Opposition comes in all shapes and sizes. Opposition: feeling that somebody is out to stop you -- it takes many different forms.
Sometimes it is just outright, straightforward, political campaigning. Sometimes folks choose up sides and define the issues and go after each other, and that‘s all right. Most of us can handle this reasonably well. We just agree to disagree and go about lining up others who can agree with us, and let the rest go on about their business. This kind of opposition is not too tough. It’s at least honest and above board, and it has a live and let live quality about it.
Sort of like the Catholic priest and the Baptist preacher who got to arguing one day about their different ways of worship. Said the Catholic priest to the Baptist preacher, "The trouble with you is, you just won’t accept the way we worship.” Said the Baptist preacher to the Catholic priest, "Oh, I accept it all right. Live and let live. You worship God in your way, and I’ll worship Him in His way."
Sometimes opposition is just plain old disagreement, and that’s all right. That’s not hard to handle.
But then sometimes opposition is a built-in part of the human condition. Sometimes we get resistance from other people, and it seems that there is no other reason than that they simply want to be stubborn, they just want to be contrary. If you say this carpet is red, they will say it’s green. If you think that today is a nice day, they will tell you how uncomfortable it is. If you think we should turn left, they will insist on turning right.
If you read the funny papers, you’ll know that this is the kind of opposition game that Blondie and Dagwood play on each other. Blondie holds up two dresses and asks Dagwood, "Do you like the yellow one or the blue one?" And Dagwood says, "I like the yellow one." So Blondie says, "Good! Then I’ll take the blue one." But after that Dagwood looks out at the reader and says, "I like the blue one too, but if I’d said so, she would have taken the yellow one."
Sometimes opposition is just the perverse side of human nature. We don’t want to be governed by anybody else, we don’t want to be taken over by somebody else, so we just oppose. We just stake out a place to be different. Like the three-year-old boy who came in from the yard, slammed the screen door, and before Grandma could say anything at all, just blurted out, "Grandma, I won’t!" Just plain old stubborn opposition.
But beyond and deeper than both of these there is what I’m calling destructive opposition. Destructive opposition. The situation in which it feels like someone is out to get you, out to thwart you, out to stop you from being whatever you want to be, out to prevent you from doing whatever you feel you need to do. Destructive opposition is usually much more subtle than ordinary honest disagreement; destructive opposition goes behind the scenes and uses innuendoes and maybe even lies. Destructive opposition attacks your integrity, destructive opposition questions your credibility. And you find yourself trying to argue some position or take some action, but you find out that there is someone who is out just to destroy you. Not so much to change your mind or to get something done, but to stop you, destroy you, oppose you. Destructive opposition has this highly personal twist to it.
What can you do about destructive opposition? How do you handle it when you discover that someone opposes you, not so much because they think you are making a mistake, but really because they do not trust you, they do not like you, and are out to vilify and even destroy? What can you do then?
The Bible is full of folks who had to endure such opposition. But one such person jumps to the front today. In fact, this individual is going to help us with both of the messages that I plan to bring on prayer and victory. Prayer and victory: that already suggests the outcome of my argument both this week and next -- that in seasons of distress and grief, our souls will often find relief and oft escape the tempter’s snare, by this return, sweet hour of prayer. Prayer and victory.
Now the person we’re going to look at is King Hezekiah of Judah, living in the eighth century before Christ. King Hezekiah will help us think today about opposition, prayer and victory. And next week he will help us work with feelings, prayer and victory.
Now when Hezekiah acceded to the throne of the little Kingdom of Judah in 715 BC, he undertook to undo a lot of the mess his father Ahaz had done. Ahaz had appeased the huge empire of Assyria and had paid tribute to them; he had allowed the worship of Assyrian gods and had even placed an Assyrian altar in the temple in Jerusalem. That was an incredible concession to the power of King Sargon and the Assyrian empire. It would be rather like our saying, “Well, every Sunday when we come here to worship, right up here next to the Bible we will place a copy of the Communist Manifesto.” It lets the enemy right inside the gates. That ‘s what Ahaz had done.
This kind of thing Hezekiah cleaned up. He threw out that altar, he closed down the popular shrines around the countryside, he centralized worship in the Temple in Jerusalem. And in so doing he did one other thing as well: he fanned the flames of nationalism. The more that Hezekiah encouraged the people to serve the God of Judah and Him alone, the more they returned to their roots, the more they asserted their national pride, the more they began to resist their Assyrian masters.
And they got away with this for a while. Sargon was busy with other problems, and they got away with it for a while. But then the fires of rebellion began to spread to other subject peoples too. The Egyptians, the Philistines, Samaria, a whole host of other peoples began to show signs of restlessness. And the new king up in Assyria with the awkward name of 5ennacherib marched his armies southward and westward to deal with these uppity folks. Sennacherib became, in a word, opposition, for Hezekiah. Destructive opposition. Deadly, destructive opposition. And it drove Hezekiah to prayer. And finally gave King Hezekiah victory. Let’s explore that scene.
There are two whole chapters in the prophecy of Isaiah which deal with the incident; they are largely copies of passages in the Book of Second Kings, but I am using the material from Isaiah because it focuses more on the role of prayer in dealing with destructive opposition. These two chapters are really too long to read and then return to, so I am going to ask you to work with me through portions of them.
What I am going to show you as we scan through these chapters is, first of all, the dynamics of destructive opposition – how it works, what it means and what to watch out for; and then I am going to show you how to use prayer to approach that opposition and gain victory. Two main things to look for in these two chapters: the dynamics of destructive opposition and the way to use prayer to gain victory over it.
Opposition, prayer, victory.
Here’s how it all got started: Isaiah 36:1-3
Here’s the confrontation: opposition at the gates.
Now the first thing we are going to notice about destructive opposition is that it will suggest to you that you have no friends, that you are all alone, that you are some kind of oddball and that nobody can be trusted to help you anyway, so why not just give up?
Listen: 36:4-6
You know you are on the way to being wiped out when someone says to you, "You know, your old friends, the ones you think you can rely on? They’re no good. They don’t care. They won’t help." Destructive opposition tries to isolate you and make you feel alone.
Now watch what happens next. Once your opponents isolate you from your friends, then they work to isolate you from your faith and from your Lord. How sinister the strategy of an opponent who is really out to get you: 36:7
You see, Sennarcherib’s ambassador tried here to hook King Hezekiah’s spiritual insecurity. Hezekiah had taken drastic action, he had closed down all the altars where the people worshipped God out in the countryside, and he had said, "Here in the Temple is the only legitimate place to worship." I cannot go into the reasons for this rove right now. But Hezekiah had obviously taken a bold step, closing down some of the places where God was worshipped. And the enemy suspected that the King and the people of Judah felt just a little insecure about that. What if they had not done the right thing? What if God is really angry about that and because of his anger will not support you now, Hezekiah, huh, what about that?
My point is this: when you are up against a truly clever and diabolical opposition, that opposition will somehow suggest to you that your relationship with the Lord may not be all that good, that you may have done something that has ruptured that relationship: are you real, real sure you haven’t committed the unpardonable sin? Are you real, real sure you are saved? Are you real, real sure you belong to the right church? Just little seeds that hook our insecurities, and destructive opposition goes to work.
There’s more. Destructive opposition poses, very often, as the voice of God. The toughest opponents you will ever face are those who clothe themselves in robes of righteousness and spout pieties at you and try to make you feel as though they and they alone have a pipeline to God. Listen to this Assyrian envoy spout the language of oozy, unctuous piety: 36:8-10.
The Lord himself said to me, "Go up and destroy". I’ll be honest with you: Nothing irritates me or worries me as much as somebody who beat me down with "The Lord told me" language. And I have heard this used and misused a thousand times. "I don’t want to have to say this, but the Lord told me to …”, and what follows is usually unkind and cutting. "I personally hate to have to do this, but the Lord told me to …”. Watch out! Watch out!
Why, we are seeing in our denomination these days some people who are moving in on the mission agencies and the educational institutions Baptists have built up and are doing it all in the name of what the Scriptures are alleged to say and what the Lord is supposed to have told them. And I have to wonder about Assyrians, who do not know the Living God, bellowing about what the Lord told them to do. Beware of Assyrians or Baptists or family members or neighbors or even preachers who represent themselves as so terribly chummy with the Almighty, but who put you down and destroy you.
We’re not finished yet. The dynamics of destructive opposition are truly complex and subtle. At this point in the dialogue, Hezekiah’s representatives get kind of nervous. Who wouldn’t? After all they have been pretty well bullied up to now. And they suddenly become conscious of the fact that up there on the city walls there are a lot of spectators, ordinary folks who have come out and are listening to all of this. So Hezekiah’s men want to go into code, they want 8ennacherib’s envoys to speak in the diplomatic language, Aramaic, and not in Hebrew. They are afraid of what might happen if everyone gets the drift of this negotiation.
But that doesn’t work. In fact it only eggs the enemy on. And so we all of a sudden learn that a part of the dynamics of destructive opposition is that your opponent will go to the grandstand. He will make you a public spectacle if he can.
36:13-15. Destructive opposition tries to isolate you from your friends; destructive opposition tries to isolate you from your Lord; destructive opposition tries to shake your own faith in yourself and your relationship to God; and now destructive opposition tries to make you look like the destructive opposition. It goes to the grandstands, it engages in demagoguery.
In other words, friends, the opponent is going to tell you that all your props are gone. And when opposition works destructively, looking for power over you, wanting to destroy you, what happens to you? You end up insecure, uncertain, cowering, and just plain scared. Is it any wonder that the chapter ends telling us that Hezekiah’s ambassadors returned and reported with their clothes tom and their hearts destroyed. And you know, some of you, what that feels like.
You worked on that job for twenty years, and somebody got to the boss and undermined you. Destructive opposition. And you never quite got over it.
You raised that child and he or she became enamored of some manipulative friend who made it look like man and dad knew nothing. Destructive opposition. And it still stings.
Sennacherib is everywhere. Destructive opposition is taking its toll. And you, like Hezekiah and his friends, feel almost destroyed.
But Hezekiah did something about this. The king of Judah turned to a source of help. And this is where the victory begins. King Hezekiah turned to prayer.
37: 1-3a, 4b: "0ffer a prayer for those who will survive•
Hezekiah’s first instinct was to ask for prayer and to ask for prayer from someone whom he trusted, from the prophet Isaiah. Do you wonder why Hezekiah did not pray himself? After all, the text says that he went into the house of the Lord. Why did he not go ahead and do his own praying? Why did he ask Isaiah the prophet to pray for him?
I suspect that it is that when destructive opposition has done its work, you and I feel so unworthy, we feel so incomplete, we have been spiritually and emotionally assaulted, and we just are not sure that we can pray. We do not trust ourselves before God. We have lost our bearings before God. And so we hesitate to pray, we don’t feel like praying, the words just will not come.
Have you ever felt like that? If the enemy has done that to you, then learn from Hezekiah and find a trusted friend to pray for you. As the King turned to the prophet, you turn to a deacon, a friend, a pastor, somebody. As Hezekiah turned to Isaiah, whose relationship with the Lord he was sure of, to pray for him, you turn to somebody who loves you, somebody who has played no power games with you, somebody whose word is good and whose heart is pure, and ask for prayer.
But now, here’s the main lesson, here’s the principal idea I want to get across -- that the very act of prayer during the crisis of opposition is going to get you a victory. If you will take that struggle, that opposition and that venom, to the Lord in prayer, there will be a victory.
But it may not come all at once. You may have to wait. But it will be there.
Watch the story now. Isaiah the prophet sent back a word of encouragement to King Hezekiah:
37: 5-7 God says, a victory is on its way. Now the enemy hasn’t tossed in the towel; the enemy doesn’t give up easily. But he’s done for just the same. Prayer is about to get you a victory.
Sennacherib tries one more time; the Assyrian warrior sent a letter to Hezekiah and tried to bully him again: How can you hope to escape? Haven’t you heard how I have crushed everybody else?
And this time Hezekiah was moved to do his own praying. This time, the King of Judah, driven to desperation, found the courage to do what he needed to have done all along:
37:14-20. A very simple prayer, isn’t it? Not long, not eloquent, not complicated -- but what does it have in it? Praise for the God who is Lord and who will not fail. Praise for the God who is alive and will not die. Praise for the God who is authentic and whose promises will be kept. More of the prayer of Hezekiah is spent of praise than on petition, more of his energy devoted toward acknowledging and trusting the Lord than on telling Him what I want.
0, my friends, hear the good news in that. Hear the good news in that. And hear the whole sum and substance of this message: that the only power which can defeat destructive opposition is the power of a confident, positive, trusting relationship to Almighty God. The only way in which you will achieve victory over those who would like nothing better than to do you in – and I spent most of my time this morning just teaching you how subtle they are – the only way in which you will achieve victory over those who would like nothing better than to do you in is to pray in praise and pray in trust. Pray in praise and pray in trust.
For in the last analysis the victory is not yours, but God’s. In the last analysis, he who would seek to humiliate a child of God is trying to humiliate God. And so the victory you seek is the victory of God, and it is done. It is finished. It is accomplished. It is life, it is victory, it is the risen Christ, it is the empty tomb, it is done.
37:36-37. Opposition, prayer, victory.
