The Voice of Satan (Part B)

Allen Redpath has an interesting quote about this kind of behavior. He says 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. After becoming devoted to the Lord and start serving him, the attacks are going to intensify. Here's Pastor Rick with part two of his message called The Voice of Satan in 2 Kings chapter 18. Here's Pastor Rick with part two of his message called The Voice of Satan in 2 Kings chapter 18. Here's Pastor Rick with part two of his message called The Voice of Satan in 2 Kings chapter 18. Here's Pastor Rick with part two of his message called The Voice of Satan in 2 Kings chapter 18. Here's Pastor Rick with part two of his message called The Voice of Satan in 2 Kings chapter 18.

Here's Pastor Rick with part two of his message called The Voice of Satan in 2 Kings chapter 18. 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, three year siege. Sargon, his son, conquers Samaria, takes them into captivity. Then Sennacherib comes into power and he attacks, 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, why does he come back again?

Because it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't make it that clear, but there are, 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, you know, 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, might be an element to, 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 cried, carried, sorry, 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 14th 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, well, they're 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. So this is not when the 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.

And even though the king is instituting reforms, it doesn't mean the people are on board. Look, when Josiah comes along, he does the same thing. But as soon as he dies, you get these four rotten kings and everybody cheering them on, making life miserable for Jeremiah and Baruch, his faithful assistant.

So this is a judgment, and it cannot be bypassed. God is filtering out the idolaters in his land. There are still lessons for God's people to learn, and they're going to learn them like this, because they are God's people, they are held to a higher standard. Men, you are held to a higher standard by God, and thus the temple tax placed upon the men, the shekel, for the men to pay. What if Hezekiah decided to trust God right here and not give in?

Well, I think we would have got the same results we got last time. But what changed? What made him change so that when they come back a second time, he doesn't give in like he's giving in this time? Well, I think the sickness, when he gets sick and God says, I'll give you 15 more years, he's almost said to him, like Peter, you know, you're going to be old when you die. Well, he comes back and him and Isaiah had to have said, look, God has given your life back to you, you've got 15 years, these Assyrians coming down, you're here to fight them, don't give in. I think that was a big part of them, looking at what God was doing with their lives and then doing something with what God had done with their lives, both he and Isaiah. And I think that's one of the great parts of the story is we have monuments in our life where God did this for me and God did that for me. It's the whole story of the Jews in the wilderness when they were told God didn't lead you out of the promised land just to kill you in the wilderness because that's what they were complaining, have you left us out of Egypt to kill us out here in the wilderness? What kind of thinking is that?

So that's where we extract these lessons, we connect these dots from the stories that we have preserved for us. So this fact that Hezekiah gives in, I don't fault him for it, what would you have done if you were the king and this juggernaut of an army is coming through and by this time in history the Assyrians are vicious people. They are not just, okay take the prisoners, sort them out and sell them.

They're skinning people alive, they're making an example about people, they're torturing them in the most horrific ways. The Jews know this, they are taking some captive for sure, but they also are leaving examples all over the place and there are other historical accounts outside of the scripture that attest to this. Well, again a severe trial, 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold. Some calculations come up with 11 tons of silver and a ton of gold and it may have been just overwhelming to the kingdom which, well let's continue verse 15.

So Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of Yahweh and in the treasuries of the king's house. So again he gives in this time, Alan Redpath has an interesting quote about this kind of behavior. He says, 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. So Redpath says, when you start becoming devoted to the Lord and start serving Him, the attacks are going to intensify. I can attest to that. I could sit down under a nice cherry tree and just sit back and say, I remember when I was just in the pew, Christianity was, you know, it's just a whole bunch of fun.

Well, that's for amateurs. You could say, you know to yourself, you have to say something. You have to say, no, you're in the thick now. And so if you, you who serve, you serve Christ, you are going to draw, you're going to draw fire, more than the one who is not. Although the one that's not serving is also under pressure. None of us get away unscathed.

You have the pressure of feeling like you should be doing more. Anyway, just ramblings from the life in Christ. We know it is worth it because if other Christians had not suffered before us, then what Christianity would have been around for us to enter into? What has kept Christianity moving forward through the centuries are faithful Christians who suffered and died for the faith. Even in the dark ages, there were believers, true believers. We just are very grateful for the martyrs that have gone before us. All of this served to strengthen Hezekiah's faith in God, not men.

And as I mentioned, he recovers as Peter recovered. Listen to what, listen to what he will say at the next attack. Years later when Assyria comes again, he says this to his commanders, Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid, nor dismayed, before the king of Assyria, nor before the multitude that is with him. For there are more with us than with him. With him is the arm of flesh, but with us is Yahweh our God, to help us and to fight our battles. And the people were strengthened by the words of Hezekiah king of Judah. See, he couldn't put those words at the first battle where he's sending the gold to him.

This is the second time. I'm just reading it, getting ahead of it a little bit. Now, as a Christian, you come along and you face some monstrous challenge, some awful thing, and you start using these words. Be strong and courageous. God says, Amen. Do not be afraid, nor dismayed.

That's right. Then you get to the part about the Lord fighting the battle for you, but things don't turn out the way you thought. It doesn't make God any less God. It goes back to God causes all things to work together for the good, for those who love Him. And we go by the promises of God, not the explanations.

I mean, there are explanations in the promises sometimes. The bottom line is we believe. Though the vineyards fail, I will trust in the Lord. And when we get to heaven and look back, we say, Wow, it's amazing how much God had this totally under His control when I thought He did not. I would have given up a long time ago were it not for the Holy Spirit to come upon the soul and say, You just keep swinging. You just keep trusting. That's what I want from you. You let the, you know, the body count's going to be the body count. You just trust in me.

And that has been a lifesaver. Otherwise, ministry would be miserable. And I do talk about from time to time the hardships of public ministry. But I hope I balance it with the blessings of the Lord that go with it. And it just, you end up just, yeah, God is right. And it comes down to trust. If you had to go into battle with a Bible study or a trust of the Lord, only one you could take, which one would you take? I would take the trust of the Lord.

But I can't get that trust of the Lord without first the Bible study. So which would you rather go into battle with? A sword or iron ore?

You get the sword from the iron ore, but it's not the finished product. So, yeah, courage. Here's another kind of courage. What happens when you fail? You're just not serving the Lord like you should, but you're still trying. Well, why are you still trying? Courage.

I feel like if I were king of the forest. It's courage. It takes courage to serve God. It takes, okay, here comes the hit.

Take it. Because He'll make good when He's good and ready. But that's the problem. Anyway, verse 16. 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 to the king of Syria.

That had to break his heart. It had to break the heart of Isaiah, the prophet, both of them. Looking out for, they wanted what God wanted. They wanted to look out for the people.

They're at the end of themselves. This was the move they made. I think in hindsight, again, it was the right move. Hindsight for them, not me. They had the right move because, again, God is purging the land of the idolaters through these hardships, forcing to come back to Christ even, opportunities to come back.

But these two will prevail. Verse 17. Then the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaras and Rabshakeh.

There's a little music like that. From Lakish with a great army against Jerusalem to king Hezekiah. And they went up and came to Jerusalem.

When they had come up, they went and stood by the aqueduct from the upper pool which was on the highway to the fuller's field. Now is the second attack. I think most serious commentators, they come to the same conclusion. You might, as you study, you might kick back at them at first. Then you start investigating and you've got to get to your own thinking.

You have to get to where, okay, what do I think? I know what he said, I know what he said, but what do I think? And, you know, I agree with many of them that this is the separate attack here. And it is presented that way in 2 Chronicles 32.

In fact, I should just read this. We have this saying, you know, no good deed goes unpunished. Well, listen to this in Hezekiah's day. After these deeds of faithfulness, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came and entered Judah and encamped against the fortified cities, thinking to win them over to himself. And so there it is, after these deeds of faithfulness, then comes the enemy. And this time the enemy gets to speak at the walls of Jerusalem and it will be the voice of Satan.

And this is where we are. The visit of the Babylonian ambassadors, it looks suspicious to Assyria. Hezekiah has paid them off to appease them for now.

But then they're raising their eyebrows over this. They're actually knowing that there's some talking between Egypt and Judah because he's going to bring that up in his propaganda monologue. So the second visit, and that's how I'm going to approach it, you could say, if you didn't like that approach, you could say, no, the king paid off the king of Assyria and then he didn't care for it and he came down anyway.

But I don't think that fits much of the story. He mentions here in verse 18 the great army of Assyria. Well, he comes with enough troops just in case Egypt wants to get involved, to intervene. So he's ready for that and the siege. These are titles here, Tartan, Rabsaris, Rabsheka.

They're not personal names. The Tartan is the supreme commander. The Rabsaris is the chief officer.

And my favorite, the Rabsheka, is the field commander. So, again, I think this is after his near fatal illness that he survived by the hand of God and God gave him confirmation. I'm going to turn the sundial back.

You'll know that I'm giving this to you. This time it's not a bodily illness, it's the Assyrian war machine. But God did not deliver him from sickness to let him die by the sword of the Assyrian. Verse 18, and I think he comes to that conclusion. And when they had called to the king, Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, Shevna, the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, came out to them. So here comes Rabsheka with his entourage. And these are the representatives of the king, Hezekiah, in the city.

And they're coming out to parlay with each other. Verse 19, then Rabsheka said to them, Say now to Hezekiah, Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this in which you trust? Now it's on. Now we get the voice of the devil because he's going against Yahweh. What confidence is this in which you trust? He's going to attack Yahweh.

He's going to lie. The voice of the devil to the people of God. Well, God's people, or should I say God routinely speaks through his people. The voice of God is routinely heard through his people. When you share the gospel, when you share scripture verses, that is the voice of God. Of course, you have to take into consideration the person's relationship with God. The Jehovah's Witnesses quoting scripture is not the voice of God.

It would be a very unique situation if it were. The voice of Satan is also heard routinely through people in life. People that blaspheme, the antichrist voices.

Here we're hearing it from the Rabsheka. Satan is going to speak through this man. You can say in the heart he's under the influence of Satan because it is not Yahweh. And Satan gets to speak through people more than some care to admit. Listen to what he's going to say in verses 29 through 33.

I'll just take excerpts from that. Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. Why? He's our godly king. Nor let Hezekiah make you trust in Yahweh, saying Yahweh will deliver us. This city shall not be given to the hands of the king of Syria. Do not listen to Hezekiah. Do not listen to Hezekiah. Lest he persuade you saying Yahweh will deliver us. That's the voice of the devil. Don't listen to Jesus.

Don't listen to your king. 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 crossreferenceradio.com. Once more, that's crossreferenceradio.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.