All right, if you look at 2 Kings
chapter 18, now the story that I read you from 2 Chronicles
appears in the scriptures three times. It appears in 2 Kings, where
we're going now, and the very nearly identical
record of these events is recorded in the book of Isaiah, and that's
in Isaiah 36, and then there where we read in 2 Chronicles
chapter 32. Now remember that when our Lord
inspired scripture writers to record these historical events,
it was not recorded simply to satisfy our historical curiosity. Knowing history is of no spiritual
value in and of itself. And when these men recorded what
happened, They were inspired to record it in such a way as
to make a particular point of spiritual significance. And that's
why you can read accounts, for instance, in the gospel accounts,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and then in the history books,
like 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles,
and whatnot. And you find parallel passages,
but it looks like they differ. And they do differ in some of
the details. Not so much that if both of them
are reporting the same detail, they report that detail differently.
Rather, each storyteller emphasizes different details
of the story. Now, those who are skeptics regarding
the scriptures, they don't believe that the Bible is the inspired
scriptures. They don't believe that it has
authority on all issues in which it speaks. And they think when
they see these differences in details that they've proven that
the scriptures are not reliable, because certainly if they were,
everybody would tell the same story, exactly the same. Well,
history books of today don't tell the story the same way.
when they're recording rather recent events. Pick up the newspaper. Try to find out what happened
yesterday. And the way different journalists
and whatnot handle it, well, one thing, you can see their
biases in it. But probably the facts that they
tell you are true. But the way they record them
can give differing whole-picture views. Now, as
I said, II Kings and Isaiah, almost word for word, very little
difference. The Chronicles passage that I
read earlier tells the whole story much quicker. and emphasizes
different details of the story than what you can find in 2 Kings
18 and Isaiah 36. But I want to look at these records
in 2 Chronicles and 2 Kings under this heading, leaning on or resting
in the king's word. Now King Hezekiah, according
to what is written here, is that he is the best king that Judah
ever had. Now remember, Saul, David, and
Solomon were all kings over a united nation of Israel. But after Solomon
died, The nation of Israel split in two. And you had the 10 tribes
in the north and the two tribes in the south. The north retained
the name Israel. The south took up the name Judah
because the largest section of that nation was made up of the
tribe of Judah. Hezekiah was king in Judah. Now, none of the kings of the
northern ten tribes followed the Lord. Period. None of them. From the very first one, they
all went astray. They went, as it were, hog wild
on idolatry. In Judah, it was a mixed bag.
You had some kings that did well and followed the Lord, and you
had some who followed the Lord with various degrees of faithfulness. It is written in verse 3 of 2
Kings 18, he, that is, Hezekiah, did what was right in the eyes
of the Lord, just as his father, and the word father there just
means ancestor, David had done. And look what he did. This Hezekiah,
He removed the high places. Now, I said they went hog wild
on idolatry up in Israel. In Judah, they weren't free of
idolatry. During the times of the wicked
kings in Judah, idolatry would begin to rise, and then the Lord
would be pleased to send them a good king, and that king, generally
speaking, one of the first things he would do is get rid of idolatry. And so it said that he removed
the high places, smashed the sacred stones, and cut down the
Asherah poles. And then he broke into pieces
the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites
had been burning incense to it. It was called Nehushtan, worthless. Now here's an interesting thing.
Here's a faithful king in the only part of the tribes of Israel
that remain faithful from time to time. There's idolatry in
it. There is some plain, outright
pagan idolatry involving other gods. It mentions the Asherah
Pole. And Asherah was a goddess. And in fact, it got to the point
that some in both the northern tribes and the southern tribes
believed that Asherah was the wife of Jehovah. Now, there are some in broad
Christianity that come pretty close to a similar idolatry. But they actually would, at one
point, They put up a pole, and I guess that was supposed to
be her likeness or something, right there in the temple courts
near the altar. Now, that's how bad it could
get, even in Judah. Up in the northern ten tribes,
everybody had their own god. It was a mess. It seemed like
every king in the northern tribes tried to outdo the previous one
in how far they would stray away from the God who had brought
them out of Egypt. At any rate, he got rid of that
idolatry, and then here, this serpent. Now, we are attracted
to objects, let's just face it. Not every religious symbol is
an idol, but I tend to not have anything to do with them because
today's religious symbol becomes tomorrow's idol. Now the Lord
commanded Moses to build or to make this brass serpent. He commanded
him to do that. Remember they were coming across
from Egypt to the promised land and they were being bitten by
serpents and they cried out to Moses and Moses went to the Lord
and the Lord says make a brass serpent, put it on a pole and
everybody that looks will be healed. Well, what did they do? Well, those
that looked lived and the nation was saved. But rather than simply turn their
hearts to the one whose miraculous power and goodness and grace
was shown in their deliverance from those fiery serpents, they
took that snake They said, we're keeping this. It's got power. It's got power. And you know
something? That was every bit as wicked
and idle as any of those that share his poles. The moment you
look to any object as the focus of faith, you have departed from
the faith of God's elect. There is a single object for
our faith. Yes, there is. But you can't
see it with these eyes. It's Christ. It's not the church. It's not
the preacher or the priest or whatever they happen to call
the leader of a local assembly or a denomination. I'm always,
well, theologically, I understand why people can be enamored of
another man. Practically, I cannot understand
that. Why would we think that any of
the sons of Adam can do us any good in bringing us nearer unto
God? Much less can anything made by
one of the sons of Adam provide a way for us to approach God. But that's what these Jews did.
I remember You know, I was brought up and everybody talked about
the Jews, you know, and what a great people they were. I'm not an anti-Semite. I don't
think they're any different than anybody else. But they would
say things like, well, you know, the Jews of old would do such
and such. And that was supposed to mean
we were supposed to follow what they did. Do you know what the
Jews of old did? And by that I mean, you know, from Sinai
on through the first century. God says they were stiff-necked
and uncircumcised in heart and mind. They were rebels, just
like you and me. Over and over the Lord forgave
them and re-established their nation because He'd made a promise
that through them Messiah would come. Once Messiah came though,
He just let them go. He left them to themselves. And
they went on in their unbelief. And so here these people had
set up a shirah poles, they'd taken this image that God had
said to make, and then they did what God had told them never
to do, they began to worship that image. Well, Hezekiah got
rid of it. It said that there was no one like Hezekiah
among all the kings of Judah. So, David is always set forth
as the ultimate king. That's why Messiah, Christ, is
referred to as the son of David. David was called the man after
God's own heart. But you had David, then you had
Solomon, then you had a string of them, and that whole string
of the kings of Judah, out of them, Hezekiah was the best of
them. Verse 6 says, he held fast to
the Lord and did not cease to follow Him. And then he kept the commands
the Lord had given Moses. And the result was the Lord was
with him. He was successful in whatever
he undertook. Now, why did Hezekiah do all
these things. What lie at the core? It's found
here at the beginning of verse five. Hezekiah trusted the Lord,
trusted Jehovah, the God of Israel. Now faith is not natural to us,
is it? We come into this world as unbelievers
and we stay that way unless and until God gives us spiritual
life because faith is a spiritual work. The faith that we have
in the Lord Jesus Christ is not the kind of faith we had in other
things before we came to Christ. It's not, you know, in the religion
I was brought up in, the form of Christianity I was brought
up in, they pretty much acted as though whatever faith we had
before we trusted Christ, we simply turned that faith to Christ.
No, that's not. We don't believe Christ with
a natural faith. We believe Christ as the result
of the new birth, a miraculous work that the Holy Spirit of
God does without asking or getting our permission. He just does
it. And when He has given us this
new spiritual life from above, it's then and only then that
we are able to understand, to perceive the Kingdom of God,
and to enter it. And we enter by faith. Now faith
is that which believes God, but it believes in a spiritual sense,
not just a matter of being intellectually persuaded of a set of facts.
He trusted the God of Israel. Every other spiritual grace,
every other true spiritual activity flows from that faith that God
gives to his people. at the new birth. You look at
Hebrews chapter 11, and you have a rather lengthy list of Old
Testament saints. And they're all commended by
this. These all died in faith. They died believing. But what's
interesting about the faith of all of those people mentioned
is, it would say, for instance, Abraham believed God, so he did
this. Moses believed God, so he did
this. Noah believed God, so he built
an ark. Now the things they did because of faith were not works
in which they trusted. But one thing is for sure, faith
that saves makes a person do things. People say, well, you
ought to live by your faith. Everybody does. That's the nature
of faith. Everybody lives by their faith. And so, Hezekiah believed God,
and because he believed God, he did all he could to get rid
from the kingdom of Judah, every other god. And you know, the
one who trusts God does the same thing in his own heart. Say,
well, there's no idols in my heart. Don't kid yourself. If there were no idols in our
heart, it wouldn't be so hard to give up the things that God,
by his providence, takes away from us. We will cling to them. Give you one of the big idols,
even among honest believers. Paul talks about that we should
not covet. because covetousness is idolatry. Oh, we love stuff, don't we?
Of course, I saw a movie that Bonnie and I watched many, many
years ago. Not that we're old enough to
have seen movies from many, many years ago, but we watched one,
and a couple was splitting up. It was a comedy. And the man
asked the woman, well, why are you leaving me? Is it the money?
She said, no, it's not the money. It's all the things you can buy
with the money. Oh my, it is so hard, is it not,
to give up what we could have if we would simply be a little
less dedicated in our pursuit of Christ. But anything that
keeps us from pursuing Christ single-mindedly is an idol. And the Lord, in his grace, is
rooting them out. And I'm not as old as some people
here, but I'm old enough to realize, man, there's a bunch of them,
because he's still rooting them out. And I suppose the biggest
idol of all is self. So why did Hezekiah get rid of
the idols? Because he believed God. It said
he held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow Him.
It doesn't mean Hezekiah never stumbled, that Hezekiah never
did the wrong thing. In fact, we find in another account,
in fact it may have been this account right here, I can't remember.
But when he first heard that the king of Assyria was coming
for him, He held him off by paying him. He emptied the temple of
all the gold it had. He emptied the royal treasuries
of all the gold and silver. And I was reading, and I mean,
we're talking about tons of gold and silver. He bought him off. And he did that even as he was
telling the people to trust in the Lord. Now someone might say,
well, he was just being wise there. He could hold Sennacherib
off for a while while they made preparations, started building,
fixing up the wall and stopping up the water from flowing out
of the city and out into the field where the army would be
coming and all that. Maybe so, but still, he tried
to pay him off. And we are full of lapses in
faith. But here's the thing. We never
quit believing God. We stumble, but as the scriptures
say, the righteous falls seven times, but he always gets up.
He rises again. And when we find ourselves trusting
ourselves or something in this world, and there we are, spiritually
speaking, lying face down in the dust, what do we do? Do we
say, oh, I guess I'm just lost. I'm a Christian and never do
things. No, we get up. We confess to the Lord what a
fool I was. I'm about to say we dust ourselves
off, he dusts us off, he washes our feet, and on we go. We don't
cease. And he said he kept the commands
of the Lord. Now, am I going to say that believers
keep the commands of the Law of Moses? No. In fact, believers
are not called upon to keep the commands of the Law of Moses,
at least not, we're not called upon to keep those commands because
Moses gave them, or even because God gave them on Mount Sinai.
All of those laws were part of a covenant that God made with
the nation of Israel. Now, many of the moral laws that
he put in there are still things that we ought
to do. Many of them are repeated in the New Testament. But we
don't look to the covenant of Sinai to find out how we ought
to live. However, the law was more than
ten commandments. There were those ten commandments
and then over 600 more of them. But the law as Jews understood
it. When you talk about the law,
they didn't just think about all the commands. They also considered
all the system of worship that God had put them under. And all
of those matters of worship were designed as an illustration,
a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, who he was and what he came to
do. And I'll say this about believers. They do what the gospel says
to do. They do follow Christ. The Lord
Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice, and they know me, and
they follow me. Now, goats may follow for a little
bit, but they will eventually wander off. Goats don't like
sheep food. They eat different things. Sheep stumble. Sheep wander. But when one of God's sheep wanders,
what does he do? He goes out and finds him, brings
him back. The sheep are never far from the shepherd. They hear
his voice and they follow him. And if the Lord is pleased to
speak to you, shepherd to sheep, you'll follow him. You will. Why? Because he's the shepherd. And he has put his power into
his voice in the gospel such that when his sheep hear it,
they come. Therefore, the Lord is with us.
He's with us because he determined to be with us. But we do not
completely dismiss the idea that as we go through space and time
in our own lives, we have these experiences. That as we believe
him, so he is with us. And he who does not believe the
Lord Jesus Christ, who does not trust Him, can make no legitimate
claim to the gracious presence of God with them. If God's gracious
presence is with you, and you are presently not a believer,
you will be. You will be. This King Hezekiah, when he heard
what was going to be done, or probably surmised it himself,
he heard that Sennacherib, king of Assyria,
was coming to overthrow both Israel and Judah. Here's what
he said to the people there in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, in those
days, that was the capital city of Judah, was where the city
of David was, which was a part of the city of Jerusalem, where
the palace was and things like that. It was a little bit higher
than the rest of the city. There he is in Jerusalem and
he speaks to those in Jerusalem and Jerusalem is set forward
to us as a picture of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Talks
about the heavenly Jerusalem coming down from heaven. And that's all believers in the
Lord Jesus Christ. And so he says to them, this
verse seven of 2 Chronicles 32, be strong and courageous. Now think of that. Here you've
got an army that evidently has at least 185,000 people in it. And you've got a walled city
that you couldn't cram 185,000 people in there, much less have
an army in there like that, plus all the support and all that
else, you know? And they hear that this massive army is coming
their way, and the king says, don't worry about it. Don't worry
about it. Do not be afraid or discouraged
because of the king of Assyria and the vast army with him. Now,
what I like about the king's words here, and you know, you
can say Hezekiah is a picture of Christ, you can say he's a
picture of the believer. There's ways, you know, you can
use both of them. If you're going to say he's a
picture of the believer, then you would say, saying, well,
David doesn't fit into this story. That is, it doesn't say a whole
lot about him. David would then be standing as the picture of
Christ, and we as the kings and priests he's made us to be. But
there's a reason you can use it as a picture of Christ or
of the believer. Because God has so joined Christ
and his people. They are one. And once we have been born again,
At least in spiritual things, we are like Christ, and we have
the same attitudes. It's just that we still have
to wrestle with and struggle with the flesh that's in rebellion,
yet in rebellion. So at any rate, the king speaks
and says, don't be afraid. And how often did Christ say
to his disciples, fear not. Fear not. Do not be afraid. or discouraged because of the
king of Assyria and the vast army with him. Now at that time
Assyria was the biggest, most powerful and menacing empire
on the earth. And he had a huge army. And you
know the king didn't deny that. To all that could be seen, to
all that could be detected by natural senses, this king was
going to come in and wipe them out. And yet the king says, don't
worry about him or his army. That doesn't make any sense,
does it? No, it doesn't make any natural
sense. And it doesn't make any natural
sense for us to say, much as I hate my sin, I'm not going
to worry about it. I'm not gonna fear that it can
destroy me. As powerful as it is, as powerful
as the evil spiritual forces there are in the universe, and
I don't know much about them, I just know they exist. As great and powerful as the
wrath of God is, I can say, because of my Lord
Jesus Christ, I don't have to be afraid or discouraged. It doesn't mean I won't be afraid
or discouraged. I don't have to be. Fear not. David said, surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And
if the goodness and mercy of God is following you, what have
you to fear? And that's kind of what Hezekiah
says here. He goes, don't be afraid of the
king of Assyria and that army. With Him, with that King, is
only the arm of flesh. Now, it's a big arm, there's
no question about that. But the biggest arm of flesh
is nothing compared to the arm of God. David says, the Lord is my light
and my salvation. Therefore, I won't fear if 10,000
be raised up against me. What's one man against 10,000?
Everything if the Lord is with him. You say, I see that great enemy,
death. It's not very far on the horizon
for me. It's a fearful thing to me. Death
has, and this is going to sound a little bit redundant, but death
has slain many. Death has been the portal to
everlasting condemnation for many. It's fearful. There's a door. It's got death
written on it. I've never seen what's on the other side. I've
heard about it. Never seen it. Never experienced
it. It's scary. Of course, it's fear
not. Fear not. Death can only reach as far as
your flesh. And I'm going to fix that in
time, too. It cannot touch your spirit. It cannot touch that
eternal life that I've given you. For there is a greater power
with us than with Him. With Him is only the arm of flesh.
But with us is the Lord our God, I like this, to help us and fight
our battles. Now you'll notice it does not
say to help us fight our battles. He says, to help us. How's that? By fighting our battles. The way this story ends, the
Jews never drew a bow, never pulled their sword, never marched,
nothing. They woke up and the whole Assyrian
army was dead. Brethren, I know sometimes the Apostle
Paul in particular talked about waging a war, but the waging
a war in this world, he's not talking about what's being illustrated
here. What's being illustrated here
is the warfare for our souls. We can't fight that battle. I remember how many times I heard
the story of David and Goliath and they say, and we all need
to be like David, you know, and go out there and kill Goliath.
Goliath's too big for us. We are, like Saul and all the
rest of the Israelite army, rightfully afraid to go out and face Goliath. David is a picture of Christ.
He deals with Goliath. Do you know who the Israelites
slew that day? An army in retreat. They didn't
even fight the Philistines that day. The Philistines were running
and they chased them down, killed them and took all their stuff.
We're not fighting for our souls. The Lord does that for us. Paul said, thanks be to God who
gives us the victory. He doesn't say he works the victory
through us or by us. He hands it to us. Now do you understand why you
can be the failure you think you are and still be victorious
in the end? Isn't that wonderful news? David faced Goliath saying the
battle is the Lord's. And it is. And it says here, back in 2 Kings,
excuse me, 2 Chronicles 32, it says, and the people rested
themselves, leaned to themselves on what Hezekiah said. What do we lean ourselves on? What our King has said. We rest ourselves in the word
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing more and nothing less.
He says, come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and
I will give you rest. And where does that rest come
from? It comes from His Word. Are you like me? A lot of the
days between Sunday to the next Sunday, your heart struggles with confidence
and assurance and spiritual things. You feel lost or maybe, you know,
a second-class Christian or something. You feel you haven't done enough.
And a sense of guilt that brings condemnation comes upon you. And then, by the grace of God,
you're able to gather with God's people or listen in or whatever,
and the Word of Christ is preached. He is set forth in all His unspeakable
glory. Oh, the Lord Jesus. You and I
are not faithful, much as we'd like to be. Our following His commands, iffy
at best. It's there, but doesn't seem
to make it to the surface all the time. I would hate to try to get to
heaven. on my faith, on my faithfulness, on my confidence, or anything
like that. But I have no fear whatsoever
when I am able to see Christ and realize the whole thing's
on Him. Him I can trust. I know He did
everything that pleased the Father. not only under God's demands
of righteousness as illustrated in the law of Sinai, but also
in performing all that He had been given to do in the performance
of the gospel. What is left for us to do in
the gospel? Nothing. It's not a performance-based
system. Well, it is, but not our performance. The success of the gospel is
utterly, completely, and if I could come up with some more synonyms,
I would, to describe the same thing. It is all in Christ. If he succeeded, everyone in
him succeeds. Period. In the days of the flood, all
hope was in that ark. Noah, his wife, his three sons,
and their wives got in the ark, and there's a bunch of animals
in there. Now, that did not change how severe the flood was. Not
a single drop less of rain fell. The waves were not quiet around
the ark. But for those eight human beings
and all those animals in that ark, Their entire safety depended
on this and nothing else, the ability of the ark to weather
the storm. If the ark made it, so did everyone
in it. That's a pretty simple illustration,
isn't it? A boat story. Love those boat stories. And
Christ is the ark of God. And it says we've been in Him.
Those who are ever in Him, they've been in Him since before the
foundation of the world. And that ark came into this world
where God's wrath is present, where His judgment is evident.
And it's only going to get worse. And He not only came into this
world, but He came into this world as our substitute. He did
for us what we could never do for ourselves in living righteously
before God. And then He did for us what we
dare not do, come before God with sin on us. He bore our sin
in His body on the tree. And there he is, he's hanging
on that cross, and there's things going on there you can't see.
I mean, if you were there on Mount Calvary that day, you wouldn't
have seen the big work that was going on. All you would have
seen was a man dying. Not even the disciples understood
what was going on. But after it's done and it's
explained to us, we can see it illustrated in the crucifixion. As it's written, cursed is everyone
who is hanged on a tree. And our Lord was crucified. That's
why Peter was careful to say he bore our sins in his body
on the tree. He didn't say the cross. And
I'm not going to follow like that one cult does and say that
Jesus was actually crucified on a tree somewhere. No, he was
speaking figuratively. I mean, it was made out of wood.
That's a tree. Why is it so important to point
that out? Paul put it this way. He was made a curse for us, as
it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung upon a tree. He was
made a curse for us that he might redeem us from the curse of the
law. And while he was literally hanging
on a cross made out of pieces of a tree, hung up there, it
illustrated what was happening. He was cursed by God. He was
made a cursed thing by God. That's why he cried out, my God,
my God, why have you forsaken me? And he died. He said it is finished. What was finished? Dying. Nobody
in hell ever finishes dying. They are forever dying because
their death can never pay for their sin. But Jesus Christ did
what we can't do. He died completely. That's what that word means. It's completed. It's in fullness.
It's reached its goal. It's finished. And his death
was such that the curse that was on him was put away because
God's judgmental curse was exhausted on Jesus Christ with regard to
everyone he represented on that cross. And we were in him. And as you
look at that cross, you can say, if he makes it, so will I. If he doesn't make it, neither will I. Did he make it? Yes, he did. How do we know? Three days later,
he comes out of death. He died unto sin once, now he
lives unto God, and contained in that whole thing is the fact
that the life he came out of the tomb with is a never-ending
life. He didn't just resume the life
he had. He comes out a new person. He died under sin, he comes out
as a person with no sin. And we were in him. And just
as God during the days of Noah, he closed him into the ark and
then he opened up the door. And Noah comes out into a new
world in which there is no curse, in which no judgment is coming
within the context of Noah's life. And we pass through God's
judgment in Christ. He came out the other side and
we're with Him. Our experience of this has got
to catch up. As far as God's concerned, we came out of the
grave with Him. We ascended to the right hand
of the Father with Him. We have all spiritual blessings
in the heavenly places with Him, in Him. And the door is open
at the proper time. we'll walk out into an existence
without sin, without a curse, everything good that you could
possibly imagine, and much, much, much more. Brethren, I don't
know all that waits for us, but what I know is so good it would
be worth every moment of your life to obtain it. And yet it's much more than that.
Unsearchable riches, Paul called it. And our Lord says, in my Father's house are many
dwelling places. I go to prepare a place for you.
And since I'm going to prepare a place for you, you can be sure
of this, I'll come back and get you. Now, I receive you unto myself
for this glorious reason, that where I am, there you may be
also. Now, you see anything of your
doing in that promise? Do you go prepare a place for
you? Do you come again? Everything from you as a lost
and cursed sinner All the way from there to you conformed to
the image of Christ, no curse, no sin, no death, nothing. That
whole thing is based on what Christ has done. And that's what
Christ says. And by the grace of God, let
us lean on our King's word. Just rest ourselves in what he
said. We don't have anything to worry
about. Nothing in this world and nothing
in the world to come. Our Lord has defeated all our
enemies, and we will be with Him in everlasting
blessedness. A whole lot more could be said,
but I'm going to quit there.