The Voice of Satan (Part A)

Every work that he began in service of the house of God in the law and in the commandment to seek his God, he did it with all his heart, so he prospered. So this is the kind of man we have before us, this king Hezekiah, who's going to be put under severe pressure by the Assyrians as we often are by Satan.

Satan puts us under severe pressure at times in our life. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of 2 Kings.

Please stay 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. But for now let's join Pastor Rick in the Book of 2 Kings chapter 18 as he begins his message, The Voice of Satan. This is a section that's covered in Kings and Chronicles and Isaiah. There's never an end to preparation, to reading. When you finish reading all three of those and every commentary you can find on all three of those, there's still something more. And because the goal, I think, of all Christians is to squeeze as much out of everything for the kingdom that we can when we're giving a chance.

For a pastor, of course, the big chance is in the pulpit to try to squeeze out something that will edify the people in some way, convict, rebuke, exhort. Again, the story shifts back in time and that is important. It's important to understand that when you come to the Old Testament books, strict chronology is usually not there. And it's up to the reader to research and put the puzzle together.

It's doable most of the time. It's not that critical because the truths are there. They can be out of chronological order. The truths remain. The truths. So, in this we've got some other ones floating around like little satellites of poor chronology. But that's how it is. It's not a criticism.

It's just a fact. The unbeliever may come to that and think that those are grounds for rejection and they are wrong. Well, Judah is the remainder of the focus throughout the rest of kings because the northern kingdom is gone. It will be touched on again, but they're taken captive and dispersed throughout the pagan world and the pagans have been put into their territory. In verse 1 of chapter 18, now, it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea, the son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. In verse 2, he was 25 years old when he became king and reigned 29 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abi, the daughter of Zechariah. Well, he becomes king of Judah about three years before Assyria takes the northern kingdom, conquers it and takes it away.

So, he's about 25 years old. When he sees this, he knows, he can recognize that that was a judgment on them and he takes steps to avoid it happening to Judah. He becomes a very faithful king. In fact, you know, you can say he was the most faithful of all of the Judean kings, not counting David, starting with the split of the nation of the kingdom. Josiah, of course, is right there with him, but Hezekiah is exceptional and it is a delight to study this man's life. He has one stumble and we'll come to that in a little bit, verse 3, and he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh according to all that his father David had done. Now, as I mentioned earlier, this was said of Asa, Jehoshaphat, Amaziah, Uzziah, Jotham, Hezekiah and Josiah.

Just those kings of the south, none of the north, received that commentary. And it is remarkable that such a man as Hezekiah is the son of such a rotten man as Ahaz. And his life is different, largely because he willfully comes under the influence of Isaiah.

Micah the prophet is ministering in Israel at this time, in Judea at this time also, but Hezekiah and Isaiah seem to have been close as just friends, as well as Isaiah, of course, being the great prophet that he was, and the king, and it shows up. He personally did right in the sight of the Lord. He personally loved the Lord. And when he comes to power, or comes to the throne, he immediately institutes drastic reforms against the devil's work that his own father had pushed upon the people. And many of the people, he didn't have to push them much.

His reforms are more widespread than any of the kings before him. It says, according to all his father David had done, and of course, David is the standard into the New Testament. David is honored as such a righteous man. And this Hezekiah, he sang the songs of David. We read about him in the Psalms. Even in the days of trouble, David sang songs to the Lord. Hezekiah is this kind of a king. Hezekiah restores temple worship, reestablishes the sacrificial system, even reaches out to others throughout the land, if there were any from the northern kingdom still in the territory, inviting them to come celebrate the Passover. He reorganized the priests, meticulously outlined their responsibilities, tore down the high places of false worship and those pagan altars all over the land. He published 137 proverbs of Solomon that were otherwise not published.

He gets, you know, he has the rights to them and he makes sure that they go public. He destroys even the bronze serpent that Moses had erected there in the wilderness. And he's just, he knew, he understood like Paul. Paul could see things that was wrong with his people's practices and he'd go against them.

The Sabbath and the circumcision for the Gentiles and Paul just, he could see it and he stood firm. Well Hezekiah was similar in that regard. When the Assyrian conquered the north, the northern kingdom, he has to face the Assyrians and he becomes a vassal king to them or the king to Judah. He puts under their, he pays tribute to the Assyrians. He's going to stop doing that. Oh, I don't know, 17 years or so later he's going to just stop. Maybe not that long, but he does stop. The Assyrians are going to come against him for that and that's when he's going to stumble and cave into them.

And then they're going to go away and then they're going to come back again and that's when he really shines. Verse 4, he removed the high places, broke down the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and 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 Nehushtan.

Well the Nehushtan means the bronze thing. It's got the idea of the bronze serpent in the Hebrew language. And again, Hezekiah and Josiah iconoclastic, just break down icons wherever they could. Chuck Smith says, when I need an idol to remind me of God, that's a sign of spiritual dullness and that is accurate. If you have to have, you know, the Jews would boast the invisible God because everyone else had their, some representation.

It's an interesting thing. You don't find the Jews bowing down before a theophany. An appearance or a manifestation of God in a pillar of fire by night, a cloud in the daytime to the Jews, for example, was one theophany.

It's a manifestation of God's presence. The bush that burned but was not consumed, that's a theophany. A Christophany is when God does it in human form. In the Old Testament, before the birth of Christ, before the virgin birth, when Christ shows up in the Old Testament as the angel of the Lord, as the one that came and dined with Abraham before Sodom and Gomorrah was burned to the ground, He would receive worship. You know, if they bowed down before Him, He would receive it. But you wouldn't find any of the Jews bowing down to a theophany, to a manifestation of God.

That's an interesting thought, I think. Anyway, the healing that came from this bronze serpent in the days of Moses, and if I'm speaking quickly, it's because there's so much information. I do want to cover it because I think it's very good, very rich with lessons for us as Christians. When the Jews became unbelieving in the wilderness, God sent serpents to bite them, vipers. And He told Moses to fashion a bronze serpent that whoever would look at the serpent would be healed if they suffered a bite from the serpent. And if you were obstinate and say, I'm not going to look at it, then you died in the judgment.

And of course, this is an image, a type, a type of the cross of Christ. Well, the Jews kept this bronze serpent and they're burning incense to it. Now, some might say, well, you know, Ahaz took away the altar, took away the temple worship.

So this is the closest thing we've got. Well, that would have been wrong still. That would not have been an acceptable reason. God had forbade such things. And so Hezekiah comes to the throne and he gets rid of it.

And he destroys it and says, no, it's dead. It's just a bronze thing. It's nothing. It is nothing. It is not God. And though it had been used in the wilderness, as I mentioned, to heal, to save lives as a type of Christ, it has no power at this point. And the lesson is, of course, that men in rebellion, the lesson from that serpent in the wilderness, men in rebellion have to be dealt with. And they have to be dealt with before the cross of Christ. You're looking at it from the New Testament. Our cross, of course, is the most well-known emblem of God's judgment on sin.

I don't know of a greater emblem. Even the Ten Commandments does not go as far. There's not blood on the Ten Commandments. There's blood on the cross and there's the blood of the Son of God. And that blood is a testimony to His love and His invitation to come and believe.

And we, of course, know the story. Anyway, the Jews preserved the serpent, made an idol out of it, and, you know, fallen nature looks to material things and will ignore God who deserves the trust and adoration. So, anyway, moving on to verse 5. He trusted in Yahweh, God of Israel, so that after Him was none like Him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before Him. Again, that's beginning at the split of the kingdom after Solomon. For He held fast to Yahweh.

He did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which Yahweh had commanded Moses. So He's a man of the law, a great heart for God. We read this in 2 Chronicles, and there are about four chapters devoted to Hezekiah there. In chapter 31, it says, In every work that He began in service of the house of God in the law and in the commandment to seek His God, He did it with all His heart, so He prospered. So this is the kind of man we have before us, this king Hezekiah, who's going to be put under severe pressure by the Assyrians as we often are by Satan.

Satan puts us under severe pressure at times in our life. So his first order of business was to restore the place of worship. And we get that in 2 Chronicles 29. 2 Chronicles 29 gives us a lot more details, but it does leave out some of the other parts. And so, you know, and then Isaiah gives us even more, and it's a lot of reading. 2 Chronicles 29, 10. Now it is in my heart to make a covenant with Yahweh, God of Israel, that His fierce wrath may turn away from us. And so He knew He had to clean up what His Father left behind. He had a kingdom of people who were very comfortable with idolatry, if not totally engaged with it.

Of course we, you may have neighbors and friends, associates, that are very comfortable with rejecting Jesus Christ. And it is our responsibility to recognize that, not to vilify them and become their enemies, but to understand what we're working with. It says here in verse 6, so that after Him was none like Him, among all the kings of Judah, no who were before Him. Now Hezekiah and Josiah, both are described in this way. And it's a remark about the life of Hezekiah that I think the historian said, just let it stay like that.

We don't need to add to that. Oh, and Josiah too. Josiah comes along, by the time Josiah dies, it's 92 years after they're about Hezekiah. And the historians make the comment, Josiah was this great king also. But they don't say, let's go back and let's amend what we said about, what was said about Hezekiah to include Josiah. They just let it stand. That's my take on it. And I think that makes perfect sense.

They had other problems, like the chronology evidently. Anyway, verse 7, Yahweh was with Him. He prospered wherever He went, and He rebelled against the king of Assyria, and did not serve Him. So He gets, God is with Him, He understands this, and He thought, you know, why are we giving God's money to these pagans, this pagan kingdom?

We're setting our faith right with God. And so His father tried to rebel, but His father had different motives. His father just wanted the money. Whereas Hezekiah, he wants to keep the money too, but it is God's people, and He's the king over the people of God, as a man of God, and so He's going to stand up against the ungodly, this tribute He has to pay. It took courage to do this, but it backfires. And we can surmise why it backfires the first time.

The second time it does not. Verse 8, He subdued the Philistines as far as Gaza, and its territory, from Watchtower to Fortified City. Well, we'll come back to His rebellion, but in the midst of it, He's taking territory back from the Philistines.

There's that phrase, from Watchtower to Fortified City, you know, it's a thorough campaign that He launched. He attacks the Philistines. This is in fulfillment to Isaiah 14. Yeah, you get to Isaiah, you read chapter 14, and some of the other chapters, through 28 and all, you're like, boy, this is tough reading. Well, but there's prophecy in there, and it's fulfilled prophecy.

And this is one of them. Hezekiah, he finishes the work that his grandfather, his great-grandfather, Uzziah, began. Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and then Hezekiah. And his great-grandfather started to work against the Philistines, and now he finishes it. And the Philistines don't become a great threat after this. Verse 9, Now it came to pass in the fourth year of King Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea, son of Elah, king of Israel, that Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, came up against Samaria and besieged it. So the chronicle goes back again, to before the northern kingdom was completely overrun, and he's now talking about the siege. Just a brief rundown of the Assyrian kings. Tiglath-Pileser, he comes against Ahaz, makes him a vassal king of Assyria. Shalmaneser comes against Samaria, the northern tribes, and besieges them, his son. Evidently, Shalmaneser dies before the siege is completed, the three-year siege. Sargon, his son, conquers Samaria, takes them into captivity. Then Sennacherib comes into power, and he subdues Hezekiah.

Now he's going to attack him for not paying tribute. Hezekiah will then pay tribute, but then later he comes back again. And it's going to be kind of interesting to try to get through why does he come back again?

Because it doesn't make it that clear, but there are very strong clues. Anyway, when he comes back that second time, he's defeated by the Lord and 185,000. Overnight of his troops are slain, forcing him to retreat.

Verse 10, And at the end of three years they took it, that's Samaria, in the sixth year of Hezekiah, that is, the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel, Samaria, was taken. Now I purposely leave out the overlapping of the kings. Sometimes, you know, Ahaz is king, but he's really not ruling.

His son is also king, and they're sharing the throne. And this is quite common, but it's confusing enough, without throwing that in. So I'll just leave it out, because it really doesn't change much. Every now and then it might be an element to pause over, but overall it's just more confusion, from the way I see it. Verse 11, although I think the commentators, in written form, they should go into these things.

Very helpful, but as far as from speaking about it, it could be heavy duty. Verse 11, Then the king of Assyria carried Israel away captive to Assyria, and put them in Hala by the Hebar, the River Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes, because they did not obey the voice of Yahweh their God, but transgressed his covenant, and all that Moses, the servant of Yahweh, had commanded, and they would neither hear nor do them. So again, the historians not letting any of the future generations lose sight of what happened. We see this today. I mean, we even have a, you know, remember the Alamo.

I think this is about rental car prices, but no, of course not. But anyhow, the fall of the northern kingdom is restated here. Now we switch back at verse 13 to Assyria coming against Hezekiah with force for the first time.

Verse 13, In the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. Well, it's about 715 years before the coming of Christ. The second one will be at about 701 years, so about a 14-year gap. This is about eight years after Samaria fell.

That's where we are. So there's a lot of time in between these events. If you read them, they seem like they just happened dovetailing one into the other, and that's not the case here. Between the invasions, we'll get to a little bit more about this first one in a moment, but Hezekiah, after this first invasion, he's going to get very sick and God is going to heal him miraculously.

But both Chronicles and Kings puts this at the end of his life, and so the chronology is out of water again, because when he gets healed, the Babylonians come to say, hey, we just want to bring you some flowers and chocolate and say, we're glad you're well. And Isaiah's like, what did you show them? I showed them everything. He said, you nitwit.

You weren't supposed to do that. And I'm thinking, now it's going to be a problem. Now Babylon's going to get strong and they're going to come take it all. And the guy's going to say, were they going to do it in my lifetime? No. Whew. Well, okay. Let them have it.

So not quite like that, but yeah, that's how it was. So again, we're kind of all over, but it's a big part of the story, because Assyria, they know what's happening in Israel. They've got their spies, and they find out these Babylonians are coming down.

They're saying, hey, Judah is at it again. Going to Egypt, now they're making deals with Babylon. Babylon's not strong yet. Babylon's way from being strong, but she's building up and Assyria knows this. Eventually, almost 200 years from here, Babylon will be the world force and will take out Assyria. Anyhow, it's interesting, in the annals of Sennacherib, he has this stone carved with details about much of what transpired between these two kingdoms and others. And he says he took 46 cities and 200,000 captives from Judah.

And it would be at this time, because again, the armies of the Lord wiped them out later, but it's at this first invasion when he's taking all these fortified cities. That's where you have to put that, I think. Some of it is debatable, but not much.

Much of it is, you do the research, you have to come to, okay, this is the puzzle that fits. Otherwise, you have bigger questions. So if you put, for example, this wipeout by the Lord of the 186,000 men at the first invasion, then he's not going to come again. He's wiped out.

So it has to be a second invasion. So let's cover it. Verse 14. Then Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lakish, 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, 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold. So you see, the king gives in, Hezekiah, the good king. He sees these cities being wiped out and he says he's going to come to Jerusalem and get us too. This is not when 185,000 Assyrian troops are wiped out overnight. This is years before that. So why did God not come to Hezekiah's aid if he was such a good king at this time?

Well, there are damage in the land of the idolatry that the people brought upon themselves. Thanks for joining us for today's edition on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We trust that what you've heard today in the book of 2 Kings has been something to remember. If you'd like to listen to more teachings from this series, go to Cross-Reference Radio dot com. Once more, that's Cross-Reference Radio dot com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. Our time is about up, but we hope you'll tune in again next time as we continue on in the book of 2 Kings. We look forward to that time with you, so make a note in your calendar to join Pastor Rick as he teaches from the Bible right here on Cross-Reference Radio.