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Reading 2 Chronicles 32 and 33 where the Assyrians came against Judah, but Hezekiah encouraged the people to trust in God. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
As a powerful enemy was coming against Judah, King Hezekiah said to his people, Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed. They might be greater than us in number, but we have God when we understand the text.
You're listening to When We Understand The Text, an online Bible ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty. Find videos and more at our website, www .tt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.
Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Old Testament, we've been in the book of 2 Chronicles. And just today, as I was going through my notes to kind of look at what material I had left to cover, I realized we've only got five chapters left.
So we could be finishing up our study of 2 Chronicles as early as next week, last day of the month of May, last day in our study of 2 Chronicles. Now these five chapters are rather lengthy chapters, and rarely do I even get through three chapters in one lesson.
So we'll see. But things seem to be coming to a close here as we've been studying through these kings of Judah in the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles. And I've loved this study. I mean, ever since Judges.
That was where I started doing Old Testament on Thursday. We were in the book of Judges. So we've done Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and now finishing up 1 and 2 Chronicles. So we've been looking at this royal line in Israel, pointing toward the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who is going to come through the line of David and establish his kingdom forever.
And that is what the readers of 2 Chronicles are anticipating. That's kind of the theme of the book, is remembering the Davidic covenant and the promise of a king who will deliver this people. So far, the kings that we've looked at have not been fit for the job, even those who were righteous kings.
And Hezekiah is one of those righteous kings, the king that we've been reading about and continue with his story in chapter 32. We're going to read about Sennacherib invading Judah, but God delivering Judah out of the hands of the Assyrians.
Yet Hezekiah, though he was a righteous king, was a prideful man and was stricken with illness, which then we read about in chapter 33, and we also read when we were in 2 Kings. So we read about Hezekiah there.
Hezekiah is one of two remaining righteous kings. The other one is going to be Josiah, and it won't be until next week that we will read about him. But the rest of the kings are wicked. And even when Josiah became king over Judah, though he was a righteous king, the rest of Judah did not follow suit with him.
As soon as he passed away, they went right back to doing the evil things that they were doing under Manasseh and Ammon. So let's continue with the story of Hezekiah here, chapter 32, beginning in verse 1.
After these things and these acts of faithfulness, which we read about last week in chapter 31, Hezekiah organizing the priests, reinstituting Passover, the celebration of Passover in Judah. After these acts of faithfulness, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came and invaded Judah and encamped against the fortified cities, thinking to win them for himself.
And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and intended to fight against Jerusalem, he planned with his officers and his mighty men to stop the water of the springs that were outside the city and they helped him.
A great many people were gathered and they stopped all the springs and the brook that flowed through the land saying, Why should the king of Assyria come and find much water? He said to work resolutely and built up all the wall that was broken down and raised towers upon it and outside it he built another wall and he strengthened the millow in the city of David.
He also made weapons and shields in abundance and he set combat commanders over the people and gathered them together to him in the square at the gate of the city and spoke encouragingly to them saying, 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 and the people took confidence from the words of Hezekiah, king of Judah.
Amen to that. Why would you not have confidence in that? That is a pep talk right there. They've got an arm of flesh. Yeah, they might outnumber us. We've got God that should be our confidence in any single situation.
The Lord will help us and fight our battles and the people took confidence in the words of Hezekiah king of Judah and we can take confidence in those same words if God is going to deliver his people from a massive enemy, from being annihilated by this huge army.
Don't you know that your God will deliver you and protect you and care for you in whatever situation or trial you are going through. Lean on the everlasting arms of Christ. Now these things that Hezekiah did in preparation for this coming invasion, this took a significant amount of time.
So it wasn't like the Assyrians were invading lower Judah and then Hezekiah immediately, oh, build that wall up right over there. Oh, let's fashion some shields real quick. This took a while. I mean, it took a period of years, but the expansion of Jerusalem, the building up of the outside walls actually encompass parts of Jerusalem that previously weren't protected by the walls.
So Jerusalem became larger in size than it had ever been before. The border wall was larger under Hezekiah than it had ever been under any other king, including Solomon. Even though the nation of Israel was larger and more prosperous when Solomon was king, Jerusalem itself was larger and more prosperous under Hezekiah.
He had even built up the temple. It was taller than it was when Solomon had built it as Hezekiah had brought his reforms and also repaired some of the damage that had been done by previous unrighteous kings.
So this is the way that the Lord had blessed Hezekiah and Jerusalem because of his righteousness and the people's obedience. So even in this slow conquest of the Assyrians, Hezekiah had time to fortify the city and also improve on their weaponry.
So here we get to verse nine. After this, Sennacherib king of Assyria, who was besieging Lachish with all his forces, sent his servants to Jerusalem, to Hezekiah king of Judah and to all the people of Judah who were in Jerusalem saying.
Now, before I get to this part with the address from Sennacherib, notice there that it says that the Assyrians were besieging Lachish. So remember that a siege is when an army surrounds a city and basically starves them to death or starves them into surrender.
That takes a long time. So this is what Sennacherib was doing as Hezekiah was building up the walls of Jerusalem to protect the people and also fashioning some new weapons in case they were going to have to do battle.
So now here, verse 10 is Sennacherib's address to Hezekiah. Thus says Sennacherib king of Assyria, on what are you trusting, that you endure the siege in Jerusalem? Is not Hezekiah misleading you that he may give you over to die by famine and by thirst when he tells you, the Lord our God will deliver us from the hand of the king of Assyria?
Has not this same Hezekiah taken away his high places and his altars and commanded Judah and Jerusalem, before one altar you shall worship and on it you shall burn your sacrifices? Do you not know what I and my fathers have done to all the peoples of other lands?
Were the gods of the nations of those lands at all able to deliver their lands out of my hand? Who among all the gods of those nations that my fathers devoted to destruction was able to deliver his people from my hand that your God should be able to deliver you from my hand?
Now therefore do not let Hezekiah deceive you or mislead you in this fashion and do not believe him for no God of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my hand or from the hand of my fathers.
How much less will your God deliver you out of my hand? Now, as you place your trust in the Lord your God, as you do just as Hezekiah encouraged his people to rely on the Lord to help us and to fight our battles, as you place your faith in him, Satan is going to attempt to make you doubt.
Satan is gonna plant thoughts into your mind and say things like, hey, you know that friend of yours that died of cancer? Did God deliver them? Now, what makes you think that God is gonna deliver you?
You know that friend of yours that lost his job and he lost everything and had to completely move because there wasn't any more work available to him? If God couldn't save him, then what makes you think that God is gonna save you out of your situation?
Satan is gonna plant doubts in your mind like that, but you need to cling all the more to Christ. You are going to have trouble in this world and there is no guarantee that you're gonna be delivered out of the things that may come your way, the circumstances, things that will go wrong around you.
Those things may end up in failure and remain in failure, but you have this confidence that no matter what happens to you in this life, with faith in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. You have been justified before God and all this that we experience in this world, this is but a light momentary affliction as Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians 4 and in the book of Romans saying, none of this stuff can even compare to the eternal weight of glory that awaits us if we endure to the end.
So cling to Christ Jesus and we have this promise in scripture. He will deliver us. He will deliver us from the ways of this world, from the fallenness of creation, from the wages of sin, from the wrath of God, from the sting of death.
Jesus Christ will deliver us into his eternal kingdom forever. So trust in Christ and do not let these light momentary afflictions that we experience and endure in this life, shake your faith from the promise and the confidence that we have in Jesus.
So we go on here in verse 16, and Sennacherib's servants said still more against the Lord God and against his servant Hezekiah. And he wrote letters to cast contempt on the Lord, the God of Israel and to speak against him saying, like the gods of the nations of the lands who have not delivered their people from my hands, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver his people from my hand.
And they shouted it with a loud voice in the language of Judah to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall to frighten and terrify them in order that they might take the city. And they spoke of the God of Jerusalem as they spoke of the gods of the peoples of the earth, which are the work of men's hands.
So again, they spoke about God just as you would disregard an idol as nothing, as a vain thing that has been made by the hands of man. So these people, these servants of Sennacherib were talking about God the same way.
The true God, the living God, they were blaspheming him as the work of the hands of man rather than the creator of all things. So then verse 20, here is how Hezekiah responded to this. Then Hezekiah the king and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz prayed because of this and cried to heaven.
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. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he came into the house of his God, lowercase G, the house of his God, some of his own sons struck him down there with the sword.
So the Lord saved Hezekiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem from the hand of Sennacherib king of Assyria and from the hand of all of his enemies and he provided for them on every side. And many brought gifts to the Lord, to Jerusalem and precious things to Hezekiah king of Judah so that he was exalted in the sight of all the nations from that time onward.
Notice the setting that Sennacherib was in when he was struck down and killed, where was he? He was in the house of his God, again, lowercase G, he was in the temple to his false God and some of his own sons came and struck him down.
So as he said, the Lord God was gonna be powerless to deliver Judah, what ended up happening instead was that his own made up God was powerless to save him and his army was struck down, he was sent away in shame and his own sons killed him.
Thus, the victory belonged to God and because of Hezekiah's faithfulness, the Lord blessed Hezekiah. Verse 24, in those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death and he prayed to the Lord and he answered him and gave him a sign but Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him for his heart was proud.
Therefore wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem but Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah.
Now we read about this in a little bit more detail in 2 Kings and it was Isaiah who first came to Hezekiah and warned him because of his pride, this was what was gonna happen to him. Hezekiah repented and so the Lord stayed his hand.
Now I don't know why this is written the way that it is but it's actually out of order. These things happened before Sennacherib, the king of Assyrians came against Judah and threatened Jerusalem and it was likely because of Hezekiah's pride that that event was allowed to happen but Hezekiah repented, he was healed because he repented and likewise the Lord delivered Judah out of the hands of the Assyrians.
So verse 27, and Hezekiah had very great riches and honor and he made for himself treasuries for silver, for gold, for precious stones, for spices, for shields, and for all kinds of costly vessels. Storehouses also for the yield of grain, wine and oil and stalls for all kinds of cattle and sheep folds.
This section that we're reading right here goes with what we read in verse 23. Many brought gifts to the Lord and to Jerusalem and precious things to Hezekiah, king of Judah. So now it's detailing some of those precious things that king Hezekiah had in his own possession.
Verse 29, he likewise provided cities for himself and flocks and herds in abundance for God had given him very great possessions. This same Hezekiah closed the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon and directed them down to the west side of the city of David and Hezekiah prospered in all his works.
And so in the matter of the envoys of the princes of Babylon who had been sent to him to inquire about the sign that had been done in the land, God left him to himself in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.
I don't know if you remember this portion of the story from our study back in 2 Kings 20, we got more details there than we got here in 2 Chronicles, but there were some Babylonians that came and Hezekiah took them throughout Jerusalem and through the temple and his own house and the storehouses and he just boasted about all the stuff that he had.
Well, this filled up the Babylonians with envy and provoked them to want to conquer Judah for all of the riches that Hezekiah had. And so Isaiah said to Hezekiah, there are days coming that all that is in your house in which your fathers have stored up until this day, they're going to be carried away to Babylon because of what you have just done in the pride of your heart.
Hezekiah's response was basically, eh, ain't gonna happen to me. That's a future generation. I don't have to worry about that. So because of the pride of Hezekiah and not being concerned with future posterity, this is going to become a curse against Judah.
Verse 32, now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and his good deeds behold, they are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. And Hezekiah slept with his fathers and they buried him in the upper part of the tombs of the sons of David and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem did him honor at his death and Manasseh, his son, reigned in his place.
Manasseh, of course, being a very wicked king who we read about in chapter 33. Let's cover that one quickly. Manasseh was 12 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem. For a wicked king, that's a long time.
And it's more than a generation. It's like a generation and a half that a wicked king was ruling over Judah. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel.
For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down and he erected altars to the Baals and made Asheroth and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars in the house of the Lord of which the Lord had said in Jerusalem, shall my name be forever.
And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his sons as an offering in the valley of the son of Hinnom and used fortune-telling and omens and sorcery and dealt with mediums and with necromancers.
He did much evil in the sight of the Lord provoking him to anger. And the carved image of the idol that he had made he set in the house of God of which God said to David and to Solomon his son in this house and in Jerusalem which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel I will put my name forever and I will no more remove the foot of Israel from the land that I appointed for your fathers.
If only they will be careful to do all that I have commanded them all the law all the statutes and the rules given through Moses. Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel.
The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people but they paid no attention. Therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon.
And when he was in distress he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom.
Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. It's unfortunate that sometimes God has to let us go through this kind of suffering for us to see that we have sinned before him and he is God and only he alone can deliver us and forgive our sins.
But in the case of Manasseh that's what it took. Praise God for his mercy that he doesn't let us die in our sin but instead that we might see the truth of our depravity and come to repentance and worship Christ the Lord.
Verse 14, afterward he built an outer wall for the city of David west of Gihon in the valley and for the entrance into the fish gate and carried it around Ophel and raised it to a very great height. He also put commanders of the army in all the fortified cities in Judah and he took away the foreign gods and the idol from the house of the Lord and all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the house of the Lord and in Jerusalem and he threw them outside the city.
Notice that he didn't destroy them and notice that he didn't remove them from Judah. He just threw them outside the city. He also restored the altar of the Lord and offered on it sacrifices of peace offerings and of Thanksgiving and he commanded Judah to serve the Lord the God of Israel.
Nevertheless, the people still sacrificed at the high places but only to the Lord their God. God had commanded he was only to be sacrificed to in the temple because they were still worshiping at the high places.
This left the hearts of the people open to begin worshiping the false gods again, which was eventually what was going to happen. Verse 18, now the rest of the acts of Manasseh and his prayer to his God and the words of the seers who spoke to him in the name of the Lord the God of Israel.
Behold, they are in the Chronicles of the kings of Israel and his prayer and how God was moved by his entreaty and all his sin and his faithlessness and the sites on which he built the high places and set up the Asherim in the images before he humbled himself.
Behold, they are written in the Chronicles of the seers, which we don't have. So Manasseh slept with his fathers and they buried him in his house and Ammon his son reigned in his place. Ammon was 22 years old when he began to reign and he reigned two years in Jerusalem and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord as Manasseh his father had done.
Ammon sacrificed to all the images that Manasseh his father had made and served them because Manasseh didn't destroy them. He just removed them from the city. Ammon went and gathered them back up and started worshiping them just as he had previously seen his father do.
Remember Ammon had brothers that had been sacrificed to these false gods. Verse 23, Ammon did not humble himself before the Lord as Manasseh his father had humbled himself when Manasseh was finally convicted but this Ammon incurred guilt more and more and his servants conspired against him and put him to death in his own house.
But the people of the land struck down all those who had conspired against King Ammon and the people of the land made Josiah his son, king in his place. Josiah will be the last righteous king of Judah and we'll read about him next week.
This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more visit our website at www .utt .com. If you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast or just send us a comment, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com and let your friends know about our ministry.
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