I don't trust what I think in a vacuum. I need to bounce my thoughts off of other men. Those who've gone before me. And if there are times when I think they're wrong, I'm going to back it up. But if there are times that they think I'm wrong, then I'm going to make adjustments.
And that's what the proverbs is: the way of a fool is right in his own eyes. He doesn't check. And so his involvement with the Proverbs is an indication of those two things. He appreciated the wisdom of others, and he knew he could not grow. without the wisdom of others.
This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Ricky is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastorik is currently teaching through a topical series. Please stay tuned with us after today's message to hear more information about cross-reference radio, specifically, how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick with his continuing message called How to Overcome Through Christ.
Lose sight of man's spiritual need and all is lost. The need of all humanity is personal, the personal kingdom. Submitted to the King of Kings.
So it overcame by observing what God said, What sinners did And then he sided with God. That's fantastic. He can look and say, you know what? That is mean what that person did. I'm not doing that.
God says that's me. I'm siding with God, and the consequences are going to be the consequences. And if you learn it as a teenager, you have a much better chance. of developing it Into your adult years. And die, not just a person that would be missed, but also one that has a testimony for Christ.
But then his faith was tested.
So he comes to the throne, he starts cleaning house, he's just knocking bowling pins down. Conduct under fire. determines overcoming. 2 Chronicles 32:1. After these deeds of faithfulness, Sennacherab, king of Assyria, came and entered.
Judah, he came against the fortified cities, thinking to win them over to himself. What? No good deed goes unpunished. That's what he could have said. And got bitter.
I've been doing all of this. The chronicler says after the deeds of faithfulness.
Some of you have not lived long enough, or you've not been in the fight long enough to have this happen to you. If you stay in the fight, It will happen to you. And you will prevail As long as you abide in Christ.
So he faced And endured hard. Hard experiences. And that gives us transferable lessons. We can look at him and say, I'm going to do some of this, I can get some of this. He understood obedience.
Now Samaria, the kingdom in the north, They, you know, it's hard to say some area because it sounds like you're saying some area. And it just hounds me. There's a lot of those words that are just, you know, in our language, they just have. Other meanings. I'm still struggling why why you can't say sooth.
They drove the soothsayers out of the land. Anyway, uh Coming back to this. He understood obedience, as I mentioned, and he saw the northern kingdom fall. When he was 31 years old, He saw what the Assyrians did to them. How they completely just Dismantled the kingdom and took everybody out and brought foreigners in.
His new neighbours. And after the fall, Judah had constant problems with the Assyrians. Once the Assyrians conquered Israel to the north, Judah now had problems. But he didn't fall with them. It didn't follow well he did have a he did cave in at one point.
Doing what every believer must do in their heart. 2 Kings 18:4. He removed the high places and broke. I know I'm rereading this with a review from Kings, not Chronicles, which adds a little more. He removed the high places, broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden images, broke in pieces the bronze serpent.
that Moses had made For until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it and called it. He called it No ishten.
So the Jews, some of them, started worshiping The bronze serpent that Moses had made in the wilderness, it survived into the kingdom age. And he said, You know what? This is a sacred cow. And it is blasphemy. You can't be worshiping that.
And so he destroyed it. He says, nothing. It's nothing. See? It's not a God.
2 Kings 18:6, for he held fast to Yahweh and did not depart from following him, but kept his commandments, which Yahweh commanded Moses.
So he's not out of step with Moses by destroying the brass serpent that Moses made. Moses would have been right there with him. He also stopped enriching the enemy. How do I overcome?
Well, don't advocate for things that are against Christ. 2 Kings 18, 7.
Now if you do this. You may find yourself declaring war You go to the family reunion, and everybody is indoctrinated except you. When you hold your ground, next thing you know, you got piranhas on you. 2 Kings 18:7. Yahweh was with him.
He prospered wherever he went, and he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.
So the Assyrian king was held at bay by his father Ahaz by paying tribute to him, giving them money. gold and stuff. And Hezekiah said, He's the enemy. He just took away the Northern Kingdom. We're not giving him a cent.
One of the lessons is stop giving evil a pass. 2 Kings 18, he subdued the Philistines as far as Gaza. In this territory, present-day Gaza, there are no more Philistines. We cover that all the time. The people who say I'm Palestinian, that means I'm a Philistine.
No, you're not. You're Jordanian Arab, more than likely.
Well, you're certainly not a Philistine. Those people are gone. Hezekiah Then stumbles at this about this time. Took a few years, but he stumbled. to appease the enemy.
2 Kings 18:13, in the 14th year of King Hezekiah. He's 39 years old now. Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. Sennechareb, the Assyrian king, he writes about this. His historians have an obelisk writing about.
what he did to Hezekiah and how he numbers forty-six cities that he conquered in Judah. They didn't get Jerusalem. They almost they got they encircled it. besieged it. And that's when the angel of the Lord showed up and put an end to that.
2 Kings 18:14 Then Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, I have done wrong. Turn away from me. Whatever you impose on me, I will pay. And the king of Assyria assessed Hezekiah. king of Judah, three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.
You don't have to know how much it is to know, it's just a lot. And it wasn't his money. He's stealing money from God's people. Hezekiah this great king caved At this point, he's overcome.
So When I fail, I'm in good company. And I also have the opportunity to recover because he's going to recover. But he's not going to recover on his own, but he's going to be involved. He's going to be very involved in the recovery. It won't be, oh, God just swooped in and did it all.
Well, sometimes God does do that. But that's not the norm. Laziness is not a virtue. Be it spiritual or otherwise. 2 Kings 18, verses 15 and 16, the story continues.
So Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of Yahweh. and in the treasuries of the king's house. You know while he's doing this. He's got shame, his heart is broken, he's humiliated. His countrymen are like, Man, what did you do?
He's got infighting. You should have kept paying the tithe. No, we should have done this. Oh, we don't give him the money yet, but he's going to come in and wipe us all out.
So, all that's going on. He's got to live through that. And he continues. He says At that time, Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of Yahweh and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
So he opens the house of the door, the doors of the house of God again that his father shut, and now he's selling off the beauty of those doors to survive. Whoever said Living for Christ is always beautiful in every way Spiritually it's beautiful. But In reality, there's ugliness to it. There's no romanticizing war, whether pure, physical or spiritual, it's war, it's ugly. His lapse of faith.
How did he survive that? There's a man that loved God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. And now he's bowing down. To the bully. As I mentioned, they already decimated the northern kingdom.
Sennacherib wrote this Hezekiah of Judah who had not submitted to my yoke, him I shut up in Jerusalem. His royal city like a caged bird I made him pay for his crime. And you had to live with that for a while. But he grew stronger because of this.
Some of you have been through situations where you've been humiliated and dragged through the mud and persecuted wrongly. Life's so unfair, You want to tell the truth to your kids? You should tell the truth all the time.
Sometimes you just tell them it's none of their business, so you don't have to tell them the truth. Prerogative of the parent. But one truth do you tell em, life's not fair. I could still feel the same emotions of It just I don't know, rage mixed with Mortification. When my mom would tell me tough.
So I should just say, I mean, I wanted to do it, whatever it was, tough. There's no comeback for that. Not when you're the kid. Your little sneakers on. Anyway.
What does he do? What does he do? He starts making Jerusalem fortified. He's paying the king. But he's building up the fortifications of Jerusalem.
He's messing with the water springs. Even to this day, you can go through Hezekiah's tunnel. There's a tunnel of water coming into the city, and it's one of the tour stops. And unless you're claustrophobic, you don't want to go through that. But otherwise, Anyway, so he gets to work.
That's in 2 Chronicles. 32. And what does Assyria do? They send the foul-mouthed Rabshekah.
Some sort of high-ranking general comes showing up. Isaiah, it's in Chronicles Kings, but Isaiah captures it best. And this foul-mouthed ambassador not an ambassador emissary. He's just telling, you know, he's using profane words. He's terrorizing the people who can hear him.
And he's saying, just surrender, and we'll let you live in your land. And he says this until we come take you away. Why do you Are you out of your mind? And this is how they did it with everybody else. He terrorized Judah.
And at this time in history, the Assyrians were notorious. for torturing anybody that resisted them. They weren't so much in the days of Jonah. but by this time in history they were pretty nasty customers, and it would be better to not fight them. Because even if you fought them a little bit and then you surrendered, they're still gonna tor they would hang the skins of their victims over the wall.
They'd do all sorts of crazy stuff, put people in logs and throw them out in the lake and stuff in the logs snakes and other stuff, you know, and tax returns, receipts, and stuff. But Yeah. Anyway. So what happens at this time, Isaiah, Isaiah 37, the prophet goes to the king and says, God's spoken. He's going to deal with these guys.
So he's building Hezekiah back up. Because what did Hezekiah do? He's just built fortifying Jerusalem. Then he gets terminally ill. We can't exactly pinpoint the time of when he gets ill.
There's enough evidence to lean heavy on this side that is happening. while all of this stuff is going on. Because we have a timestamp, and he's 39 years old, his 14th year as king from 25 to 1439.
So what does Hezekiah do? He pours out his heart to God. Turns to the wall, he's weeping to the Lord. Because Isaiah, the prophet, came up. And he says, thus says the Lord, get your house in order, you're going to die.
Like, I thought you were my friend. I thought you were my buddy. That's not what buddies tell buddies. And then Isaiah leaves. And Hezekiah's left and he's weeping before God.
And then as Isaiah gets to the courtyard, Isaiah hears the voice of the Lord say, Go back. To the king. and tell him he's going to live. And Isaiah goes up and he puts A lump of plasters figs on him and The whole thing gets Figured out. And he survives.
God could use a lump of figs, he can use anything to do that, but anyhow. At that point, the angel of the Lord then shows up and defeats the Assyrian army, and one night wipes out over 130,000, 80,000, whatever, I don't recall the exact number.
So he faced paganism in his own family. He faced death, possibly torture by war. He faced This Death by illness. And there's more coming. Not as intense.
But that's overcoming. Alan Redpath writes, You know nothing of the wiles of the devil until you are out and out for God and for souls. The measure of his concern about you is governed by the measure of your abandonment. to the Lord. I read that last line again.
The measure of his, the devil's concern about you is governed by the measure of your abandonment to the Lord. The more you throw yourself into Christ. and your duty given to you The more susceptible you are to attack. And that's the story of Hezekiah. He's not the only one, but he's the one we're talking about tonight.
In about his thirty-ninth year, he was granted fifteen years more of life.
Well, yeah, we'll put him about 55 years when he died, but again, there's space near to add another five or six years to that. But let's just say he's at fifty five. The troubling part and some Scholars disagree, but the majority Agree with me. All right. You I mean, I don't know why I don't get standing ovations and rose petals thrown in front of me.
The humility alone merits that. But anyway, back to this.
So he has a son. Like three years later, named Manasseh. who will become king for fifty five years. And that man was a monster. And so you look at the story and you say.
If he didn't pray for law for survival, he wouldn't have had Manasseh. And if he didn't have Manasseh, how much misery would have been spared the Jewish people? That's something for you to chew on. It's not our purpose tonight.
Somebody said, Well, I'll run to the question box and put it in, and we get it later. Anyway, his shortcomings. While he lost trust in God by So I've wrapped that up. He has a son in that time period of life that he would not have lived to have that son, but he does, and he has him, and he's. But in the end, even Manasseh repents and turns to the Lord.
But God says the damage Manasseh did is irreversible, even though he gets saved.
So the shortcomings is that he lost trust. in God by paying the enemy. And then he's careless. Once he has this great victory and he's healed from his sickness, the Babylonian. The Babylonians, and at this time, Babylon's very small.
They're not a world player at this time.
Well, they send. A delegation to To wish him well, find out this is a miracle, what happened? And he says, you know what, I like these guys. And this is pretty much the language of the Bible. But anyway, he says, like these guys, and he becomes the host.
And he's just fluttering around he's like a social butterfly with these people. And he starts taking him around to all of his look at his my treasures, look at the spices, look at the gold and the silver. And they go and Hezekiah waves tootaloo and they tootaloo and Isaiah shows up. What are you doing? I just showed them everything.
You showed them everything, yes. Listen to the word of the Lord. They're going to come and they're going to take it all away, everything. And that happened, but it didn't happen for another hundred years.
So Isaiah was able to keep The Assyrians out. But Jeremiah wasn't able to keep the Babylonians out. No slight on either on the prophet Jeremiah, it's just how it turned out. Anyway. The Babylonians left, and Hezekiah says, Will they do it while I'm king?
And you gotta say, you might wanna say, What a selfish guy, but or would you be honest and say, you know, I would have said the same thing. I wouldn't want to have to live through that. And so it's it was honest enough if you came out and asked. Their pride tiptoed in Just like Hanani the prophet warned Asa after his great victory over the million men: you gotta watch yourself, stay faithful to the Lord, he'll be faithful to you. which you say, that's odd that he would say that after I just trusted God.
Well the God knew and the pro sent the prophet to tell him. That's when you're going to be set up.
So I want to read one section from 2 Chronicles 32. Verse 35. Or verse 25, 26.
Well, I'll just do the whole part. In those days, Hezekiah was sick, near death, and he prayed to Yahweh, and he spoke to him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not repay according to the favor shown him, for his heart was lifted up, therefore, wrath was looming over him. and over Judah and Jerusalem. Then Hezekiah humbled himself For the pride of his heart oh man, that pride, right?
That me first stuff. When you're not supposed to be first. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of Yahweh did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah. Fantastic life.
Now almost done. His association with Solomon. And the Proverbs of Solomon indicates at least two things. That Hezekiah was a praying king. We've already covered that, but as relationship to the Proverbs, Proverbs 25 verse 1.
These also are proverbs of Solomon, which. The men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied. We have just that statement, and then the following Proverbs after 25 belong to that. episode. And the point that is being made is that Hezekiah appreciated.
The wisdom of others. He didn't just, you know, I don't need to read. I don't need to find out what anybody else has to say. I don't have to read any books. I just have it.
Well, he wasn't that way. He said, I don't have it. And he knew he could not grow without others. Proverbs 12:15. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise.
So, any good pastor is going to read commentaries and sermons of other pastors, usually long-dead ones, because they finished their race. You know how they landed. And they're doing that because this they should be saying to themselves, I don't trust what I think in a vacuum. I need to bounce my thoughts off of other men. Those who've gone before me.
And if there are times when I think they're wrong, I'm going to back it up. But if there are times that they think I'm wrong, then I'm going to make adjustments. And that's what the proverbs is: the way of a fool is right in his own eyes. He doesn't check. And so his involvement with the Proverbs is an indication of those two things.
He appreciated the wisdom of others, and he knew he could not grow. without the wisdom of others. So if you're trying to overcome in Christ self-loathing, is not going to serve you or God. That is pride. And you need to detect it.
Yes, we all have things about ourselves. that we hate that we're not. I hate that I'm not this. I hate that I'm not that.
Well, you're not, but you are something else, and it's good. Find it, develop it. And if that's something you don't like, Tough. This is just the truth. Just the truth.
But once you accept it, it's not so bad. It's like getting in cold water. Eventually, it's not so bad. Anyway. So, no, we've come here to be encouraged tonight.
That doesn't sound encouraging.
Well, it should sound encouraging because God is going, He's never going to leave you nor forsake you. Even though he stands out of pretty far away doing nothing sometimes, a little bit too long.
Alright.
So don't quit. Don't, you know, your failures, you're going to have them. That's all right. You're going to have victories too. God did not disown Asa, and he did not own Hezekiah when they stumbled, and he won't disown you when you stumble.
Just stay in it. Do not bow down to another. This character study. Is the Bible Teaching method. On overcoming, and I'm going to close with two verses.
Mark chapter 4, verse 17. And they have no root in themselves. and so endure only for a time Afterward, When tribulation or persecution arises, for the word's sake. Immediately they stumble.
Meanwhile Pansies can Handle You know, the heat. Is that how it goes and how does it go? Can't handle the heat in the kitchen. What are you, a pansy? Pansies can handle the cold, they can handle one of them.
I'm sure somebody will clean my clock on that one later. Incidentally, Since we got like two minutes left, I'll read the last verse.
Somebody had the audacity to correct me on something Sunday. And I said, oh boy, I'm going to have to do an exorcism. About The corporations, not scripture. We won't have that.
So, when I was giving the value of the corporations. you know, Apple and Microsoft. Those were old numbers. And they're different numbers now. It really doesn't affect anything, but I just had to get that off my chest.
It's just been weighing on me.
So back to this, closing with this on overcoming. The Apostle Paul said this, and you know, it's sad that some theologians don't want him to mean this about himself. But he said, O wretched man that I am, Who will deliver me from this body of death, this failure, this sin? I thank God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
So then, with my mind, I myself serve the law of God with my flesh. Since I'm susceptible to sin. You have to give commentary on that, lest you give the impression that it's okay to sin. That's not what it's saying. He is saying, my flesh wants to sin, my spirit never does.
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