieved by what we see in the moral decline in our nation, and the, and the, you know, in some ways, the very insane choices being made flowing out of that moral decline, the great difference between a Christian and a mere conservative is that the Christian, you know, there is some wonderful quality of, um, gladness and hope in a, in a king and a kingdom that can never be shaken.

Amen. Amen. Well, join us next week and we will be looking together at a thing that I mentioned last time. We'll be looking at a, at a period in Scottish history when Scottish pastors got together because they were concerned about the national decline.

But as they talked to each other and as they, they asked men to preach to them and not to the people outside the church, they really felt the weight of their own sin and that that was at the root of much of the decline of the nation around them.

So the sin of the pastors, you know, producing churches that were compromised, compromised churches, opening wide the door of compromise in society. So, uh, many wonderful lessons there and we'll, we'll run through that next week.

Wonderful.