December 8: THE WINSOME HONOR OF THE LORD

Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. Isaiah 36:1

This unsettling turn of events was clearly another attack of Satan against the royal line of David through whom the promised Messiah was to come: the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5)! Recall that Hezekiah’s father, Ahaz, in faithlessness had sought protection for Judah (protection from Syria and Israel) by bribing the Assyrian king. The idea of paying a thug to be a bodyguard has never been a good one! Fortunately, Hezekiah was not like his father.

Assyria was well-known for brutality, but they also exercised a large degree of intelligent human strategy. With a goal of wealth and power (not simply destruction), they sought by persuasion to gain control of Jerusalem’s treasures. Why use force to take the city if they could be persuaded to surrender? Then the king of Assyria sent the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And he stood by the aqueduct from the upper pool, on the highway to the Fuller’s Field (Isaiah 36:2). It is somewhat ironic that the Rabshakeh came to the very same spot outside the Jerusalem wall where, years earlier, Isaiah had met Ahaz to urge him not to get involved with Assyria (Isaiah 7:3). This Rabshakeh was like a chief of staff from Sennacherib. Propaganda was his specialty, and his assignment was to undermine the faith of Hezekiah who firmly believed that it was not God’s will for His people to be subject to Assyria (see 2 Kings 18:5-7, 2 Chronicles 31:20-21). The Rabshakeh sent a message to Hezekiah that was a clever mixture of fact and fiction, portraying Hezekiah as a deceiver within earshot of the watchers on Jerusalem’s wall (Isaiah 36:4-20) and later accusing God Himself of being a deceiver (37:10).  

Satan’s strategy still involves the mixing of truth and error. Though he tried many times to prevent the arrival of the promised Messiah, he was unsuccessful. After the birth of Jesus, he followed up by killing all the baby boys in Bethlehem, but did not succeed in killing the baby Jesus (Matthew 2:14). His efforts to obscure and discredit the message and work of Jesus continue to this day, even as he knows that Jesus is coming again soon. Though he cannot prevent the second coming any more than he did the first, he is feverishly working to prevent people from being alert and prepared for this reality.

Hezekiah proactively prepared for a siege of the enemy (2 Chronicles 32:1-8,30; see also 2 Kings 20:20) while praying and encouraging the people to pray (Isaiah 37:4, 15-20). It appeared that Judah was doomed and would face the terrible fate of dissolution, as the ten tribes of the Northern kingdom of Israel. Such times of uncertainty call for proactive and fervent seeking of the Lord. At the foundation of Hezekiah’s prayer was an excellent perspective: the winsome honor of the LORD in the eyes of the world. He prayed:

“Now therefore, O LORD our God, save us from [Assyria’s] hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are the LORD, You alone.” Isaiah 37:20