FBC Daily Devotional – December 30, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Thursday morning. We have what two days left in this year and today in our scripture reading reading in 2nd

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Kings chapter 18 through chapter 19 and in in this chapter a chapter 18

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The Assyrians are enemies of the Israelites the children of Judah and they have come to attack they want to destroy

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Judah and they Send this threatening message and in this whole encounter between the

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Assyrians and God's people of Judah. I see some interesting

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Principles that we can learn from that the enemies of God's people will use some of the same

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Tactics that Sennacherib or the Assyrians used against Judah in this

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Old Testament passage for example The Spokesman for the

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Assyrians seeks to undermine the confidence of God's people by attacking their supposed source of help and they assumed that the

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Assyrians assumed that Judah was looking for help from the Egyptians and so the

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Assyrians sought to undermine the Ability of the Egyptians to provide any help.

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The point is that the help that That the enemy thinks you're looking to he'll try to undermine your confidence in that in that help that source of help and if that's especially true if you are trusting in the

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Lord, we're gonna see that in just a minute a Second tactic that the enemy will use is he'll criticize your

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Your religion you'll criticize your practice of Of your religion you see that in verse 22

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He the spokesman for the Assyrians. He says if you say to me we trust in the

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Lord our God is it not he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah the king of Judah has taken away and Said to Judah in Jerusalem.

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You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem Well, in fact, yes Hezekiah did take away a bunch of altars and he did tell the people of Judah and Jerusalem They needed to worship at the altar in Jerusalem because that's the way

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God had ordained things Hezekiah had brought about a revival and eliminated some idolatry in the land but Hezekiah is

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Criticizing that practice of their religion, which was to focus only in Only in Jerusalem at the temple and he also

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Undermines their confidence in the Lord when he says if you say we trust in the Lord our God You have violated what what the

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Assyrians are saying is you've violated the worship of God by taking away the existing things and criticizing the faithful practice of their faith a third way that the enemy can

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Intimidate you try to intimidate you is by Just undermining your ability here here how the

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Assyrians say this in verse 23 He says now therefore I urge you Give a pledge to my master the king of Assyria and I will give you two thousand horses

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If you are able on your part to put riders on them, what's he doing? He's mocking them

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He's essentially saying you don't even have enough riders if I gave you two thousand horses to put on them

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He says how then will you repel one captain of the least of my master's servants and Put your trust in Egypt for chariots and horsemen undermining their ability a fourth tactic that the enemy will use to try to defeat you is to claim that God is really on the enemy's side

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This is what the Assyrians did in verse 25 He says have I now come up without the

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Lord against this place to destroy it The Lord said to me go up against this land and destroy it so the enemy of God's people is

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Claiming that God is on the side of the enemy to attack his own people now

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To be to be honest and to be fair there were occasions where God gave the enemy of God's people the

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Responsibility to attack God's people but that's not the case here and God the

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Lord never said that to the Assyrians so Claiming that God is on their side

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God is against you and then a fifth tactic is is to undermine your morale

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To undermine your morale does this in verses 26 and 7? The the spokesman for the

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Assyrians is speaking Publicly and there are people listening in on this people of Judah listening in on what the

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Assyrians are saying and the Assyrian spokesman is speaking in the language of the

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Jews speaking Hebrew and the the officials and Judah Say to the

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Assyrians stop speaking in our language speak to us in your language. We can understand you and The Assyrians say no, we're not gonna stop speaking in your language.

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We want all the people on the wall to hear We want them to hear what's coming What's happened gonna happen to them how they're gonna be taken captive and they're gonna be destroyed and all the rest of stuff

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What's he doing? What's the enemy doing? undermining their Morale trying to destroy their morale and the enemy does that to you too just discouraging you

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Undermining your morale and then a last tactic that we see here that the enemy uses is to really kind of foment distrust in The leadership that God has established

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So he does this in verses 28 to 35 and I'll not take the time to read it but basically what the spokesman for the

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Assyrians says is Hezekiah is gonna lead you down a path of destruction as a kind of a king

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The king that God has put in place The God -ordained leader of God's people. He is going to take you into a path of destruction and The whole the whole purpose of that is to get the people to turn against the leadership

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That's one of Satan's tactics. That's one of the enemy's tactics against God's people even to this day

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To get you to distrust The the leadership that he has put over you.

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How should we respond to such assaults? Hezekiah shows us a good way in chapter 19 verse 1 he responds with with sobriety and humility

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It says when King Hezekiah heard about this he tore his clothes He covered himself with sackcloth and he went into the house of the

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Lord. He didn't he didn't stand against the enemy arrogantly defiantly but he faced that enemy and the enemy's threats soberly and humbly and Then he sought

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God his word and his will and he sought God's help You see that in verses 2 through 4 of chapter 19 and he trusted in the word of the

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Lord verse 6 Isaiah comes to as a Kaia Speaks to Hezekiah through a spokesman and says don't be afraid of the words

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Which you've heard which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed against me says the Lord I will send the

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Spirit Upon him and he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land And I will cause him to fall by the sword in his land.

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That's exactly that's exactly what happened How do you respond to the threats of the enemy pray much?

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Pray much and commit the matter to the Lord as the enemy Responded to the threat that he heard that was going to take him away and he said to Hezekiah don't think

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I won't be back to destroy you because I certainly will and to that Hezekiah went back into a matter of prayer.

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He took the letter from the Assyrians before the Lord and laid it before the Lord and Prayed and committed the matter to the

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Lord So this is a really very helpful section of Scripture chapters 18 and 19 and 2nd

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Kings you can see some tactics that the enemy uses to attack God's people and You can see some good ways to respond to those tactics as well

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So I hope this is helpful to you Father I pray that we would be alert to the tactics of the wicked one and We would respond in a way that would please you and give you honor and glory.

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We ask in Jesus name. Amen All right. We'll have a good rest of your Thursday and look forward to the last day of 2021 tomorrow