WWUTT 544 Hezekiah's Hesitation?

Hezekiah was a righteous king in Judah, but his righteousness was not enough to save them from their enemies. We're not saved by our own merit. We are saved by the gracious work of God when we understand the text.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of the book of 2 Kings, and in our study of this book, we are done with the kingdom of Israel. The northern kingdom has been exiled. They are no more. So the remainder of our study will be on the kingdom of Judah.

Isaiah pops up in our reading today, will be in chapter 18. But before getting there, I wanted to come to a story in Luke chapter 4. In context, this probably would have been a little bit better when we finished up the ministry of Elisha, but I think at the conclusion of Israel, this is still applicable as well.

So in Luke chapter 4, Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up. He goes back to his hometown. And as was his custom, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath, and he stood up and he began to read.

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And Jesus rolled up the scroll and he gave it back to the attendant and he sat down.

In the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on him and he began to say to them, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And all spoke well of him and they marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

And they said, is not this Joseph's son? And he said to them, doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, physician, heal yourself. What we have heard you did at Capernaum, do here in your hometown as well.

And he said, truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months and a great famine came over all the land.

And Elijah was sent to none of them, but only to Zarephath in the land of Sidon to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them were cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.

And when the people of Nazareth heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him up to the brow of a hill on which their town was built so that they could throw him down a cliff.

But passing through their midst, he went away. So the people of Nazareth were interested in these words that Jesus said, even it even appears that they believed him when he said that these words of the prophet Isaiah have been fulfilled in your midst.

It says that they spoke very well of him. But then when he said that he was not going to do miracles among them. When when he said that they would say to him, hey, what you did in Capernaum, we want to see you do here.

And he said that he wouldn't do it. Then they got very mad and they tried to drive him out of the town, even tried to throw him off of a cliff. The only miracle that they ended up seeing was that their efforts just kind of stopped and Jesus passed through their midst and he walked away.

And that was pretty much it. But here Jesus is pointing out that even though there were many lepers in the time of Elisha, he only healed Naaman, even though there were many widows who were suffering at the time of Elijah, he only went to one.

So Jesus was pointing out to the people of Nazareth that though he had the power to heal them all, if he wanted to, he wasn't going to because it was not his will to do so. And this was what made them very upset.

See, our sovereign Lord has chosen for his glory and for his purposes those who are going to be saved. And he has also selected for destruction those who will be destroyed. And all of this, again, is to the praise and the glory of God.

So Israel was devoted to destruction because they worshiped false gods. And the Lord is also going to eventually turn Judah over to their enemies as well. But the Lord is gracious and he is slow to anger.

There's still more that he has to do with Judah during this period of time that we're reading about in the book of Second Kings. And one of those things is to give a promise to a certain king who is going to become one of the ancestors of Christ because of his faithfulness to the Lord.

Let's begin reading here. Second Kings, chapter 18, starting in verse one. In the third year of Hosea, son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. So as we're going to be focusing on Judah, some of these kings come to power in it.

And it kind of says when this king ascended the throne based on who was king in Israel. So as far as the narrative goes, Israel is no more. They've been turned over to the hands of their enemies. But as we now focus on Judah, some of what we read about was during a time when Israel still existed.

So that's you'll see Israel mentioned. They're just no longer a major player in the story anymore. So verse two, he was twenty five years old when he began to reign and he reigned twenty nine years in Jerusalem.

His mother's name was Abby, the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done. He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah.

And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made. For until those days, the people of Israel had made offerings to it. It was called Nehushtan. So this is the same bronze serpent that we read about in Numbers, chapter twenty one, because of the people grumbling against the Lord.

God sent serpents into the camp, bit the people and they died from those snake bites. They begged Moses and the Lord for relief. So God had Moses craft a bronze serpent and he put it up on a pole. And whenever somebody was bit by a serpent, they just had to look at the bronze serpent and then they would be healed.

Their life would be saved. Jesus talked about this same serpent in John, chapter three. He said just as the serpent was raised up in the desert, so will the son of man be lifted up and all who look on the son of man who look upon Christ and his sacrifice upon the cross will be healed from the deadly disease of sin that all men are inflicted with.

So this same bronze serpent was quite a relic in Israel and in Judah, but it eventually became an object of worship. And so rather than preserving it, it was better for it to be destroyed. So it just kind of shows you what God thinks of relics.

It's better for you to destroy that relic if it would become something that you would instead worship. You know, you may have noticed some similarities here to between Israel and Judah and the Roman Catholic Church.

A lot of the things that Israel was guilty of is the very same thing that the Catholic Church does. Worshiping certain relics. Catholic Church does that. Worshiping the Asherah who is considered the mother of God.

That's what the Catholic Church does with their veneration of Mary. So there's a lot of these same errors that Israel and Judah were destroyed for. It's the very same thing we see the Roman Catholic Church doing today.

So anyway, we continue from there. Verse 5, Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him.

For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him wherever he went out. He prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him.

He struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory from watchtower to fortified city. In the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hosea, son of Elah, king of Israel, Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria and besieged it.

And at the end of three years, he took it. In the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of Hosea, king of Israel, Samaria was taken. The king of Assyria carried the Israelites away to Assyria and put them in Halah and on the Haber, the river of Gozen and in the cities of the Medes, because they did not obey the voice of the Lord.

Their God, but transgressed his covenant. Even all that Moses, the servant of the Lord commanded, they neither listened nor obeyed. So it's kind of like now is the story has shifted to what's going on in Judah.

We're getting the perspective of Israel's exile from the eyes of Judah, of the king of Judah. And notice that Moses is mentioned here rather than David. It says that Hezekiah was faithful to all of the commands of Moses.

Previously, it said that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David, his father, had done. But then it mentions that he did all that the Lord had commanded Moses. This is just showing how thorough Hezekiah was in his faithfulness to God.

There are other places where we'll read about a faithful king, and it says that he walked in all the ways of his father, David, but he didn't tear down the high places. Well, Hezekiah was even more thorough in his obedience to God.

He loved God with an even deeper love than his predecessors had, as it talks about here. So that's why it mentions that he kept even the commands of Moses. The way that a king was supposed to rule in Judah, that was the way that Hezekiah reigned.

So verse 13 now in the 14th year of King Hezekiah. So this is after Israel has been exiled and the king of the Assyrians moved the Israelites to a particular location. So in the 14th year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.

And Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish saying, I have done wrong. Withdraw from me. Whatever you impose on me, I will bear. And the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah, king of Judah, 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold.

And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house. At that time, Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that Hezekiah, king of Judah, had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria.

And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab Saris, and the Rab Sheikah with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the washer's field.

And when they called for the king, there came out to them Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna, the secretary, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder. All of these things are happening at exactly just about exactly 700 B .C. and it's all been confirmed with archaeology.

There have been records uncovered at Nineveh that verify this exact military campaign that we are reading about. In fact, let me read you this note here. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, launched a major assault against Judah.

Archaeology shed significant light on this event. The Sennacherib relief found at Nineveh depicts the Assyrian attack on the Judean city of Lachish. Sennacherib built a siege ramp on the southwestern corner of the city and destroyed its defenses by using archers, infantry and siege machines.

The Judeans responded by erecting a counter-siege ramp to bolster their defenses. It was to no avail. Sennacherib conquered Lachish. Both the actual ramps have been uncovered. So you think of these big ramps so that the soldiers could march up and over the wall.

They've even uncovered those ramps of this very siege that we're reading about here in Second Kings. All of that is very cool, by the way. Let's continue on into verse 19. And the Rabbi Sheikah said to them, Say to Hezekiah, thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, on what do you rest this trust of yours?

Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust that you have rebelled against me? Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it, such as Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to all who trust in him.

But if you say to me, we trust in the Lord our God, is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, you shall worship before the altar in Jerusalem? Come now, make a wager with my master, the king of Assyria.

I will give you 2000 horses if you are able on your part to set riders on them. How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master's servants when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?

Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, go up against this land and destroy it. So the rab Shaka is he's speaking on behalf of the king of Assyria.

Rab Shaka is cupbearer. He was like a personal attendant to the king. And this speech that he has given to Hezekiah here, he's basically saying, hey, if you go with Egypt is going to go bad with you, too.

There's nothing that you can do. It's basically what the rab Shaka is saying to Hezekiah. And he says that even the Lord, your God is not on your side because you've torn down the high places. Now, I don't think that was necessarily the reason why God was punishing Hezekiah.

I think it was more the reason because of him desecrating the temple to try to buy off the king of Assyria. Just as the previous king of Judah, Ahaz, started removing pieces from the temple and started moving some things around.

We started to see the gloriousness, the beauty of the temple being deconstructed. And so we're seeing that same thing happen with Hezekiah. He did that even more by taking the gold off the doors and trying to bribe the king of Assyria with it.

So that's probably the reason why God is bringing this punishment against Judah. Even though Hezekiah was such a righteous king, Judah has followed after false gods for so long that not even Hezekiah's righteousness is able to prevent this tyranny from coming against the kingdom of Judah.

But we're going to hear from Isaiah coming up in Chapter 19, which we're not going to get to today. I said we would see Isaiah in our reading, but that will be next week when we'll see Isaiah pop up. In the meantime, let me continue going here.

Verse 26, then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah and Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall.

But the Rabshakeh said to them, has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you and not to the men sitting on the wall who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine?

That's a lovely picture. Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus says the king, do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand.

Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying the Lord will surely deliver us and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, make your peace with me and come out to me.

Then each one of you will eat his own vine and each his own fig tree and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey that you may live and not die.

And do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying the Lord will deliver us. Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad?

Where are the gods of Sefer Vaym, Hena and Eva? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their lands out of my hand that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand kind of sounds very similar to a taunting speech that Goliath gave to Israel, doesn't it?

Talking about how his gods were going to deliver Israel into his hand. But it was, of course, the Lord God of David that delivered Goliath into David's hand. Verse 36, but the people were silent and answered him not a word for the king's command was, do not answer him.

Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household and Shebna, the secretary and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told them the words of the Rabshakeh.

And then we will come back to that next week and hear what the Lord says to Hezekiah through the prophet Isaiah. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you for the word of God that has been given to us that we may read it and understand it.

And let us not let us not be shaken by the threats of the people of this world, just like the Rabshakeh was trying to threaten Hezekiah and the people of God. We're not threatened by these things because we are on the Lord's side.

We are overcomers with Christ. And so it is in him that we will reign forever if we endure to the very end. So keep our hearts steadfast, keep us fixed on the promises of God, the promises of your eternal kingdom.

If we endure and help us not to be led astray by sins, help us to resist every temptation to be devoted fully to the Lord our God. And when we sin, ask for your forgiveness. We are assured in the scriptures that if we ask forgiveness, you are faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Cleanse us of our sins even now and guide us in your holy name. In the name of Christ we pray, amen.

Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .utt .com.