Good morning. Welcome to Mercio Church. I love hearing testimonies of people trusting God and his faithfulness, but I do want to warn you, I'm not strong enough to see pictures and videos of good food and not start salivating.
So if you see Drool, I'm not bored. I'm just hungry.
So my prayer and my favorite of you is to wait to leave. Don't leave the next five minutes. Go get lunch. Please. Lock in with me for a little bit.
But my name is Daniel. I'm the college pastor here. I'm excited. You can go ahead and open your Bibles to 2 Kings chapter 18. If you have a copy of scripture, Or have your phone, your device, go ahead and go to 2 Kings 18.
We're in week two of a series called Prophets and Kings, where we're looking. In the book of 2 Kings, we're looking about the story of God's people. If you're unfamiliar, if you're not familiar with the Bible, or maybe you're just reading it for the first time or newer to church, you may not be too familiar with 2 Kings. It's in the Old Testament.
So, if you go to the beginning of your Bible and flip over a few books, it's right there. But 2 Kings really answers some questions like, okay, if the people of God, if Israel is the people of God in the Old Testament, there's covenant people, why are things going so poorly? Why are they taken into captivity? Why are all these bad things happening? Is God not really in control?
And really what 2 Kings tells us is like, no, he's still sovereign. But even in their hearts, even though they know they're God's people, their hearts are still prone to wander. And really, there's this thread throughout the entire Old Testament, and it's seen really heavily in 2 Kings that there needs to be a greater king. There needs to be a greater person to come and actually stir and change the hearts of the people back to God, to obedience. And we know on this side of the cross that is King Jesus.
But what we see here is just them trying and failing and trying and failing. To do things, but really their fear, their worries, their lack of belief that God is going to do what He said He's going to do. Really just shines and is apparent all throughout this. Last week we started, Pastor Bobby. Kicked off our series looking at King Hezekiah.
That's where we're going to be for the next couple of weeks. We're going to be looking at the life of King Hezekiah. He's one of the few good kings in Judah. And really, what we saw is at the beginning of his reign, last week, he got rid of idolatry. There was idolatry everywhere in Judah.
It was all over. The people, you know, they had little statues, they had figurines, they had the high places, had an asherah, which is basically something like, you know, I believe God's going to do this, but just in case he doesn't, they've got something in their back pocket. And Hezekiah really kind of got rid of all that. in Israel. And that was verses 1 through 8.
And what we saw was, we can kind of still live that way today, that we can believe God, we can have these other things that are kind of vying for our attention, vying for our affection, for our trust to put our trust in them rather than trusting that God is going to do. What he says he's going to do. And that's the first little bit. That kind of gives an overview. of who Hezekiah is.
A little bit of his life. He was a good, godly, trusting, faithful king. One of the few. But as we're going to see today, that even though those things were true, he wasn't without flaw. And today, we're going to be talking about a topic that every single one of us experiences, and none of us like to talk about.
We're going to talk about fear. What does fear look like in the life of a believer? How does it show up in our lives? How does it play out? What causes it?
Is it prevalent for us as adults? You know, I was talking to someone the other day that has kids, and I was telling them that my oldest, she's starting to just now get into like the afraid of the dark phase. She's three years old. She'll make up random things. She's terrified the cow's going to get her in a room.
I don't really know what that means. We're praying against cows. Amen? I know, but we're. She's in that phase, and he was like, Yeah, you know, kids, you know, they're afraid of the dark, monsters under the bed, all the little stereotypes that kids go through.
And he's like, But you know, they'll outgrow it. And I was like, Yeah, they will. And I left, and I'm like, Do we outgrow it? Or do we just start stop calling it the dark and we start calling it the future? You know, do we just shift the wording, but fear still dictates all of our decisions?
We don't cower in our bed because there's a monster in our bed, but we might cower and not be able to go to sleep because of what comes tomorrow. Anybody else been there? It's very easy to look at a kid and say, You shouldn't be afraid of that thing in the closet, but the Lord says, Don't be afraid about tomorrow. And boy, are we afraid. It's the exact same thing.
Fear is in us to the core. I'm gonna get you to do something, an actual illustration. You're gonna help me with it.
So, I'm gonna get everybody here and everybody at our campuses, campus pastors, if they don't engage, I want you to go tap them on the shoulder and tell them to do it. I want everyone to hold your hand out. Like you're holding a cup of coffee. And I will call you out. My father-in-law went to a concert and didn't raise his hands, and the lead singer called him out.
So I'll call you out. All right, everybody's got it. Pretend you bump into someone or someone bumps into you. They're the one that does it. And spill your coffee on your shirt, your brand new Sunday best.
Oh, man. Spill your coffee.
Okay, good. Thank you for participating. Let me ask you a question. Why did you spill coffee on yourself? I got one person, a few people at the camp, I'm sure people don't know what a rhetorical question is, but here we go.
But the answer is this. Because you had coffee in your cup. And you're like, okay, dude, we get it. No, what I'm saying is, if you had tea in your cup. If you'd had water in your cup, if you'd had a lid on your cup, if you'd have been a little more careful.
But the reason, that's what we can think of the reason, but the real reason you spilled coffee is you had coffee in your cup. And you're like, okay, what does that mean? The same thing happens in your life. What happens in your life does not create anything in you. It just exposes what's in you.
When something happens in your life, it doesn't create something that's inside of you. It just happens. When someone makes you do something that causes anger to arise, they didn't put the anger in you, they just drew it out. We see it all the time. You're at a restaurant, and if you're got kids like mine, if there's an open cup of water, that thing's getting knocked over.
Anyone? This is going to happen. But you've seen it and you've probably done it. Exact same situation, kid does it accidentally. It's not on purpose, total accident.
They're not trying to be rude.
Sometimes we or you'll see one parent they react totally calm like hey we'll clean it up not a big deal You see another parent fly off the rails. Did that circumstance create that response in the parent? No, it just revealed what was in there. The same thing is true for us spiritually. The same thing is true as fear.
When a circumstance in your life happens, it does not create fear in you. It just reveals that it's in your heart. Are you tracking with me? That's what we're going to see today. It's true in the life of Hezekiah, and it's true in our lives.
Here's our big idea. is that circumstances don't create fear, they reveal it and give us an opportunity. To respond in faith. Hezekiah is a great king. He's a good king.
He's a good guy. But we're about to see some circumstances in his life that knock that cup out of his hand and what spills out. fear and it's all over him. And some of you in here today, you can't see it because we don't have spiritual lenses like the Lord does. But if I could look at some of y'all's shirts, there'd be fear written all over you.
Fear about what tomorrow brings. Fear about a future decision, fear about what's gonna happen in your kids' lives, fear about your marriage. Fear about your friends, fear about work. I don't know what the thing is. You can apply it to a million areas.
Let me tell you, that circumstance did not create fear in your heart. It was there. And now, as believers, if you're a believer in the room, That is untenable with our faith in Christ.
So we have to do something with it. We have to learn how do we move from fear to faith. And that's what we're going to see today. The circumstances in Hezekiah's life, they mean they reveal some fear in his heart. And I'm gonna be really honest with you.
If there were ever circumstances that people would say, like, you know what, fear's probably warranted. These are them. These are them. Let me get a little bit of background. Eight years before where we are today.
Assyria, the big bad of the day, if you know your Bible, you've heard Jonah, he was sent to Nineveh, didn't want to go there because he hated him.
Well, that was the capital of the Assyrian Empire, and they hated God's people. They did horrible things to them. And so that's the people that are around them. And Hezekiah is very aware. But eight years earlier, The Assyrians had carried off Israel, the northern kingdom, had carried them off in exile.
And now, eight years, here we are, they come knocking on Hezekiah's door. They come knocking on the king of Judah's door. And what we have to have is this reality. Before we really get into this sermon, I want to make sure we understand this. And we see it in Hezekiah, who's this good, godly king.
is that fear can exist even in the life of a faithful believer. Fear can exist even in the life of the faithful believer. We saw it last week with idolatry. We're like, I'm saved. I don't have idols anymore.
I don't have anything that I worship.
Well, do you move your schedule around for everything your kids want? Do they get to dictate what your life looks like? Is every decision you make based off money or comfort? That's an idol. And we saw that last week.
That can still be true in the life of a believer. The same is true for fear. Even though God has saved us and He's secured an eternity for us, we can still struggle to trust Him for tomorrow. And that's where fear springs its head in the life of believers. We need to understand that.
And we need to understand that living in that that making our decision based on the fear that's in our life it's incompatible with our life as believers. It's incompatible with what God calls us to. We have to learn to let faith lead in our lives and not fear.
So, how does it reveal itself? How does it show up in our lives? How do we deal with it? How do we move? From fear to faith.
What we're going to see today is we're going to see four ways that fear pushes us to respond wrongly. The four things that fear tempts us to do. That when these circumstances arise, fear is like, hey, you should do this. What we're gonna see is how fear tempts us to go away that God calls us not to.
So, Assyria has. has come knocking on Judah's door. Come to Hezekiah. And it's the first time we see fear push Hezekiah to respond wrongly. Assyria is on his doorstep.
God, think about it. If you know anything about where this led up to this point, let me tell you: God has promised Abraham, He's promised Moses, He's promised David a kingdom, and what Hezekiah should do when these people come up against God is He should say, the God of all the universe is for me. I will not negotiate with you. I will not do anything with you. You do not have a right to what God has promised me.
And what does he do? Look at verse 14. It says, And Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, I have done wrong, withdraw from me. Whatever you oppose on me, I will bear. What he's saying is, I don't want to fight, I don't want to make anything uncomfortable, I don't want to ruin anything.
Let's negotiate, let's barter back and forth. That's the first thing that we see: is that fear tempts us to negotiate where faith tells us to say no. Fear tempts us to try to find a way to make the thing more comfortable, where the scripture or where God has drawn a lion in the sand and says, Do not cross this thing. And we're like, Well, I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable, I don't want to do that thing. God has promised his people that he would take care of them.
He's promising that he'll go before them, that he'll protect them, he'll trust them. Like I mentioned, he's promised Abraham and Moses and David. That he will be their God and they will be their people. And Hezekiah knew these things. And he was still more afraid of what Assyria might do to him than he was faithful that God was going to come through on his promise.
And before we throw stones at him. Before we do anything and say, like, oh, Hezekiah, how could you? We do this as well. How often do we waver or fail to stand up? To do what we know we ought to do because fear in our lives.
We know that God has told us no. But we find it easier. We know it would be difficult. We see it all the time. I'm a college pastor, so I see it all the time with our college students, especially in dating relationships.
Especially before you're like, okay, I'm not a college student. Let me tell you, what I see in 21-year-olds, I see in 51-year-olds. It just looks a little different, right? Scared of the dark as a kid, scared of the future as an adult. It plays out the same way.
When it comes to relationships, I've heard students be like, well, I love them, they're good for my life. And if I don't do X, Y, Z, then they'll leave me. And so what do they do? They begin to negotiate where God has drawn a line in the sand. And we see it play out over and over, and it ends horribly.
And they're like, I just never thought it would go here. I'm like, I did. When you began negotiating, because fear crept in your mind. That's what happens. That's what we're going to see play out in Hezekiah's life that it goes worse.
For us at work, when people are gossiping about somebody, and we know, man, we should say no, we should walk away, but the thought pops in our head.
Well, man, if I walk away, I might be an outcast. Or actually, they might be start gossiping about me.
So it might just be, I mean, Lord, you don't want me to be an outcast, you don't want me to feel weird.
So I just would begin negotiating. Or God has called us to be different.
Some of us have been okay with things happening in our lives that God has told us to run from. Because it's more comfortable, it's easier. But let me tell you, this isn't just because you're worse. You're not doing that because you're worse than every human. This is kind of the human, it's in our nature a little bit.
We see it in Hezekiah. Why does he do it? If he's the godly king, why does even he struggle with it?
Well, last week, Pastor Bobby mentioned King Ahaz. King Ahaz was Hezekiah's father, so he was the king previously. He was a horrible dude. And I'm going to go, okay, he's a bad guy. I don't know.
I mean, worse than horrible. He offered, he sacrificed one of his sons. He did a horrible thing. He took all the gold from the temple and gave it to the king of Assyria. This is the life that Hezekiah grew up in.
This is the home that he grew up in. He grew up in the home where his dad is killing his siblings. Where his dad is offering the gold that God has told him to put in the temple to other nations. And Hezekiah, he rises above that, right? He becomes a good, godly king.
He would never, ever, ever fall back into that way, right? We'll see what Hezekiah does right when he's done. He begins to negotiate, and the enemy says, Well, give me all your gold and silver. What does Hezekiah do? Does he say, No.
I will not do that. Look at verse 16. It says at that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord. and from the doorpost that Hezekiah, king of Judah, had overlaid. And he gave it to the king of Assyria.
He did the exact same thing that his father had done. And let me tell you this, that fear is both in our nature and in our nurture. It is something that is so deeply ingrained in who we are, and we learn it. We know this is true in other areas of life. Fear is the exact same way.
I found myself this morning. I didn't want to, you know, growing up, I was like, I'm not going to grow up to be my dad. And this morning, I'm like, you know what? We would need a good rain. I find that saying the things my dad did.
You know, I see that all the time. I'm like, kids these days can't drive. I'm like, oh, gosh, dude. You know, I'm just, I start making noises when I get up off the couch. I'm like, oh man, I'm getting there.
I'm becoming my dad. We do it in every area. My wife and I, we were in premarital counseling, one of the best pieces of advice we got. They said, if you're not constantly pursuing the Lord and how you approach your relationship with your spouse, you will do one of two things. You will either replicate and do the exact same thing your parents did, or you will do the exact opposite.
If you grew up in a home where arguments were settled by very who could be louder and who could make the other feel worse, you either do that exact same thing or you're like, I'm not going to be like my parents. And so what do you do? You never ever say a word. You're just completely passive. Both of those are fear responses.
And we see that replicated in things like marriage and in things like how we make jokes and the dad jokes that I make. And when your dad tells you to pull his finger, you're going to do the same thing, right? You're going to do all those same things. But the same is true with fear. If you grew up in a home where the word of the Lord was put before you, but only when it was convenient.
And well, we will follow God, but not if things get hard.
Well, then it's going to be very easy for you to replicate that in your life. That's what happens to Hezekiah. He grew up around it. But he really did rise above it. But when fear came knocking, when the circumstance allowed fear, what did he do?
Man, that fear just rose up for what he had learned in his entire life. And it happens with us. And we're gonna see that how it presents itself, how fear shows up. The rest of the passage, you're gonna see it's both in our nature to kind of do that, and some of these things are learned. From Hezekiah, but the problem is this.
Is that even though it's in our nature, it's in our nurture, we have been born again, believer, to a living hope. 2 Timothy 1:7 says, For God gave us not a spirit of fear, one of power and of love and of self-control. Romans 6, Paul paints this picture. He says, When you were not in Christ, When you were not in him, you submitted your members, your body, your thoughts, the way that you process things, the way that you handled circumstances in your life. You submitted them to works of unrighteousness.
But now that you've been born again to a living hope, now submit them to works of righteousness, that you have a way that you can take the way that you think, you can take the way that you live, you can take the way that you go about your work and the way that you parent. And all that fear, you can take it to the Lord and say, Lord, do something with this and let me respond in faith, not fear. You don't have to live as a slave to sin anymore. We don't have the thing and say, well, I grew up this way, I did this. You've been born again.
I don't care the family you were born into.
Now you've been born into a new family.
So we have to begin to learn how to walk out that way of living. We see it happen in Hezekiah's life, and we see it happen in our own. We have to learn how to replace our response being fear-motivated with being faith-driven. We're going to see that in just a minute at the end. How do we respond in faith?
But after Hezekiah begins negotiating with the Assyrians, what do they do? Do they accept his offer? No, they reject it. Because as we see in our lives, fear-driven decisions usually don't end that well. And the Assyrian king spokesperson, he speaks up.
We're going to be in verse 19. I'm going to say this: a lot of these names are very hard. And I don't know if it's pride or fear or just my third grade reading level. I'm just going to call them like spokesperson or advisor, just so you guys don't laugh at me the entire time.
Okay, praise God. All right. Verse 19, this spokesperson for the king of Assyria, he says, Say to Hezekiah. Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria. On what do you rest this trust of yours?
He begins attacking the trust of Hezekiah and the people of God. He attacks Hezekiah's leadership. He says that no other country is around you. Egypt's not going to help you. The northern kingdom's not here anymore.
They're not going to help you. He even goes on to say that God isn't even on your side anymore. Look at verse 22. 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 Jerusalem, you shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem. Last week, that's what we saw. Pastor Bobby mentioned it. That Hezekiah tore down these high places, these altars, these places of idolatry. But isn't this exactly what the enemy does?
The second you take a step. A massive step in your life to honoring God. What has Hezekiah done? He's saying idolatry will not stand anymore. And immediately Immediately, the king of Assyria throws it back and says, actually, you shouldn't have done that.
It happens all the time. We see it in our college students. Every summer, We call our students to give up. You know, part of their summer. We call every college student here at Mercy Hill to give the first two years after college, to go to the nations, to go on a church plant, or to be a resident here.
We call them to do something very hard. We see it every summer like clockwork. That when students say, okay, I'll commit the whole summer to learning about God's heart for the nations and how the local church ought to play its role in that. They commit, they're excited, then I hear this. I'll get a text.
Hey, Daniel. I talked to my parents, my friends. I've just been feeling, I just don't know if this is what the Lord has for me anymore. Every summer. And I'm like.
Is it shocking that right as you took a massive step towards godliness? The enemy said that's probably not what you should have done. We see that in college students. We see it everywhere in our church. We see it all the time.
People joining a group. I'm wearing this shirt today. You know, at the end, I'm going to push you to sign up for a community group. Spoiler alert, right? At the campus is here, it's in the lobby.
We're going to push you to sign up. We're going to push the importance of it.
Some of you in here who are not in a group, I'm going to tell you your future right now. You're like, whoa, this is not some spiritual thing. I've just seen it play out too many times.
Some of you are going to sign up for a group and you're going to be excited. You're going to be like, I'm finally going to find the community that I've always wanted and I'm going to take these steps. And the second you get home, your kids' schedule, your work, these things are going to creep on your head. You're like, well, I just don't know if it's the right time for us. Maybe, what if this group doesn't work out?
What if they're not the right people for me? Fear. The second you take a step towards godliness, fear creeps up. We saw it all through our Chosen series. I had told people like, well, I feel like God's called maybe to approach adoption.
And I'm like, okay, great. And two weeks later, they're like, I just don't think it's what the Lord has for us right now. I'm like, why? I'm like, well, the family dynamics. And I'm like, I'm not doubting there's real reasons.
What I'm saying is, are they fear motivated? Let me tell you this. This is not the whole point of the sermon. This is the point of the today, part of this. Is that a difficult step toward godliness is always better than an easy step away from it?
A difficult step toward becoming the person God died to make you. It's always easier. I mean, it's always better. It's always right. It's always more functional than the easy step.
Away from it. Because it's always going to take you farther than you ever thought you were. That easy step that seems easy, it's going to cause you to drift. It's like not swimming. in the ocean when the undertow's coming.
It's easy, but brother, it'll take you somewhere you never wanted to go. And that's what a step away from godliness does. It doesn't seem hard in the moment, but it takes you further than you ever thought you'd be. I don't know where you are today. I don't know what you've done before you walked in here, what you've done in your past.
Why you showed up today? But the step you ought to take towards godliness. in your life. Do not let fear convince you it's wrong.
Well, I know I ought to serve, but I don't know if my kids can be in there for two serves as mine are, and they're eating nine pounds of goldfish. They'll be all right, right? You'll be okay. I don't know if we can join a group. It'd be hard.
Yes, it would.
Well, man, I don't know if we got time in our lives. I don't know if we can handle everything going on. You can't handle it, everything in your life if you're not in a group.
Well, I don't know if I should go on a go team trip. I don't think my heart doesn't break for the nations that way. Your heart doesn't break because you've never gone on a goateam trip. Do you get what I'm saying? Do not let fear stop you from taking those steps towards godliness.
It happens over and over again. That's what we see happening here in Hezekiah's life. He honors God. Think about what he does, he has gone and torn down temples to idols. And what has the enemy done?
The enemy has said that's wrong. That's not honoring God. That's what he does in our life. It's the same play. And what because we stay in ourselves, we don't join a group, we don't have community.
We're like, oh, I'm so unique, he's attacking me this way. He's done it for 2,000 years. At some point it's on us. At some point, at the enemy, it's your flesh, it's me. And so we have to continue to take these steps.
And then he continues, but he goes on, he doesn't even say, like, hey, it's not only wrong. That you did this thing. It's not only wrong. He's like, now, actually, God has sent me here to punish you for how wrong it was. Look at verse 25.
He says, 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. And this is the second way that we see fear push us to respond, the second lie. Is that fear tempts us to doubt where faith has told us to trust?
Fear tempts us to doubt where faith has told us to trust God. That's what he's doing here. He's trying to get Hezekiah to doubt that God is going to do what he said he's going to do. Hezekiah's done this great thing, and the enemy's like, that's not it, dude. You're horrible.
You shouldn't have done that. He's getting this doubt. Like, well, maybe I shouldn't have done those things God's called me to. What is he attacking Hezekiah's life? He says your planner's untrustworthy, your friends are untrustworthy, your God's untrustworthy, and fear sets in.
Fear and doubt creep in his mind. He goes, I know God told me that he'll never leave me and forsake me, but what if I brought this on myself? What if I've done that? That's what the enemy is trying to get him. That's what fear is telling him.
It's what we think. This year, our theme, our aim for this year, is fortify the family. This exact thing: fear tempts us. Men in the room, if you're taking notes, I want you to do this. If you're not taking notes, write down that.
Fear tempts us to doubt where fate tells us to trust. That thought, that reality is why our goal is to fortify the family. Why? Because I know every father, every husband in the room, this is true, has been true of you, or will be true of you, and will continue. There will be a moment, if you're a believer, where you will feel the call to step up in your home as a father or a husband.
And I'm telling you, the second that you do, doubt will creep in, fear will creep in, and it will say, You've tried a thousand times and you failed. You're not that type of dad. Your kids don't. You see them people walking around, how happy their kids are to see you. They see them.
Your kids don't act that way. You're not that dad. You failed a million times. I know your wife's never said anything harsh to you, but you're good at discerning her looks. You know she's mad at you.
And so you just stay passive. And you just stay reserved. And then we have churches that end up being mausoleums to men that could have been great men of God. Because they're terrified. to take a step because fear has led their home.
Men. Step up and lead, myself included. I was saying this. There were tears pouring out as I was writing the sermon. Why?
Because I got kids, I've had kids for three years, and I've only seen fear dictate my life time and time again in three years. What happens over the next 30 unless something changes? It's just going to repeat itself. And so today we get a chance not to listen to that voice over and over again. We get a chance to step up in Philippians 4.19.
Says, and my God will supply every need of yours according to the riches and glory in Christ Jesus. He wants fathers, husbands, and rooms to be godly, faithful men who lead. If he wants that for you, trust that he will do it. You aren't good enough to do it on your own, but he is. You aren't strong enough to lead, but he is.
You are not a good enough father or husband, but he is through you. Yeah. And we have to believe that. And I was thinking about this. I was like, okay, man, if that's true for me, how do I help my wife, my friends, my kids?
How do I help them move from fear to faith? What role can I play? What's a massive step that I can play? And it dawned on me. Honestly, right after I'd been harsh to one of my kids, and this truth had come up in my mind.
Is that the words you say either encourage fear or faith? The way that I speak to my wife, does it encourage her to not let fear reign and to trust that God is gonna do what He says He's gonna do? When I speak to my kids, am I like, no, no, no, don't do that thing. No, no, no, be afraid. It's fear what I'm cultivating in their hearts.
Or is it like, hey, God is with you, He is for you? You might go share the gospel. You might have someone not say horrible things about you, but it's worth it because He's good. And he's called you to it. The words that I speak, the words that you speak to your friends, to your spouses, to your kids, you're cultivating fear or faith in their life.
And we have to take that with the weight it has. It is massive. I get a chance to encourage my brothers or sisters. to take steps, and I either affirm the faith or the fear and doubt in their life. And we get a chance to do that.
And we're going to see that exact same thing play out in Hezekiah's life in just a few minutes. Let's get back to the passage.
So after the Assyrians say all this, Hezekiah's advisors say, Hey, can you speak in Aramaic? Not in Hebrew. We speak Aramaic, but the common people, they don't speak Aramaic. And so we wanna kind of keep this between us. We don't want them to be worried.
Let's keep them between us. They're wanting this conversation to be private, to not worry everybody else. Look at verse 26. Then Eliakim and the rest of the advisors, they say, 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.
They're trying to hide this. And keep it in secrecy because what they're thinking is: if we can hide it from everybody else, we can handle it ourselves. We've never thought that, right? We never thought of, you know, okay, good, we're not them. We're better.
No. And obviously, the Assyrians are like, we're not doing that. Look at verse 27. But his advisor, the king of Assyria's advisor, says, 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 of their own dung and drink of their own urine?
He's basically saying, I'm gonna let everyone know. That their award is coming to an end. And yes, when I said dung and urine, five grown men smiled and hit so that we still have a maturity. Praise God. All right, no, well, it happens every service.
But what he's saying is, he's like, no, I'm going to let all of them know. That their world is coming to an end. Isn't that what fear tells you? What's popping up in their mind? If everyone finds out, it'll go horribly for you.
It'll turn out bad, and that's the third thing we see. Is that fear tempts us to hide what faith tells us to bring into the light? Fear tells you. What he told Hezekiah's advisors. They believe if they can keep their situation, their circumstances underwrap, that it won't be that bad, and maybe they can handle it on their own.
My daughter, I mentioned I have a three-year-old daughter. She got her first splinter. I'll say splinter. It was a, it was a in the smallest piece of wood, like on the side of her finger. But she was, she was walking and she got it.
She's screaming bloody murder and she's like this. And she's running around. She's like, Dad, something's in my finger, something's in my finger. I'm like, let me see it, let me see it. Take your hand off.
And she's like, no, and she runs away. And I'm like, all right, that's fine. And so she runs back. She's like, you left me. And I'm like, no, I didn't.
And then she's like, fix it on my finger, fix what's on my finger. I'm like, let me see it. She's like, no, this happens like five times. And I walk away. I'm like, okay, that's fine.
Let me know. And she keeps saying that I've betrayed her and I've left her, but she just will not let go. And then finally, you know, after I convince her I'm not going to hurt her, I don't have to cut her finger off, all that stuff, that she's trembling like I'm doing open heart surgery on her. She opens her hand and she's like this. I mean, it's like it's saying splinter is exaggeration of the year, right?
It is, it is the smallest thing. And I get it off, and she looks at me like I am a god amongst men, right? She's like I'm a hero. But then it dawned on me. I was like, why would she not do that?
Why would she not just let me see it? But because we fall in the same trap, we don't understand that if you ever want healing or change to come in your life, the first step is exposing the thing to somebody that can help. The first thing is that if you have a community group, if you have a prayer group, whatever you have, if you're like things are going bad, okay, tell me about it. Like, I'm just gonna keep between me and the Lord. What are we doing?
I should look at you the same way I look at my daughter. I'm like, let me see it, and we can help. God has put me in your life to help with these things. Let me do it. We do that same thing as adults.
We're like, well, I don't want to show them this thing, but we just get really good at masking it. We just call it selflessness and humility. I don't want to be a burden to them. We get real good Christianese language, right? I don't want to bother them.
I don't want to put something on them that's not theirs to bear. Let me tell you this. Let me knock that down. Galatians 6:2 says. Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Do not prevent them from fulfilling the law of Christ in your life. Take those things to community. I've seen this in community groups.
Now, my fear is that it's a lot of things that, it's a lot of the times people are like, well, my group just wasn't that, you know, I haven't really found a great group. And I'm like talking to people about it and they'll say things like this. And I've had people say things like this to me. They'll come to me and they'll be like, hey man, could you pray for my wife, my daughter, my kid, myself, whatever? Just spent the whole last week in the hospital.
It was a rough week, but we're home now and we're doing better. And I'm like. Brother, why why did I hear about this last week? Like, why wasn't I at the hospital praying with you? Why wasn't our whole group there praying with you and praying over you?
But the truth is, we love asking for prayer on the back end. We love asking for prayer when things are handled in LRN. We love keeping the existent of ourselves because the problem is, we think the sum total of Christian faith is: if I can get all the other Christians to think I got it all together, then I'm good. But the total of Christian faith is God's trying to prepare you to be a part of the people that He's prepared for Himself. And so the way that he wants to do that is lay your whole life before him and others.
And invite them in. Man, we love asking for prayer after things that we love battling on our own. And so, what I'll challenge you with is this. When you let fear keep you from openness. May we rob ourselves and others from the opportunity of being who God has called us to be.
God has called you to be a brother or sister in Christ. God has called you. To be that. You know, I've had my brother and sister, they both got married. They did not call me the morning of their wedding saying, hey, I'm getting married today.
It was months and months leading into it. Why? Because they're my siblings, and I know their life. And so, if you are a brother or sister in Christ and you have people around you, they ought to know when things are happening. Do not hide it from them.
The enemy in fear will tell you if they find out. This is the lie. If they find out X, Y, Z. then it will go horribly. It will end terribly for you.
That's what Hezekiah and his advisors believe. That's what we believe, but the opposite is true. If you don't share, If you don't bring it to community, then it will probably go horrible for you. Because you are not strong enough to bear it on your own. Stop letting fear push you to hide sin or circumstances in your life that God calls you to drag, sometimes kicking and screaming into the light.
I would not have let my daughter No matter how much you wanted to, not get that thing out of her finger. Eventually, what would I have done? You parents, you've done it. When they've got something in their mouth, what do you have to do? It's like you're fighting a dog, you're prying their mouth open to get stuff out.
Because you love them. Do you not love the church? Do you not love your brothers and sisters? Will you not do whatever it takes to help them? Commit to your group and sign up.
We're going to talk about that in just a few minutes. But after this Assyrian's long speech, they give this really long speech. He begins, continues on. By saying, Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He can't save you.
He can't help you. And then he offers them the good life. He's like, not only can he not save you, we can actually save you. We can give you the good things. Look at verse 31.
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 of his own vine. And each one of you is on 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 that will 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. Then he continues on by saying, Not even God will save you. He says, None of the other gods of any other lands have saved them, so why would your God be indifferent? Look at verse 35. Who among the gods of the lands to deliver them?
Out of my hand. That the Lord, that Yahweh should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand.
Now the enemy challenges their belief in the goodness of God to do what he said he's going to do. He offers them a way. Think about this. He offers them the way to get the promises of God without obedience to God. He's like, You want the land flowing with milk and honey?
You want fig trees? You want water? You want the land that God has promised? You can get it if you'll submit to me. If you just abandon God and abandon what He's called you to do.
then you can get what God has promised. Another way. And that's the last thing that we see fear tempt us to respond to it with. Is that fear tempts us to tighten our grip? When God calls us to open our hands.
Fear tempts us to say like you have to take control of your life. When God says, just give it over to me. When God says, I've promised these things, I'm going to do them by my name, not because you deserve it, not because you've earned it, but because I keep my word. He's promised them a land flowing with milk and honey that he will be their God and they will be his people. He will care for them.
But I'm sure for them, it was tempting to get those things by submitting to the Assyrians that moment. That they would get the promises of God without the obedience of God. And it's tempting for us too. Back to my daughter. She is a walking illustration.
She is a fiend for cupcakes. Dude, I don't get it. You would think that she's got some addiction, massive sugar addiction. But we, as any good parents, we're like, hey, you have to eat your dinner first. You eat that, and then we're bartering with her, and we're trying not to.
We're like, you gotta eat more food. But what she'll do is, I'll be like, hey, one more bite. And then you have a cupcake. I promise you, if you do this, then you will get this. And she'll put food on her fork and she'll put it in her mouth and I'll turn away and I'll hear her spit the food back out on her plate.
And I'm like, okay, you're not tricking me. And she'll run over and be like, I'm done. I'm like, you didn't need it. And so I'll go back. And I think, I'm like, why does she think she can get what I've offered her without doing what I've said for her to do?
And in that moment. It's like, brother, that's exactly what you do with God. You try to get all the promises of God. without doing what he's called you to. It's true for little kids, and it's true for you.
And we see it, and you've seen it: people try to get the promises of God in ungodly ways. They try to get the things that he's promised them in ways that he's called them not to do it. We see this all the time in relationships and dating.
Well, God wants me to have someone I love. God wants me to not be alone. God wants me to have companionship. I know he's caught it in marriage, but I can get those things without having to go the way. And so, what's happened?
Sexual morality, premarital sex, cohabitation before marriage, all those things are incredibly on the rise, and marriages are faltering.
Well, I'm not pointing that out because it's the worst thing on God's degree on earth that it's worse than anything else that we all do, but it's one that we can see clearly. And we see it play out time and time again. And the problem is, you got to be able to apply this to other areas of life, is that we've begun to try to grab those promises in ungodly ways, in the ways that He hasn't called us to. And the root of that is fear: fear that God won't come through. That if I obey, and I take control of myself, then it will happen.
If I trust God, then it won't happen. And we have to be wise. I hear people talk about wisdom. This is where I think we can grow as a church. I'm growing in this area right now.
Is that you're like, okay, dude, you just talked about sexual immorality or cohabitation before marriage. I'm married. That doesn't apply to me.
Well, wisdom is not just the right knowledge. Wisdom is the right application of the right knowledge, right? That's what we have to do.
So we gotta be able to take this truth and apply it to other areas in our life. We see it with generosity all the time. People say, well, if I give monetarily to the church, I won't have enough money for my family. And if I don't have enough money for my family, well, God has told me that He's going to provide for my family. And so that's me not providing for my family.
What's the promise? God says, I'll provide. I'll be your provision. And what do we do? What does fear tell us to do?
You've got to provide for yourself. Right? Do you see that? And so then we try to get the promises of God without being obedient to what God has called us to do. We see it happen time and time again.
Disagreements with other people, especially believers.
Well, God says that he'll give us love, joy, peace, patience.
Well, they did something wrong to me. I won't feel very peaceful talking to them. It will not bring me a lot of joy, so therefore I won't do it. What will bring me a lot of joy is leaving and never talking to them again. But what has God called us to do?
God has called us to reconcile ourselves to one another.
So, what do we do? We try to get the promises of God in ungodly ways. We do it time and time again. And we have to be wise and see this pop up in our lives so that we can turn from it and turn back to faith. But in all these areas, let me ask you this: in any area that you can apply this to your life.
When it comes down to it, when it comes to the promises of God. Who gets to make the decision on how they come about in your life? Is it his sovereignty? Or is it you just white knuckling your life? And holding on.
Who provides for you? Honestly, not the Christian answer. I know a lot of us have been to Sunday school and you want to go, Jesus, right? I get it. But I'm talking about like really who provides for your life?
Is it the God who said he would, or is it how hard you work and how well you do at work? You get what I'm saying? That's how this plays out. That's exactly what Hezekiah is doing. That's what the people of God are being tempted with, to take control of their life.
So we've seen these temptations that fear presents to the believer, to the follower. And how his advisors and Hezekiah gave in to him a little bit. And how we've seen that we're guilty of the exact same things a lot of times, but now.
Now we've got to ask ourselves, what's the proper response to these things? Here's the application for today. Replace fear with faith by listening to the word of the Lord. and the voice of a brother or sister. Replace fear with faith by listening to the word of the Lord and the voice of a brother or sister.
After all this, this fear rising up. This fear creeping up into the life of Hezekiah. We see Hezekiah begin to finally move from fear to faith. We see him begin moving somewhere else. Look at verse 1 of chapter 19.
I said, as soon as Hezekiah heard this, here's all these things.
So he tears his clothes and covers himself with sackcloth. and went into the house of the Lord. And he sent Eliakim, who was over the household. And Shebna, the secretary, and the senior priest, covered with sackcloths. to the prophet Isaiah, the son of Amos.
This is the first time we've seen him. Respond and repentance. We've seen him go to community. We've seen any of this the first time. And he tears his clothes.
Why? That didn't do anything to get him closer to God. What it did was, it put his body in a position that his heart wanted to follow. Why do we raise our hand in worship? Oh, because we're closer to God.
No, that doesn't get us closer to God. Why do we ask them to come down front? Because we're getting our body in a position we want our hearts to follow. That's what Hezekiah is doing here. Hezekiah is saying, I have lived in fear too long.
I'm going to respond in faith and all my heart to follow that. Then he continues on. And we see finally this prayer, this plea from Hezekiah. It's the first time we've seen him pray. And it says, Thus says Hezekiah.
This day is a day of distress, of rebuke, and of disgrace. Children have come to the point of birth and there is no strength to bring them forth. It may be that the Lord your God heard all the words. of Rabishake. Whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to mock the living God, and will rebuke the words that the Lord your God has heard.
Therefore, Lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left. He admits it's been a day of distress, it's been a day of fear. And they don't have the strength to handle it. The truth is, they never had the strength to handle it. But you know, some of them, in our lives, sometimes it takes us to get into a certain point before we realize we don't have strength to handle a situation.
Same is true for Hezekiah. It just took them a while to see that. But after he voices his plea, after he voices his prayer, after he tears his clothes in repentance, after he goes to community. We see God respond through Isaiah. In verse five.
Isaiah said to them, say to your master, thus says the Lord. Do not be afraid. Hezekiah didn't tell God he was afraid. Because the guy didn't tell Isaiah he was afraid. He didn't tell his advisor he was afraid.
Why? Because God understands that in so many ways our response to those circumstances. It's fear. Just like the coffee, he could see the fear all over Hezekiah.
So the first thing he says is, do not be afraid. Because of the words that you have heard. With which the servants and the king of Assyria have reviled me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him.
so that he shall hear a rumour and return to his own land. And I will make him fall by the sword in his own land. Isaiah reminds him. That God keeps his word, he keeps his promise. This is the first time we've seen Hezekiah seek out community.
It's the first time we've seen him pray or plea. It's the first time any of God's promises are mentioned to Hezekiah as a comfort, as a reminder that God has kind of come through. And we fall into that exact same trap. You would not believe how often I hear people. Face circumstance in myself, and you don't bring it to community.
You're not praying and pleading with your community group. You're going to have no one reminding you of God's promises in your life. And in our weakest moments, we respond with fear. We do the exact same thing Hezekiah did, and then we're shocked, we have the exact same results.
So, how do we do it? How does the word of the Lord And the word of a brother or sister in Christ, how does that move us from fear to faith? Here's what I want to apply to this. Number one, repent of the times fear has won in your heart. Turn from them.
The first thing Hezekiah does, remember, he rips his clothes. He covers himself in sackcloths. It's the way they put their body in that position.
Some of you, after the service, men, you need to come down front and pray. Proverbially tearing your clothes and laying down here. and putting your body, maybe for the first time. And you got to just pretend it's just you in the room. It doesn't matter what a single other person thinks.
That you need to turn from the times you've chosen fear for your family. You need to turn from the times you've chosen fear in your life and put your faith that God is going to do what He says He's going to do. Why? Because we can look back at the cross and say: if he didn't withhold his son, why would he withhold anything else? Respond.
Turn from your sin. Turn back to Him. He has not given us a spirit of fear to fall back into slavery. Repent of the times you have chosen to pick those chains back up. That you've chosen to wear that again.
Confess. Repent with a fear-based leadership. Others of you may need to repent from the times you've hidden sin from your community, you've hidden hard circumstances.
Some of you are going through horrible things: a diagnosis, a hardship, a work hardship, and you haven't told a soul. And you need to confess those things. You need to invite them in to walk those things and walk those things out with you in godly community. And repent. And begin letting faith be your response.
This word revival gets thrown on a lot. And every time I hear it, they're like, oh, we want revival. And they're like, oh, it's in a really good keys. It's in a good kick set or a good worship set. No, revival starts in the heart of repentant people.
That's exactly where it starts. And so if you're like, well, I want revival to happen. What's got to happen around me? No, it's got to happen in you first. You have to stop caring what everyone else thinks about your relationship with God and start caring about what God says is true about you.
That you were bought worth a price. You are not your own. You don't get to let fear lead you anymore. You drag it, kicking and screaming to the father and say, Deal with it, because I know you dealt with it 2,000 years ago. Let it be true now.
Come to the altar. Pray. Men. Lead, lead our church. Lead your family.
Young men, if you're not married, come pray for the family you might have one day. If not, pray for somebody else's family. Man, will we start by repenting and turning? But not because we're strong enough. But because for every single time we were fearful, Christ was faithful.
That when he was in the garden And he said, let this cup pass for me, but not my will, but your will be done. What he was saying was, fear will not win, faithfulness will. Why? Because the faithful one will be treated like he was fearful, so that all of us who are fearful can be treated like we were faithful every time. That's the gospel.
And because that's true, there's nothing to fear anymore. It's a liar. It is telling you that he is not sovereign over your life, and he is. He has brought you to this place for this reason to use you for good works that he prepared before him that we should walk in them. And the first step to walk in them, for a lot of us, is repenting from the times we've trusted fear of our faith.
That's what we have to see. The second thing I want you to do is, I want you to commit to a community group. Words of a brother or sister. This is not words of a friend who's going to affirm you and tell you that you're, you know, your friend. Yeah, they're totally in the wrong.
I'm talking about brother, sister, and Christ. In the gospel center community, helping you walk this out.
Some of you are in a group faithfully, and I want you to commit to going there faithfully. And maybe there's other people in your life that you know that are in a group, you need to challenge them to jump in a group. But some of you are in a group. And you ain't really in. You either get drugged there by your husband or wife or a friend, or you go because people think weird of you, and you answer enough questions, and you say, Well, pray for work.
Like, that's your only prayer request ever, which is great to pray for that. But, like, you know. If that's you, you know I'm talking about you. That you're in, but you're not really in. Jump in headlong and do not let fear rob you from what God has for you in this life.
Do not let fear lead and then be like, well, I'm not getting everything I want out of this. What does Hezekiah do? He goes to Isaiah, and Isaiah relays the word of the Lord to him. Could God have spoken to Hezekiah? Of course he could.
But a lot of times God chooses to speak through your brothers and sisters in Christ in your life. He chooses to use them. It's brothers and sisters reminding you of who God is, what He's promised, calling you to repentance, grabbing you by the hand, and walking you out in accountability. That's what he calls you to. You know, we have these cards.
It's got the regroup, it's got all the maps where all the groups are all across the triad. You can go in the lobby to every campus, you can go online, you can sign up. You guys know how the internet works. I feel like a lot of times people are like, well, if you don't know how the internet works, you know how the internet works.
Sorry, ask somebody. Go online, look for group. If you don't have a group. Don't be like, well, they don't have one that's God's sign. No, it's not.
I'm giving you, that's not God's sign in your life. Your sign after that is to email or go talk to your campus pastor at all of our campuses. We'll find your group leader. We'll find your group. We'll meet at the campus if we go.
We'll do whatever we got to do. There is no excuse. There is no excuse. You know, I got this shirt on that says life is better together. I don't know if you can see it, it's not very bright, but it says life is better together.
If I could without making the shirt look weird and I could keep typing, I would actually say, it's actually impossible alone. would be the rest of the shirt. That's what I'd say. Because so many people see this shirt and they're like, well, I get life. I agree life is better together, but I'm okay with good enough right now.
I'm okay with good enough. There ain't no good enough. It's either better together or impossible alone. That's your two choices. And the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of what Christ has done in his freedom is he allows you to pick today.
You can pick to live an impossible life. And no one will know. Or you can pick. Choose life he's called you to. I hear people say this all the time.
This will be the last thing. They'll say, with everything I got going on, I can't handle being in a group right now. I don't want to look at him and say, brother. If you ain't in a group, you can't handle everything you got going on right now. You got it backwards.
You put the car before the horse. Community, gospel-centered community is what God wants you to do. Think about this. Hezekiah was raised to rule and reign a kingdom and he couldn't do it. I don't know if anybody else is royal in here.
I ain't royal. I ain't strong enough to lead this life. You're not. You need people in your life helping you walk it out. Desperately.
The word of the Lord. the voice of a brother or sister. Let's pray together. God. I ask.
That today, before we leave, like I get, we got things to get to, everybody's got somewhere to be, but for a moment, maybe for the first time ever. We would sit and we would say God before I get in the hustle of the week, before things pile on top of me. The Lord, the reality would set in that I've been living a fear-based life. That I've been letting fear of the future fear of Me not being in control. Fear of me not being good enough dictate everything I've done.
Maybe for the first time today. God, I'm going to turn from them and repent of that and turn back to the Father. And believe that Christ atoned for all those sins. And walk in that freedom. A faith-driven life.
God, I pray that husbands all across our church. I pray that wives all across our church. Would go first. That they would model for the next generation. God, as a college pastor, the biggest thing I've seen shape the next generation is not necessarily only the parents, it is the other believers that are around.
So, God, I pray. That the adults, the couples in this church, would go to the altar and model for our next generation what stopping living a fear-based life looks like. And I pray that ask people come to pray. That people would lay hands on them and they'd pray with them, and our elders would pray because we understand, God, if revival is going to happen anywhere in the world, it's going to happen in the hearts of repentant people. God, I want you to move.
And God, if anything's gonna happen today. If it's going to happen in my heart, it's going to be because you do it.
So, God, I'm asking you to move. And do what you've promised you said you would. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen. Mm.
