Alright brethren, let's stay
there in the passage Brother Adam just read in 2 Kings. I was going to read that, that
he just read, but I just didn't think I would have time to read
it and preach the message too. We looked at two passages in
the past couple of services that deal with the same trial as is
going on right here. In Isaiah 30, the Lord sent Isaiah
with the gospel, and this was his word to the children of Judah.
In Isaiah 30, 15, thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of
Israel, in returning and rest shall you be saved, in quietness
and in confidence shall be your strength. He told them to return
and wait on the Lord, believe the Lord, trust the Lord. And
then, speaking of the same, during the same time, in Isaiah 32,
the Lord sent Isaiah and he declared who the Savior would be. He sent
the word and he said, in Isaiah 32 too, a man should be as a
hiding place from the wind. and a covert from the tempest,
as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land. That man is the God-man, the
Lord Jesus. So we had two messages dealing
with the same trial. The first one he said, return,
return from looking to Egypt, return and wait on the Lord,
believe the Lord, trust the Lord. The second message he declared
this man, Christ our Savior will be the hiding place from the
tempest. He'll be as rivers of water in
a dry place. He'll be the shadow of a great
rock in this sun-scorching desert. Well, today we come to the details
of the trial and the specifics of the trial, what was going
on when all of this took place. This trial was a trial for Hezekiah. specifically for Hezekiah. He's
the king of Judah, and he's a good king. He was a good king. His father Ahaz had led the children
of Israel, or the children of Judah. He was king of Judah.
You know, at this time Israel and Judah are divided. Israel's
ten and a half tribes, and then you have Judah. And Ahaz had
led the children of Judah to worship wherever they wanted
to, however they wanted to. They were building places in
the groves and in the high places and they had images and they
were even worshiping that brazen serpent that Moses had lifted
up. And Hezekiah broke down those
images and he broke down those groves and he was restoring true
worship to Judah. He destroyed that brazen serpent,
told them it's just a piece of brass, worthless. They were worshiping
that thing. So he's in the middle of doing
a good work. He's restoring true worship to
Judah. He's telling them according to
the commandments that God gave to Moses. He's telling them you
come to Jerusalem, the one place God said to come to. He said
you come through the high priest God provided, through the lamb
God provided, and at the altar God provided, all of this picturing
the one way to come to God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
alone. Come to the place where he's
established his gospel, hear the word preached, believe on
his son, trust his son, and God will save his people. The Lord
Jesus will save his people. He's in the middle of doing this
good work, and it's a good work. And while he's in the middle
of restoring this worship to Judah, God sends this trial to
him. And it was some kind of a trial. It was some kind of a trial.
The king of Assyria, his name is Sennacherib, he had conquered
Syria already, and then he had conquered Israel. After that,
And then he had come up against Judah and he'd taken many of
the fenced cities of Judah and took the citizens of those cities
captive to cities that belonged to the Medes. So he's already,
he's just gradually coming closer and closer and closer to Hezekiah. And now he sent these generals
of his to the wall at Jerusalem. And Hezekiah sent out three of
his men And they have a meeting here
and we just heard Rapshika and the things that he said. Rapshika,
I'm told, is a title of a field general rather than actually
a man's name. But that's what they came there
and he was saying this. Now, this is how serious this
trial is. The Lord promised the Lord Jesus
Christ was coming through the tribe of Judah, the Lion of the
tribe of Judah. And he promised, the scepter
shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet
until Shiloh come, until Christ come. Now that's a guarantee
that nothing's going to happen to Judah. That's a guarantee
God's going to spare Judah because Christ is coming through Judah,
that tribe. Hezekiah is here now faced with
this great army, and not only was it just those generals that
came, they came with a great host. They came with a big army,
and they're just standing there in front of the wall, and they
just, you heard the speech they just gave, that he gave to these
men. Do you think it strange, brethren,
that while Hezekiah was doing this good work of faith and restoring
true worship to Judah, that the Lord would send this great trial
with the king of Assyria? You should never think something
like that a strange thing when God sends afflictions. When you've
repented and you're trusting the Lord and you're doing as
the Lord has commanded in a work of faith, don't think it's strange
if the Lord sends you a trial. We're going to see here what
the Lord was teaching Hezekiah and the other chosen children
of God among the tribe of Judah. We'll see what he taught them
here. I don't want to read this again, everything that Brother
Adam just read, but I want to just make a few comments on it.
You see how that what Rabshica was doing was he was trying to
turn the children of Judah against Hezekiah. He was saying, Hezekiah,
you had all these convenient places to worship. You didn't
have to go a long ways to go all the way to Jerusalem to worship. You had a grove just around the
corner. It was convenient for you, just
around the corner from your house. You didn't have to go all this
way to Judah, but Hezekiah took away that convenient place and
said, you've got to come to this altar. He's trying to turn the
children of Judah against Hezekiah. But what Hezekiah had done was
declare the true way of approaching God, the true worship of God. He said to them, he's trying
to demoralize them. He said, you're so small in number.
He said, if you just give me a gift, I'll give you 2,000 horses
if you got enough riders to put on them. He's just speaking so
arrogantly to them. And then he saved his strongest
argument for last. He said, do you think I've come
up against you without the Lord being on my side? He said, look
at all these other nations I've conquered. And he said, none
of their gods were able to save them. And he said, the Lord's
on my side. He said, the Lord sent me to
conquer Judah. That's what Rapshika's saying
that Sennacherib, that's what Snocker was saying, but it wasn't
true. None of that was true. Now brethren,
seeing how great this trial was, we're talking about a great trial. A whole nation coming up against
little Judah, and they're reduced to just one and a half tribes
at this point. A great army come up against
them. Seeing what a great trial this was, Do you think it would have been hard to hear when Isaiah
came there and preached and said, this is the word of the Lord. Your strength is to return and
to quietly trust the Lord and wait on him. You know, we can
have something far less come about, some far less trial. And
we have this thought of, well, I believe the Lord, but I got
to do, you know, I'm just not going to sit on my hands. I got
to do something. Look at the greatness of this
trial. And the Lord said, look to me, trust the Lord, wait on
the Lord. This will be your strength. This
will be your salvation. This man, the God-man, the Redeemer,
will be the hiding place. He will be your salvation. That's
the gospel. It doesn't matter what trial
you're in, what you're facing, the only way any sinner shall
be saved from our sin, the only way, the only way, is by the
Lord Jesus Christ fulfilling the whole law in perfect righteousness,
by him coming and preaching this gospel to you through the messenger
he sends, by the Spirit of God giving you a new heart to believe
him and trust him and cast all your care on him. This is how
God saves his people. because God will get all the
glory for the salvation of his people. We're not going to get
anything to glory in. We're not. He's going to get
all the glory. He says that in Isaiah, in the
book of Isaiah. He said, I will not share my
glory with another. he's going to get the glory.
And this is the whole purpose we saw this morning in the first
hour. His purpose of saving is that we sing praises to him and
give glory to him. Because as Jonah learned, when
Jonah tried to run from the Lord and not do what the Lord said,
the Lord The Lord sent that tempestuous storm, and Jonah was cast into
the sea, and the whale swallowed Jonah up, and when he's in the
belly of the whale, he's crying out to God, and the whale spits
him out on the land, and this is what Jonah learned through
all of that. Salvation is of the Lord, and that's so, brethren. A to Z, salvation is of the Lord. We're sinners. We're sinners. We have to be saved by the Lord. And that's what the Lord's doing.
He's saving his people from our sins by his grace, by his mercy,
not because we deserve it, not because we've earned it, because
the Lord is gracious. That's the message of this whole
book. This book, The whole point of
this book, the whole reason God made this entire world is to
glorify his name in the person of his son, to give his son all
preeminence. That's the main purpose. It's
not even, our salvation's not even the main purpose. We get
to benefit in that we're saved, but the main purpose in God saving
sinners is so that God manifests that he's holy and he's righteous
and he's long-suffering and he's merciful and that he will by
no means clear the guilty. There is only one way that God
could have mercy on his people and at the same time condemn
us, and pour out justice on us, and we die the death penalty
which the law demanded. There's only one way God could
be merciful and just, and that is God sent his own son, and
his own son bore the sin of his people, bore the curse that we
deserved, and he redeemed his people from the curse of the
law. Therefore, God is a just God, and he is a savior. Oh,
that's good news. That's good news. Now, I want
to show you some things Hezekiah learned. So, Rabbi Sheik has
told this word that Sennacherib sent him to declare. Now, here's
the first thing Hezekiah learned. He owned himself totally unable
to save himself or to be able to save anybody else. This is
the king of Judah now, and he owned himself, unable to save
himself or unable to save anybody else. Look here in 2 Kings 19
verse 1, And it came to pass, when King Hezekiah heard that
he rent his clothes and covered himself with sackcloth and went
into the house of the Lord. This renting his clothes, covering
himself with sackcloth, this is all a picture of humiliation. This is a picture of repentance.
This is a picture of somebody being in the dust and owning
themselves to be totally helpless. And he sent his officer to Isaiah
the prophet in verse three, and they said to him, thus saith
Hezekiah, this day is a day of trouble and of rebuke and blasphemy. Now here's what he confessed. This is what he learned in all
of this. The children are come to the
birth and there's not strength to bring forth. In other words,
we're not able. We're not able. We don't have
strength. That's what he learned. Wouldn't
it be amazing if we had a president of these United States that did
what Hezekiah did? Wouldn't that be amazing? He
sent the king of the nation sent for God's preacher. That's what
he did. Wouldn't it be amazing if me
and you did this right here? It would be amazing grace. It
would be totally to the praise of God's glory and God's grace
and God's power if you and me do this right here. If we come
before the Lord confessing, we don't have strength to save ourselves.
Everybody in this world thinks they do. That's what you hear
preachers preaching in churches everywhere, that sinners have
power to save themselves or to do something. There's a little
something you can do. I'm here to tell you, brethren,
there is none righteous, no, not one. That's what this book
says. This book says there's none that
seeketh after the Lord. Did you know that? There's none. If we lean to our own understanding,
we're not trusting Christ our wisdom. Now this is true, brethren,
not only when the Lord first calls you, but when you're in
a trial like Hezekiah's in, or any other lesser trial, it doesn't
have to be this major of a trial. If we're still leaning to our
wisdom, we're not trusting Christ to be our wisdom. If we're looking
to the works of our hands, we're not trusting Christ to be our
righteousness. If we're looking to our works
as having sanctified us, we're not trusting Christ to be our
sanctification. If we're thinking we can deliver
ourselves out of it, we've got some way we can deliver out of
it, we're not trusting Christ our Redeemer. It can't be partly
grace and partly works. We have to cast it all into His
hand. When God brings His child to behold our need for Christ
to save, He does it by showing us we do not have strength to
save ourselves. That's what Hezekiah saw. The
children have come to the birth and there's not strength to bring
forth. But if we're still trying to
save ourselves, we're not trusting the Lord. But now listen, for
everybody who's God's child, everybody that God's purpose
is to save, God's not going to be frustrated
and resisted. He will bring each and every
one he's going to save. He will bring us to the point
where we finally surrender and say, I don't have strength. He will succeed in that. He will
succeed in that. You that believe, did he not
succeed in that when he called you? When he called you, he succeeded
in that. And that's what has to be done
first, is show us we are sinners incapable of saving ourselves.
Secondly, the Lord brings us then to cast all our care on
the Lord. All our care on the Lord. He
says in verse 4, this is what he asked Isaiah to pray to the
Lord. He said, It may be the Lord thy
God will hear all the words of Reb Sheikah, whom the king of
Assyria, his master, hath sent to reproach the living God, and
will reprove the words which the Lord thy God hath heard.
Wherefore, lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.
Now again, I remind you, this is the king of Judah. This is
the most powerful man in the land. But he sends word to God's
preacher and asks Isaiah to pray to the Lord for him and for all
God's elect remnant that are left. That's what he did. He's
casting it all into the hand of the Lord, trusting the Lord.
God has a remnant. That's what the scriptures call
God's people, a remnant. If you read Ephesians 1, you
find out they're called God's elect. We're called that in scripture
more than any other title that we're given in the scriptures.
God blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
according as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the
world that we should be holy and without blame before him
in love. In whom we have redemption through his blood even the forgiveness
of sin to the praise of the glory of God's grace wherein he hath
made us accepted in the beloved. That's all the grace of God. God did that. God did that. And that's what he's speaking
of here, is lift up thy prayer for the remnant, for the remnant. That's the church of God. You
see, when the Lord Jesus Christ came, contrary to what this world
preaches, when the Lord Jesus Christ came, He knew exactly
who He came to lay down His life for. Exactly. He said, I lay down my life for
the sheep. He said that. He knew, he said,
just like the Father knows me, I know them, and I love them,
and I lay down my life for them. And he looked at the scribes
and Pharisees who were trusting themselves and thought they were
so holy and righteous, and he said, you do not believe me because
you are not my sheep. He didn't say, you're not my
sheep because you don't believe. He said, you don't believe me
because you're not my sheep. See, Christ came down and laid
down His life and bore the sins of every particular sinner God
entrusted to Him. And He bore the justice that
they all deserved, and He satisfied that justice. And when a man
has died under the death penalty, the law has nothing else to say
to it. And this is what he teaches his
people through the preaching of this word. He sends you the
gospel and teaches you salvation has been accomplished, redemption
is done. That's what Christ cried from
the cross when he said, it is finished. That's what he accomplished. He didn't fail. Scripture says,
He said in Isaiah 42, He shall not fail nor be discouraged until
He has set judgment in the earth. And our Lord did not fail. Our
Lord accomplished the work. Hebrews 9 says, He came at the
end of time to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And
that's what He did. That's what He did. and He comes
to me and you lost in our sins, dead in our sins, thinking that
we're good, thinking that we can save ourselves, just wanting
nothing to do with God. However He does it, He brings
you under the preaching of the gospel, and you begin to hear
this word, and you don't like it at first, because it takes
all the glory from you. And you don't want to hear that,
because you want a little something to glory in. Why? Tell me this. Just reason with
me just a minute. Why would anybody be angry at
a message that gives God every bit of the glory and exalts him
to the highest and abases you and me? What did he tell Isaiah
the message was? He said, go preach all flesh
is grass. and thy God reigneth. That's
the twofold message. We're sinners. He's the Savior. That's the message. And so he's
begging here now that Isaiah pray to the Lord who has purchased
his church with his own blood and who's promised to save all
his people. And when that king of Assyria
reproached Hezekiah, and he reproached the remnant in Judah, he reproached
the living God. That's what he says here, he
reproached the living God. Notice here, he said, the king
of Assyria, his master has sent to reproach the living God. And
brethren, that's how one God's people are, is when somebody
reproaches one of God's people, they're reproaching the living
God. So first he learned he was helpless to save himself or anybody
else. Second thing he did, he cast
all his care on the Lord. He asked, pray to the Lord to
save us. And then thirdly, God strengthened
his faith through the message of the gospel. He learned the
importance of this word. He learned the importance of
hearing the gospel preached. The Lord strengthened him through
the gospel. It says there in 2 Kings 19 in verse 6, it says,
And Isaiah said unto them, now get this now, this took some
time. It looks like Isaiah just turned
around and answered them. But you have to think about this.
Isaiah is a man, he's a sinner saved by grace just like they
are. And here they come to him and ask you pray for us. And
he sought the Lord. He prayed and he sought the Lord.
And the Lord gave him a message. And so Isaiah went and preached
this message to them. And here's what the message was.
Isaiah said to them, thus shall you say to your master, thus
saith the Lord. You go tell, he said, you go
tell them to tell their master, thus saith the Lord. Here's what
the Lord says. The Lord said, be not afraid
of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants
of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. That's what God told them. This is the Lord speaking. Now, have you ever, have you
been praying for the Lord to save? Have you been praying for
the Lord to save you? Been praying for the Lord to
save you out of a trial? The Lord answered their prayer.
This is a great, great child. He answered their prayer. And
how did he answer it? He answered it by sending Isaiah
with the message from the Lord. That's how he answered their
prayer. He uses his earthen vessel to preach his gospel. That's
how he answers the prayer of his people. One of the ways he
answers the prayer of his people, he gives you a word of the gospel.
We heard the Lord's word to turn to him and to stop trusting self
or any other, to wait on the Lord. Thus said the Lord God,
the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest shall you be saved,
in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. That's
what the Lord told them in the beginning. That's how he turned
them from trusting Egypt. Hezekiah wavered at first, and
he was going to try to make an alliance with Egypt. When Repchiki
said that and said, why are you trusting in Egypt? Hezekiah had
done that, but the Lord sent Isaiah preaching and he turned
Hezekiah back to trust the Lord. And then we heard the message.
He said that the man Christ Jesus is the covert from the storm.
He's our refuge and our provider. And now the Lord declares this
good news. He said, Be not afraid of the
words which thou hast heard with which the servants of the king
of Syria have blasphemed me. Any word that you hear a man
preach whereby he's saying that we can save ourselves Or what
about He saying that He can save you? Or He's telling you to look
to your hands? Or He's telling you if you offer
Him so much money, He'll save you? That all the things that
Reb Sheikah was saying there, anytime you hear a man putting
the work of salvation into the hands of a man, it is blasphemy
against God. That's exactly what it is. What
did Paul say in Romans 11? If it's grace, it's not works.
If it's works, it's not grace. They can't coexist. The Lord declared through Isaiah
what the Lord would do. He said in verse 7, 2 Kings 19,
7, Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a
rumor and shall return to his own land. And I will cause him
to fall by the sword in his own land. And so Rabshica returned,
and he found the king of Assyria warring against Libna, for he
had heard that He was departed from Lachish. He heard a rumor,
just like the Lord said. The Lord said, I will do this.
I will cause this to happen. I will cause them to leave my
people alone. And sure enough, when Rapshika
gets back, Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, had heard a rumor,
and he's off fighting another group of folks, just like the
Lord said he would. See, The children of Israel,
I mean the children of Judah, they couldn't make that happen
to the king of Assyria. They couldn't make the king of
Assyria leave them alone. They couldn't turn the king of
Assyria and make him go off to another country and leave them
alone. Who did that? The Lord said,
I will. Lord said, I will cause it to
happen. I'll make him hear a rumor and I will work this. And that's
what the Lord did. You see, do you see that? The
Lord, the King's heart is in the hand of the Lord. Scripture
says he turns it whithersoever he will, just like the rivers
of water. That's who God is. God is God. God is sovereign. God is all
powerful. That's what God did. Now you
see, he's given this message to them to strengthen them to
trust the Lord. And as a cause being taught,
not only is he unable, he's being taught to cast it all on the
Lord. He's being taught the importance of this gospel. The Lord just
keeps sending them Isaiah, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the
Lord, thus saith the Lord. It's how God's gonna save. But
we have to wait on the Lord. We have to wait on the Lord.
That's something we don't like to do. I tell you, everything
being so instamatic nowadays. I think that's just to make us
less patient. I think it's turning us into
a people that we want it now, we want it yesterday. But the
Lord and the way he works, he's going to make us wait on his
time. Now look what he did in verse 9. I'm just going to read
this. Just listen. Verse 9. When he
heard say of Terhaka, king of Ethiopia, Behold, he's come out
to fight against thee. He sent messengers again to Hezekiah. See, he's got to go fight somebody
else, but now he sends another threat to Hezekiah and quite
left him alone yet. And he said, Thus shall you speak
to Hezekiah, king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God, in whom thou
trustest, deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be delivered
into the hand of the king of Assyria. Behold, thou hast heard
what the king of Assyria hath done to all lands by destroying
them utterly. And shalt thou be delivered?
Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers
have destroyed? And he lists all these nations
right there. He said, Where is the king of
Hamath, and the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Seraphim,
and of Hinnah, and of Ivah? And Hezekiah received the letter
from the hand of the messengers, and he read it. And what did
Hezekiah do? He went up into the house of
the Lord, and he spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed
before the Lord, and he said, O Lord God of Israel, which dwelleth
between the cherubims, and you remember the cherubims on each
side of the mercy seat on top of the ark. He's saying, O Lord,
my propitiation, my mercy seat. You that have mercy and save
sinners by mercy. He said, Thou art the God, even
Thou alone of all the kingdoms over the earth. Thou has made
heaven and earth. Men will say, so you think that
the God that you're preaching is the only God there is? That's
exactly what Hezekiah said. You alone are the true God. And yes, I believe the God that
I'm preaching to you is the true God. The God of this book right
here is the true God. He made heaven and earth. He
said, Lord, bow down thine ear and hear. Open, Lord, thine eyes
and see, and hear the words of Sennacherib, which has sent him
to reproach the living God. Of a truth, Lord, the kings of
Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands, and have cast
their gods into the fire, because they were no gods, but the work
of men's hands. They were wood and stone, therefore
they've destroyed them. Now therefore, O Lord our God,
I beseech thee, I beg of thee, save thou us out of his hand,
that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art
the Lord God, even thou only. You see, even though the Lord
gives us the gospel and he gives you the word of comfort and he
tells you he's going to save, he may not immediately deliver
us. Sennacherib sent more threats, but the Lord's teaching us to
trust the Lord to work in His time. The Lord began to fulfill
His promise, but the Lord allowed the enemy to roar a little bit
longer. But Hezekiah didn't give up. When he got that letter,
he went into the house of the Lord. This time he didn't sin
for Isaiah. You see a strengthening of his
faith right here. You see him depending more upon
the Lord right here. He went into the house of the
Lord himself and spread that letter out before the Lord and
begged the Lord to have mercy on him. You see, true faith,
the faith God gives, will not give up, will persevere, will
keep believing God, will keep trusting God. The Lord answered
his prayer the same as he did before. Look at verse 20. Then
Isaiah, the son of Amos, sent to Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith
the Lord God of Israel. He dealt with him one way. He
kept sending his messenger to preach the word. You know, Isaiah
here Not only is the Lord going to save through the preaching
of the gospel, but Isaiah here is a picture of Christ Jesus
being the one mediator between God and man. If he's going to
deal with you, he's going to deal with you through Christ
the mediator. And the Lord just kept sending Isaiah to him, kept
sending Isaiah to him, and that's what he's going to do for his
people. And if you're hearing the gospel today, If you're really
hearing the message today and you're being blessed in your
heart spiritually today, it's not because of me. It is not
because of me. It's because the king of kings,
the mediator, the head of the church, the bishop and shepherd
of our souls, the pastor who is God, it's because he's speaking
into your heart through the Holy Spirit. That's how come you're
hearing. And this is what he said, Thus saith the Lord God
of Israel, verse 20, That which thou hast prayed to me against
Sinatra, king of Israel, I have heard. This is the words that
the Lord hath spoken concerning him. The virgin, the daughter
of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn. The
daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee. Whom hast thou
reproached and blasphemed? And against whom hast thou exalted
thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high, even against the
Holy One of Israel? By thy messengers thou hast reproached
the Lord, and hast said, With the multitude of my chariots
I have come up to the height of the mountains, and to the
sides of Lebanon, and will cut down the tall cedar trees thereof,
and the choice fir trees thereof. And I will enter into the lodging
of his borders, and into the forest of his caramel. I've digged
and drunk strange waters. With the sole of my feet have
I dried up the rivers of besieged places. But the Lord declares,
the only reason the king of Assyria did any of those things and conquered
any of those nations is because it was the Lord's purpose for
him to do it. Look at this. Hast thou not heard
long ago? This is the Lord speaking. He's
speaking to the king of Assyria. Have you not heard long ago how
I've done it? and of ancient times that I formed
it. Now have I brought it to pass that thou shouldest be to
lay waste-fenced cities into ruinous heaps. Therefore their
inhabitants were of small power. They were dismayed and confounded.
They were as the grass of the field and as the green herb,
as the grass on the housetops and as corn blasted before it
be grown up. But I know thy bold, and thy
going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me, because
thy rage against me, and that tumult has come up into mine
ears, God said. Therefore I will put my hook
in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I'll turn thee
back by the way by which thou camest." You know, If you've
ever seen, they used to do this, I don't know if they still do,
but they would put a hook in a hog's nose and they just clamp
on it and pull it whichever way they want to pull it. That's
what the Lord said I'm going to do. He said, and this shall
be a sign to thee, you shall eat this year such things as
grow of themselves, and the second year that which springs of the
same, and in the third year sow ye and reap, plant vineyards
and eat the fruit. And he said, And the remnant that's escaped
of the house of Judah shall yet again take root downward and
bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem shall go
forth a remnant, and they that escape out of Mount Zion, the
zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall do this. God said, I'm going
to do this. Therefore thus saith the Lord
concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city,
nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with a shield,
nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the
same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith
the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it for mine own
sake and for my servant David's sake. You know who David represents? David represents the Lord Jesus
Christ. And God said, I'm going to save
this city. I'm going to do it for my own
sake. I'm going to do it for my servant's sake. And he said,
and I'll defend it. That's his word, and that's what
he's gonna do. He will save his people. There
will not be anybody prevail against his people because the Lord Jesus
Christ has come into this world, purchased his people with his
blood. He has redeemed us, and scripture says we arose with
him and sat down at God's right hand, and right now he's saving
his people and shall save every one of his people. God did for
Hezekiah and Judah exactly what He said He would do. In verses
35 down to verse 37. You can go home and read it.
It says that they went out and they smote in the camp of the
Assyrians 104 score and 5,000. Sennacherib king of Assyria departed. He went, he returned, he dwelt
at Nineveh. And look at what happened now.
The Lord said he's going to hear a rumor, he's going to return,
and he said he's going to be destroyed by his own house. And look what happened. Verse
37, it came to pass as he was worshiping in the house of Nishrash,
his god, that Adramelech and Sherezer, his own sons, smote
him with a sword, and they escaped into the land of Arminia, and
Esherdan, his son, reigned in his stead. Now let me end with
this. I've preached way longer than I meant to preach. Let me
end with this. Why did God send a trial to Hezekiah
when Hezekiah had been granted repentance and would believe
God and was restoring true worship to Judah? He was doing this good
work for God. Why did God send this trial like
he did? Number one, it kept him from
trusting himself. It kept him from trusting in
the fact he repented. It kept him from trusting in
his good works. It kept him from trusting in
the fact that in his faith. There's one thing to trust God,
it's another thing to trust your faith. He didn't trust his faith,
he trusted the Lord. His faith looked to the Lord.
And then saying that through the trial, the Spirit of God
made Hezekiah come to the Lord in faith and wait on the Lord.
That's what he worked through this trial. And then thirdly,
through the trial, he showed Hezekiah the Lord's faithfulness
to save his people exactly according to God's word. He just kept sending
the gospel to him, sending his preacher, preaching the same
word. I'm going to save you. I will cause the enemy to fall.
I will save the remnant, the Lord said, and he showed his
faithfulness to do it. Those three things are the purpose
of every trial a believer goes through. To show you your inability,
to show you that to trust the Lord and wait on the Lord, cast
it all into his hand, and thirdly, God shows you his faithfulness
in doing exactly what he said he would do according to his
word. It was for Hezekiah's good and it was for God's glory. That's
the purpose of every trial. I pray the Lord will bless that
and help us to do exactly what Hezekiah did. Salvation of the
Lord. Amen. All right, Brother Greg.