Today’s Podcast
Today’s Scriptures
Today’s Bible reading plans include:
Ready – 2 Kings 19:1-19
Set – 2 Kings 19; James 5
Go! – 2 Kings 18-19; 2 Chronicles 32; James 5
2 Kings 19:1-19
1 King Hezekiah tore his clothes after he heard what had been said. He then covered himself with sackcloth and entered the Eternal’s temple. 2 Hezekiah dispatched the palace administrator, Eliakim, along with Shebna the lawyer and the priest-elders, to go meet with the prophet Isaiah (Amoz’s son). Eliakim, Shebna, and the elders all went wearing sackcloth.
Eliakim, Shebna, and the Elders (to Isaiah): 3 This is Hezekiah’s message: “Today is filled with hours of sorrow, pain, anxiety, and reproof. Children are ready to be born, but there is no strength to deliver them. 4 It may be that the Eternal One your God will disprove the words of Rabshakeh, whom Assyria’s king has sent to taunt the living God. So pray hard that your God, the Eternal One, will rebuke those words and save His few children who remain.”
5 King Hezekiah’s servants approached Isaiah, 6 and Isaiah spoke to them.
Isaiah: Go back and tell your master, “This is the Eternal’s urgent message: ‘Have no fear of the blasphemy which the servants of Assyria’s kings have spoken. They are merely empty words. 7 I am going to infect Assyria’s king with a spirit, and he will hear a rumor and go back to his homeland. There I will cause him to die by the sword.’”
8 Rabshakeh returned to the Assyrian king who was now battling against the city of Libnah because he had heard that the king had abandoned Lachish.
9-10 Sennacherib then received word about Tirhakah, Cush’s king: “He is preparing to fight you.” So Sennacherib sent a message again to Hezekiah.
Sennacherib’s Message: Hezekiah, king of Judah, I warn you not to be fooled by your God, on whom you rely, when He says, “Jerusalem will not be conquered by Assyria’s king.” 11 Surely you have heard about how the kings of Assyria demolished all the nations completely—every last one of them. Do you really think you will be rescued? 12 Were the people of those nations saved by their gods when my fathers attacked? Were Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and Eden’s sons in Telassar ever rescued? No! 13 And what happened to the kings of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim’s city, Hena, and Ivvah?”
14 Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers, read it, and then placed it before the Eternal in His temple.
Hezekiah (praying to the Lord): 15 O Eternal One, Israel’s God, who sits above the winged guardians, You alone are God of all the kingdoms on earth, the One who made heaven and earth. 16 Eternal One, open up Your ears and Your eyes so You may hear and see. Listen to the words Sennacherib uses to reject the living God. 17 Eternal One, I certainly know that the Assyrian kings have destroyed the nations and lands. 18 I know how they have thrown the gods of the nations into the flames of the fire and destroyed them, but those gods were created out of wood and stones by men. 19 Eternal One, our True God, I pray You save us now from Sennacherib’s conquest—the fate that all the other nations have suffered—so that every nation on earth will know that You alone, Eternal One, are God.
Today’s Devotional
From today’s background scripture God might say:
You’ve been hearing about faith and the need to take action to demonstrate your faith the last few days. Hezekiah’s story shows again the power faith with action can have against insurmountable obstacles. Sennacherib’s message was true. No other nation had stood against Assyria’s might. They were the dominant force in the world at the time. They took the idols of the nations they defeated and threw them into fires built with the wood of the altars and temples they destroyed. No one and no gods they came across could stand up to them.
But Sennacherib had not advanced against any who believed in Me. None of the nations he faced worshiped the One True God, Jehovah, the Eternal One, Commander of the angel armies. When I release My forces in defense of My people, I win. Period. When I brandish My sword, the mightest fall to the face in fear because they know the outcome of the fight.
Hezekiah had seen My power. He knew what I could do. Hezekiah did exactly what he should have done when he saw the threat of the Assyrians. He didn’t run. He didn’t cower. He just took immediate action. He went to the Temple and laid out his concern before Me. He asked for My protection for My people and for My glory to be seen amongst the rest of the nations of the world.
Hezekiah’s walk with Me was genuine. His love for Me was pure. His actions to try to purge the nation of the idols and shrines set up by his ancestors thrilled Me. He led the people by example in his worship of Me. So I wanted to show My people that I honored Hezekiah’s faithfulness. Sennacherib was in for a shock. Despite the message he sent back to Hezekiah, Sennacherib would never return to Jerusalem. Assyria would fall victim to the same fate they inflicted on the nations they conquered. They would become slaves to Babylon as a greater force would defeat them and take their people into captivity.
If only Hezekiah’s descendents would have mimicked his faithfulness Jerusalem could have been spared the tragic end it faced not many years later. But greed, lust, selfishness, injustice, pride, all those base carnal emotions crept into their lives and they failed to honor Me as their God. In not too many years, Israel would lose its identity as a self-governing nation for more than two millenia.
Faithfulness to Me pays off. Unfaithfulness carries dire consequences.
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