Unreasonable Rescue

Prayer

Hezekiah and the siege on Jerusalem

Last week we started back into our journey through the story of the Old Testament, back into the book of 2 Kings. And since we did such an extensive recap last week, we’ll start this morning with a brief one. We picked up the story in early 8th century BC (Image of Divided Kingdom4), through the reigns of the kings of Judah, the southern kingdom (including Joash, Amaziah, Azariah / Uzziah, Jotham, and Ahaz) and the reigns of the kings of Israel, the northern kingdom. Which, as we saw, was a mess, a litany of assassinations, the throne being continually usurped. That included the kings of Jeroboam, Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah, Pekah and finally, Hoshea.

Our focus was on Hoshea, last king of Israel, who defied the Assyrian empire. As a result, the king of Assyria, Shalmaneser, laid siege to, then conquered and destroyed, Samaria, or Israel[. The Assyrians then deported large groups of the Israelites to other parts of their empire - and +vice versa, they brought in other peoples to the hollowed out towns of Samaria. So Samaria became a land of mixed peoples - but the problem was that it became a land of synchronistic worship, people who worshiped Yahweh and other gods at the same time. That’s where we left it, the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel.

Our attention now turns entirely to the southern kingdom, where we’ll back up a just a bit in the historical timeline. Pick up in the reign of Ahaz, who was one of the unabashed evil kings of Judah - listen to this description in 2 Kings 16:2-4, Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God. 3 He followed the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire, engaging in the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 4 He offered sacrifices and burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops and under every spreading tree. It’s in his reign that Judah, seeking protection from Aram and Israel, becomes a vassal state under Assyria.

But things change completely when Hezekiah, his son, takes the throne. Hezekiah is not just a faithful king, but one of the most faithful ones, 2 Kings 18:5-8, Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. 6 He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following him; he kept the commands he Lord had given Moses. And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. From watchtower to fortified city, he defeated the Philistines, as far as Gaza and its territory.

You’ll notice that part of his faithfulness was to rebel against the king of Assyria - this would have been right around 705 BC, seventeen years after the destruction of Israel, and right about the time that Assyria has a new king, Sennacherib.

This brings us to the part of the story I want to focus this morning, the Assyrian invasion of Judah in 2 Kings 18. Assyria, under Sennacherib, invades Judah, plowing through the entire nation, devastating it, attacking and capturing 46 towns of Judah. Hezekiah pleads mercy, promising treasure in exchange for a withdrawal. Sennacherib accepts.

We’re not told what changed his mind, but Sennacherib decides that he does want to take all of Judah - which means taking the capital city, Jerusalem: 2 Kings 18:17, The king of Assyria sent his supreme commander, his chief officer and his field commander with a large army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They came up to Jerusalem and stopped at the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Washerman’s Field.

It’s hard to imagine what a terrible and terrifying situation this must have been for the people of Judah, those within the fortified city of Jerusalem, a last stand against a overwhelmingly powerful enemy. The Assyrians have conquered 46 towns of Judah, not to mention the other nations they conquered. They have a massive army ready to lay siege, Why would the people of Judah think it would be any different for them?

By the way, on a fun side note, there is a lot of remarkable archeological evidence that confirms the Biblical account, mostly from the Assyrian records. There are a number of Assyrian artifacts that both detail and depict the invasion. That included descriptions of the 46 Judean towns captured, how many people they deported, the siege of Lachish. Archeological evidence has been found in Lachish that support the invasion - hundreds of Assyrian arrowheads found there, human remains, destroyed walls, the siege ramp, all from that time period.

Other artifacts support Jerusalem’s preparing for a siege - in the books of 2 Chronicles and in 2 Kings, there are descriptions of Hezekiah blocking off the springs of water outside the city walls and building a tunnel to bring the water inside (the idea being to deny water to the Assyrians and provide it for the Jews). Those springs, the Gihon springs, still exist today. And that water still flows through that tunnel, where an inscription was found midway documenting its construction. They had two crews digging from opposite directions and the inscription is where they met up. How they able to do that 2700 years ago, I have no idea - this thing is 1,800 feet long and 150 feet underground). By the way, you can walk through that tunnel today!

In 2 Chronicles and Isaiah, there are references to Hezekiah using the stones of houses to build up the walls - they’ve dug and found those walls, date back to around 700 BC.

And this inscription was found in one of the annals of king Sennacherib, “He (Hezekiah) himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city, like a bird in a cage...fear of my lordly splendor overwhelmed that Hezekiah. The warriors and select troops he had brought in to strengthen his royal city Jerusalem, did not fight...”

That’s exactly what it felt like, I’m sure, trapped, like a bird in a cage. To make matters worse, the Assyrian officials are sent to taunt Hezekiah and the people in order to help them see the hopelessness of their situation and to surrender without a long, drawn out siege. 2 Kings 18:19-22, The field commander said to them, “Tell Hezekiah: “‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: On what are you basing this confidence of yours? 20 You say you have the counsel and the might for war—but you speak only empty words. On whom are you depending, that you rebel against me? 21 Look, I know you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it! Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who depend on him. 22 But if you say to me, “We are depending on the Lord our God”—isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship before this altar in Jerusalem”?

So the question they are pressing Hezekiah on is a simple one - who are you depending on? Who the heck do you think will rescue you? Egypt? Your God? Later on they remind the people of Judah that no god of any land has been able to stop them, they have been an unstoppable force. They go on to mock the Israelites, offering them 2,000 horses - but wait, you don’t even have enough riders for them! Who knows, maybe it was the Lord your God who came and told us to march against this country and destroy it?!

Jewish officials plead for them to stop, because all the people can hear them. But that’s the point, they want the people to hear - they want them to know how bad it’s going to get. They tell the people, you’ll be eating your own excrement and drinking your own urine. At some point, if you’re in a city under siege, food runs out! They tell them of bountiful lands they will take them to if they make peace with the oh-so-merciful Sennacherib, a land of grain and new wine, olive trees and honey.

Unreasonable Rescue

Let’s be honest, that deal would be awfully enticing in that moment - maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, being deported to a new land. Gotta be better than this, shut up in a city, surrounded by a massively powerful army. Siege could last for months...years...stuck waiting as food diminishes, people starve, until they break down the walls and slaughter us wholesale. The most likely outcome is that they are going to die at the hands of the Assyrians. By any rational view, it seems the best option would be to choose to surrender, at least that way they’ll live.

I want to stop the story at this point in time, because what we read here is an invitation to us to consider our own willingness to trust in God, no matter the circumstances. To consider how we would respond in those times when our situation appears completely hopeless. When you can’t imagine how things will get better, they’re only going to get worse.

These are God’s people, and under Hezekiah’s leadership, they have been faithful to the Lord, more faithful to him then generations of Israelites before them - all the high places removed, the sacred stones smashed, all the places of idol worship, gone. And yet here they find themselves on the edge of total destruction, of having their nation obliterated, just like the northern kingdom of Israel twenty years prior.

If there’s anything that’s clear in the Bible, it’s that the Lord is willing to let his people, us, face great trials. To suffer, endure hardship. To be in dark places. The places where its hard to see a way out, that rescue seems impossible. Abraham and Sarah, how could they possibly father a great nation as the years passed and they got older and older and older? How would the Israelites ever be free from enslavement? Or escape the mighty Egyptian army bearing down on them from one side, an impassable sea on the other? Or find enough food and water for an entire nation in the desert?

And to think of situations we might face today - a terminal diagnosis. Not enough money in your account to pay off the pile of bills that keeps building. A wayward child who’s more rebellious than ever. A marriage that’s falling apart, every encounter turns into an argument. Or to be a follower of Christ in a nation where you might be arrested at any given moment by your own government, as was the case this week for members of the Early Rain Covenant Church, a Presbyterian church in China.

Instructive to see what Hezekiah does in the midst of his great trial, 2 Kings 19:1, When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the temple of the Lord. In response, the Lord sends word through the prophet Isaiah, promising a reprieve, a report that will cause the Assyrians to withdraw. All of which takes place, but it only spares the Israelites for a short period of time, and then the threat of siege comes again.

And again, Hezekiah throws himself on the mercy of the Lord, 2 Kings 19:14-19: Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. 15 And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: “Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. 16 Give ear, Lord, and hear; open your eyes, Lord, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God. 17 “It is true, Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands. 18 They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by human hands. 19 Now, Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, Lord, are God.”

Hezekiah offers us a beautiful image of turning to the Lord in faith in the most dire of circumstances, the severest of trials

And it begins with a posture of the heart - he comes in humility. He tears his clothing, puts on sackcloth - a gesture of humbling. No show, no pretense, he lays himself out in prayer before the Lord. Comes without any sense that he or the Israelites deserve this. That God owes them in any sense because they’ve been faithful. Or vice versa, that they are disqualified, that any disobedience would preclude the Lord from rescuing them. He knows that God’s grace and compassion are greater than that.

That’s exactly the point - in his prayers, Hezekiah doesn’t appeal on any basis of who he or the Israelites are, and what they may or may not deserve. Hezekiah’s appeal, his pleas, are based entirely on who the Lord is. You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. Lord, you made it all, heaven and earth . This man, these Assyrians - dared to ridicule you, to demean you, the Living God. As Hezekiah prays, he appeals to the Lord’s honor - Lord, do this for your glory, so all the kingdoms of the earth will know that the Lord alone is God (exactly what we talked about last week, it’s him and only him, above all).

Story ends with the Lord sending word to Hezekiah through Isaiah, “I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria.” Because the Lord always hears our prayers, our cries for mercy. He heard Hezekiah’s cries. He rescues Jerusalem, promising that no arrow will be shot against Jerusalem, no siege ramp will be built against it, no Assyrian will enter the city.

I love the word God has for Sennacherib, 2 Kings 19:27-28, But I know where you are and when you come and go and how you rage against me. 28 Because you rage against me and because your insolence has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will make you return by the way you came.

The promise comes true, 2 Kings 19:35-37: That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! 36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. 37 One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.

The Assyrian army is devastated by the angel of the Lord - the Lord fights for his people caught in a hopeless situation. So Sennacherib withdraws and returns to Nineveh where years later, he is murdered by two of his own sons - ironically, while he is worshiping his own (false) god.

Fun historical note, in the midst of all the annals of Sennacherib’s military campaigns, all the records of his great victories, there’s a conspicuous silence on Jerusalem. We saw how he bragged about having Hezekiah trapped like a bird in a cage within his royal city. But then, nothing. Nothing more about Hezekiah or Jerusalem. It appears he did not want to record his humiliating defeat at the hands of the Lord God, the one he dared to mock.

Spiritual Practice

Grow in faith, Grow in trust of who God is. Small steps of faith knowing and trusting who God is, day by day. So important to be in Scripture, to learn it, memorize it - so the truth of who God is, and how he commands us to live, become imbedded in your mind and heart.

And as you grow in small acts of faith, you’ll be prepared to trust the Lord when the trials come (and they will come, all of us face them at some point in time). Follow Hezekiah’s example. Pray in humility. Throw yourself before the mercy of the Lord. Not based on yourself, but on who God is - his faithfulness, his love, his compassion, his glory. Closing Prayer.