The Lord Jesus Christ gave his
gospel to the people of God as a means of faith and a source
of spiritual comfort. Paul says in Romans chapter 10
and verse 17, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word
of God. It is a good thing for us to
be here this morning in the hearing of the Word of God. If we have
any relationship with God, any relationship with the Lord Jesus
Christ, it is by faith. That's the only way, by faith.
Faith is our channel. Faith is our access to come to
the Lord Jesus Christ. It is because we believe in the
things that He has said, believe in what He has done. As we enter
into that relationship which faith enables, we come to Him. And he has given us this gospel
to believe and to comfort us so we hear the things that he
declares. And the Lord himself said in
John chapter six and verse 63, the words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit and they are life. So we've gathered this
morning to hear the words of life. We have gathered in the
Spirit by faith to receive those things of comfort and truth that
the Lord Jesus Christ would have us know. Do you desire faith? Do you desire that your faith
grows? Then hear the gospel. Be where
it is preached. Seek the Lord at such times as
these. Is our faith weak? Then it is
strengthened, both through trial and the intercession of the Lord
Jesus Christ on our behalf. So the Lord could say to Peter,
I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. In Judah, at the time of our
readings, we discover that the people of God were faced with
the massed army of Sennacherib. And Hezekiah, the king there
in Jerusalem, already seeing his land diminished as the hosts
and the hordes of Assyrian troops made their way into the towns
and the villages and the other cities of Judah. was holed up
in Jerusalem, besieged around about by these enemies. But Hezekiah was a man of faith. And in the face of the opposition
that he faced, as he stood there seeing these soldiers coming
towards his city, he took steps that would help to protect the
city, and he turned his face to the Lord, and he asked for
the Lord's help. Hezekiah, because of his faith,
was able in turn to speak to his people words of comfort and
encouragement. And he said in 2 Chronicles chapter
32 and verse 8, With him, that is Sennacherib,
is an arm of flesh. But with us is the Lord our God
to help us and to fight our battles. And there's a lovely little phrase
as the end part of that verse. It says that the people rested
themselves upon the words of Hezekiah, king of Judah. The people took courage. The
people were comforted. The people found rest in these
words of faith. Words that Hezekiah spoke to
the people. They had confidence. They had
faith in his words. How much more then Ought we,
the Lord's people, to rest upon the words of the Lord Jesus Christ
when He says, the words I speak unto you, they are spirit and
they are life. He that is for us is greater
than he that is against us. The arm of the Lord is revealed
to His church. The arm of the Lord is the Lord
Jesus Christ. The arm of the Lord, this one
of whom Hezekiah spoke, is revealed to the church. Christ is our
captain. Christ is our leader. Christ
is the one who is king over his people and speaks comfortably
to his people and says, I am with thee to fight thy battles. I am with thee to lead thee to
victory. I am come to deliver thee from
the hands of thine enemy. And indeed the Lord Jesus Christ
has revealed to us just the extent of that life which he gives.
For he has said that the battle is fought and won. The deliverance
is already secured. The victory is gained. And he
calls us to rest peaceably in faith upon those things which
he has done. Thus won, thus won. How is Christ ever going to lose
one of his little ones? How will he ever relinquish that
prize that he has labored so comprehensively to secure? Indeed, we might ask, how is
it that he would deny us any good? that is needful for our
spiritual well-being, even in this world, having done so much
for us and himself laid down his life for the sake of his
people. In Romans 8, 32, the Apostle
Paul takes this theme and emphasises it, saying that God Himself,
the Father, He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him
up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us
all things? These are the things that our
faith are directed to, the provision that has been made, the supply
that is available, the strength that we have not of ourselves
but in that one who is our shield and our defender, that one who
goes forth against the foe on our behalf. that one who has
built up the walls of our defence and has provided for the nourishment
and the refreshment of his people's souls even in the midst of these
wilderness situations that we encounter. I want this morning,
as the Lord will enable us, to draw a few simple similarities
and examples from this narrative about Hezekiah that we, I believe,
can apply to our own circumstances and situations in this life. The Lord Jesus Christ was there
in Jerusalem, the city of Zion, the city of God, with Hezekiah. The Lord was with him by faith
and though Hezekiah looked out on the forces that were ranged
against him many years before Jesus ever came in the flesh,
in the incarnation, to die, yet by faith he saw his Messiah,
he saw his Deliverer, just as surely as we see him by faith. Who other than our blessed Saviour,
could truly have it said of him, he served the house of God with
his whole heart and prospered. This is a statement that is made
of Hezekiah, but it has a greater fullness. It has a greater meaning
in the context of the Lord Jesus Christ. The chronicler said of
Hezekiah, he served the house of God with his whole heart and
prospered. But the Lord Jesus Christ has
served the house of God with his whole heart and he has prospered
far above and beyond anything that Hezekiah was able to achieve
in the limited and time-constrained period of his existence. The
chronicler from whom we read earlier speaks highly of Hezekiah's
religious and spiritual reformation and revival in Judah. And at
the time of Rabshakeh's tirade against the people there in Jerusalem,
Hezekiah, by that time Hezekiah had already hosted the renewed
Passover ceremony. He had re-established the temple
worship and he had restored the sacrificial system in Judah,
having thereby established a national witness to the glory of God. And he did it all with singleness
of heart. He was motivated by God the Holy
Spirit. So 2 Chronicles 31 says verse
20, And thus did Hezekiah throughout all Judah and wrought that which
was good and right and truth before the Lord his God. And in every work that he began
in the service of the house of God and in the law and in the
commandments to seek his God, he did it with all his heart
and prospered. Hezekiah understood the need
to offer God blood, blood for blood, life for life. And so the sacrificial system
as it was re-established there in Jerusalem spoke of the coming
way of redemption that the Lord Jesus Christ himself would enact
and accomplish. The Lord was the antitype of
the pictures that were set before the eyes of the people in Jerusalem,
as those lambs were slain, as the altar was covered in blood. as the priest went into the presence
of God, making offering at the time of the Passover, thanking
God with the blood on the doorposts and the lintels. There was the
picture of the Lord Jesus Christ's redemptive power. And for those
of faith, they had eyes to see these wonderful things. I think
perhaps one of the greatest chapters in the Old Testament with respect
to the clarity of the view that the Old Testament saints had
of the coming Messiah and the work that he would fulfill as
the suffering servant is found in Isaiah chapter 53. You're
familiar with it, I know. But that passage was written
by a man who was, as far as I can make out, in Jerusalem at this
very time. So the man of God, Isaiah the
prophet, was ministering in Jerusalem to Hezekiah at this very time.
And Hezekiah was a man of single-hearted faith. He understood what this
was all about. He understood that they were
looking forward to the coming Lamb of God, as he is described
by John the Baptist. Hezekiah prospered for God blessed
him in Christ and for the sake of the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ that would in centuries to come be fulfilled. In his youth the Lord had touched
this young man's life He had caused him to know the truth,
and he had brought to him a heart and soul relationship with the
divine persons. He sought the Lord with sincerity
of heart. With all his heart, he sought
the Lord, and he found him, and he prospered. You know, worldly
prosperity is not spiritual prosperity. and rarely are the two to be
found in the one individual. And I believe the prosperity
that Hezekiah had in his earlier days when he had wealth in his
treasury and wealth in the temple that had to be given up shows
us that in his new impoverished state, As far as the world is
concerned, he learned a greater spiritual prosperity. And sometimes
the Lord has to take things away from us in order to give us better
things. Sometimes he has to remove that
which we have found to be a comfort to us in order to prove himself
to be a greater comfort than any. Paul says in 1 Corinthians
chapter 1, For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise
men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God hath chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound the wise. And God hath chosen
the weak things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty. And there was none mightier than
Sennacherib. There was none, as far as the
world was concerned, more powerful. The worldly wise would say, Hezekiah,
you're a hiccup on the road. You're just a pebble. There's
nothing going to stop this army swarming over your nation. Israel,
the northern tribes were already taken. They were already removed. And now all that was left was
this little city and Hezekiah in the midst of it. But our Lord has established
that He will bring to naught those things that are, and He
will promote and prosper those things that do not appear to
the eyes of the men and women of this world. The people are
going around their business outside here today. They're thinking
that they've got plans to make and jobs to do and responsibilities
to fulfil and they have no idea the richness that exists within
the four walls of this little place. They've no idea of the
wealth of wonderful eternal blessings that the Lord is pleased to pour
out upon his church day by day. They understand nothing of the
value of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and know not of
the comfort that the Lord's people have in dwelling together in
brotherly and sisterly love in these great truths that we have
to share together. The Lord says through Paul in
1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 29, no flesh should glory in
his presence. No flesh will glory in the presence
of God. No flesh will glory in the presence
of God. And that was Rabshake's big mistake. Oh, he came with all the power
of Assyria. He came as the delegate of Sennacherib
the king. And he sought to glory in God's
presence. Now I've mentioned previously
that some of the old Jewish writers actually wonder whether Rabshake
may have been a Jew or at least have spent time amongst the Jewish
people. Such is the insight and the wisdom
that he exercises in this tirade that he levels against Hezekiah. Be that as it may, it is clear
this man is proud. And in his arrogance and in his
self-importance, here this infidel stood before the gates of Jerusalem,
the gates of God's holy city. And he ranted, and he threatened,
and he shouted abuse at God's people. And the Lord says, no
flesh shall glory in my presence. This foolish man knew no better
than to realize that attacking the Lord's people was an attack
on the Lord. And so it is today. Those who
touch the Lord's little ones, touch the Lord. And Zechariah
2, verse 8 says, For thus saith the Lord of hosts, After the
glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you. For
he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of his eye. The Lord's church, the Lord's
people, those who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are
the apple of his eye. He loves them. He cherishes them.
He desires their well-being. He seeks to give them good gifts.
He longs to embrace them and to fellowship with them, to share,
to shower them with his love and his kindness, his grace and
his mercy. The Lord's people are a delight
to him and precious beyond measure. What is it that says he owns
the cattle of a thousand hills, the wealth of every mine. What
does the Lord need with rubies? Oh, but he loves his people. He loves his people. He loves
us. And if someone touches us, Someone
lays a hand upon us. Someone drops a barbed word against
us. He takes it personally. He takes
it as an assault on him and he says that no flesh will glory
in his presence. I want to notice a few features
of Rabshaki's insolence here before us. One of the things
that is noticeable in this story is that Rabshakeh spoke in the
language of the Jews. Now there are those in writing
on this passage say that the people to whom he spoke, Eliakim
and Shebna, they might have been smarter than to make a point
about the language because it probably indicated to Rabshake
that there was a certain fearfulness on the part of the people in
Jerusalem. But be that as it may, I want
to think about the point that comes to our mind that here was
a man who knew the Jews' language and was able to touch all the
buttons that would speak most loudly to the fears and concerns
and the aspirations of those who were behind the wall. Rabshakeh
spoke in the language of Zion, against the Lord and his people. And I believe that we can take
that and we can draw a parallel, which is this, that error, because
that was what Rabshaki spoke, error taught in the language
of scripture is more subtle and more dangerous. than the opposition
that we get from the fleshy world around about us. There is a sense
in which we can handle the opposition of the world, the grossness,
the immorality, the temptations that come to us which are contrary
often to the values that we have. And we just, we separate ourselves
from it and we don't put ourselves in the position where we can
easily be snagged and snared by the temptations outside but
it's the temptations that come in the language of Zion. It's
the dangers that are subtle that creep up upon us. The teaching
of false prophets is more damaging to the well-being of the church
than the forces that are often raged against them outside. And attacks on the Lord's little
flock by those who claim to be doctors of religion or theologians
or lawyers in the things of God can be more damaging than anything
else. Around about 400 AD, 400 years
after the time of Christ, there was a British monk called Pelagius
and he taught a doctrine of free will in the matters of salvation
and he denied predestination which had been accepted hitherto. He did it in the language of
scripture. He did it, he taught his doctrines in the language
of Zion and they infiltrated the professing church of the
time. In the late 1500s, a Dutchman
called James Arminius, he espoused teachings that spread like a
cancer through every Christian denomination. And in the late
1800s, a man called Andrew Fuller, a preacher amongst particular
Baptists. That's what you are. You are,
you're particular Baptists. A particular Baptist preacher.
caused so much trouble with his teachings, employing the language
of Zion, talking about atonement, talking about redemption, talking
about particular redemption, but building into the very vocabulary,
building into the very words, an error and a falseness which
has instilled itself in every Baptist group probably as far
as I know in the world. This corruption that comes from
such teachers as these has a greater toll upon the Church of Jesus
Christ because it employs the language of Zion. It speaks to
us in our own terms, and we have to be ever more careful against
it. They, instead of gold, brought
brass, and instead of silver, they brought iron. Error doesn't advertise
itself. Error creeps in unawares. It sounds plausible, but it brings
disaster. Paul, writing to the Corinthians,
says in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 13, For such are false apostles. deceitful workers, transforming
themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel, for
Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore
it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers
of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works. as Rabshakeh spoke in the language
of the people of Zion. He also appealed directly to
the people. Now, I don't want to be presumptuous
here, but he directly contradicted and denied what Hezekiah said. And I say this to you, take care
who you listen to. Be careful today who you listen
to. There is every ease of communication
available today that people of the past had no knowledge of.
You can listen to sermons on sermon audio or wherever from
all manner of churches. And some can be recommended to
you by friends or some can come to your attention because you
put a search word into Google or you ask for a particular subject. And before you know where you
are, you're listening to a preacher from a church that you would
never attend ordinarily, never go along to or whatever. But
suddenly you're steered into a new path. You're given a new
way of thinking. If the Lord gives us a teacher,
if the Lord gives us a pastor, if the Lord gives us a faithful
minister, then let us seek to hear him and let us be careful
about wandering too far from the fold of the Lord's sheep. The Lord is good to his people,
to his church. He sustains them. He provides
for them. He gives them that help that
they require. Let us be careful who we listen
to. There was a Hezekiah here in
Jerusalem, and there was a Rabshakeh outside the walls. He spoke the
language of Zion. To whom would the people give
ear? The Lord says in Matthew 7, beware
of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly they are ravening wolves. Another aspect of Rabshake's
approach was that he promoted the great king of Assyria repeatedly
throughout his narrative, the tirade. He speaks about the great
king of Assyria. Never once does he refer to Hezekiah
as king. Never once. Now, perhaps this great king
varies from age to age. In Rabshake's age and Hezekiah's,
it was Sennacherib. But really, this great king is
anything that is opposed to the kingly rule of Christ in our
lives. And in our own age, it's not
Sennacherib anymore or Rabshake or any other. But ask ourselves,
what is it that threatens the kingly rule of Christ in our
life? What is it that drives us? What
is it that motivates us? What is it that gives us most
pleasure? Could money be a driver? Ambition? Reputation? Family? In our age, the great King of
Assyria is anything that detracts from the rule of Christ in our
life. Christ will be first. in his people's lives. Don't
doubt it. He will be. I'm not saying he
wants to be. I'm not saying he might be. I'm
saying He will be. And if you are one of the Lord's
people, He'll take away whatever you put there as you're king
of Assyria. He will take it away for He demands
to be king. We speak of Him as prophet, priest,
and king. Oh, we want His prophecies. We want His gospel, the declaration
of the word of the Lord amongst us. And we want his priestly
office and the cleansing that it gives. He will be king also. Paul and Silas came to Thessalonica
and the Jews that were there were deeply troubled by the fact
that these two ministers of the gospel were come amongst them.
They stayed when they were in Thessalonica with a man called
Jason. They went into Jason's house.
And the teaching of Paul and Silas caused great consternation
so that the enemies of the gospel ran to the city leaders with
their complaints and they said, these that have turned the world
upside down are come hither to Thessalonica, whom Jason has
received. And these all do contrary to
the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one
Jesus. Yes, they said that there was
another king, one Jesus. And Jesus will be king in his
church. Jesus will be king in the lives
of his people. And he will not put up with anyone
who would endeavor to overthrow him or challenge him. We do not
bow to the great king of Assyria. We do not bow to Caesar. We do not bow to the governments
of our age. We recognise the lawful leadership
and kingly reign of Christ in our lives. And if we run foul
of those authorities around about us or any other thing, then we
must stand up for the Lord and that which he has taught us.
These, says the writer of the Revelation, these shall make
war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for he is
Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are with him are
called and chosen and faithful. Back to Rabshake. Rabshake tried to offer better
than Hezekiah could offer. Look at verses 31 of 2 Kings
chapter 18. Verse 31. Hearken not to Hezekiah,
for thus saith the king of Assyria, make an agreement with me by
a present and come out to me. And then eat ye every man of
his own vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every
one of the waters of his cistern. Now the contrast was what would
be eaten and drunk during a siege. We read it a little earlier in
the passage. The words probably shocked you by their plainness. So we don't need to repeat them.
But that was the contrast. This is what you're going to
get if you stay behind those walls. This is what you can enjoy
if you just come out to me. He tried to make it appear that
there was better to be had by coming out than could be had
if they stayed in. He says in verse 32, again Rabshakeh
had a real grasp of what Israel and Judah was like. He said,
until I come and take you away to a land like your own. He said,
yes, this was an ethnic cleansing before the phrase was ever invented.
And that's what they did. They endeavored to move mass
groups of people around in order to break the ties of the particular
geography, location that they would have had and grown up in.
And it was a way of subjugating the people. And so the king of
Assyria moved these people around into different places. He'd already
removed Israel. and now he was going to do the
same to Judah. But he says, I'll take you to
a place that's just the same as the loveliness of this land
in which you currently live. You've nothing to lose and everything
to gain by coming and making friends with the king of Assyria. Rabshake in making his presentation,
making his pitch as he did. He asks an extremely pertinent
question. He says at the end of verse 32,
hearken not unto Hezekiah when he persuaded you saying, the
Lord will deliver us. Okay, so here's what he says. He says, what is it going to
profit you if you stay with Hezekiah? What will it profit you if you
stay here in this city? Rabshaki had done his homework
and temptation when it comes, comes ready formed. Whoever will
do a deal with the devil will imperil his eternal soul. The Lord Jesus Christ said, what
is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose
his own soul? He taught us to pray, lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Rabshake likened the gods of
the nations to the one true God. Let's read verse 33 in the same
passage, 2 Kings 18. Hath any of the gods of the nations
delivered at all his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?
Where are the gods of Hamath and of Arpad? Where are the gods
of Sepharvim, Hena, and Eva? Have they delivered Samaria out
of mine hand? I wonder if we have an answer
to that question. What makes our religion better
than anyone else's? What is it that makes our faith
more proper than the faith of all those other religions and
all those other denominations that are out and round about?
the gods of the heathen, the gods of the Muslims, the gods
of the Roman Catholics, the gods of the Presbyterians, the gods
of the Lutherans, the gods of the Mormons. What makes our God
any different? What is it that makes us sure
that our God will deliver us when the gods of all these other
groups fail to deliver them? Now, we don't wear large a denominational
badge. Our denomination really means
very little. It's just a man-made identification. There is but one real question
when it comes to our Christian faith and our spiritual life. Is your God able to deliver you? That's it. Is your God able to
deliver you? And we'll ask the Presbyterians
and the Lutherans and the Mormons and the Roman Catholics and the
Muslims and all the different religions and groups and the
vast, vast numbers of concepts of God that people have in this
world. Is your God able to deliver you? That's the question Rabshake
asked of the Jews. I love this verse, I love this
verse. Psalm 40, verse 17. The psalmist says, I am poor
and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me. Thou art my help and
my deliverer. Make no tarrying, O my God. We spoke about the word sucker
the other day when we were together. And the idea that to sucker means
to run towards to help. And here we have the same theme. The Lord thinketh upon me. Now, I wish I thought more about
the Lord than I do. But the Lord thinks about me
and He is ready to help and ready to deliver. Isaiah, we've already
said, was the prophet in Jerusalem at this time and he was comforting
the people as any good preacher would be doing. In Isaiah 59
verse 20 he says, the Redeemer shall come to Zion. These are
his words, this is his writing. He's saying to the people at
that very time, the Redeemer shall come. The Apostle Paul
in Romans quotes the same verse, he uses slightly different words.
He says, there shall come out of Zion the Deliverer. Here is
Sennacherib with his army. Here is Rabshakeh with his accusations
and his challenges and his tirades. And inside, Hezekiah is saying,
trust in the Lord. Trust in the arm of the Lord.
And Isaiah is saying, the Redeemer, the Deliverer will come out of
Zion. And the Lord's people are being
confronted with these allegations and challenges and the comfort
of the gospel amongst them. Who will they follow? We talk
of redemption, we talk of deliverance, we talk of salvation, because
these are the things that matter. Not how big a house we live in
or the kind of car we drive or how fancy we dress. These things
are unimportant. And I don't care about how good
you are. You know better than that. And
someday soon, you will stand before the holy God and you will
give an account of your sins. And the question then is the
question now, is God able to deliver you? Oh, we don't deny
the omnipotence of God. But we do recognise his holiness
and his justice. And if God will deliver a sinner,
it must be because that price of sin has been paid elsewhere. And so we are led to the Lord
Jesus Christ and the great substitutionary work which he has accomplished. only by the shed precious blood
that Hezekiah had been speaking of symbolically with the Passover
sacrifices, only by the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
which was looked forward to even then, is there a deliverance
to be had. Rabshakeh was right in a sense,
where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad and Serfavim and Hena
and Eva? Or any other religion or denomination,
where are those gods? If they will not stand at that
moment of need, what is their use and what is their value?
They might as well be forgotten about and their names disappear
into the mists of history. The Lord Jesus Christ already
has the victory. And this is one of the wonderful
things that we have in our day that Hezekiah didn't have. We
look back on the accomplished work of the cross. look back
and see that Jesus Christ who died there on the cross and shed
his precious blood rose again from the dead and ascended by
the testimony of scripture and his apostles into the very presence
of heaven there interceding for us. Can your God deliver you? The Lord Jesus Christ is the
great deliverer of his people. How shall we escape if we neglect
so great salvation? Rabshake sent a direct challenge
to God for the deliverance of the people. In verse 35 he said,
who are they among all the gods of the countries that have delivered
their country out of mine hand, that the Lord should deliver
Jerusalem out of mine hand? He said, effectively, your God
is no different to all the others. and we will take you as we have
taken all the others. I sometimes wonder why God doesn't
strike men dead when they make such arrant effronteries of wickedness
before him. And yet, he raises Egypt, and
he raises Assyria, and he raises Rome, and he raises England,
and he raises the USA, and he raises Saudi Arabia, and he raises
all the nations of the world to fulfill his purposes, and
then he will bring them down. You watch history. You read history. Every person lives in some moment
in history when some despot is ruling somewhere and carries
with him the fear and the threat against the lives of men. And
we are no different. But the Lord raises nations and
he brings them down. He sets kings up and he takes
them away. And we can call them king or
we can call them president or we can call them prime minister
or wherever we want. The Lord is in control. Rabshake lived to see God deliver
the people of Jerusalem. He lived to see it. And his people, the Lord's people,
the city of Zion, will prove every blasphemer wrong, for they
will be delivered in every age as the Lord God accomplishes
his purpose. I want quickly to notice, I'm
running hard on time here, but I want quickly to notice the
fact that the reaction of the people on the wall, the Lord's
people, they were told held their peace. Normally when we read
that, we think about the fact that they didn't say anything.
But I want to build something a little bit weightier upon that
phrase this morning. They held their peace. They retained
their peacefulness. They continued to be at peace
in their own souls, despite the challenges that were made to
them. They continued because they rested
on the words of Hezekiah. He had instructed them to say
nothing and they followed that one whom they trusted. This is
a picture again of the Lord's people. We are behind the walls
of our salvation, but the accusations and allegations of the world
and the enemies of the church come against us. Who will we
follow? Who will we trust? Let us hold
our peace. For the Lord has been faithful
hitherto. The Lord has delivered us up
to now. Will he let us go? Hezekiah assured the people,
with him, Rabshakeh, is an arm of flesh. But with us is the
Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles. And so it
proved. But until that time when the
battle was won, until that time when the enemy was destroyed,
the people of God were called to restraint. They were called
to trust. They were called to hope. They
were called to have a quiet confidence in the things that they had learned.
and the things that they had heard. Listen, the enemies of
the church will come. They will come speaking the language
of Zion. They will make offers that sound
really good. They will tell us that there's
more to be had. There's greater experiences to
be enjoyed. There's deeper spirituality to
be entered into. There are things that you can
experience in this life that you've hitherto not been able
to taste and to touch and to feel. Be careful who you listen
to. Be careful what you hear. Stay
your confidence upon the arm of the Lord and trust not in
the arm of flesh. Isaiah asks in Isaiah 53 verse
1, Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed? That's the contrast. The arm
of flesh or the arm of the Lord. Now just watch what I'm doing
here because I don't want to lose you. Hezekiah is an Old
Testament picture of deliverance by God from a powerful enemy. And that same Lord God, that
same arm of the Lord, because it's the Lord Jesus Christ that's
being talked about. It's not God the Father and it's
not God the Spirit. It's God the Son that was here
in Jerusalem with Hezekiah at that time. That same Lord God
who beat Rabshake and who beat Sennacherib is the same one who
has triumphed over Satan. He is the same One who paid the
price for sin, the same One who broke the power of death, the
same Jesus. And He has delivered and He has
liberated all of God's people just as surely as Hezekiah and
Jerusalem were liberated from the threat of Sennacherib. Christ
our God has triumphed over our enemies and He has saved us. The world can mock, it can look
at us and it can think, these are hicks, these are simpletons,
these are people who know nothing, these are people who are unsophisticated
country folk that have no real sense of what it is to seek to
enlarge their worldly experiences and their fleshy senses. And they may mock and they may
laugh. But the reality is that in that day of accountability,
the Lord will deliver his people and they will be left stranded.
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. He has won
us from out under judgment and death and he has set us free.
He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Isaiah says, in
his death he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised
for our iniquities. And the chastisement of our peace
was upon him. And with his stripes we are healed. Here is the gospel for guilty
sinners. Here is the good tidings of peace. Isaiah declares in Isaiah 52
verse 7, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him
that bringeth good tidings. This is Isaiah in Jerusalem at
that time. How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth
peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation,
that saith unto Zion, thy God reigneth. Thy watchmen shall
lift up the voice, with the voice together shall they sing, for
they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion. break forth into joy, sing together,
ye waste places of Jerusalem. For the Lord hath comforted his
people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy
arm in the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth
shall see the salvation of our God. May the Lord God, who loves his
people Zion, Grant us grace to see our salvation and deliverance
from sin and guilt in the person of his crucified Son, our Lord
Jesus Christ. And may we rest comforted and
peaceful in the face of every foe, content in the knowledge
that our God is able to deliver us. Amen. Let's take our hymn books and
sing together hymn 201. 201.