40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Kings 18:28-19:19 (Episode 344)

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

The so-called "king of kings" insults God as he threatens and lies to the people of Judah. Hezekiah knows it's better to be humble than to be humbled. And Isaiah isn't worried about the threats of mere men. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS Regional Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, head over to the events page. Try to find that regional event, that Here We Still Stay regional event. It's happening in the spring, May 5th and 6th in beautiful, all-American town of Bentonville, Arkansas. You can come check it out. Hang out with Chad and myself for two days.

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It's going to be a good time. Chad, last week we ended with, well, there's kind of a showdown. You've got some people that are in positions of leadership, positions of authority. We don't know much about how the Assyrian authority structure worked because these guys have titles that we have no idea what they mean. and so they're going to talk to Hezekiah about some terms. Like, hey, let's talk about what's going to go down here. Is there going to be a lot of death? Is there going to be a lot of suffering?

Who are you going to put your trust in? Are there going to be any alliances made? Hezekiah sends out his butler, his scribe, and his historian to have a conversation with these guys, and these guys aren't interested in just having a conversation with them. They want to have a conversation with everyone with an earshot And let them know that if this doesn't go a certain way, that everyone is going to end up in such a position that they might just end up dead. And if they're not dead, they'll be in an undesirable state of living.

I wish they were dead, in other words. Yes. The final verse last week said, look, man, this needs to go a certain way or people are going to end up eating their own dung and drinking their own urine. These are not texts that you hear read in church that much, but don't get mad at the messenger. This is just the word of the Lord. Right there in the Bible. Right there in the Bible. Yeah. So we had to end it right there, and we haven't heard a response yet.

We haven't heard how this is going to play out. And so the tension was high when we left last week. Yeah, it seems at this point as if this Assyrian official known as the Rob Shakir, that's just his title, seems at this point, he's already been addressing not just those three officials sent out by Hezekiah, but he's been addressing everybody. It seems as if now he is, as it were, going to pick up a megaphone. He's going to make sure that every single person is going to hear what he has to say next. This is verse 28 of 2 Kings 18.

Rob Shagash stood and called in a loud voice in the language of Judah. So he's projecting his Hebrew and he's saying, Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. Of course, that was a self-claimed title that the Assyrian king gave to himself, the king of kings. He's the great king. Thus says the king, do not let hezekiah deceive you for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand do not let

hezekiah make you trust in the lord by saying the lord will surely deliver us and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of assyria do not listen to hezekiah for thus says the king of assyria make your peace with me literally in hebrew that's make a blessing with me but it probably just an idiom for, you know, come to terms with me or make your peace with me and come out to me. Then, now notice the contrast with the dung eating and the urine drinking. So if you come to terms with me, then everything will be much better than what I talked about a few minutes ago. Then if you make peace with me, each one of you will eat of his own vine and each one of his own fig tree and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern or the

water of his own well until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, bread and vineyards, olive trees and honey, that you may live and not die. Don't listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying the Lord will deliver us. And I'll stop there for a second he's got to change his tone a little bit right he ended at verse 20 27 ended with this threat the scatological language of dung eating and urine drinking but then he wants to shift gears he he wants his purpose is basically to turn the people of jerusalem against hezekiah that's that's the he's so he's not really addressing hezekiah he's addressing he's addressing the citizens of Hezekiah, basically trying to get them to stage a rebellion and come

out to him. So don't let Hezekiah deceive you. He's telling you to trust in the Lord. Well, that's not going to work out for you. What you need to do is to listen to not King Hezekiah, but the king of Assyria. And you listen to King Sennacherib. And if you do, if you make terms with me then you're going to be eating and drinking some very pleasant things you're drinking your wine you're going to be drinking the water your sister and i'm going to take you to this i'm going to take you away but it's going to be we're going to exile you okay but it's going to be a beautiful paradise this part is like where i wonder if this is this is where you went too far like where people like i don't know man like it sounds pretty good like i mean we're

trading the dung and urine for the fig trees and the vines. That sounds better. I don't know. It seems like you might want to stop there. Don't listen to Hezekiah. Whatever he's telling you is just going to lead to bloodshed. It's not going to work.

You just come out and everything's going to be okay. And then he does this, and I'm going to take you away from here. You're not going to stay here. I'm going to take you to paradise. yeah that's that's where he crossed the line yeah you're like wait a minute like just because you love us so much you're just going to take us to like this better like

why do you if you have such a great place to take us why would you why would you just leave us here like when you go there what do you want what do you want what do you even want with this it just seems like where uh the propaganda has uh crossed the line into like okay now I'm having to suspend disbelief a little more than I'm comfortable with. Yeah, he jumped the shark there, definitely. I mean, he talks about, I'll take you to a land like your own land. It's very similar. You won't even notice that you're gone, really.

It's going to be great. It's got grain and wine and bread and vineyards and olive trees and honey. And you just live there, and you'll never die. that's just i mean it just sounds like way over the top little little too utopian yeah yeah uh well that that is a a typical temptation of uh rhetoricians like this guy just to you know instead of stopping right where he should have he's gonna push it just to maybe a little farther and then people are like i don't know i i smell a rat this sounds a little bit too good to be true Yeah, they might be like, what's this land called?

And he's like, it's called the Gulag. That's what it's called. Yeah. Real pleasant place. People love it there. Yeah. You'll never come back from it, but man, it's just a wonderful paradise. Let me tell you all about it.

So when he ends there with that part of it, but then he shifts back to Hezekiah. He says, don't listen, Hezekiah. He's telling you that the Lord will deliver you. Now, he kind of contradicts himself, you know, because earlier he said, the Lord sent me, right? The Lord sent me, the Lord sent me, the king of Assyria, to destroy you. So earlier he said that. Well, now he's going to basically turn around and undermine what he said earlier. He says, has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the king of Assyria?

Were the gods of Hamath and Arpad, were the gods of Sepharvaim and Hina and Iva, have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their lands out of my hand that Yahweh should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand? So on the one hand, he says, God sent me, and on the other hand, he's like, God can't help you. Yeah, it seems like – and this is – of course, I'm a big hardcore history fan. Dan Carlin does have a multi-part series called The King of Kings, which has to do with – It's very good. It's very good. Yeah, very good.

It's very, very good. And there really was this – not that the Assyrians didn't have gods and stuff, but the King of Kings thing is very much like, look, guys, I am God. But that's who you're dealing with here. yes i mean like the king of assyria like to call himself king of kings is like i i am on top you know the king of assyria might have a god theoretically you know that he worships whatever but as far as all other gods are concerned he's more of a god than them in in his mind so your puny little gods are no match for the king of kings which is me yeah it's it is a great thing to keep in mind when you're thinking about the ancient world i mean egypt pharaoh wasn't just

like the president of egypt he was the son he was a god right he was the incarnation of the god so and same in assyria i mean these so to have a king was one step away from having a god or in some cases not one step away at all and kind of keep that in mind too when you're thinking about one of the reasons that uh that god didn't want the israelites to have a king initially right well because you see what happens you know you're you're setting yourself up for uh a huge problem so this guy i mean he's got there's there's egos and then they see it then there's the the king of kings assyrian ego it's a huge um so that's that's what you're that's what you're dealing with here he's the he's the king of kings he's the divine person in charge at least according to to uh to

the way he thinks of himself by the way if you are just like reading second king so it would it wouldn't uh hurt you to listen to the king of kings series on that it does you're gonna get a full color picture of like who exactly and what exactly the people of israel are dealing with here oh yeah i listened to it i think it's a couple years ago uh well first of all he's just a fantastic communicator fantastic podcaster but he really does he introduces you to that whole world I mean, by the time you're done with that, you feel like you really know where these guys are coming from and the impact that they had. It's a yeah, it's a fantastic series. All right, so speech ended, right?

This was this was his rhetorical attempt to undermine the authority of Hezekiah to to scare the people and then to turn around and kind of cajole them into surrendering and then taking them to this utopian gulag called Assyria and where everything would just be so wonderful for them. So that's where he kind of ends by telling them. He's anticipating something. He ends the speech. You know he has to be thinking, all right, now the response. Are the people going to start shouting and running out to me?

What is going to happen here? It's just crickets. crickets yeah the people were silent yeah not really the response you want from a speech no you know i mean little applause i mean even booing something some kind of verbal response starts rising up you know like you know yeah you know death to hezekiah i don't know something uh nothing yeah and i like and i like the reason for it you know it has here in 36 that the people were silent and answer him not a word for the king's command was do not answer them this tells me that hezekiah is uh he's a little bit he's a little smart he's a little shrewd so yeah he must

have thought there was a possibility that something like this would go down and said told the people uh like we're not going there's no response to whatever is said we don't do it and despite how crazy this speech was and how much dread he was trying to strike in the hearts of these people they did do what Hezekiah said which was don't respond and maybe the reason you might

not respond even though the speech is that way is that if Hezekiah saw something like this coming this does actually boost your confidence in him hey they may try to do something like this don't listen to it

yeah it's it's commendable i mean it it's it's commendable on the part of the people and it's with the fact that uh they did actually listen to listen to hezekiah so uh the fact that they didn't respond it indicates some implicit trust in him you know he he foresaw this he told us don't do this and and they didn't do that so they didn't listen to they did listen to his voice the voice of hezekiah and they didn't listen to what the assyrian official said in this sense of uh obeying him so signs are good i mean maybe this is all gonna all gonna work out well the speech is over the people are silent uh then eliakim son of hilkiah over the household shevin of the secretary joe the son of base after a quarter so these three officials they go to hezekiah we don't

know where hezekiah was uh this this whole time i mean was he listening was was he back in the palace we we don't know but they go to him with their clothes torn and they reported everything that had been spoken by rob shaka by this assyrian official well hezekiah of course now is the moment of of uh of at the crossroads moment of decision he's got to do something i mean he's already He earlier, earlier, he had already paid the penalty that the Assyrian king had leveled against him, all that gold and silver that we talked about in the last episode. So what's he going to do this time? Is he going to plead for mercy? Is he going to try and buy him off again?

What's his tactic going to be at this point? Because, you know, something has to happen. So chapter 19, verse 1 introduces us to his response. we read that as soon as king hezekiah heard it as soon as he heard this report he tore his clothes that's a good sign covered himself with sackcloth another good sign and went into the house of the lord which is the best sign of all so often we associate the tearing of clothes and wearing of sackcloth with mourning but it's there's plenty of instances where it's not like mourning over the death of someone but what you might call just a time of high anxiety in this

case i think in other cases in scripture too there's this coming to the end of yourself uh there's a desperation uh attached to this so this is the king i mean for the king to like tear his garments cover himself in sackcloth uh this is obviously a a statement of humility and a human and what you're what you're doing is you're saying that i've come to the end of what i can do i mean there's you have you have no options here in and of yourself yeah that's uh that's a great way to put it it's uh you've come to the end of yourself there's no other resources to which you can turn and so as a way of expressing that kind of emptiness i guess you could say then you tear your clothes you put on sackcloth as an outward sign of what's going on inside you and then he

didn't just do that but now he actually does what he should have done to begin with he goes to the house of the lord not in order to see if there's more gold or silverware silver there which he can strip away but rather he's going to uh he's going to pray as we'll as we'll hear about in a few more verses so he's at the temple and then uh he sends these officials again eliakim and shevna and the senior priests so he's bringing them into the picture probably they were at the temple and And so he gathers them together and they all have put on sackcloth as well. So his officials and the head priest, all wearing sackcloth, are sent by the king to the prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz. And of course, this is the same Isaiah that his book is named after.

so isaiah is about to hear from them what hezekiah has to say so they're they're relaying the message to him and they say thus says hezekiah this day is a day of distress of rebuke and of disgrace so in in hebrew it's the sarah tokeha navatsa kind of have this this assonance to all three of these So distress, of course, because of everything going on, rebuke because of what they've just heard from the Caesarian official, the speech that he gave, and then the disgrace because they're kind of, they're, they're trapped. There's nowhere for them, for them to go. So a day of distress, a day of rebuke, a day of disgrace.

And then they use this metaphor. They say children have come to the point of birth and there is no strength to, to bring them, bring them forth. literally children have come to the uh mash bear in hebrew uh which is like a it's formed from the verb for for like a an opening or breaking point so literally it's like children children have come to the cervical opening we might say that's one of the ways this is this is translated so you got a child there and it's like it's ready to emerge into the world and yet the mom is completely lacking in strength she can't she can't push there's no way that she can deliver this child

that's that's kind of the the image that's being put forward here there there is no strength i mean it's a it's a momentous time and yet they're powerless to do anything to to bring about a deliverance we might say literally with the metaphor and then in literal uh political terms as well but it seems that maybe part of this too is you know hezekiah is trying you know you're talking about a guy who took down the high places, he's a guy that wanted to sort of get Israel back into a relationship with God based on fidelity of worship. He had an idea of what this could look like for the people to get back to what they were supposed to be. And as soon as he does this, he's got this great threat

and I think that when you talk about this child is ready to be born language that hey everything's ready for Israel to be the people of God again and it turns out we don't have the strength to make that happen because

we have this huge threat that we can't do anything about it's a great reminder too that so here you have a great king i mean indisputably a great king he's godly he's keeping the he's keeping the word of god yeah he's not perfect but i mean he's he's so much better than all these other kings that they've had all this time so you would think that the result would be that everything would just be wonderful

in israel and yet it's not you know so in other words fidelity the kind of fidelity that hezekiah was showing is no guarantee of our prosperity right is the point i'm trying to make i mean Very often what happens when you have fidelity is you also have a period of trying and testing after that. So there's no guarantee. It's not like you put your coins of obedience and fidelity into the divine vending machine, and now comes this wonderful life.

That's just not the way that God works. And that's kind of where Israel is at this point anyway. so they use the image of the the child about to be born no strength to bring them forth and then you go on in verse four it may be that the lord your god has heard all the words of the rabshakeh so possibly god was listening to this right maybe god heard this speech that the assyrian official gave well yeah probably a high likelihood that god did hear this speech He probably did. He probably heard it.

He hears most things. He probably heard it. Yeah, yeah. It's a very good sense of hearing God has. So maybe God heard all these words that whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to mock the living God. And if he did hear these mocking words, then maybe he will rebuke the words that the Lord your God has heard. therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is that is left so that's a message that the king sends through his officials and the priest to take to the prophet isaiah so isaiah

listen um i don't know if you're aware of what's going on but this is a really really really bad bad day for us uh everybody's kind of in distress all these terrible things were said against our god and who knows you know maybe god heard maybe he's going to do something about it he's going to stand up for himself. So what we need you to do is to pray. That's what we want you. We want you to become an intercessor for us and to stand up before God and to pray for us. And Isaiah, it's like Isaiah doesn't even, he's like, oh, I don't need to pray. I know exactly what kind of response God has for you here. So after this, we read, when the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah,

Isaiah, he's got the message already. He says, here's what I want you to say to your master. Thus says the Lord, don't be afraid of the words that you have heard, with which the, so it's ESV has,

with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me. I love Robert Alter translates this as the flunkies of the king of Assyria. it's a different word than servants and because you would expect servants but instead what you find here is it kind of has the connotation of

like these yeah these flunkies these flunkies that show up from the king of Assyria and give their little speech out there well don't you worry about that don't be afraid of them they've reviled me here's what I'm going to do verse 7

behold I will put a spirit in him probably one of these lying spirits i expect that we heard about elsewhere behold i put a spirit in him so here's here's what's going to happen he's going to hear a rumor and he's going to return to his own land and not only that but i will make him fall by the sword in his own land he's got a lot of the the prophetic confidence right yeah as he's like oh yeah well here's what here's what god says this this this and this dude ah don't worry about him or what his flunkies have said he's gonna die yeah isaiah seems very much like shake it off boys it's gonna like like oh god heard it all right and he did not

like it yeah it's like you have a whole city you know everybody's listening to this speech hezekiah tears his clothes puts on sackcloth all his officials have on sackcloth everybody's worried oh my god we're at the point of childbirth no strength and isaiah's just sitting there calm as calm can be he's like oh yeah yeah no nothing to see here nothing to worry about whatsoever that dude out there the the king like the king of kings the guy who thinks he's a god yeah he's dead yeah he's gonna die yeah this is like we talked about this uh last episode but But Isaiah doesn't say, listen to the word of the Lord and do what it is I'm about to say. Nope, that's not what he does.

This time he says, get dressed, guys, and watch. And when it's time to watch, it means that God's about to do all the work. Yeah, those are the best points in the Old Testament story. I love those moments where everybody is just totally losing it. And this one guy, maybe it's Elijah or Elisha or Isaiah or whoever it might be, who's just like the calm in the midst of the storm because they're the one person who knows what God has said, trusts what God has said and says, ah, no, you're fine. God heard and God will act. Well, this is how this works so often is that, you know, the prophets, when the leader comes and he's at the end of them, you know, at the end of himself, the prophets are usually like, perfect. That's great.

That's exactly where you want to be. That's right where you want to be. Like, oh, you've exhausted every resource you have. You have no plan. That's just the sort of time that God does something. Is it John Zoll saying where God's office is at the end of your rope? Yeah. Yeah.

yeah that's where god likes to work yeah well luther uh in in luther's magnificent commentary he talks about how you know god created the world out of nothing and uh that's still the way that he likes to likes to work so the less we have to offer god the more he has to work with yeah it seems like for a prophet a prophet gets a gets an eye full of sackcloth and ashes and it's like oh we're it's on now like that's that's a great that's a great sign for a prophet the prophet sees some sackcloth and ashes on a king or official or a priest or something like that, and he knows that this is exactly the space that God is looking to work in. Broken to contrite spirit, that's where God likes to work.

That's his workshop for sure. And he loves it especially, I think, when it is a leader like a king, someone from an exalted, high, powerful position who is now wearing sackcloth. Well, this is the stuff that Jesus says too. I mean, all, and the apostles later, like, God consistently is like, okay, I will humble the proud, and I will elevate the humble. I mean, this is, like, consistent throughout Scripture. This is how he does it. And so when you take someone who, you know, not that Hezekiah is proud, but he's in a position of prestige, he's the king, it is a lofty and high position.

And when that person humbles himself, and we know this is obviously all over Scripture, Hezekiah has not been humbled yet, he hasn't lost yet, but he has humbled himself, that God is all about that. And the Scriptures are very clear that God is all about that. Yeah, well, he's in that low spot where God likes to work. And, I mean, we all know that, like, the sin of arrogance, the sin of pride, I mean, well, that's a place where God can't work except by breaking that pride. That's why he's always lowering in order that he might work in that broken and contrite heart. Yeah, and that's a credit to Hezekiah as well, is that there are times, of course, in Scripture where God humbles somebody, but this is not really what's happened to Hezekiah. hezekiah has humbled himself which is different uh hezekiah has realized that the humbling is coming and he's like got out in front of it right he's he's like you know what uh i'm gonna go ahead

and just voluntarily uh reduce myself it was funny it hasn't really worked out like that in my own life i'm like yeah like i never really got ahead of that yeah but every time that i found myself severely humbled it's because yeah god came along with a hammer and uh and and that's that's how i end up humbled i i need to i need to maybe do the way i think that way of hezekiah might be a little bit better way to get out ahead of that so self-humbling is much but much better experience than the god humbling i take my word for it yeah so you can you can be humble or you can be humbled and those those are the options yeah and one is a little easier than the other indeed okay so uh isaiah has has delivered his speech and uh at the end he predicts the the

death of sennacherib back in his own land now we're we'll see that happen it's not going to happen like in the next verse but uh now you know you know the end of the story before you've even got to, to the end of the story. So verse eight tells us that this Assyrian official by the name of Rabshakeh, by the title of Rabshakeh, he goes back, but he finds it that the, uh, the Assyrians are no longer at Lachish. They moved on. They moved on to another place called Libna, which is, uh, from, I think I'm doing this from memory, but I'm pretty sure that we don't know exactly that location, but most scholars project it's about 10 miles or so from Lachish, but either way it's another judean city so they moved on from lakish they've conquered that already

and now they're going to this other place and then not only that but the king heard about this king of kush uh which is on the opposite side of of egypt this uh king by the name of tir haka and he's come out to fight against them so he's got in other words he's he's he's moved to a different city, but now he hears about another threat coming. So at this point, probably Sennacherib is thinking to himself, okay, I got to make a decision here because his forces are going to be too spread out. He can't deal with Hezekiah. He can't do a siege against Jerusalem and also protect himself against the Kushite forces that are probably going to be moving against him. So he's going to have to do something differently. So the first thing he does is he sends messengers back to

Hezekiah. And he says, thus you shall speak to Hezekiah, king of Judah. Don't let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered them? The nations that my fathers destroyed? Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hema, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of the Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Eva? So on and on. Well, this was a speech that was actually written down in a letter. So Sennacherib has this letter written, and he's going to send

it back to Hezekiah. Does it seem like what he's doing here is like he's going to make a decision, So even if he has to delay in his sieging of Jerusalem, he wants Hezekiah to know, like, hey, just because I'm not there tomorrow, you know, devoting your city to destruction, it is going to—I'm just—I got something else I got to deal with, but I am coming. I'll be back. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's definitely what's going on here. And there's some arrogance here, too, because what it seems like he's also doing is like, I want you to think for a minute that you uttered some prayer, and then God responded, and then I left. Don't get it twisted. That is not what happened here. Don't get the wrong idea here. When he says, shall you be delivered, that's all over the Psalms, by the way.

So this kind of speech of an enemy of God's people, you'll find that alluded or quoted in the Psalms. So, for instance, Psalm 22, the crucifixion psalm, a part of it reads, all who see me mock me. They make mouths at me. They wag their heads saying, he trusts in the Lord. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him because he delights in him. So it's the same kind of taunt, the same kind of trying to undermine what God promises. That's found throughout the scriptures, found throughout the psalms.

And that's what's being said here. You're not going to be delivered by God. Don't be so delusional as to think that God is on your side and he's going to be the one who delivers you. I think it's interesting, too. I think this line is interesting where it talks about how he's like, hey, look, they don't forget about what the king of Assyria has done to all lands. And it says, devoting them to destruction, which is very, very much what God tells his people to do to idolatrous lands. uh this sounds yeah and uh and i don't know if that's the same word in hebrew yeah i don't know i don't know if he's doing that on purpose but there's something there where uh if you're coming

up against judah who by the way needs to remain because i don't know if you know this but like jesus uh comes out of judah so you're gonna need that and then this guy says i'm gonna devote you to destruction uh this seems like a further taunting of god where it's like no no bro i wouldn't say that to to the people of god that you're you're going to devote them to destruction because i'm fairly certain that that's what he said that they were going to do to you yeah just just about the time that you think the king of assyria has reached like the height of arrogance you realize it's a false peak and there's actually another another height of arrogance beyond that that he's gonna he's gonna go to i mean this guy i don't know how he walks his head is so heavy

uh he's so he's so full of himself so he writes this in the letter hezekiah uh who uh according to sennacherib's own records uh he says i trapped hezekiah like a bird in a cage in in jerusalem that's his own metaphor for for what he did with with hezekiah so hezekiah and in in the cage of jerusalem receives this letter and i love what he does with it he uh He takes it, he reads it, and then he carries it to the temple and he spreads it out before God. You can just kind of picture him. He's a little page here, spreading this out right before, as close to the temple as he can get. He spreads out this letter and then he prays and he says,

O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands. They've cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone.

Therefore, they were destroyed. So now, O Lord, our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone. That's a heck of a prayer. It's pretty good. It's a pretty good prayer. If in your prayer you say something like, save me, God usually responds with yes to that.

Yeah. Yeah. You call upon the Lord and you ask him to save you. Well, there you go. What else do you need to say? Just like, Lord, have mercy. You call upon God to have mercy. He will.

You got to love this, too, because what you might be tempted to do is say, save us, O Lord, they're unrighteous, and of course we are righteous, or they're idolaters and we worship you. But Hezekiah is a good theologian and knows that that's not the way to do it. You don't want to contrast your goodness with their badness. Instead, he talks about all the stuff that they've done and how all these other gods they destroyed and all this stuff, but says, hey, save us from him that everyone may know that you are God. Don't do it because we're good or we deserve it or we've earned it or anything like that. Do it so that everyone will know that there is a real, a true, and an only God. and they'll know that they'll know that there is one true god in the very act of saving yes which makes us even better yeah how will everybody know that there's only one true god

well in his saving actions toward his people and in in his divine salvation then all people will know that he's not a gold of silver or bronze or wood or stone but he's the true and the living God who made the heavens and the earth. And he's just as much the God over the Assyrians as he is the God of the Israelites and the God over the Egyptians. He's the God who made the heavens and the earth. So yeah, his approach in this prayer is just picture perfect. This is exactly the kind of language he should use, the way that he should call upon God. And as we'll here in the next episode, Isaiah will tell him, God heard your prayer, and God's going to answer your prayer, and here's how he's going to do that. Yeah, awesome. Well, all right. Well, we will

leave it there. We'll leave it on a good prayer. I like it. That's a good way to end. Hezekiah has done the praying for us, and we will pick it up next week to see what Isaiah has to say concerning all of these things. I'll see you next week, Chad. All right, see you then. We'll see you next time.