Security; False Utopic Dreams vs. The
Faithful God. 2 Kings 18:5-12
We never know when we are
going to face a crisis. We never know whether the crisis or the challenge that
comes our way is something that is going to be just a minor irritant, something
that will be cleared up maybe in the next matter of days, or whether it is
actually going to turn into something that will perhaps wreck all of our
expectations and hopes and dreams in life. We never know what will happen when
we wake up in the morning what the day might bring. Some days it might be joy
and happiness when things are relatively stable and we feel like we have
accomplished something and gone forward, but there are those times in life when
we face certain situations and things happen. There are storms of life, whether
they are literal storms that come along through a hurricane, tornado or
flood—natural disasters that seem to have peppered the news a lot lately. The
economy of the world, not to mention the economy of the United States that is stretched
beyond any reasonable limit with its debt so exorbitant that it is unreasonable
to expect to be able to pay it off and have a solvent currency, puts all of us
in the realm of jeopardy financially. Our hopes and dreams for retirement, for
financial stability, literally disappear over night through various things that
can transpire—instabilities in the markets, war, disasters that we can’t
imagine. So we have to ask a question: On what do we really base our hopes and
our expectations and security? Any of these things can, and do, come along in
the course of our lives and other people’s lives, not to mention the more
personal things that can occur by just going to the doctor and being told we
are now in stage three cancer and not much can be done about it, or coming home
to find out that due to a gas leak the house burned down, or many of the other
things that can happen.
We don’t like to think about
these things. People tend to be very optimistic, maybe too optimistic, and
think that everything is going to go along because we are products of a culture
that created an unrealistic view of life. We in American have had the privilege
of living in the most affluent, prosperous society that has existed in the
history of the human race. We have more free time, more luxuries, the luxury of
more disposable income and time that any people in all of history. We often
delude ourselves into thinking that as things have been in the past so they
will be in the future, and we live in a culture that because of at the root of
the worldview that dominates American culture that has denied the reality that
the Bible talks about of living in a fallen and imperfect world, a world that
has been placed under the curse and judgment of sin, we think that the culture
by rejecting those ideas thinks that somehow we can find security and stability
if we can just control the environment, if we can just control the
political-social environment, if we can just control and prevent war, then
somehow we can have stability and security in life. And when we live in a pipe
dream like that we will be radically disappointed. This is evident throughout
our culture that there are so many of us who live in the realm of unrealistic
expectations, and when we live in a world of unrealistic expectations then when
those expectations are not met there is crushing defeat, disappointment, anger
and resentment. All of this cultural anger that we see, the suppressed anger
that comes boiling up every now and then, is because for the most part when
people reject any kind of absolute truth, any sort of absolute knowledge, and a
God who can provide real security—not in circumstances, not in the details of
life—they must put their hopes, dreams and sense of security in somehow
controlling the details of life. And who is better to control those details of
life than the government! Right? If we just pass a law, if we just get the
right person in power then they can control things. To place upon them an
expectation that they can control the consequences of a natural disaster goes
beyond all realms of expectation. The government cannot control the weather;
the environment cannot ultimately be controlled by government dictum or by
charismatic leaders. Too often in history people have put their hopes and
dreams in governments, empires and personalities.
That is what lies at the
heart of the challenge that we read about in 2 Kings chapter 18. We are
beginning our study of the Assyrian crisis that comes to the southern
In the Old Testament there is
a word that is used that, depending upon its word endings and its various
cognates, can mean faithfulness, truth, and stability and certainty, because
the root of that word has to do with that which provides an absolute,
unshakeable foundation. That is the Hebrew noun emeth, also amen which
relates to belief. It is an objective belief in objective reality based on the
character of God. So we can either put our hopes for security in man or in the
institutions of man, or individual human beings, or some sort of utopic
ideal—Marxism, socialism, and various other isms which emphasize some kind of
societal perfection—which all denies at its very core the reality of evil. If
you don’t have an absolute God of absolute righteousness then you don’t have a
basis for talking about evil, because you don’t have an external reference
point by which you can define good or evil. Good and evil are defined in
Scripture from the vantage point of an absolute character of God, and evil is
defined in Scripture foundationally not in terms of some action that goes
beyond the norm of bad things that people do, evil is defined in terms of
disloyalty to God. That is why when we read in Kings that so and so did evil in
the sight of the Lord it always goes back to idolatry, an act of disloyalty
toward God and putting hopes and dreams and faith in something other than God.
This is ultimately what brought divine discipline upon the northern kingdom of
We are in a time here in 2
Kings 18 that is around 701 BC, a date for the invasion of the southern
This is the key to having
a mental attitude of stability and security that is not in things that we think
will give us security, but where the focus is in the Lord. Lamentations
This is the same mentality
of young king Hezekiah. We have seen that what prepares them ultimately for the
crisis that comes in 701 is the spiritual revival in the true biblical sense of
the term—spiritual rededication to God in the nation—under the leadership of
Hezekiah when he first became king in 715. He prepared the nation first by
cleansing the temple, reopening the temple; the people responded in obedience
by destroying the idols and all of the alternate worship sites. In other words,
what has to happen for a culture to shift is that it is not just an academic
shift in belief but the thought systems—the worldviews, the value systems, the ethical
systems that are the outgrowth of those false worldviews—have to be destroyed.
This is the significance of the people in the southern kingdom going out and
destroying these temples. This is the same idea that the apostle Paul expresses
in 2 Corinthians 10 that we are to take every thought captive for Christ. We
are destroying fortresses and every lofty thing lifted up against the Word of
God. It is ultimately a combat between thought systems. This sets the stage for
understanding the real battle—the real core foundational issue in the
battle—that takes place between Sennacherib and the Assyrians and Hezekiah and
the Jews. When we get into the later part of this chapter and the section
dealing with what the representatives of Sennacherib say: How can you trust
Hezekiah? We have defeated all these other cultures, their gods didn’t help
them; your God is not going to help you.
This is the same basic
argument we hear all the time: How do you know Christianity is true? It’s just
like every other religion and all of that is, as Marx says, the opiate of the
masses. It really has no objective value; religion is just something that is
going to have subjective meaning for you. What the Rabshakeh will say to the
Jews is: Don’t trust in God; don’t put your faith and hope in Him, He can’t
deliver you. Of course he will learn otherwise because the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob is just as real at that time as He was to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob; and He is the God who is still in control of the history of mankind.
2 Kings 18:5 NASB
“He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel; so that after him there was none
like him among all the kings of Judah, nor {among those} who were before him.
The word “trust” in verse
5 is in a past tense form but it is the Hebrew word batach which is used many times in the Old Testament, but it is a
different focus on trust than, for example, the word “belief” in amen. The latter refers to an objective
belief in God where as batach focuses
more on a subjective aspect. There are no clear similar words in other
languages other than in Arabic which has a word which has to do with
stretched-out or something that is tight and gives the basic idea of something that is firm or solid and
unshakeable. That relates also to the foundational idea that is in the word amen, that which gives stability. In
Hebrew the usage of the word batach
it focuses more on the subjective dimension of faith in that it provides a
sense of wellbeing and security which results from having placed one’s
confidence in something or someone that is unshakeable. So the focus is not on
the subjective sense of believing God but in the subjective result of that in
that it provides us with stability and security and confidence in times of
crisis, so that we do not fall apart, push the panic button and get all upset,
but that we can relax because our confidence is in God.
It is interesting that
when the rabbis translated the Old Testament into Greek—the Septuagint—they did
not translate batach with the Greek
word for belief but rather they translated batach
with the Greek word for hope. Think about that. Why would they do that? Because
that brings out the essence of the idea in this subjective view of faith and
trust here: we can have confidence and be secure in our life only because our
hope is in God. The Greek word elpis
[e)lpij], “hope,” focuses on a confident future expectation.
The biblical idea of hope is a confident certainty, an expectation that things
will occur in a certain way. We can only think that way if the one who made the
promise can actually guarantee its results. So the trust that we are focusing
on here with Hezekiah is that he has a confident hope, his security is not in
anything temporal. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have a strong military; he did.
He did other things as he saw the Assyrian threat progress, so it doesn’t mean
that he didn’t take proper precautions, it means that ultimately he takes
normal procedures but his hope and confidence is ultimately in God as the one
who is the ultimate guarantor of his security.
Hezekiah “clung to [held
fast to] the Lord.” This is the Hebrew word which means to cleave to something.
The most famous use of this word is at the end of Genesis chapter two where
Moses says that for this reason men are to leave their parents and cleave to
their wife. It does have a sexual connotation in places but in other places it
just talks about loyalty and affection and binding one’s self to someone else
through a promise or a commitment. Jeremiah
2 Kings 18:7 NASB “And the LORD was with
him; wherever he went he prospered. And he rebelled against the king of
What this reminds us of is
that when we face certain crises, certain situations in life, ultimately the
only source of stability is trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. We must recognize
that there is a connection between hope and trust, in the sense of security,
and in obedience and the consequences of divine blessing. The trouble is we can’t
measure these empirically. We can’t go out and say that if we are obedient to
this degree then God blesses us to that degree. What the Scripture says is that
if we are obedient to the Lord and walking with Him then He is is our strength
and shield. He is the one who gives us protection and no matter what else is
happening around us we are protected by the Lord; we are protected by that wall
of fire and it doesn’t matter what else is going on, God is the one who
protects us.
As we look at this we will
see that Hezekiah will face a personal challenge and a national challenge, and
he has to use the same techniques, the same spiritual skills to face this
crisis that we do in any crisis that comes our way. It relates basically to two
foundational doctrines. One is the sufficiency of God’s power, i.e. God’s power
is all we need to protect us from any circumstance or situation in life. That
doesn’t mean that of we go into battle or if there is a catastrophe that we
won’t lose our life or possessions. It doesn’t mean that all of our hopes and
dreams won’t be dashed. What it means is that we as individuals will be
protected by God. It may be God’s plan for us not to realize those hopes and
dreams and aspirations that we have had because His plan is something else.
What happens so often is
that we seek security in money and what money can buy, in the military, in the
police, in friends, in jobs, in technology. Politically governments seek
security in alliances and foreign powers, through various treaties and other things.
None of that provides the security that only God can provide. There are certain
principles and promises that we have to remember and that were on Hezekiah’s
mind when he was young. For example, Psalm 146:3 NASB “Do not trust
in princes, In mortal man, in whom there is no salvation [help].” Jeremiah
17:5, 7 NASB “Thus says the LORD, “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind And makes
flesh his strength, And whose heart turns away from the LORD…. Blessed
is the man who trusts in the LORD And whose trust [hope: confident expectation] is the LORD.” This is
the way Hezekiah thought early on. Psalm 18:2 NASB “The LORD is my rock
and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge [batach]; My shield and the horn of my
salvation, my stronghold.” [30] “As for God, His way is blameless; The word of
the LORD is tried [proven]; He is a shield to all who take refuge [batach] in Him.” Psalm 91:2 NASB
“I will say to the LORD, ‘My refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I
trust!’ … [4] He will cover you with His pinions, And under His wings you may
seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.” He alone gives us
security because He never changes. Everything else in life changes.
At this early stage in his
life Hezekiah recognized the principle that if God is for us who can be against
us. So if God is our security then whatever measures we take God is going to
protect us because He is our source of security. But if our source of security
is in the things of this world then that will always fail us and we will always
be disciplined, our expectations will never be realized and when those hard
times come—whether they are personal or national—the only thing that gives us
hope and stability is God because He alone is the one who is in charge. Hezekiah
will learn this, but he forgets it and has to be reminded.