Someone asked a Sunday School teacher, “What are sins of omission?” After some thought she said, “They’re the sins we should have committed but didn’t get around to.”
A man asked his doctor if there was anything that could be done for his snoring. The doctor asked if it disturbed his wife. The man answered, “No, just the rest of the congregation.” I know you’re enjoying those new pews when I hear snoring. J
The title of today’s sermon is “On whom are you depending.
We all depend on something or someone in life. The question is, who do you ultimately rely on? Yourself? Your family? Your Church? Your government? Your bank account? Your friends? Or do you rely on God?
Today’s sermon comes out of 2 Kings 18 & 19 if you want to follow along. It’s the true story of good King Hezakiah, the prophet Isaiah and the evil King Sennacherib of Assyria. It will help you to understand this story better if you know up front that King Sennacherib is a type or representative of Satan and that King Hezekiah is a type of representative of a sinner saved by grace.
Backdrop:
18:1 In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. 2 He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Abijah daughter of Zechariah. 3 He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father David had done. 4 He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.)
5 Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. 6 He held fast to the LORD and did not cease to follow him; he kept the commands the LORD had given Moses. 7 And the LORD was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. 8 From watchtower to fortified city, he defeated the Philistines, as far as Gaza and its territory.
9 In King Hezekiah’s fourth year, which was the seventh year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Shalmaneser king of Assyria marched against Samaria and laid siege to it. 10 At the end of three years the Assyrians took it. So Samaria was captured in Hezekiah’s sixth year, which was the ninth year of Hoshea king of Israel. 11 The king of Assyria deported Israel to Assyria and settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River and in towns of the Medes. 12 This happened because they had not obeyed the LORD their God, but had violated his covenant-all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded. They neither listened to the commands nor carried them out.
13 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. (This is a historical fact as documented by archiology. Sennacherib killed many Jews and took 200,150 Judean Jews captive and exiled them to Assyria.)
King Hezekiah was about to have a personal crisis of faith, but he thought he could take matters into his own hands and solve this problem himself. So listen to what he did:
14 So Hezekiah king of Judah sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: "I have done wrong. Withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand of me." The king of Assyria exacted from Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 So Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the temple of the LORD and in the treasuries of the royal palace.
16 At this time Hezekiah king of Judah stripped off the gold with which he had covered the doors and doorposts of the temple of the LORD, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
King Hezekiah was a good king. He was a religious king. He followed the teaching of Moses and he did things that were an expression of his religious beliefs – like tearing down pagan altars and making the Jews worship God at the Temple in Jerusalem.
However, King Hezekiah did not have a personal faith in God. He had a superficial relationship with God at best. Up to this point in his life, if you would have asked King Hezekiah the question “On whom are you depending?” He would have had to honestly answer that he was depending on himself.
King Hezekiah tried to solve his problems by himself as is evidenced by the fact that he tried to buy off the Assyrian King.
He was operating out of his flesh – and if you rely on your flesh, you’re in for disappointment and trouble.
King Hezekiah is like so many Christians today – they profess faith in God, but by the way they live you couldn’t tell it.
There are some of you here today who are in the King Hezekiah category. You are a nominal Christian at best. Sure you do Christian things, you even speak Christianeese, but on closer examination, you are a fake – a forgerie, you’re just going through the motions – why? I don’t know – but there you are, just like King Hezekiah.
King Hezekiah was about to have a personal faith crisis.
17 The king of Assyria sent his supreme commander, his chief officer and his field commander with a large army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They came up to Jerusalem and stopped at the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Washerman’s Field. 18 They called for the king; and Eliakim son of Hilkiah the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder went out to them.
19 The field commander said to them, "Tell Hezekiah:
"`This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: On what are you basing this confidence of yours? 20 You say you have strategy and military strength-but you speak only empty words. On whom are you depending, that you rebel against me?
Out of the mouth of the enemy comes the all important question. “On whom are you depending?”
Verses 21 & 22 outline the issue of two world views:
21 Look now, you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man’s hand and wounds him if he leans on it! Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who depend on him. 22 And if you say to me, "We are depending on the LORD our God"-isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, "You must worship before this altar in Jerusalem"?
In life we can depend on Egypt or on God. They represent two world views – the secular or the divine.
Under the secular world view represented by Egypt you are depending on yourself, your friends, your family or something else to meet your needs and deliver you from trouble.
Under the divine or Christian worldview you learn to depend solely on God for your needs and to deliver you from trouble.
Which world view to you cling too?
I think it’s time for you to have a personal crisis of faith so you can be brought to the crossroads of decision. Are you going to rely on Egypt and all it represents or are you going to rely on God?
PRAYER:
Lord God, as the pastor of your precious people, I release the Hezekiah Chrisitans to You so that you might work a personal crisis in their life to bring them to the crossroads of decision. And Lord, please steer them to choose You. Amen
The Devil will try to persuade you to turn away from God. He will use all manner of temptation to lure you away.
23 "`Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses-if you can put riders on them! 24 How can you repulse one officer of the least of my master’s officials, even though you are depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? 25 Furthermore, have I come to attack and destroy this place without word from the LORD? The LORD himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.’"
Satan is a cruel tempter. He will taunt you as he taunted King Hezekiah. He will ridicule you, he will challenge everything you believe in or think you believe in. he will try to overwhelm you with fear. He doesn’t play fair and he will attack you in your most vulnerable areas. If the devil can’t get you to serve him through temptation and sin, he will threaten to destroy you.
Listen, when you are in a fight with Satan and his demons, there is no way you are going to win operating in your own strength. He’ll just mock you and then run over you.
26 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, and Shebna and Joah said to the field commander, "Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall."
27 But the commander replied, "Was it only to your master and you that my master sent me to say these things, and not to the men sitting on the wall-who, like you, will have to eat their own filth and drink their own urine?"
28 Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew: "Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! 29 This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you from my hand. (This was true, King Hezekiah was not strong enough militarily to defeat Sennacherib. And we are not strong enough in ourselves to defeat Satan. We can’t fight the enemy by ourselves, otherwise we will be soundly defeated.)
30 Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD when he says, `The LORD will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’
This is the mission statement of the Devil. His number 1 job is to prevent us from trusting in God. Because if he can prevent us from trusting in God then we have purchased a ticket on the fast train to hell. If you have allowed the Devil to prevent you from turning to God and receiving Jesus Christ as your personal savior, you are bound for hell. Today is the day to trade in your tickets for hell for tickets to heaven. The tickets to heaven were have already been paid for by the death of Jesus on the Cross. Come to Jesus today.
Right now the Devil is probably telling you not to listen to me. It’s an ancient tactic. Right now the Devil is running through your mind all kinds of reasons you should not listen to me and turn to God today. This is nothing new – let’s read verse 31.
31 "Do not listen to Hezekiah. This is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, 32 until I come and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey. Choose life and not death!
The Devil will entice you with empty promises – but the Devil’s delights always have a hook in them. The Assyrians were basically saying to the Jews of Jerusalem, “Hey, come be our slaves and we’ll treat you real good – it’s better than death.”
The Devil does the same thing, he says, “Come be my slaves and I’ll treat you real good.” He promises you the world and you end up a miserable, low life, slave. A slave to debt, a slave to work, a slave to sin, a slave to compulsive behaviors. If you listen to the Devil and follow him, you’ll just end up being his kick-dog. Unhappy, unfulfilled, unproductive, completely lacking meaning or purpose in life. In the end you’ll die a miserable wretch – empty, with nothing to show for your life.
"Do not listen to Hezekiah, for he is misleading you when he says, `The LORD will deliver us.’ 33 Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? 34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah? Have they rescued Samaria from my hand? 35 Who of all the gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me? How then can the LORD deliver Jerusalem from my hand?"
36 But the people remained silent and said nothing in reply, because the king had commanded, "Do not answer him."
The people had every right to be scared out of their sandals. The Assyrians were known as the cruelest people on earth. When they captured a town, they would impale lagre numbers of people alive. The would decapitate scores of others and pile their heads outside the city gates. The captured king and his officials were publically drawn and quartered and they buried the children alive in trench graves. Then they took the rest of the people and made them slaves and treated them cruely.
This is a gruesome picture, I know, but it doesn’t even compare to how Satan is going to treat you if you don’t know Jesus as your personal Savior.
Alright, so what was the response of King Hezekiah to all this great news:
37 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary and Joah son of Asaph the recorder went to Hezekiah, with their clothes torn, and told him what the field commander had said.
2 Kings 19
19:1 When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the temple of the LORD. 2 He sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary and the leading priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 3 They told him, "This is what Hezekiah says: This day is a day of distress and rebuke and disgrace, as when children come to the point of birth and there is no strength to deliver them. 4 It may be that the LORD your God will hear all the words of the field commander, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to ridicule the living God, and that he will rebuke him for the words the LORD your God has heard. Therefore pray for the remnant that still survives."
Alright, notice what King Hezekiah does here:
1. He tore his clothes and dressed in sackcloth. (an act of repentance and desperation.)
2. He went to church (He went to the Temple to wait on God.)
3. He called on his pastor the prophet Isaiah to pray for him. (Notice that Hezekiah asked Isaiah to “pray to your God” for him.)
King Hezekiah was at the height of his personal faith crisis, and he was heading in the right direction. He was choosing to turn to God, but he did not yet have a personal relationship with God, otherwise he would have prayed to God himself.
Hezekiah had to die to himself and submit his will entirely to God. The same thing we must do before we can truly come to Christ.
5 When King Hezekiah’s officials came to Isaiah, 6 Isaiah said to them, "Tell your master, `This is what the LORD says: Do not be afraid of what you have heard-those words with which the underlings of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. 7 Listen! I am going to put such a spirit in him that when he hears a certain report, he will return to his own country, and there I will have him cut down with the sword.’"
Wow! What great news! The enemy is going to be defeated.
King Hezekiah decided to put his trust in God and God assured him through the prophetic word of Isaiah that the enemy would go down in flames!
Now, you need to know something, when you turn to God and receive Christ as your personal Savior, the Devil will not leave you alone. It is true, you are no longer his slave and he no longer has power over you. But that doesn’t stop him from trying to get you back as his slave – dog.
8 When the field commander heard that the king of Assyria had left Lachish, he withdrew and found the king fighting against Libnah.
9 Now Sennacherib received a report that Tirhakah, the Cushite king [of Egypt], was marching out to fight against him. So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah with this word: 10 "Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, `Jerusalem will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.’ 11 Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered? 12 Did the gods of the nations that were destroyed by my forefathers deliver them: the gods of Gozan, Haran, Rezeph and the people of Eden who were in Tel Assar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, or of Hena or Ivvah?"
There it is, another empty threat. Sennacherib basically says, “Don’t think you’re off the hook, I’ll be back to get you and man will I make you suffer.” Satan will never give up trying to shake your faith and get you to turn away from God.
But, there is something different about King Hezekiah now. The thing that is different is that he now has a personal relationship with God. So instead of hiring his pastor to pray for him, he goes into the temple and confidently prays his own prayer before the Lord. And when you know Jesus as your personal Savior, you can do the same thing!
Here is what he did:
14 Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. 15 And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: "O LORD, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. 16 Give ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God.
17 "It is true, O LORD, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands. 18 They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by men’s hands. 19 Now, O LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O LORD, are God."
What a great prayer! It’s honest, heartfelt and powerful.
Listen, God hears and responds to the prayers of a righteous man, woman or child.
20 Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria. 21 This is the word that the LORD has spoken against him:
"`The Virgin Daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you. The Daughter of Jerusalem tosses her head as you flee. 22 Who is it you have insulted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel! 23 By your messengers you have heaped insults on the Lord. And you have said, "With my many chariots I have ascended the heights of the mountains, the utmost heights of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the choicest of its pines. I have reached its remotest parts, the finest of its forests. 24 I have dug wells in foreign lands and drunk the water there. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt."
25 "`Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it. In days of old I planned it; now I have brought it to pass, that you have turned fortified cities into piles of stone. 26 Their people, drained of power, are dismayed and put to shame. They are like plants in the field, like tender green shoots, like grass sprouting on the roof, scorched before it grows up.
27 "`But I know where you stay and when you come and go and how you rage against me. 28 Because you rage against me and your insolence has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will make you return by the way you came.’
29 "This will be the sign for you, O Hezekiah:
"This year you will eat what grows by itself, and the second year what springs from that. But in the third year sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 30 Once more a remnant of the house of Judah will take root below and bear fruit above. 31 For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors.
The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.
32 "Therefore this is what the LORD says concerning the king of Assyria:
"He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here. He will not come before it with shield or build a siege ramp against it. 33 By the way that he came he will return; he will not enter this city, declares the LORD. 34 I will defend this city and save it, for my sake and for the sake of David my servant."
Basically, God is saying to Sennacherib that he can’t lay a finger on Jerusalem, not now, not ever!
Now look what the Lord will do for you when you humbly approach him in worship and prayer:
35 That night the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning-there were all the dead bodies! 36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
Twenty years later this is what happened to King Sennacherib:
37 One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.
The word of God was completely fulfilled!
When the Devil comes against you – you need to go to God, and God will put the Devil to flight. When you know Jesus you can resist the Devil and he will flee.
