Sunday Morning Service (II Kings 19)

II Kings 19

Audio Access Available Above

“Kings And Blessed Deliverance” • 10.1.17 • Calvary Christian Fellowship, Sunday Morning Service

Intro

- The Assyrian army has come into the land of Judah. They have sacked the outlying fortified cities and now sit opposite of the wall of Jerusalem.

- There are three prominent military officials that are seeking to negotiate Judah's surrender. They are breathing out threats, running down their victories, filling the ears of Judah's men with fear.

- Hezekiah's men have asked that the Rabshakeh speak only in a language that they could hear, but he only speaks louder.

- When his message is finished, the men return with their clothes torn and relay the message to the King. What would you do in his position?

- What will you do when the enemy tells you of your own defeat spiritually? When he runs down a list of casualties that you know exist? Let us learn from King Hezekiah. Verse 1.

Text

• II Kings 19:1-5 : "And so it was, when King Hezekiah heard it, that he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord. Then he sent Eliakim, who was over the household, Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz. And they said to him, 'Thus says Hezekiah: ‘This day is a day of trouble, and rebuke, and blasphemy; for the children have come to birth, but there is no strength to bring them forth. It may be that the Lord your God will hear all the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to reproach the living God, and will rebuke the words which the Lord your God has heard. Therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left.’ So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah." : Hezekiah is at his lowest point emotionally and professionally. His men have returned from the frontlines and their report is not good.

- Hezekiah tore his royal robes and replaced them with sackcloth. This is a symbol both of mourning and outrage. The King is powerless to do anything about this.

- Where is a King supposed to go at this time? Other Kings, like David, put on their own armor and led their troops. Some would gather their military commanders and begin strategizing a defense.

- Hezekiah went into the house of the Lord! He knew that this was the only place to be.

- Notice that he doesn't take sackloth off. He isn't interested in hiding his feelings or presenting some phony emotional pallete. He goes in just as he is!

- Why do we feel the need to camoflauge our true feelings before the Lord and to some extent, before His people? Hezekiah wasn't going to pretend or hide anything.

- He went into the outer court. Remember that he refurbished and repopulated the temple complex in the first month of his reign. His investment pays off in spades!

- He knows where to go and he knows who he needs to talk to. He sends a message to the prophet that he no doubt grew up listening to.

- He tells Isaiah that a day of great difficulty has come upon them. It's comparable to a woman's extremely difficult labor. The woman is ready to give birth but doesn't have strength to push.

- The mother and the baby are in danger of losing their lives! Could it be that the Rabshakeh's  words will come true? Will God allow that? He doesn't see any other true possiblity.

- "Isaiah, pray for those that survive this!" The King is resigned to what he believes is his nation's fate. Isaiah has something much better for him to hear. Verse 6.

• II Kings 19:6,7 : "And Isaiah said to them, 'Thus you shall say to your master, ‘Thus says the Lord: 'Do not be afraid of the words which you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me. Surely I will send a 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 own land.'" : Hezekiah was down to a few choices and none of them were good. Thankfully, God is good at introducing new choices!

- The King of Judah wouldn't have to fight a hopeless battle. He wouldn't be forced to surrender to this vicious foe. God would simply cause the King of Assyria to choose a different battle!

- I've found myself calling upon God to do this very thing for friends of mine who have been in "no-win" situations. It comforts me that God isn't confined to accepting our conditions!

- In this case, God would simply introduce a rumor that would compel the King of Assyria to go back to his own land. Eventually, God will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.

- That part will come at the end of the story. For now, the rumor was going to be more powerful than the sword. Verse 8.

• II Kings 19:8-13 : "Then the Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah, for he heard that he had departed from Lachish. And the king heard concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, 'Look, he has come out to make war with you.' So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, 'Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, 'Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.' Look! You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by utterly destroying them; and shall you be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered those whom my fathers have destroyed, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?’" : The Rabshakeh returned from Jerusalem to Lachish only to discover his boss had gone out to fight against the King of Ethiopia. Isaiah 37:9 tells us that Hezekiah heard about it to.

- Can you imagine the encouragement that he received from this news? Have you been there?

- Any ray of sunshine is welcomed in the midst of a difficult storm! It's wonderful to breathe in a sigh of relief. The enemy will make sure that that feeling doesn't last long!

- Before the King leaves, he re-sends his previous message, hoping to reset his previous stance of intimidation! "The facts haven't changed! Don't let your God deceive you!"

- The message is that He is not working on His behalf. He is not orchestrating events. He is not to be trusted. Don't play the fool, Hezekiah! Some of us give up at this point. Not him! Verse 14.

• II Kings 19:14-15a : "And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. Then Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said:" : Hezekiah received the threatening, fear inspiring letter and read it. "God, I thought you had this?"

- Haven't you been there before? Instead of being put off by that, he went directly to the house of the Lord. He didn't waste any time.

- He didn't reason that he had "already done that." Nor did he dismiss the activity as something that he "tried, but that obviously had seen it fail!" He became a fixture at the temple!

- I've seen people act this way most of my Christian life. When trouble comes, all of a sudden, you see them at everything. That's a good thing.

- What's much better is when a Christian remains in fellowship and is always present! Those people seem to have far fewer calamities and are far less impacted when they inevitably come!

- Hezekiah's example here is vital: If help is going to be found, it won't be found in a military meeting or in a financial institution. It will be found in the presence of God!

- Your help will be found in His presence, among His people and by His Word!

- When Hezekiah arrived, he took the Assyrian's scroll and spread it out before the Lord. He says, "Lord, look what just came for you!"

- In a very real sense, because God is Father to those that have believed upon Christ, He takes upon Himself the responsibility to meet His children's needs.

- In reality, this letter truly shows that the Assyrian is picking a fight with Hezekiah's God! This was the right place to bring that correspondance. His prayer at that point is enlightening.

- What is your perspective when you get a troubling letter or have an overwhelming need? - From my own experience, I tend to look at the size of the difficulty, the expense related to the trouble or the time that will be taken by what is before me.

- Generally, that can cause my prayers to begin from the perspective of the issue at hand. Hezekiah doesn't begin his prayer with the problem. He begins with the person of God! Verse 15.

• II Kings 19:15b-19 : "Then Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said: 'O Lord God of Israel, the One who dwells between the cherubim, You are God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. Truly, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands—wood and stone. Therefore they destroyed them. Now therefore, O Lord our God, I pray, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are the Lord God, You alone.'" : Hezekiah begins his prayer by acknowledging who he is praying to. This is the Lord God of Israel. He is the One who lives between the Angels that worship Him.

- He is the God that reigns over all of the Kingdoms of the Earth! What is Hezekiah doing?

- Does God need this information? God knows who and where He is! No, instead Hezekiah confesses and affirms this for his own sake! He needs to know who truly sits on The Throne!

- He chooses to see this letter in light of the One who is receiving it! The One who is receiving it is well established, sitting in authority, with all security. The noise and fear of Jerusalem isn't there!

- He is transcendant above every circumstance and nothing can move Him from His rightful place. Yet, He is also imminent, close, involved because He made heaven and earth!

- This is the God that Hezekiah is talking to. This is the being that he calls upon to listen, to bend His ear toward. To open His eyes to see. To hear the words of this blasphemous King.

- Hezekiah invites God to consider these things. He wants God to be active on His account.

- Notice also that the King is not ignoring the severity of the issue. He knows how effective the Assyrians have been, but he also acknowledges the truth out from among the Rabshakeh's lies.

- The Assyrians were able to destroy those nations because those nations trusted in gods that were inventions of Men!

- These little statues and figurines weren't representations of powerful deities. They were figments of men's imaginations! No wonder the Assyrians were so successful!

- But now Assyria has to deal with a true, living and powerful God! All of this praise and acknowledgment leads to Hezekiah's request: Save us from his hand!

- Why? So that everyone will know that You are God alone! "Advertise your greatness Lord!" "Do this for your own reputation!" "Do this so that other nations will know the difference." Verse 20.

• II Kings 19:20-28 : " Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, 'Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Because you have prayed to Me against Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard.’ This is the word which the Lord has spoken concerning him: ‘The virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you, laughed you to scorn; The daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head behind your back! ‘Whom have you reproached and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice, and lifted up your eyes on high? Against the Holy One of Israel. By your messengers you have reproached the Lord, and said: 'By the multitude of my chariots I have come up to the height of the mountains, to the limits of Lebanon; I will cut down its tall cedars and its choice cypress trees; I will enter the extremity of its borders, to its fruitful forest. I have dug and drunk strange water, and with the soles of my feet I have dried up all the brooks of defense.' ‘Did you not hear long ago how I made it, from ancient times that I formed it? Now I have brought it to pass, that you should be for crushing fortified cities into heaps of ruins. Therefore their inhabitants had little power; They were dismayed and confounded; They were as the grass of the field and the green herb, as the grass on the housetops and grain blighted before it is grown. ‘But I know your dwelling place, your going out and your coming in, and your rage against Me. Because your rage against Me and your tumult have come up to My ears, Therefore I will put My hook in your nose and My bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way which you came." : Did you notice what God called Judah? The virgin daughter of Zion! Assyria thought that they would "have their way" with Judah!

- They will be untouched and will be endlessly laughing at and mocking the Assyrians!

- Assyria has bitten off more than they can chew. They haven't come up against a fragile, overwhelmed city. They have come up against a fear inspiring God!

- The enemy put all of it's stock in their previous victories. Their chariots had conquered mountains. They had cut down trees that blocked their path and overtook foreign water supplies.

- God asks the Assyrians, "Why did you think that you had so much success?" God planned to use the Assyrians against those nations. That's why they were mowed down like grass before them!

- Ultimately, Assyria's success became the fuel for their rage against the Lord. Their victories propped up their hearts, not to be thankful to, but to hate the Lord!

- They wanted to be their own gods, to determine their own destinies. God has seen and heard it and will now use their own cruelty to judge them.

- God will put His hook in their nose and send them back in humiliating defeat. Verse 29.

• II Kings 19:29-31 : "This shall be a sign to you: You shall eat this year such as grows of itself, and in the second year what springs from the same; also in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them. And the remnant who have escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and those who escape from Mount Zion. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.’" When an agrarian society is forced to survive behind it's city walls, it is missing the time necessary to plant crops and tend to their growth.

- Judah is living off of it's stores of food and with every day, the inhabitants are becoming increasingly desperate. God tells them not to worry.

- They will be able to eat the food that will come up from the remnant crop for the next two years and in the third year, the ones that were barely surviving behind the wall will flourish!

- This is a beautiful picture of what happens in the life of a believer. There will be times of great testing and difficulty. You will feel as though there is only one miserable outcome.

- But when you trust in the Lord, there is always hope for a better day! Just like the crops would be sustained to bring them nourishment, their own lives would again be fruitful!

- They'll take root downward. They'll be healthy, established, secure. And they'll bear fruit upward. They'll worship and give praise to the Lord! Is that not the way it goes for believers?

- They will have had to drink deep from the wells of trust. When they have, they rise up in praise to the Lord! That was what God promised because that is what He is passionate about!

- They couldn't make this happen. But because God wanted it to happen, there was no way that it wasn't going to happen! Verse 32.

• II Kings 19:32-34 : "And this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria: 'His armies will not enter Jerusalem. They will not even shoot an arrow at it. They will not march outside its gates with their shields nor build banks of earth against its walls. The king will return to his own country by the same road on which he came. He will not enter this city, says the Lord. For my own honor and for the sake of my servant David, I will defend this city and protect it.'" : Isaiah relays this wonderful message to King Hezekiah. "They won't even get started!"

- They are not going to get inside the city. They are not even going to shoot a single arrow at the city! The King will come and go on the same road. Why?

- God will defend His people for His own honor. Assyria thought to mock God. God will defend His own Name! He will do this for His promise to David! He would be Jerusalem's defense. Verse 35.

• II Kings 19:35,36 : "That night the angel of the Lord went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere. Then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land. He went home to his capital of Nineveh and stayed there." : While the Assyrians slept, God released a single angel who killed 185,000 of the most fierce soldiers on the planet!

- Josephus mentions an outbreak of the plague from field mice! If so, the angel released them!

- Can you imagine waking up to this massacre? "They found corpses everywhere!" There was no sign of struggle. No chariot tracks. How did this happen?

- However many were left, went back to Ninevah with their King and they didn't return.

- No more letters of intimidation. No more threats. No more discussions on the nature of Assyria's power. They silently retreat to their own land. Judah will not have to face them again.

- God had rescued them, but what about His promise regarding Sennacherib? Verse 37.

• II Kings 19:37 : "One day while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with their swords. They then escaped to the land of Ararat, and another son, Esarhaddon, became the next king of Assyria." : The text makes it seem as though this happened fairly quickly after the fact, but nearly two decades have transpired. We find the King worshipping in the temple of Nisroch.

- His defeat at the hands of Yahweh did not sway him from his faith. Here he is twenty years later, still faithfully attending the services of his false, failure god! How sad!

- How many have had their lives rocked, only to remain in their idolatry and to become twice as deluded as they were before.

- Add Sennacherib to that list and pray that God will take your loved ones off of it!

- There are Jewish legends that tell of an inquisitive heart in Sennacherib. You don't just lose like he did without trying to understand why it happened.

- Legend has it that he discovered that Abraham had nearly sacrificed his only son and that that was why God had acted favorably toward the Jewish nation.

- He felt that if God helped them for that reason, then he might turn favorably toward him if he sacrificed both of his sons! It seems that they beat him to the punch!

- It's certainly not worth much, but what legends are!? The picture though is abundantly clear. Chapter 19 began with Sennacherib at the walls of Jerusalem. He ends in the temple of his god.

- He asked out loud, "What God can deliver you from my hands?" He ends wondering how it was that his own god could not deliver him from his own son's hands while in his temple!

- The people of God begin in mourning and confusion, scared to death of their violent foe. They end in peace, grateful that the God they served was bigger than the foe they faced!

Conclusion
- At his most desperate point, Hezekiah ran into the temple. He wore his clothes of mourning and shame. He sought the Word of God and he laid out his burden before the Lord.

- Friends, I pray you will do the same! We exist as a church to encourage you in the right direction and to bear your burden with you.

- Hezekiah learned to see his problem in the light of God's person. He discovered that God acted because of His own reputation and for the sake of His servant David.

- How much more will He deliver you, not for the sake of a servant, but for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ, by whom we are His own children?

- He didn't fail Hezekiah then. Christian, He won't fail you now!