· 2 Ki. 19:20-34: God’s response to Hezekiah.
Hezekiah went to the temple and spread out the
letter of Sennacherib before the LORD. The
first thing Isaiah says in response, speaking for the “LORD God of Israel” is
that God has heard because Hezekiah prayed. According to the word of God, prayer is
effective! Forgive me for not entering
into a lengthy discourse on understanding the sovereignty of God and the responsibility
of man. What I must do is believe what
God’s word tells me, and this response from God affirms what the Epistle of
James says: The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much
(Jas. 5:16). The obvious “other side of
the coin” here is that if Hezekiah had not prayed, the LORD would not have
heard, which also fits our brother James: you do not have because you do not
ask (Jas. 4:2).
God’s response in this matter allowed the
people of Judah and Jerusalem to mock the Assyrian king (19:21) who mocked God,
the Holy One of Israel (v22-24). Let
me refer again to the famous “Song of Moses” (Dt. 32), where God promised
Israel that after her sin and rebellion and being removed from the land, He
would still honor His name by bringing judgment on Israel’s enemies.
Vengeance is Mine, and
recompense; their foot shall slip in due time; for the day of their calamity is
at hand, and the things to come hasten upon them. “For the LORD will judge His people and have
compassion on His servants, when He sees that their power is gone, and there is
no one remaining, bond or free (Dt. 32:35-36).
Consider those words and the situation
Hezekiah faced. Certainly, the power of
Judah was gone. They were no match for
the Assyrians, as the Rabshakeh had said.
By crying out to the LORD Hezekiah brought into the matter the God who
is the Judge of the whole earth. And His
justice is true justice.
The LORD then laid out the truth. According to 2 Ki. 19:25-26, the Rabshakeh was
correct in saying that YAHWEH had sent the Assyrians to Israel and Judah to carry out
His, YAHWEH’s judgment. Sennacherib was
God’s servant. But then it went to his
head. In his arrogance Sennacherib
exalted himself above the LORD (19:27-28).
Again, note how this fits Deut. 32: Had I not feared the wrath of the
enemy, lest their adversaries should misunderstand, lest they should say, ‘Our
hand is high; and it is not the LORD who has done all this’ (Dt. 32:27).
Let us pay attention here. Take the United States for example. We look back in our history and believe that
God has protected and used this country.
This is not just my idea; it was a popular thought throughout our
history. But we don’t talk at all like
that today. Today our greatness is
because by our own ingenuity we have the greatest economy in the world and the
greatest military and we are the most generous nation and so forth. We give God no credit. We are on borrowed time.
Take modern Israel as an example. It was a miracle that there were enough Jews
left after the Holocaust to establish a nation.
We believe God worked to bring about the return of Israel as a
nation. He used a Christian nation, the
United Kingdom, in special ways to bring about the Balfour Declaration. He used another Christian nation, the USA, to
bring about a positive vote in the UN, giving Israel status as a nation. There is tremendous evidence that in 1948
(War of Independence), 1967 (6-Day War) and 1973 (Yom Kippur War) Israel
received supernatural help to win against tremendous odds. Yet, that is not what one hears in Israel
among the populace, the media, even the governing officials. It all gets explained in human terms.
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