Strategies
for Distraction. 2 Kings 18:19
It is the revelation from God to man that
is constantly being challenged. Despite the fact that we have an overwhelming
amount of evidence people still reject the Bible because the issue isn’t
evidence. The evidence is good for us as believers because it gives us
confirmation that what we believe is true and that we really can trust the
Word. But ultimately it doesn’t matter how much evidence we have on the
veracity of God’s Word, the bottom line is still volition: Do we want to
believe God’s Word? No one had more evidence of the veracity of God and of His
care and His existence than Adam and Eve in the garden, because God came and
spent time with them every day and they heard the self-authenticating authoritative
voice of God every single day. They had more evidence than we could ever
possibly have in an experiential way and yet they chose to disobey God. In the
same way, when the Lord Jesus Christ was on the earth and we had the living
Word of God who revealed God in the flesh, and all that He said and did in
terms of miracles and teaching carried the same weight, authority and validity
as everything that God the Father communicated in the garden to Adam and Eve.
And when we come to the New Testament and see the Lord Jesus Christ on the
earth incarnate He is still rejected, not because there was not enough evidence
but because evidence isn’t the issue and reason isn’t the issue; the problem is
our volition and sin, and despite an overwhelming amount of evidence for the
existence of God and the veracity of His Word, in sin the human race wants to
suppress that truth in unrighteousness.
So the center focus of the battle is
always: are we going to trust God or are we going to seek some other solution
to the problems and challenges that we face in life? Are we really going to
truly take God at His Word and trust Him radically and completely or are we
going to try to solve the problem some other way? Do we believe in the
sufficiency of God’s power and grace, the sufficiency of the Word, or do we
think that somehow we are going to try and solve our problems from our own
resources? Are we going to look somewhere else for help or are we going to
trust God and something else, or maybe bail out and try God as a last resort
after first trying to solve our problems on our own? That is part of what
Hezekiah did when he was faced with the invasion of the Assyrian army and with
the overwhelming power of the Assyrians preceding that invasion because he
tried to buy them off with money, the gold, silver and other objects out of the
temple. Again, Hezekiah was going to try to handle it his own way by trusting
the Egyptians as his allies and as the ultimate resource to give him military
power in order to resist the invading force of Sennacherib.
What this does is depict for us in terms
of a battle—which is how the spiritual life is often depicted in Scripture—and
what it focuses for us is the same issue that we face no matter what our battle
or challenge may be. The battle always comes down to the same issue: are we
going to try to solve the problems, the challenges on our own, or are we going
to trust in God? That becomes the key issue.
2 Kings 18:19 NASB Then Rabshakeh said to them, “Say now to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says
the great king, the king of Assyria, “What is this confidence that you have?”
The Rabshakeh’s mission was an early form of
psychological warfare: twisting and manipulating data in order to forget
trusting in God and to trust in something else. In this we see the classic
strategy that Satan always uses in order destroy our effectiveness in the
spiritual life. The Rabshakeh focuses on the real
central issue, and that is trust. The word that is used in this verse for
confidence and trust is the Hebrew word batach, which has the idea of the expression of assurance,
of confidence, what are you relying upon, what are you depending upon? It is
not a trust in the sense of what it is that you believe,
it has more the idea of what it is that you are placing your confidence, your
hope, your confident expectation. So we see that in this verse the real issue
is trust.
In the Old Testament there are three key
words that are translated “trust.” The first is amen which has the idea of expressing something that we believe. It
comes from the root aman,
which means to believe something, to trust in something. It relates to that
which has a sure and stable foundation. In one place it is used to refer to the
foundation stone that is under the door posts of the temple—that which cannot
be shaken. The idea underlying this word aman is stability, cannot be
shaken, that which provides a firm foundation.
This is used in 2 Chronicles 20:20 NASB
“They rose early in the morning and went out to the wilderness of Tekoa; and when they went out, Jehoshaphat
stood and said, ‘Listen to me, O Judah and inhabitants of
“…put your trust in the LORD
your God and you will be established. Put your trust in His prophets and
succeed.” Putting our trust or believing in Him are
parallel or synonymous concepts. Notice, you first “put your
trust in the Lord and you will be established.” That means you will
stand firm. The way to stand form and have stability in life doesn’t come from
the details of life, it comes from having our trust in
God. The second statement is to “put your trust in His prophets and succeed.”
Why in His prophets? Because the prophet is the one who gives the message of
God. How do we listen to the prophet today? We go to His Word. By putting pour
trust in His Word—meaning the physical Bible, the revelation that he has
given—we are in the same way putting our trust in Him. So this word aman means trust,
and notice that it is trusting God that gives victory.
The second word that we find, the primary
word that is emphasized and translated “trust” in the Old Testament, is the
word batach.
This emphasizes confidence. What are we relying on? What are we depending on?
It is not trust in the abstract, it emphasizes more the result of trust which
is a confident relaxed reliance—what we sometimes call faith-rest, because we
trust God and that allows us to rest and relax in the midst of our
circumstances. This word is used in passages such as Psalm 28:7 NASB
“The LORD
is my strength and my shield; My heart trusts [rests
in confidence] in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart exults, And with my
song I shall thank Him.” The result of putting our confidence in Him and
relaxing in His strength is that we are helped,
strengthened. This leads to praising God which is a part of worship. So there
is this movement from understanding who God is and what He provides for
us—which is why the writer can say the Lord is his strength and shield—leading
to a change of mental attitude because volitionally we are going to put our
trust in God, and this leads to a solution to the problem. Then we rejoice and
praise God.
Psalm 31:6, 14 NASB “I hate
those who regard vain idols, But I trust in the LORD” Notice the “but” which
indicates the contrast. There are those who put their trust and reliance in the
things of creation—money, things, people, various problem-solving techniques
that human viewpoint generates—but we are going to put our trust and hope
solely and exclusively upon God. That is the battle, the contrast. “….
But as for me, I trust in You, O LORD, I say, ‘You are my God.’” David
makes it very personal here: You are my God.
In other passages in the Psalms we see
what we are not supposed to have confidence in. We are not supposed to have
confidence in, for example, military technology. Psalm 44:6 NASB
“For I will not trust in my bow, Nor will my sword
save me.” Does that mean he is not going to take weapons into battle? Of course
not, but he is not relying upon human ability, human skill, human technology to
be the ultimate source of victory. Psalm 49:6 NASB “Even those who
trust in their wealth And boast in the abundance of
their riches?” Does that mean there is something wrong with wealth or
accumulating material things? Not at all, it is only wrong when the
accumulation of wealth and material things is designed to solve the problems
that only God can solve. That is why the apostle Paul in Colossians chapter
three defines greed as idolatry, because when people become greedy in terms of
that materialistic lust what they are doing is assigning to things, to money
and the things that money can buy, and possession of things, a source of
security and stability that only God can provide. At that point it becomes idolatry.
Psalm 52:7, the man who did not make God his strength “But trusted in the
abundance of his riches {And} was strong in his {evil}
desire.” It is not that he strengthened himself by means of wickedness but that
his focus in finding strength and stability somewhere other than God was that
which was wicked.
A third word that is sued in several
passage sin the Old Testament is the Hebrew word shaan, which means to lean on
something. From that is means moving from the physical leaning upon something
to the mental dependency upon something. 2 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
14:2-4 NASB “Asa did good and right in the
sight of the LORD his God,
for he removed the foreign altars and high places, tore down the {sacred}
pillars, cut down the Asherim, and commanded Judah to
seek the LORD God of
their fathers and to observe the law and the commandment.” But then he is faced
with military conflict. [9] “Now Zerah the Ethiopian
came out against them with an army of a million men and 300 chariots, and he
came to Mareshah.” Asa will
clearly be outnumbered but he has God on his side so he doesn’t need anything
else. [10] “So Asa went out to meet him, and they
drew up in battle formation in the
In Genesis 3
the serpent/Satan appeared to the woman: “Did God really say that you can’t eat
of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?” He is questioning
God’s revelation. The Rabshakeh asks the question:
“Where is your confidence?” Today we get the same question: Where is your
confidence? What are you depending upon for happiness in life, for stability in
life, for meaning in life, for solving the problems being faced in life. What are you depending on? Are you focusing on God
ultimately or on the various things that we have in the world system?
Previously
Hezekiah had trusted in himself. He had tried to buy off the Assyrians. Then he
tried to solve the problem by entering into military alliances with the Egyptians,
and the Egyptians did not have the military strength to withstand the
Assyrians. But there is no hope in man, no trust in man; yet that is what
Hezekiah was doing. 2 Kings 18:19 NASB Then Rabshakeh
said to them, Say now to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of
Assyria, “What is this confidence that you have? [20] You say (but {they are}
only empty words), ‘{I have} counsel and strength for the war.’ Now on whom do
you rely, that you have rebelled against me? [21] Now behold, you rely on the
staff of this crushed reed, {even} on
The problem
we have is trusting in everything in the world but
having an exclusive and unique trust in God. Psalm 118:8, 9 NASB “It
is better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in man. It is better to
take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in princes.” The solution is
not politics. But that doesn’t mean we don’t get involved in the political
process.
As we get
into the next section we see that the Rabshakeh takes
an interesting tack in his strategy. He starts talking in terms of religious
categories. 2 Kings 18:22 NASB “But if you say to me, ‘We trust in
the LORD our God,’
is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and
has said to
There are
some things going on in our world today that are very similar to this. When
there are people in power—like Sennacherib, the Rabshakeh—who
are dealing with true religious reality but they reject the validity of any
religion they can’t properly assess or interpret the situation because they don’t
believe at a core suppositional level that religious ideas have any
significance—whether it is true or false religious belief. For example, when
Muslims have victory over an enemy they believe they should indicate that by
building a mosque there. It is a strategic concept militarily, and of we let
them do it then that is just fanning the flames of fanaticism on their side. We
have to think in those terms. If you are secularized and have rejected the
validity of any religious thinking then you can’t think that way and can’t make
good decisions.
The other
issue is that of a nuclear
The really bad
decision that the Rabshakeh is getting ready to make
is because he doesn’t believe that any of these gods or foreign powers that the
Assyrians had defeated had any validity, neither did this God of Judah. But it
is the God of Judah who is going to destroy his army and hand him and
Sennacherib the greatest defeat that