A Rally to Prayer (Part B)

Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah again, verse 10. Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you. Well, who says that all the time? Satan.

Whenever the pressure's on, really on. You know, don't let God tell you Jerusalem shall not be taken. That's what he's telling these people. Don't let yourselves trust your God, because he cannot stop us. And he knew Isaiah told the king, don't fear this guy. 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 2nd 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. Today, Pastor Rick will continue teaching through his message called, A Rally to Prayer, in 2nd Kings chapter 19. In the day of Hezekiah, of course, they were sacrifice, human sacrifices of their own children, the Jewish people, and we scratch our heads, and we wonder how could they ever have fallen for such a thing as we do today. Wonder how can people be so foolish, because it is spiritual.

Satan is very active, goes to and fro, has an army with him to do these things. And the consequence of apostasy is laid out in Deuteronomy 31, the prophet and the king, they didn't lose sight of these things. They knew if God wanted to judge them, then there was nothing they could do.

But they're hoping that's not the case. He says, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to reproach the living God. So Hezekiah is asking God to deal with these people. Sennacherib is the Assyrian king. He's out conquering other fortified cities of Judah at this time. Again, he had done it, I don't know, 14 years earlier, now he's back at it. And Hezekiah is saying, Lord, they're blasphemers, these people.

I mean, I know, we're fighting to reform the nation, and these guys are just outright evil. And so he asks here in verse 4, and we'll rebuke the words of Yahweh, your God has heard. So what he's saying is, Lord, you've heard what they've said about you, and he's appealing to the Lord with facts. And therefore, lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left. And that's what he's asking Isaiah to do. So he's rallying the prophet for prayer. Well, Isaiah's already been in prayer and already has the answer.

And we're going to get to that in a minute. But there's no name it and claim it here. That's presumptuous sin.

You know, I'm just going to name it and it's going to be mine. You're just misguided at the least and presumptuous at the most. We don't hear of Hezekiah naming it and claiming it.

Watch out for that. You can see how people get tripped up with these things. I don't think they wake up in the morning, the people, and say, today I'm going to blaspheme and do something like this. They just follow their leaders. I think some of their leaders do wake up and say, you know, look out at the congregation and see dollar signs and tell the people what they think they want to hear. And the next thing you know, you've got a whole movement on your hands, and it's very difficult to wrench someone free from something that they first believe. Well, verse 5, so the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah, and Isaiah said to them, thus you shall say to your master, thus says Yahweh, do not be afraid of the words which you have heard with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.

This is a good start. So Isaiah, you know, they come and tell them this and Isaiah is saying, listen, I already have the message. I've been praying too. I don't need a king to tell me to pray. I've got an army surrounding the city. He's not saying that, but that's where it comes out.

You can extract that from the story. Again, Jerusalem, the only fortified city that had not yet been conquered by the Assyrians, Isaiah is not giving a personal opinion. He's not saying something. You get to Jeremiah, you get these false prophets and they're doing that presumptuous stuff. They're saying, God's going to do this and he's going to do that. Jeremiah said, no he's not.

We're going to be going into captivity. That's what God said. And of course, they persecuted him for doing it.

They do that today. If you tell some Christians, listen, that's kind of a kooky prayer. You have no right to pray like that. Oh brother, you better jump in a foxhole.

Never mind what the Bible says. Their emotions have already decided the matter. Anyway, he's ready with the reply. Well, news of Reb Shachar, his words circulated. They reached Isaiah 2 and he already had been with the Lord and has the instruction. He says, do not be afraid of the words which you have heard. Well, that's what the king wants to hear.

Consider the source. It's the great prophet Isaiah. Well, if he says it, then that's going to be reassuring. Hezekiah is going to then, as leader of the people, take that and tell the people. 2 Chronicles 37, as I mentioned, Isaiah 37 and 2 Chronicles 32 have the parallel story. Here's what the king says to the people. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria, nor before all the multitude that is with him, for there are more with us than with him. Well, Isaiah told him first, don't be afraid. And that's all he needed. And now he's connecting this to, you know, Elisha. You know, those who are with us are more than against us. Open the eyes of my servant.

He's got it now. He is strong in the Lord at this point and he's bringing the people with him and they will not have to swing one sword. He continues in this sixth verse, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed.

Now here's the interesting thing. Servants here in the Hebrew is a different word than servant in verse 5, this one in verse 6. In verse 5, it is the typical word for a servant, but here it is often translated a lad or a child without insult. But the context here, contextually, this is disparaging.

He's insulting. He's saying, those boys, those little foot boys of the king, those little lackeys of Assyria, that's how he's using it. I think the context makes it, that's why the historian changes words. If he wanted to say they're the servants of their king, he would have used the other Hebrew word.

But no, he calls those boys over there. I kind of like those human touches when they, they're all over scriptures, and you got to, you know, dig for them, but when you get them, they glow, you know. It's like, yeah, that's what I would have said. I'd call them punks too, but you know, that's why God didn't let me write scripture. You would have been in the flesh. It wouldn't have been scriptures. The writings of Rick and they would be, don't read that. Anyhow, God knew they were blasphemous. Verse 7, surely I will send a spirit upon him and he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land. You know, God can lead us not into temptation, but he can also allow the wicked to be channeled into temptation.

Just, it's in Romans, it's other places, many places, but I'll just take the one that we might be most familiar with, second Thessalonians. For this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie. Well, earlier he said, because they didn't have the love for the truth. They want lies. Well, God's fine. You think lies are better than truth? Well, here's your lies, because I'm not going to let you run the insane asylum.

You will think you're running it. This is the sovereignty of God. You are either going to serve the Lord or you're going to serve the enemy, but you will not be sovereign.

He is and he alone. The influence upon them, this extraordinary divine impulse or persuasion, God is in control. That's what the prophet is is telling the king and the leaders who have come to him. These prophetic words came true. So, Necharab will hear of the defeat of his army, that we won't, we'll get to in verse 35, and return to Assyria. That will be the end of his Judean campaign, and there will be some interference by the Egypt-slash-Ethiopian kingdom, but they'll never really cross swords.

I'll come back to that later. He says here, and he shall hear a rumor, verse seven, and return to his own land. Rumor, I think, is an unfortunate choice of words. Report would have been better, because, you know, you hear a rumor, you think of an unsubstantiated report. Well, the reports he gets are substantiated.

They're not, what, really? They're like, oh no, he's going to get the report that, well, the Ethiopian- Egyptian alliance is moving that way, that's one report he will get, but the main one that Isaiah is talking about will be, you just lost 185,000 troops in one night. I think either they all died from acute food poisoning, or God just miraculously wiped them out. Either way, that's the report that will return him to his land. We have other cases of this in Scripture, but that's for future kings, future other events. Here, with this Assyrian army, it will put an end to their invasion, that it's an angelic slaughter, and he says, and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land, and that's a, and then, by the way. So, God is telling Isaiah these things, and then he gives Isaiah a little more, oh, and by the way, because that doesn't happen for another 20 years or so, the king gets assassinated, Sennacherib. But, you know, you just, you trust the prophet Isaiah, it turns out right, we come back, we Christians look at this and say, look at that.

If I were living then, I would be looking for this guy to die when he went back to Assyria. Would I say why Isaiah was wrong, even though Isaiah was right about the other stuff? Well, I would like to think, I would say, well, if Isaiah said it, being the prophet that he was, I'm going to, that's what I'm going to believe, because we do this with Scripture. If the Scripture says it, if I don't understand it, I'm still going to side with the Scripture, and not against it. Very easy to say to God, you promised, you know, and start quoting all these verses, when the enemy rises like a flood, you know, and then you find out, you know, God is not answering the prayers you, the way you thought. You know, that's God. I think God, God could say without guilt, you know, if I just took you home to heaven right now, I wouldn't hear a squeak from you in the line of complaints. So, just trust me, and, and do your job, and we have to, I think, it is very good to try to keep our faith basic to the Scripture.

Otherwise, why bother? Why would you come out on a Wednesday night to hear someone talk to you about kings, or some of the other books of the Bible, unless there was a value to it, and God is the one that assigns the value. Well, verse 8, then the Rabsheka, I always want to say that with music, you know, a heavy bass or something, the Rabsheka, returned and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah, for he heard that he had departed from Lachish. Well, there's the use of the word report again, heard, it's not a rumor, it's the same Hebrew. So, I don't, again, the translators are inconsistent at times, but you've got to be cautious in criticizing them, because it's a monumental task, and they've done very well.

In the end, we have a trustworthy document. Just the deeper you dig, the more things you come up with, and then you have to settle them, then you settle them and come back to, well, bottom line is it's correct. Technically, rumor is a report.

It's just used as an unsubstantiated report in our society as a rule. Well, again, here he says Rabsheka returned and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah. Well, this is in Lachish, these are Judean territories, fortified cities, so Sennacherib's taken his forces to conquer them, while Rabsheka goes to Jerusalem, and it's all going to stop in a little while. Verse 9, and the king heard concerning Terheka, king of Ethiopia, look, he has come out to make war with you. So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah saying, well, this Terheka is also called an Egyptian king, and history has both on him.

Well, it's sort of an Egyptian Ethiopian kingdom. They provided a balance of power. They were a big army. At one point in the kings, they have a million men on the battlefield, that they can put on the battlefield.

That's pretty significant. Even today, pretty hard for one side to put a million men. I think in the Gulf of Iraq war, we put 400,000 troops into Iraq. Well, this was a time before, you know, CH-51s and troop transport ships, and pretty big force.

So, Assyria would not take lightly any thought of this army coming in their direction. When he loses the 185,000 troops, he won't have the force to stand against the Ethiopians, and he's going to leave. He won't have force to stand against the Jews. And that's not his whole army. Again, that 185,000, he still has a very big army. Even though he loses them, they're just not in that theater of operation.

So we have, again, two movements. The report of the Ethiopian-Egyptian troops possibly coming to help Judah, and then the one we haven't gotten to yet, which is coming, he'll get the report that his troops have been wiped out. It says here at the bottom of verse 9, So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah.

These messengers are going to deliver a letter to the king. And now verse 10, Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. So now we have again the voice of the devil through Rabshakah. And he wants Jerusalem to fall. He's got like this hatred for Jerusalem. He's probably already thinking of, you know, the statue they're going to build for him in downtown Nineveh once he conquers it. And because it's a relentlessness, they will be pulled away, his troops, but then they will come back. And when they come back, that's when they get slaughtered.

So there's a lot of little twists and turns here, but this is his response as he's being pulled away. Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah again, verse 10, Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you. Well, who says that all the time? Satan.

Whenever the pressure's on, really on. You know, don't let God tell you Jerusalem shall not be taken. That's what he's telling these people. Don't let yourselves trust your God because he cannot stop us. And he knew Isaiah told the king, Don't fear this guy because they've got spies. Unfortunately, Jews passing on information. Verse 11, Look, Rabshakah still speaking, You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by utterly destroying them. And shall you be delivered? Are you kidding me?

Look at the facts and the stats. Everywhere we have gone, they have fallen. What gives you the audacity to suppose that somehow your prayers are going to be answered? They were praying too. Hezekiah will acknowledge the fact that they have been conquering all the places that they have invaded in his appeal to God. And in that appeal, he appeals to God to make new facts. And and God is going to do that. And so this propaganda is your God is no better than anybody else's God, although the Assyrian God is superior.

But we hear that today. People tell us, What makes you think Christianity is so good? How come the other people say, I don't know. It's almost boring to hear them say it. But we have to, hopefully, if the Spirit leads, we can help them with that if they let us. But some people, they're, you know, they're just adamant.

There's nothing you can say. The ground could, you could part the Red Sea and they still will say, Well, it's just a scientific thing. Mars must have been lined up with Saturn or something. Verse 12, he says, Have the gods of the nations delivered those whom my fathers have destroyed? And if you feel like you want to recite those nations, go ahead. Verse 13, Where is the king of Hamath?

And he names the other nations. These were Syrian. These are, Rabshakah is Assyrian. Syria is a separate kingdom at this time. Modern day Iraq is ancient Assyria.

Nineveh is modern Mosul for, by the Tigris River. Anyway, their gods were impotent against our God is the meaning. And he insisted that prayer does not work, no matter the religion. And that is the voice of the devil. Verse 14, And Hezekiah received a letter from the hand of the messengers and read it. And Hezekiah went up to the house of Yahweh and spread it before Yahweh. And Hezekiah prayed, verse 15, before Yahweh and said, O Yahweh, God of Israel, the one who dwells between the cherubim, you are God.

You alone of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Verse 16, Incline your ear, O Yahweh, to hear. Open your eyes, O Yahweh, and see. And hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. And so he takes, they read the letter to him, they give it to him. He takes that letter and he takes it to God. And he says, here it is in writing. This is what they said about you and your people.

This is what they're doing. And the king, his heart was always in the Lord's house. As in verse one, initially he goes right to the Lord's house and there he's inspired, you know, got to get Isaiah involved in this, and he sends to Isaiah. Something the other kings, not all of them, but most of them, refuse to do. All of them in the north, they just didn't want to hear the men of God.

He talks about the mercy seat. He talks about the fact that we have a monotheistic, triune God, as we, the Trinity, you know, the Godhead, which distinguishes us from all the religions of the world. And the Jews were in habit of pointing out that Yahweh is the creator. Of everything you see, there's only him, and he makes it clear there's no other gods.

It's all, you know, bogus. Can't help but love Hezekiah. In time of crisis, man, he's just leaning on his faith, and he does nothing else to win, except pray. Well, he did fortify the city, but they never, you know, they never needed it. In fact, the Assyrians don't even get to put a siege mound against it, which is interesting, because that tells us that their army was intending to do it, but was wiped out before it happened. Verse 17, truly Yahweh, the kings of Assyria, have laid waste the nations and their lands.

And he's acknowledging, yep, the facts. Verse 18, because he's going to talk about other facts. And have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone.

Therefore, they destroyed them. Verse 19, now therefore, oh Yahweh, our God, I pray, save us from the hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you are Yahweh, God, you alone. So, you know, again, he's a humble man. He's not saying, you have to save us.

We're your people. I demand to be, you know. He is very, very careful how he phrases his words and presents his case to God. I think God wants us to articulate things. There are times, of course, when we're in heavy, you know, there are no words. There are groans and grunts, even tongues. But I think most of the time, God wants us to say, to learn how to talk to him. And I've found when you do this, you know, you want to say something to God and you feel the Lord said, now you know that's not right. So you don't even say it.

You say something better, something true. Anyway, there's no denying the overthrow of the false gods. There's no denying that the vanquished northern kingdom, who would not heed the prophets, have perished. This made Hezekiah distinct among the kings. Verse 20, then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, thus says Yahweh, God of Israel, because you have prayed to me against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, I have heard you. Isaiah's always bringing good news, is he not?

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news. You know, Isaiah said a righteous man stops his ears for bad news. I don't want to hear anymore.

I can't fix it. Stop pouring this out on me. He's dragging me down. I like good news. I love good news.

It's just hard to get sometimes. Well, because you have prayed to me, he says in verse 20, against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, I have heard you. What if he didn't pray to him? Well, we have no doubt what would have happened. Just look at the northern kingdom.

That's what would have happened. But God had a man on the throne that was righteous, verse 21. May that be said about our homes, that God has a man that I don't mean male necessarily, but God has his people there who will call upon him. Verse 21, this is the word which Yahweh has spoken concerning him. The virgin, the daughter of Zion, has despised you, left you to scorn, and the daughter of Jerusalem has shaken her head behind your back. So Isaiah said this is what God says, that she's thumbing her nose at you. Jerusalem is mocking you.

That's the idea. The prophecy is in metaphor. And he says this vulnerable little maiden whom you've come to abuse, she's gonna laugh in your face. And he declares that the chosen people are laughing at the blasphemous invader. This is the faith they have.

This is, you know, this is just Isaiah the prophet on the authority of God saying we're not going to put up with this. 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.