Like No Other - Pt.1 The Devil's Target

(NLT) — 5 Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time. 6 He remained faithful to the Lord in everything, and he carefully obeyed all the commands the Lord had given Moses. 7 So the Lord was with him, and Hezekiah was successful in everything he did. He revolted against the king of Assyria and refused to pay him tribute. 8 He also conquered the Philistines as far distant as Gaza and its territory, from their smallest outpost to their largest walled city.

9 During the fourth year of Hezekiah’s reign, which was the seventh year of King Hoshea’s reign in Israel, King Shalmaneser of Assyria attacked the city of Samaria and began a siege against it. 10 Three years later, during the sixth year of King Hezekiah’s reign and the ninth year of King Hoshea’s reign in Israel, Samaria fell. 11 At that time the king of Assyria exiled the Israelites to Assyria and placed them in colonies in Halah, along the banks of the Habor River in Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes. 12 For they refused to listen to the Lord their God and obey him. Instead, they violated his covenant—all the laws that Moses the Lord’s servant had commanded them to obey.

POINT- King Hezekiah is this man who trusts in the faithfulness of God - in doing so there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah.

KEY POINT- There were some great Kings in Judah, we of course recall King Jeosphat who knew a thing or two about worship. We have Josiah who did pretty well, Manesah who started off rough but came a great leader and man who honored God, etc.

POINT- But Hezekiah was unprecedented there was no one like him among all the kins of Judah, this is because of his faith and his action! You want to be great, you want to be unprecedented within your generation then trust the Lord your God and show that you trust by your actions!

(NLT) — 6 And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

MAIN POINT- What will cause you to stand out in your life and in heaven is going to be your resolve to trust God - this is why you are different! We can have complete trust in the Lord our God because he is faithful and his faithfulness is sovereign.

KEY- We start to see this turning point though, when the northern kingdom of Israel fell this put significant amounts of pressure on Judah.

KEY POINT- We are not depended on each other to walk out our faith in God, we have a personal responsibility and no one can excuse this, but you would be a fool to assume that your faithfulness only affects yourself!

There is a ton that is going into this story and it is going to be EXTREMELY hard to keep you in the loop with everything, but I’m going to try…

KEY- The nation of Judah stopped paying this “tribute” to the nation of Assyria. This decision was made largely in part because of the belief that Egypt would some how help Judah in the event Assyria came to collect the payment. However Egypt turns out to be a bit flaky and now Assyria is coming in to overrun and do to Judah what they had just recently done to Israel.

You see its one thing to say I trust God when you got friends to back you up, its another thing to say I trust God when your friends start to act a bit flakey… Is your trust in the faithfulness of God attached to something or someone other than the faithfulness of God???

Now things start getting really complicated…

(NLT) — 13 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, King Sennacherib of Assyria came to attack the fortified towns of Judah and conquered them. 14 King Hezekiah sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: “I have done wrong. I will pay whatever tribute money you demand if you will only withdraw.” The king of Assyria then demanded a settlement of more than eleven tons of silver and one ton of gold. 15 To gather this amount, King Hezekiah used all the silver stored in the Temple of the Lord and in the palace treasury. 16 Hezekiah even stripped the gold from the doors of the Lord’s Temple and from the doorposts he had overlaid with gold, and he gave it all to the Assyrian king. 17 Nevertheless, the king of Assyria sent his commander in chief, his field commander, and his chief of staff from Lachish with a huge army to confront King Hezekiah in Jerusalem…

POINT- Notice that Hezekiah apologizes for keeping in tact what was his and offers to give it up.

I need to encourage someone here tonight - Don’t ever feel ashamed to fight for your joy! Don’t ever feel like you are in the wrong for fighting for the salvation of one of your friends!…

KEY POINT- The enemy doesn’t just want your gold; your joy, peace, family, school… He wants your complete and total inhalation.

I’m here to call to fight some students who have considered it reasonable to go thru life without their joy simply cause you have pondered is it worth the fight?? We can’t allow the enemy to come in and take “tribute” what God has entrusted us to take hold of…

And so Hezekiah goes into the temple and he takes all the silver all the gold and has the gold removed from the temple doors…

KEY POINT- This is what happens when we start to depend on ourselves rather than depending on God… In all of our efforts for success we will strip ourselves of everything of value and hand it over to the enemy for the taking.

So now here is Hezekiah, broken, insecure, unsure of himself …

QUESTION- Has life ever put you in a situation where you find yourself questioning every decision you have ever made???

QUESTION- Has life ever put you in a situation where you find yourself questioning every decision you have ever made???

KEY- Sometimes God will set up a situation where he will put all the comforts you need to get to the next step and as you take it remove them one by one. And you think why would God do that??? Because he wants to show you that it was never those assurances you needed to begin with.

MAIN POINT- It is often when we reach these moments of brokenness, regret, fear, etc that the enemy brings out his weapons to attack our dependence on the faithfulness of God. I worded that very specifically because the enemy can not attack the faithfulness of God, this is why I made it a point to let you know that God’s faithfulness is not connected to anything other than his own faithfulness… Its a futile effort to try to get God to not be faithful its like trying to make water not be wet its like trying to get fire to not be hot. FAITHFUL IS WHO HE IS FAITHFULNESS IS INDICATIVE OF HIS VERY BEING!

WHILE the enemy can not attack the faithfulness of God he can attack our dependance of his faithfulness, he can attack our belief that God WILL keep his promises, he can attack our trust in God.

KEY- We see Hezikiah back pedeling from the faithfulness of God because of his current situation.

MAIN POINT- The enemy will attack our trust in God’s faithfulness with his favorite weapons and if we are not on guard if we are not full of the spirit and understanding of the word of God we run the risk of falling.

Intimidation - (NLT) — 31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?

Accusation - (NLT) — 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.

Comparison - (NLT) — 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?

Confusion - (NLT) — 35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?

Compromise - (NLT) — 30 And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.

(NLT) — 19 Then the Assyrian king’s chief of staff told them to give this message to Hezekiah: “This is what the great king of Assyria says: What are you trusting in that makes you so confident? 20 Do you think that mere words can substitute for military skill and strength? Who are you counting on, that you have rebelled against me? 21 On Egypt? If you lean on Egypt, it will be like a reed that splinters beneath your weight and pierces your hand. Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, is completely unreliable! 22 “But perhaps you will say to me, ‘We are trusting in the Lord our God!’ But isn’t he the one who was insulted by Hezekiah? Didn’t Hezekiah tear down his shrines and altars and make everyone in Judah and Jerusalem worship only at the altar here in Jerusalem? 23 “I’ll tell you what! Strike a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you 2,000 horses if you can find that many men to ride on them! 24 With your tiny army, how can you think of challenging even the weakest contingent of my master’s troops, even with the help of Egypt’s chariots and charioteers? 25 What’s more, do you think we have invaded your land without the Lord’s direction? The Lord himself told us, ‘Attack this land and destroy it!’ ”

(NLT) — 26 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, Shebna, and Joah said to the Assyrian chief of staff, “Please speak to us in Aramaic, for we understand it well. Don’t speak in Hebrew, for the people on the wall will hear.” 27 But Sennacherib’s chief of staff replied, “Do you think my master sent this message only to you and your master? He wants all the people to hear it, for when we put this city under siege, they will suffer along with you. They will be so hungry and thirsty that they will eat their own dung and drink their own urine.” 28 Then the chief of staff stood and shouted in Hebrew to the people on the wall, “Listen to this message from the great king of Assyria! 29 This is what the king says: Don’t let Hezekiah deceive you. He will never be able to rescue you from my power. 30 Don’t let him fool you into trusting in the Lord by saying, ‘The Lord will surely rescue us. This city will never fall into the hands of the Assyrian king!’ 31 “Don’t listen to Hezekiah! These are the terms the king of Assyria is offering: Make peace with me—open the gates and come out. Then each of you can continue eating from your own grapevine and fig tree and drinking from your own well. 32 Then I will arrange to take you to another land like this one—a land of grain and new wine, bread and vineyards, olive groves and honey. Choose life instead of death! “Don’t listen to Hezekiah when he tries to mislead you by saying, ‘The Lord will rescue us!’ 33 Have the gods of any other nations ever saved their people from the king of Assyria? 34 What happened to the gods of Hamath and Arpad? And what about the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Did any god rescue Samaria from my power? 35 What god of any nation has ever been able to save its people from my power? So what makes you think that the Lord can rescue Jerusalem from me?” 36 But the people were silent and did not utter a word because Hezekiah had commanded them, “Do not answer him.”

POINT- If you ever find yourself in a position when you are questioning the faithfulness of God its time for you to get a word on it. Get a word on your doubt - Hezekiah does this by going to the prophet Isaiah we do this by going to our prophet, our priest, our king, the one whose all that summed up in one We go to the feet of JESUS

(NLT) — 6 the prophet replied, “Say to your master, ‘This is what the Lord says: Do not be disturbed by this blasphemous speech against me from the Assyrian king’s messengers. 7 Listen! I myself will move against him, and the king will receive a message that he is needed at home. So he will return to his land, where I will have him killed with a sword.’ ”

So it looks like this word is coming to pass… But sometimes even when things are falling into place we can be hit with the weapons of the enemy causing us to bring into question God’s faithfulness…

(NLT) — 10 “This message is for King Hezekiah of Judah. Don’t let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you with promises that Jerusalem will not be captured by the king of Assyria. 11 You know perfectly well what the kings of Assyria have done wherever they have gone. They have completely destroyed everyone who stood in their way! Why should you be any different? 12 Have the gods of other nations rescued them—such nations as Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Tel-assar? My predecessors destroyed them all! 13 What happened to the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad? What happened to the kings of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?”

King Hezekiah gets this letter and the first time being attacked he goes to get a word on it, now he does something slightly different…

(NLT) — 14 After Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it, he went up to the Lord’s Temple and spread it out before the Lord. 15 And Hezekiah prayed this prayer before the Lord: “O Lord, God of Israel, you are enthroned between the mighty cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone created the heavens and the earth. 16 Bend down, O Lord, and listen! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see! Listen to Sennacherib’s words of defiance against the living God. 17 “It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these nations. 18 And they have thrown the gods of these nations into the fire and burned them. But of course the Assyrians could destroy them! They were not gods at all—only idols of wood and stone shaped by human hands. 19 Now, O Lord our God, rescue us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone, O Lord, are God.”

I know my God is able to keep his promise, I know he is faithful. I have a confidence in God because God is like none other, and his love for you is unmatched.

(NLT) — 9 Soon afterward King Sennacherib received word that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia was leading an army to fight against him. Before leaving to meet the attack, he sent messengers back to Hezekiah in Jerusalem with this message: 10 “This message is for King Hezekiah of Judah. Don’t let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you with promises that Jerusalem will not be captured by the king of Assyria. 11 You know perfectly well what the kings of Assyria have done wherever they have gone. They have completely destroyed everyone who stood in their way! Why should you be any different? 12 Have the gods of other nations rescued them—such nations as Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Tel-assar? My predecessors destroyed them all! 13 What happened to the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad? What happened to the kings of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?”

KEY- The nation of Judah is back at war, portions of the nation of Isreal are falling left and right, and here we have the king of Judah Hezekiah trying to stand firm

POINT- The strategy of the devil is to weaponize intimidation and fear to cause you to doubt the faithfulness of God.