Which king's voice are you listening to?
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What or who can you trust?
What happens if your confidence in that thing or that person or that God is shaken?
How do you recover?
In our reading today, you will hear three voices… each representing a king
The field commander of the Assyrian army will speak for King Sennacharib
Eliakim and others will speak for King Hezekiah
And Isaiah will speak on behalf of Yahweh.
1 Assyria’s King Sennacherib marched against all of Judah’s fortified cities and captured them in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah. 2 Assyria’s king sent his field commander from Lachish, together with a large army, to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. He stood at the water channel of the Upper Pool, which is on the road to the field where clothes are washed. 3 Hilkiah’s son Eliakim, who was the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and Asaph’s son Joah the recorder went out to them.
13 Then the field commander stood up and shouted in Hebrew at the top of his voice: “Listen to the message of the great king, Assyria’s king. 14 The king says this: Don’t let Hezekiah lie to you. He won’t be able to rescue you. 15 Don’t let Hezekiah persuade you to trust the Lord by saying, ‘The Lord will certainly rescue us. This city won’t be handed over to Assyria’s king.’
16 “Don’t listen to Hezekiah, because this is what Assyria’s king says: Surrender to me and come out. Then each of you will eat from your own vine and fig tree and drink water from your own well 17 until I come to take you to a land just like your land. It will be a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards. 18 Don’t let Hezekiah fool you by saying, ‘The Lord will rescue us.’ Did any of the other gods of the nations save their lands from the power of Assyria’s king? 19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Did they rescue Samaria from my power? 20 Which one of the gods from those countries has rescued their land from my power? Will the Lord save Jerusalem from my power?”
1 When King Hezekiah heard this, he ripped his clothes, covered himself with mourning clothes, and went to the Lord’s temple. 2 He sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and the senior priests to the prophet Isaiah, Amoz’s son. They were all wearing mourning clothes. 3 They said to him, “Hezekiah says this: Today is a day of distress, punishment, and humiliation. It’s as if children are ready to be born, but there’s no strength to see it through. 4 Perhaps the Lord your God heard all the words of the field commander who was sent by his master, Assyria’s king. He insulted the living God! Perhaps he will punish him for the words that the Lord your God has heard. Offer up a prayer for those few people who still survive.”
5 When King Hezekiah’s servants got to Isaiah, 6 Isaiah said to them, “Say this to your master: The Lord says this: Don’t be afraid at the words you heard, which the officers of Assyria’s king have used to insult me. 7 I’m about to mislead him, so when he hears a rumor, he’ll go back to his own country. Then I’ll have him cut down by the sword in his own land.”
What or who can you trust?
What happens if your confidence in that thing or that person or that God is shaken?
How do you recover? Or do you?
The questions that arise in our reading today are connected to trust. Jerusalem - the city of God is under siege. The Assyrian Empire has been plaguing Jerusalem for a long time by this point. This isn’t the beginning of the struggle.
V 20 Will the Lord save Jerusalem?
Sennacharib says no.
You don’t really think that God will save you, do you? You don’t really trust the leaders of your church, your community, your ?? We’re coming for you, and you may as well just surrender now. We’ve taken all these other cities, you’re next.
V 20 Will the Lord save Jerusalem?
Sennacharib says no.
Hezekiah says… I sure hope so. But he responds (correctly?) with lament and distress. He sees God’s judgement in this… and perhaps, he also owns what Sennaharib accuses him of in some of the verses we skipped over… but Hezekiah, though he may have erred here, is a “good king” - he is generally committed to the things he is supposed to be committed to.
This entire story appears in 2 kings 19 and in 2 Chronicles
Sennacharib accuses Hezekiah of trusting Egypt for protection when Yahweh has been clear. In chapter 30, Yahweh speaks through Isaiah against those who would make alliances with Egypt… saying that repentance and trust are the key to salvation.
Just a few chapters earlier, we read…
15 This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.
V 20 Will the Lord save Jerusalem?
Sennacharib says no. Don’t trust.
Hezekiah says maybe.
But Isaiah’s response reminds us of the “questions behind the questions”…
Will Hezekiah trust Yahweh?
And why should Yahweh be trusted anyway?
What does Isaiah say? “Do not be afraid.”
How can Isaiah say this? The troops are closing in. And reports are such that the fall of Jerusalem is imminent. Right?
Isaiah context:
Same time as Micah. But Micah is on the margins, outside of Jerusalem, but also without access to the power structures. Isaiah is in Jerusalem, and has regular access to the king as we saw in the reading.
Isaiah 1-12 Judgement & Hope for Jerusalem (old Jerusalem vs. new Jerusalem - because of the promise to David, the judgment isn’t the end. The King “Emmanuel” will be like a shoot from a stump
Isaiah 13-27 ends with a description of the New Jerusalem
Isaiah 28-39 accusation of J’s leaders turning to Egypt for protection instead of the repentance and trust that God has told them is what God wants (cf
8 He has told you, human one,
what is good and
what the Lord requires from you:
to do justice, embrace faithful love,
and walk humbly with your God.
So we hear these three voices.
And, perhaps obviously, we want to attend to what we learn about God from this text - what do we see God doing in Isaiah? What does it show us about what God is like?
If we back up to those “questions behind the questions”…
Will Hezekiah trust Yahweh?
And why should Yahweh be trusted anyway?
Lissa Wray Beal, in her commentary on Kings and Chronicles (where this story is also recorded) helps us here…
She points out that Hezekiah should trust Yahweh for two reasons…
God is to be trusted because God is sovereign. This is demonstrated in Yahweh’s command over the nations. It’s a universal rule.
But God is also to be trusted because God is personally attentive to the people of God.
Beal writes: “Should [God] be only sovereign but not attentive, there is a terrible sense of humans as merely cogs in [God’s] grand designs - their woes and needs unheeded and unimportant within a larger plan. And should [God] be personally attentive without being sovereign, [God’s] attention would be cloying: always sympathetic and caring but never able to effect change. … In concert, Yahweh is both attentive and powerful. God is able to order the world rightly and to his purposes while still ministering in compassion to to his people towards their best end.”
Which of these voices sound familiar to you?
King Sennacharib? Don’t trust. There’s no way this is going to work out. All the signs point to defeat and destruction. The voice that undermines confidence in God?
King Hezekiah? We’ve done our best. (Both in following God, and in hedging our bets…making deals with Egypt, etc) Maybe God will act on our behalf?
Or God? (Yahweh, who is revealed to us most clearly in the person of Jesus, who is the Christ, who is the slain and risen Lamb, now seated at the right hand of the father, from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. King Jesus.)
What kind of God is both sovereign AND attentive. Universally in charge. But also aware and involved in the details of life?
On this Christ the King Sunday, can we listen for the voice of the One who holds all things? Who has stormed hell and come out the other side holding the keys of death and all that would separate us from God?
If we know the end of the story - not the pie in the sky when we die ending… but the God is making all things new end. How does that change how we live now?
Let’s pray…