2 Kings 19:20-37
November 6, 2021
Isaiah Prophesies Sennacherib's Fall
Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard. This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:
“She despises you; she scorns you—the virgin daughter of Zion; she wags her head behind you—the daughter of Jerusalem. “Whom have you mocked and reviled? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights? Against the Holy One of Israel! By your messengers, you have mocked the Lord, and you have said, ‘With my many chariots I have gone up the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon; I felled its tallest cedars, its choicest cypresses; I entered its farthest lodging place, its most fruitful forest. I dug wells and drank foreign waters, and I dried up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt.’ “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins, while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and confounded, and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, like grass on the housetops, blighted before it is grown. “But I know you're 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 into 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.
“And this shall be the sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the Lord will do this.
“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. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”
And that night 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. Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went 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 escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.
Today we are studying 17 verses and that is a lot to cover, but it is not my words or thoughts that encourage, rebuke, or give direction, but God’s. First God is speaking through Isaiah to Hezekiah about the fall of Sennacherib king of Assyria. Next, the Lord is showing the foolishness of anyone, you and me or the king of Assyria who believes without Him they can do anything. Long before he was king God had established that he would be the king of Assyria and that he would conquer strong nations. It makes one wonder how often do you and I give thanks and have a thankful spirit for the blessing and the things God has done through us?
Such a man is President Donald Trump, he did more good for our country than any other President since President Regan, but not once have I heard him give praise to the God that gave him the wealth, or the skills that made him a President, that return oil independence to our nation, who stop the flow of illegals into our country, who stood against China, and all other governments that had taken advantage of us for many years. We had low unemployment and most of us did not like his tweets, or how he took credit for most things that were good that happen, but do you recall President Obama taking credit for the Navy seals killing the leader of al-Qaeda. Could that be why we are in the mess we find ourselves in today in the U.S.A.?
Folks, it is not money, nor Washington D.C. we need to look to but the God of Creation, the one that makes everything that is, His name is Jesus Christ, and the book of John gives us this account, In John 1:1-3, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was at the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
No comments:
Post a Comment