Slices
Prepare
There is nothing we can’t say to God. Tell him – truthfully – what is on your mind.
Bible passage
Sennacherib threatens Jerusalem
36 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. 2 Then the king of Assyria sent his field commander with a large army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. When the commander stopped at the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field, 3 Eliakim son of Hilkiah the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder went out to him.
4 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? 5 You say you have counsel and might for war – but you speak only empty words. On whom are you depending, that you rebel against me? 6 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. 7 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’?
8 ‘“Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses – if you can put riders on them! 9 How then can you repulse one officer of the least of my master’s officials, even though you are depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? 10 Furthermore, have I come to attack and destroy this land without the Lord? The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.”’
11 Then Eliakim, Shebna and Joah said to the field commander, ‘Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.’
12 But the commander replied, ‘Was it only to your master and you that my master sent me to say these things, and not to the people sitting on the wall – who, like you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine?’
13 Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew, ‘Hear the words of the great king, the king of Assyria! 14 This is what the king says: do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you! 15 Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord when he says, “The Lord will surely deliver us; this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.”
16 ‘Do not listen to Hezekiah. This is what the king of Assyria says: make peace with me and come out to me. Then each of you will eat fruit from your own vine and fig-tree and drink water from your own cistern, 17 until I come and take you to a land like your own – a land of corn and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
18 ‘Do not let Hezekiah mislead you when he says, “The Lord will deliver us.” Have the gods of any nations ever delivered their lands from the hand of the king of Assyria? 19 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? Have they rescued Samaria from my hand? 20 Who of all the gods of these countries have been able to save their lands from me? How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’
21 But the people remained silent and said nothing in reply, because the king had commanded, ‘Do not answer him.’
22 Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary and Joah son of Asaph the recorder went to Hezekiah, with their clothes torn, and told him what the field commander had said.
Explore
Assyria has swept through Judah, capturing city after city, and the army arrives at the walls of Jerusalem riding high on their victories. Representing King Sennacherib, the field commander meets King Hezekiah’s spokesmen at the same aqueduct where Isaiah had confronted a defiant King Ahaz (Isaiah 7:3,10–13).
Seeds of disobedience have grown and borne bitter fruit. As the field commander puts it with scathing wit, leaning on Egypt was only going to give them splinters (v 6), there was a reasonable chance they would have to eat their own excrement, and God was not going to bail them out this time (vs 12–15)!
It was always God’s intention that in choosing one nation to be his own, that nation would be a beacon for others. Assyria is in many ways a terrible, godless nation, but here we see it claiming to enact the will of the Lord (36:10). The Assyrians can see this God has high standards for his people and that there are consequences for them in disobeying him. But Assyria will pay the price for its blasphemy (vs 19,20). In all this, God’s power and glory will be displayed, giving multitudes the chance to respond in righteous fear and worship.
Respond
What are today’s headlines? Pray for those caught up in each situation, that they would have eyes to see how God is at work to bring about his good purposes.
Deeper Bible study
What or whom do you trust most in life? Have you ever experienced broken trust? What makes you willing to trust again?
The rest of our readings (chs 36–39) move to a new literary genre, from prophecy to narrative.1 What’s particularly interesting is that they provide the context for the prophecies we’ve been reading; in a word, it’s pressure. That helps me to understand the baffling choice Judah made for idolatry. No doubt they were tempted by the hedonism that went with idol worship (remember the condemnation of ‘revelry’?),2 but the leaders also faced enormous geopolitical pressure – and it wasn’t just verbal jousting like at the United Nations.
So, let’s unpack the nature of the pressure. First, it involved physical danger: Assyria was threatening to destroy Jerusalem. However, the second and more pernicious pressure was from spiritual manipulation: the Assyrian commander wrapped his threats in a claim that God was on his side (v 10). Ironically, some parts of the church today are doing the same thing: claiming that a partisan political agenda is a word from God, causing many with different politics to give up on the church altogether. Tragic! Despite these excesses, the church still needs the gift of prophecy, so long as it is combined with the maturity to ‘test the spirits’.3
The intense pressure was also the context that taught Israel to trust God. Let’s make this personal. Are we really trusting God when our health is good, our job is secure and our lifestyle is enjoyable? Maybe a little, but we really learn to trust God when the bottom drops out of our lives. Hard times force us to turn to God wholeheartedly and pray to God fervently. The bittersweet truth is that pressure is often the tool God uses to teach us real trust.
How has God taught you about real trust in the past? Pray about a situation in your life that is helping you move to a new level of trust today.
1 To see the full Hezekiah story, read 2 Kings 18–20 and 2 Chr 29–32 2 Isa 22;2,13 3 1 John 4:1
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Hosea 11,12; Revelation 3
Pray for Scripture Union
SU Mission partner ICE in Exeter praise God that they could run their Narnia project again this year. It was wonderful to have hundreds of children coming through the interactive experience and getting a sense of the wonder of CS Lewis’s world and the truth which inspired it.
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