The Divine Solution: Turn and Trust. 2 Kings 19:1-4
The start of
the divine solution is to turn to God and to trust in Him. As we look at
chapters nineteen and twenty which cover the final stage and years of
Hezekiah’s reign there are two things we have to go over before we really
understand the writer of Scripture is putting these things together for us. We
have a tendency as westerners, because of how we read books and write history,
which is primarily out of A Greek or Roman background, to try to take that
approach and apply it to Scripture. The writers of Scripture, while they are
writing true facts of history, often do not organize those facts in a
historical order but they organize them in a way to express certain
theologically defined agendas. There is a sort of divine editor here who is
making some specific points in relationship to the spiritual life of
The Jews
knew the horrors that would come if they surrendered to Sennacherib. We have
focused on the strategy that really underlies this whole approach of the three
leaders of the Assyrians. It is not an unusual strategy in history, it is the
challenge of the authority and the veracity and the reality of God’s ability to
provide and protect us. It is essentially a challenge of even the existence of
God because they were cynics, they understood that the gods that they
worshipped were probably nothing more than wood and stone and metal, and these
were men who were not religious in the normative sense of the word but were
brutal in their desire to expand their empires, were dominated by power lust
and the desire to control the ancient world. The strategy that they used was to
try to remove the spiritual barriers that the Jews would erect in order to
refute them.
Their
approach was the same strategy that Satan used in the Garden of Eden with Eve
by asking her a loaded question: Did God really say
that you can’t eat from all the trees in the garden? It was a loaded question
because if it is going to be answered it can only be answered by putting
yourself in a position to judge God—the creature puts himself in a position to
judge and evaluate the thinking of the creator who had made everything and
defined everything. But Eve just walked right into that trap like most of us do
all the time, and we immediately jump in without any thought, begin to answer
the question and validate the presupposition that is behind the question.
In this
question we see that Hezekiah prevents that from happening by telling his
representatives to not say anything. That represents a lot of wisdom on
Hezekiah’s part. He understands principles that we see demonstrated in
Scripture in various passages. Such as Proverbs 26:4 NASB “Do not
answer a fool according to his folly, Or you will also
be like him.” The idea here is that when
someone who is operating on a human viewpoint approach to reality then
if you answer them according to their assumptions, if you validate their
assumptions, then you’ve really lost the battle and are just going to be like
them. You are both arguing from either independent experience or independent
reason rather than answering according to what God has said. So we have to be
very careful how we answer questions, objections and challenges to God’s Word,
that we don’t validate or get walked into a trap by validating a contrary or
contradictory way of thinking. The New Testament states the same thing. Paul,
writing to Timothy says, “Avoid foolish and ignorant disputes.” Just because
somebody raises certain objections or questions doesn’t mean we need to answer
them. We need to stop, think and evaluate the best strategy to answer them from
the framework of biblical truth. Remember the fool is defined in Scripture as
the one who has said in his heart [thinking] there is no God. In the way he
thinks he operates as if there is no God. Proverbs also says that there is a
way that seems right to man but the end thereof is death.
There is a
way that almost every single religion comes up with that seems to make sense to
people. That is, that you can do certain things to gain God’s approval and
blessing. But throughout the Scriptures it is emphasized that the only way to
God is to just trust in Him, that it is on the basis of faith. It is in faith
alone that we are justified. Abraham in Genesis 15:6 said that his faith was
reckoned him as righteousness, that he was justified by faith alone, not by
what he did but by trusting God’s promise. In contrast the fool says there is
no God. He operates on the presupposition that there is nothing more real than
his own experience and his own reason. That is where the Assyrians are as they
present this challenge to
This kind of
thing can happen to
us in many different ways and it is almost associated with the same kind of circumstance
that we find here, i.e. some sort of problem or challenge in life. Some of our
challenges are small, just the every day challenges of trying to decide when
faced with a set of circumstances, am I going to do what I know to be right by
trusting in God, trusting in His Word, or am I going to try to handle this
situation on my own resources. Any time that we are faced with a set of
circumstances where we have to make that kind of choice that is what is meant
by a problem. It is more of an academic use of the word “problem.” We are faced
with a decision that we have to make, we have to work our way through that
decision and make our choice as to whether we are going to resolve it one way
or the other. This is why we call certain spiritual skills problem-solving
devices. It is not that we are faced with something that is big and huge, many
times it is something small but it means we have to choose—divine viewpoint or
human viewpoint.
In this circumstances the southern
Before we
can get into this we have to stop and go back and do a little fly-over on
chapters 18, 19 & 20 to understand the chronology. Once we understand the
chronology some things are going to be more apparent to us. What do we know for
sure? In 2 Kings 18 we see that when Hezekiah began to reign in
But as
happens in many of our spiritual lives as time goes by we begin to trust the
Lord less and less, we get our eyes off of the Word and on to the details of
life, and we see a problem in our spiritual life. By 701—which we know is when
Sennacherib invades into the
This is a
major problem that we have today in
When
Hezekiah and the people get away from God then the nation is threatened, but
when they turn back to God they are then protected. That doesn’t mean that they
shouldn’t strengthen the military, that they shouldn’t
fortify the cities, or be engaged in any of the other things that a nation
should do in order to protect itself. But that is not the ultimate solution.
The same thing is true in our lives. There are many things that we can do in
our own lives in order to give some measure of stability and happiness, but that
is not the ultimate source of happiness or stability. If we do not have our
lives basically governed by the use of what we refer to as the ten
problem-solving devices, these basic spiritual skills, then no matter what else
we do it is not going to bring us to a position of stability, happiness, peace
and hope. So we see this tension here. Do we trust in ourselves and our own
resources or do we trust in God?
Initially
what happens is that Hezekiah is no longer dependent upon God, he quits
trusting God. Where as before he has refused to pay the tribute to Sennacherib
and now that there is going to be a negative reaction to that his courage isn’t
quite what it had been because his faith isn’t what it had been. So when
Assyria heads south and Sennacherib assesses him with a tribute of 300 talents
of silver and 30 talents of gold (equivalent to eleven tons of silver and a ton
of gold), a huge amount of money in that day based on their economy, Hezekiah
has an option. It is not do I give him the money or not? The problem is, do I
trust God or not? It always comes down to that. Rather than trusting God he
decides to handle the situation himself and he empties the treasuries of gold
and silver to pay off Sennacherib. 2 Kings 18:15 NASB “Hezekiah gave
{him} all the silver which was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasuries of the king’s
house.” This is at the beginning of Sennacherib’s invasion of the land, early
701, and Hezekiah is in rebellion against God. Sennacherib sends his three
henchmen to propagandize and intimidate
But chronologically
there are several things that happen in between. As we go through chapter
nineteen what we see in vv. 1-7 is the description of Hezekiah humbling himself
before God, going to the temple, sending his representatives to Isaiah to seek
the guidance of God’s Word as it comes through the prophet, and then there is a
promise from God given through Isaiah in verse 6: “Do not be afraid because of
the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria
have blasphemed Me. [7] “Behold, I will put a spirit in him so that he will
hear a rumor and return to his own land. And I will make him fall by the sword
in his own land.” So this is the first promise that we see in the order of
Scripture that God is going to give them victory and that Sennacherib is going
to leave. This is followed by a second return of the Rabshakeh
in the hope that Hezekiah will hurry up and surrender so that he can put all of
his attention on the Egyptians coming up from the south. Then we have
Hezekiah’s second prayer, 2 Kings 19:16 NASB “Incline Your ear, O LORD, and hear; open Your eyes, O LORD, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, which he has
sent to reproach the living God.” So Hezekiah is defining the real issue in
terms of the character and the integrity of God. That is what is at stake.
These pagans had come along and said that God couldn’t protect Judah, He can’t
exist, and therefore Hezekiah is saying to God, You have to stand up for your
integrity.
Then there
is a second answer from God, given to Isaiah, 2 Kings 19:20 NASB
“Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah saying,
‘Thus says the LORD, the God of
Israel, ‘Because you have prayed to Me about
Sennacherib king of
Then we are
told about the defeat of Sennacherib in vv. 35-37 where the angel of the Lord
comes and during the night slaughters 185,000 Assyrians. Sennacherib has
already left after getting wind of a rumor and he is headed home. His army is
destroyed after he left by God. This is reminiscent of the plagues of
When we come
to chapter twenty it seems from the way we read Scripture that it comes after
chapter nineteen. But the reality is that chapter twenty comes before chapter
nineteen. Chapter twenty fills in some blanks that we didn’t know about in
chapter nineteen. There apparent problem: 2 Kings 20:5 NASB “Return
and say to Hezekiah the leader of My people, ‘Thus says
the LORD, the God of
your father David, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I
will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the LORD.” God answers the prayer of Hezekiah.
Hezekiah is desperately ill; he is under the sin unto death. He has disobeyed
God and this occurs before the events of chapter eighteen, verse 17. He is in
carnality and God strikes him with this illness and tells him that he is going
to die. Notice in the answer to prayer the emphasis on David. God is going to
be faithful to His promise to David, to keep one of David’s seed in
So Hezekiah
is under the sin unto death, he turns back to God and God promises to lift the
penalty of the sin unto death and give him another fifteen years, and He also
says He will deliver the city from the king of
If we go on
in chapter twenty there is one other episode that is covered. In verse 12 we
are told about another situation that occurs at approximately the same time. 2
Kings 20:12 NASB “At that time Berodach-baladan
a son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a
present to Hezekiah, for he heard that Hezekiah had been sick.” That tells us
that first Hezekiah is sick and then Merodach-baladan
is going to come and visit. 2 Kings20:13 NASB “Hezekiah listened to
them, and showed them all his treasure house, the silver and the gold and the
spices and the precious oil and the house of his armor and all that was found
in his treasuries. There was nothing in his house nor
in all his dominion that Hezekiah did not show them.” What do we learn here? In
2 Kings 19:1 NASB “And when King Hezekiah heard {it,}
he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth and entered the house of
the LORD.” So at this point he is turning to God and
is following the proper procedure that we see in Scripture. This begins with
confession of sin, which is also described in Scripture as humbling ourselves
before God—an expression for the believer submitting to the authority of God.
In submitting to the authority of God when we come into His presence we have to
first of all acknowledge our sins. To illustrate: Psalm 32:5 is David’s
confession after the sin of adultery with Bathsheba and the conspiracy to kill Uriah. NASB “I acknowledged my sin to You, And my iniquity I did not hide; I said, ‘I will confess my
transgressions to the LORD’; And You forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah.” To confess means
to acknowledge or to admit what we have done. Remorse is not part of the
semantic meaning of confession. It might be there but that is not what it means
to confess; it means to admit wrongdoing. It is a legal concept. Psalm 51:3 NASB
“For I know [acknowledge] my transgressions…” That is what confession is. Then
God forgives is. Psalm 103:12 NASB “As far as the east is from the
west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.”
There is
another concept that goes with this and that is the one alluded to by “humbling
ourselves before God.” This is the word that is used in a very well known
passage in 2 Chronicles 7:14. In the chapter preceding this we have the dedicatory
prayer of Solomon when he dedicated the temple. It is interesting prayer
because in it he goes to God and says basically, These
people are really going to screw up. At some point they are going to turn to
idols, defame the sanctuary, and they are going to be removed from the land.
But Solomon asks in his prayer that when they do this, when they have disobeyed
the Lord and have been removed from the land, that when they turn back to the
Lord that He will restore them to the land. He is basing this prayer on the
promise of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28-30 where God foretold that at some point
Israel would disobey God and be removed from the land. But God also said that
they would turn back to Him and that when they did He would restore them to the
land. Solomon is his prayer is simply calling upon God to do what he said he
would do in those passages. In 2 Chronicles
Hezekiah’s
thinking in 2 Kings 19:1 is to apply this principle: humble ourselves (submit
to God’s authority) and turn back to Him. Hezekiah is going to lead the way and
then maybe God will deliver them from Sennacherib. This is the point. He
understands the right procedure.
2 Kings 19:2
NASB “Then he sent Eliakim who was over
the household with Shebna the scribe and the elders
of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz.” They have to demonstrate their humility also to
Isaiah. In terms of application today he is going to confess his sin and then
turn to the Word of God to see what God has to say to him so that he can apply
the Word in his own life. [3] “They said to him, “Thus says Hezekiah, ‘This day
is a day of distress, rebuke, and rejection; for children have come to birth
and there is no strength to {deliver.}” In other words, we are at the point of
deliverance but there is no way we can deliver ourselves. [4] “Perhaps the LORD your God will hear all the words of Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of
When we see
effective praying in the Scripture it is because the one who is praying is
stating a case which demonstrates that it is the character and integrity of God
that is at stake. They argue from promises and make a case to God why He should
answer the prayer the way they want Him to: If you don’t answer prayer, if you
don’t deliver us, then your reputation is no better than any other god in the
ancient world.
What are
they doing? They are going back to the very promises of God and calling upon
Him to fulfill the promises he has made because His reputation is at stake. This
is the same way that Hezekiah will frame the next prayer where the issue is
reproach to God.
2 Kings 19:6
NASB “Isaiah said to them, “Thus you shall say to your master, ‘Thus
says the LORD, “Do not be
afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the
king of
What is the
solution to the problem? First of all, the solution is to turn to God. We do
that through humbling ourselves, putting ourselves under the authority of God,
confessing sin and focusing on His Word. The second component is then to trust
His Word and to rely upon His Word, and to then relax and let God solve the
problem and not try to do it in the energy of our own flesh or our own
abilities. This is exactly what is demonstrated at the cross. God solves the
problem of sin at the cross by putting the penalty completely and totally on
Jesus Christ. So that is faith we trust Him and Him alone and then relax, not
trying to gain the favor and merit of God by doing good deeds on our own. That
doesn’t mean that there is not a role and a place for obedience and good deeds.
For as Paul says in Ephesians 2:10 NASB “For we are His workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that
we would walk in them.” But the works come as a result of our spiritual life and
spiritual growth, not to gain the merit and favor of God.