God Answers Prayer. 2 Kings 19:16-37
Last time we just looked at
the opening part of Hezekiah’s prayer: the way he addressed God. In his address
to God we see that it is not just a formal recitation of certain titles or
certain names related to God but that the use of those names and titles are
designed to bring before God the reality of His covenant relationship with
Israel and to emphasize the fact that He, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
stands in a position as the unique God of the universe. He is the creator God
of the universe and as such He sovereign in authority over all of history, the
kingdoms of man, and over the destiny of these kingdoms.
The first thing that sort of
overrode everything we saw last time is the principle that is stated at the end
of James 4:2, that we have not because we ask not. Notice when Isaiah begins to
relay to Hezekiah the answer that God gave to his prayer: 2
Kings
In the introductory address
to God in verse 15 we see first of all that Hezekiah emphasizes the uniqueness
of God, and we see that the uniqueness of God cannot be separated from His
identification with the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant. The names
that are used there for God emphasize that He is Yahweh, the God of Israel, the
one who dwells between the cherubim as a reminder that God had entered into a
covenant relationship with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This is
the basis for why Hezekiah comes to Him to deliver and save the people in this
time of crisis. When we apply that into our own thinking and our own prayer
life we need to think in terms of what is God’s covenant relationship with us
that is the foundation of our relationship to Him. That, of course, would be
the new covenant and the death of Christ on the cross.
The second thing we saw was
that the uniqueness of the God of Israel cannot be distinguished or separated
from His role as the creator God who therefore has the right to rule in human
history; emphasizing the fact that God is creator and the doctrine of creation
as it is laid out in the Scriptures is not just some secondary doctrine but is
at the very core of what distinguishes the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob from
all of the other so-called gods and goddesses of all of the world’s religions.
Only the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob stands completely distinct and
separate from the creation. He is not part of the creation.
Prayer presumes that God has
the right to intervene in our lives and in history and change things. He can do
so because He is above and beyond and outside of creation, and He is the
sovereign ruler. What is embedded in that as a presupposition is that God is
the creator and has the right to answer prayer in that way. So the conclusion
is prayer to the sovereign God of Israel is based on the literal reality of the
Genesis account of creation. We pray to the creator.
In Acts chapter four is a prayer
where after John and Peter have been arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin
and bullied by the religious authorities in Jerusalem, they go back to the
other disciples and give a report to them and the first thing they say to God
is that they are praying to the God who made the heavens and the earth, etc. So
we see that even in the New Testament the doctrine of God as the creator is
fundamental to our address to God in prayer. So this is the foundation for this
prayer: God has the right to intervene in the affairs of mankind.
In 2 Kings 19:16 we see the
expression of the petition itself. There is a cry to God, a call upon Him to
listen, and then Hezekiah begins to outline exactly what the problem is that
the
For example, Psalm 17:6 NASB
“I have called upon You, for You will answer me, O God; Incline
Your ear to me, hear my speech.”
Psalm 31:2 NASB “Incline Your
ear to me, rescue me quickly; Be to me a rock of strength, A stronghold to save
me.”
Psalm 102:2 NASB “Do not hide
Your face from me in the day of my distress; Incline Your ear to me; In the day
when I call answer me quickly.”
In each of these examples we see that the one
who is praying and calling upon God is expressing the urgency of the situation.
There is a pressing need and God needs to pay attention to it and intervene
right now. “Incline your ear” has the idea of “bend over and lower your ear so
you can hear me more readily.” In Hezekiah’s prayer the word “reproach” has the
idea of a taunt or a boast. God is being ridiculed; His character is being
brought into question; His very existence is being challenged. In fact,
Sennacherib is insulting the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by saying, “Your
God is not better than any of these other gods.” This is the challenge from the
world system in so many ways: how can you trust God, how can you really believe
in God? Hezekiah is calling upon God in this prayer to stand up for
Himself.
Then
he rehearses the circumstances of the situation. 2 Kings
19:17 NASB “Truly, O LORD, the kings of
Hezekiah
expresses his petition. 2 Kings
God answers
through the prophet Isaiah. 2 Kings
There are
three basic sections to this answer. The first is what is shaped in terms of
what the literature of the day as a taunt or a mocking song where God is going
to ridicule the abilities of Sennacherib, and he is going to put Sennacherib
down as just some minor character on the stage of history who doesn’t even
recognize that ultimately it is God Himself who is working behind the scenes to
bring about His will in history. A simple statement is made in verse 21 which
refers to
2 Kings
19:22 NASB “Whom have you reproached and blasphemed? And against
whom have you raised {your} voice, And haughtily lifted up your eyes? Against
the Holy One of
The boast
that Sennacherib made. 2 Kings 19:23 NASB “Through your messengers
you have reproached [ridiculed] the Lord, And you have said, ‘With my many
chariots I came up to the heights of the mountains, To the remotest parts of
Now God
answers him. He is stressing that ultimately He is the one who rules over the
affairs of men. What this answer brings out for us is the age-old conundrum of
the sovereign will of God versus the individual free will of man. Both are
true. God rules over history to bring about that which He intends. At the same
time He gives man within a limited framework freedom to choose and to chart the
course of his own life on the basis of his own volition and decisions. We get
into problems when we start trying to define the causative relationship of
God’s will on human history in terms of creaturely causation. When we look at
how causation works in the creaturely realm we extrapolate that back to the
divine realm and try to define God’s act of causation on human history in terms
of the same categories and the same way that human causation works; and that is
where we create a problem. God is wise enough and powerful enough to rule in
the affairs of men without violating human freedom and responsibility, and to
do so without making man into a puppet. So when man makes decisions he makes
them freely and on his own terms, and yet when it is over with it seen to be
exactly what God intended. Sennacherib on his own made the decisions he made to
be who he was going to be and to rise up and set himself up in arrogance
against God. That was his decision, not God’s decision. Yet, when all is said
and done we realize that God in His sovereignty allowed and intended for
Assyria to rise as a powerful nation in order to use it to bring discipline and
cursing upon the northern kingdom of
Israel, and now in bringing invasion into the southern kingdom.
God is going
to emphasize this by raising another rhetorical question. 2 Kings 19:25 NASB
“Have you not heard? Long ago I did it; From ancient times I planned it. Now I
have brought it to pass, That you should turn fortified cities into ruinous
heaps.” Sennacherib is fulfilling the plan of God even though he has made these
decisions himself and is not aware at all that God is orchestrating history,
nevertheless God is ultimately in control. No human being can operate outside
of the sovereign will of God.
2 Kings
19:26 NASB “Therefore their inhabitants were short of strength, They
were dismayed and put to shame; They were as the vegetation of the field and as
the green herb, As grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown up.
[27] But I know your sitting down, And your going out and your coming in, And
your raging against Me.” What God is emphasizing here is that He is the one in
control, He is the one who allowed
A shift to
addressing Hezekiah: a promise of deliverance. 2 Kings 19:29 NASB
“Then this shall be the sign for you: you will eat this year what grows of
itself, in the second year what springs from the same, and in the third year
sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.” A sign is usually a
miraculous sign of how God is going to act on behalf of someone in a positive
way.
When
Sennacherib is defeated and leaves the whole army doesn’t get killed. There
were many more troops than the ones around
Then we have
the promise related to what God is going to do to the king of
How this was
fulfilled just shortly thereafter. 2 Kings 19:35 NASB “Then it
happened that night that the angel of the LORD went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and
when men rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead.” There are a
number of studies that have been done which indicate that the army of
The next
verse takes place sometime later when there is another threat tom then throne.
2 Kings 19:37 “It came about as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his
god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword; and they escaped
into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son became king in his place.” At
this point what had happened was that Sennacherib has bypassed his two older
sons in order to pass the throne down to his third son, Esarhaddon. Out of
jealousy the two older sons assassinated him as he was in the temple of the
eagle god worshipping, and then they escaped.
So again we
see a tremendous example of the veracity of Scripture and that the prophecies
that God gives come true precisely as he describes they would, and these things
are not simply made up or are things people wrote down because they had some
sort of emotional encounter with God. In the same way God can intervene in our
lives—maybe not as dramatically, but in such a way that he protects and defends
us because we are members of the body of Christ and on that basis we come to
Him in prayer.
This is why
prayer is to be a priority in our lives, not just something we do on occasion
but something that is to be a top priority in our life.
THE DESTRUCTION OF
SENNACHERIB
by: George Gordon
(Lord) Byron (1788-1824)
THE
Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And
his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And
the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When
the blue wave rolls nightly on deep
Like
the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That
host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like
the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That
host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For
the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And
breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And
the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And
their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And
there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But
through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And
the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And
cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And
there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With
the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And
the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The
lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And
the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And
the idols are broke in the
And
the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath
melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!