Because you have Prayed
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Let me tell you a story.
A Story that was prophesied.
A Story of war and battle, of death and victory.
Of danger and deliverance.
This is the story of King Hezekiah and Jerusalem facing the Assyrian horde. Harried and oppressed they faced an army of vast proportions, a military threat that had terrorised the world.
This story is in your Bibles three times, at least. You could make the case for more!
It is here in Isaiah, and almost identical copy of the story is found in 2 Kings 18-19. It’s also found in 2 Chronicles 32.
So between here and 2 Kings, as almost identical sections, It was probably written in Isaiah first and then duplicated copied into the book of kings when it was compiled.
This story is no myth lost to history, we know the dates, this story took place in 701. We have the records from Assyria of some of the events that took place. We have Sennacherib's art, depicting his campaign in Judah, this bas releif is housed in the British museum, found in Sennacherib's palace room.
Let me tell you the story.
Sennacherib was king of the Assyrians, the king of the greatest world power of the time. In their prime, these nations would regularly go out to war to increase the size of their teritory.
This year, Sen came down from the north to attack Judah. Israel to the north of Judah was already defeated, oppressed and a vassal of Assyria.
Judah too, with King Hezekiah leading them, had already been paying tribute to Assyria to keep them at bay. But it was not enough.
Assyria came down and started attacking fortified cities in Judah.
The Enemy Taunts & Demoralises
The Enemy Taunts & Demoralises
Undermines trust in God
Makes trusting God seem silly
Says that he is actually the one doing God’s will!
Tries to cause division by openly speaking to the soldiers
Promises rewards to deserters
Sows doubt in the minds of the men
Makes faith in the LORD sound ridiculous
Interestingly Hezekiah had taken efforts to purify the worship of God in Judah. He did what was pleasing in the sight of God. You may remember that God had appointed a place for the people to sacrifice, and that was Jerusalem. But other places had popped up, where people had made thir own altars, often connected with idolatry and other false worship.
Yet, Rabshakeh takes this good thing, and tries to turn it into a reason to look down on Hezekiah:
But if you say to me, “We trust in the Lord our God,” is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar”?
“Look, Hezekiah removed the places of worship to the LORD, he’s the bad guy!” Hezekiah was acturally dowing what God wanted, but that was painted as a bad thing.
So to, we here will have the good things of God painted as a bad things. The enemy will, and already has sown division among us. He whispers in ears and makes us think that the good things we have are actually a problem.
I’m sure you could see, there’s any number of things that could be said about us:
They take the Bible too literally, they’re “fundamentalist”
They reject forms of worship that other people enjoy, their worship is too restrictive.
They’re unloving, they practice church discipline
They preach an “old fashioned” view of sexuality and men and women’s roles.
All of these things are good things, done in obedience and faithfulness to God! But they are twisted and spat back at us as if they are bad things. As if we should be ashamed, when it is they who are in rebellion!
We do not stand proud and boast, as if there is anything in us that was not first from the Lord, instead we humble ourselves before the Lord, and in doing so we shame the proud and arrogant enemies of God. Our humility looks like weakness to them, but it is our greatest strengths.
So don’t listen to the enemy’s whisper. They will claim to speak for God. They will make you feel like you’re the bad guy. They will try and sow division among us. They will try and get you to doubt your elders, to look down on your brothers and sisters, to consider jumping ship to greener pastures, (i’m not saying we are the only true church, but i am saying there are many false ones, and we are susceptible to the demoralisation campaign of the enemy). We saw these tactics in the New Testament, we should be unsurprised if we see them today.
But humility is our way forward. Humble obedience and dependence on God.
One of the ways our humility is evident is the way the faithful Pray. Like the way Hezekiah prays:
To the LORD in Prayer: Hear and Deliver us!
To the LORD in Prayer: Hear and Deliver us!
Hezekiah receives the news from his top officials who went out to meet Rabsakeh.
What’s his first response?
As soon as King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went into the house of the Lord.
He goes to prayer and intercedes. He calls on the Lord.
He takes the traditional signs of mourning and despair, torn clothes.
Hez also calls on the prophets. He calls Isaiah to pray:
It may be that the Lord your God will hear the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to mock the living God, and will rebuke the words that the Lord your God has heard; therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left.’ ”
HE intercedes for the people of God, he calls other people to pray
He’s confident that this is worthwhile.
He presents the problem to the Lord as not just an issue of their own safety, but an issue of God’s honour and glory. Assyria is mocking God, and God will not be mocked.
The LORD Responds: Don’t be Afraid
The LORD Responds: Don’t be Afraid
The Lord returns a response through Isaiah.
He’s going to distract Sennacherib so that he won’t be coming straight down to Jerusalem
Isaiah said to them, “Say to your master, ‘Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the young men of the king of Assyria have reviled me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.’ ”
Don’t be afraid, YHWH has got you. Those words are reviling God.
God’s going to deflect Sen away from Jerusalem.
So This is what happens. Rabsakeh goes back to Lacish only to find that Sen has moved off somewhere else because he heard the king of Cush was massing his forces to fight.
The Enemy Doubles Down
The Enemy Doubles Down
So a letter is sent down to Hez, presumably to try and stop Jerusalme from breathing a sigh of releif.
He’s basically trying to say, just because we’re off fighting the King of Cush dows not mean you’ve escaped. We’re still coming for you:
Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’ ”
This is more attempts to demoralise and divide them.
It’s an “our Gods are bigger thatn your gods” taunt
But those other nations were not under YHWH - that’s the big difference.
That and the fact that everything they had acheived is because God allowed them.
To the LORD in Prayer: Save us for your own Glory!
To the LORD in Prayer: Save us for your own Glory!
Once more Hez hears the taunts, once more he goes to prayer.
Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord.
He took the letter, symbolically laying it before the Lord
What a great attitude. Would that we were like this! Sadly for many of us we must come to the end our rope before we learn to be quick in prayer!
What did Hez pray this time?
And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: “O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God.
Recognition of YHWH as the Lord God, creator, able to hear and save.
Once more noting the way that the enemies mocked God.
So Hez asks GOd to acts for the sake of his own fame, honour and glory:
So now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord.”
God always acts for his own glory. Now this might sound selfish, until you realise that God glorifying himself is the greatest blessing he could bestow on his people
We are loved, we are saved, we are given eternal life when God displays his glory.
The same goes here, the salvation they seek comes with God displaying his glory. SO they ask for it in prayer!
The LORD Responds: Because you have Prayed, I will act
The LORD Responds: Because you have Prayed, I will act
Isaiah receives a response from God:
Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria,
Note this “Because you have prayed” - sometimes it feels as though prayer is useless. Yet at times the Lord is waiting to respond, for us to seek him, so that he will act.
God could premptively answer all your prayer before you pray them However to keep us humble and looking to our God, he waits for our prayers, for our pleas.
Because Hez prayed, God answered.
Answered with an oracle about Assyria, notably that Assyria was going to be turned around by God. This is what he says about them:
“ ‘I know your sitting down and your going out and coming in, and your raging against me. Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.’
Assyria has acted presumptuously. But God know everything, where they’re going, what they’re up to.
God will treat them like livestock, turning them around.
Specifically, the King will not come down and lay seige to Jerusalem, he won’t even get a shot off:
“Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it.
This is the promise, the prophecy.
How does God act to bring this about?
The Angel of the LORD Went Out
The Angel of the LORD Went Out
The Angel of the LORD is often beleived to be the pre-incarnate Christ. Before Jesus took on flesh as a babe in Bethlehem, he was with God, he was God, and through him the World was made.
Jesus led Israel up out of Egypt, and so we are confident to say Jesus came to rescue Jerusalem:
And the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.
God came to their aid!
How did he strike them? Other sources indicate maybe plague/sickness
Sen retreats!
Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home and lived at Nineveh. And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword. And after they escaped into the land of Ararat, Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.
So what?
So what?
What function does this text serve in the book of Isaiah?
Enemy tactics
Go to the Lord in prayer
Jesus saves!
