23.46 The Good, The Bad, and The Angel

³⁵ And it came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the Lord went out, and killed in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand; and when people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses—all dead. – 2 KINGS 19:35

This is one a several times that God chose to fight the battle for Israel. When God chooses to show His grace, mercy, and supernatural martial power, in this case with the deployment of an angel to wreak havoc on the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, He does so to emphasize some important truths about Himself and His glory. In this case it was against Assyrian King Sennacherib, who had very publicly blasphemed, mocked God, and was consumed in his own self-glorification. At the time, about 701 B.C., the Assyrian King had a series of knockout victories over several kingdoms and Judah was next in line.

It was in the period Israel’s history covered in the second half of the Old Testament when God’s message was communicated by prophets. Across several centuries God was teaching, exhorting, Israel, often in exhortation to turn away from their idolatry and unfaithfulness, to return to the moral foundation set for in the Ten Commandments, to remember how all their blessings came from Him and not themselves, and to remember the many times He had delivered them from defeat.

From Exodus 20:2-6, are the first two commandments which are focused on the intended relationship between man and God, the one true God who is introduced through His mighty works and signs in liberating the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

² “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

³ “You shall have no other gods before Me.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; ⁵ you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, ⁶ but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

As I mentioned, the second half of the Old Testament documents a long period in which God’s prophets spoke truth to the Israelites. Preceding this destruction of a 185,000 man army by one bad-ass angel, the prophet Isaiah, one the the major prophets of the Old Testament, reveals the coming judgment from God against King Sennacherib:

²⁰ Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Because you have prayed to Me against Sennacherib king of Assyria, I have heard.’ ²¹ This is the word which the Lord has spoken concerning him:

‘The virgin, the daughter of Zion,
Has despised you, laughed you to scorn;
The daughter of Jerusalem
Has shaken her head behind your back!

²² ‘Whom have you reproached and blasphemed?
Against whom have you raised your voice,
And lifted up your eyes on high?
Against the Holy One of Israel.
²³ By your messengers you have reproached the Lord,
And said: “By the multitude of my chariots
I have come up to the height of the mountains,
To the limits of Lebanon;
I will cut down its tall cedars
And its choice cypress trees;
I will enter the extremity of its borders,
To its fruitful forest.
²⁴ I have dug and drunk strange water,
And with the soles of my feet I have dried up
All the brooks of defense.”

²⁵ ‘Did you not hear long ago
How I made it,
From ancient times that I formed it?
Now I have brought it to pass,
That you should be
For crushing fortified cities into heaps of ruins.
²⁶ Therefore their inhabitants had little power;
They were dismayed and confounded;
They were as the grass of the field
And the green herb,
As the grass on the housetops
And grain blighted before it is grown.

²⁷ ‘But I know your dwelling place,
Your going out and your coming in,
And your rage against Me.
²⁸ Because your rage against Me and your tumult
Have come up to My ears,
Therefore I will put My hook in your nose
And My bridle in your lips,
And I will turn you back
By the way which you came

-2 Kings 19:20-28

Some important points in the message from God as delivered by Isaiah are that:

1. King Sennacherib, although the King of an enemy of Israel, benefitted from God’s providence in Assyrian victories. Assyria was one of many kingdoms that were used by God to execute judgment against Israel and other pagan kingdoms. The major problem was, King Sennacherib was not a humble man – he sought to take all the glory for himself, even to the point of mocking the one true God, the God of Israel from whom all his victories were made possible.
2. God is also responding to a prayer of Israels’ King Hezekiah, one of the few “good” kings who made major efforts to reform the wayward kingdom of Judah. Since after the reign of King Solomon in about 930 B.C.,through civil war, Israel had broken into two kingdoms referred to the northern kingdom of Israel (sometimes referred to as Samaria) and the southern kingdom of Judah. Judah contain Jerusalem and was sometimes ruled by “good” kings while the kingdom in the north was always ruled by idolaters who worshiped pagan gods instead of the one true God of Israel.
3. God heard King Hezekiah’s prayer in the midst of a long terrible siege and threats by Assyria, a conquering nation that had already defeated the northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria).

The magnificent prayer of King Hezekiah is in 2 King 19:14-19:

¹⁴ And Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord. ¹⁵ Then Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said: “O Lord God of Israel, the One who dwells between the cherubim, You are God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. ¹⁶ Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. ¹⁷ Truly, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands, ¹⁸ and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were not gods, but the work of men’s hands—wood and stone. Therefore they destroyed them. ¹⁹ Now therefore, O Lord our God, I pray, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are the Lord God, You alone.”

King Hezekiah’s prayer is one of the many powerful models found in the Scriptures of a prayer that moves God’s heart. First the prayer comes from a humble heart and one that recognizes God’s power, authority, mercy and His glory. It emphasizes a truth about pagan gods and that they are powerless and only a creation of man, whereas man is a creation of God.

The fact that God uses this opportunity during the time of the Prophet Isaiah, provides believers a spiritual message emphasizing critical truths about God. The time of prophetic teaching and revelation emphasized God’s signature with miraculous signs so that we may believe. While it is possible that God may chose to intervene in our day with miraculous signs before the “Last Days”, it is not the time in the era of the church that such stark pronouncements need to be made to “authenticate” God – those days have passed having culminated in the times of Jesus’ apostles and the 1st Century church.

We have the record of the Bible that clearly provides witness to the mighty and glorious works of God, and the unmistakable teachings and signs of Jesus who is fully man and fully God. As testified in the Gospels, and is pointed to in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ was a willing and perfect sacrifice for the redemption of man’s sin through God’s grace alone. He was raised from the dead on the third day, defeating death and remains the stalwart and impregnable hope of eternal life.

You may be interested in how King Sennacherib got on the bad side of God. Here is how he defied God, evidenced in a communication, via the Rabshakeh (like a field commander in the Assyrian forces), to the people under siege in Jerusalem, who were starving to death and maintaining vigilance at the same time:

“Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! ²⁹ Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver you from his hand; ³⁰ nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, “The Lord will surely deliver us; this city shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” ’ ³¹ Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make peace with me by a present and come out to me; and every one of you eat from his own vine and every one from his own fig tree, and every one of you drink the waters of his own cistern; ³² until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive groves and honey, that you may live and not die. But do not listen to Hezekiah, lest he persuade you, saying, “The Lord will deliver us.” ³³ Has any of the gods of the nations at all delivered its land from the hand of the king of Assyria? ³⁴ Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim and Hena and Ivah? Indeed, have they delivered Samaria from my hand? ³⁵ Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their countries from my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’ ”

³⁶ But the people held their peace and answered him not a word; for the king’s commandment was, “Do not answer him.” ³⁷ Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and told him the words of the Rabshakeh. – 2 Kings 18:28-36

So he again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, ¹⁰ “Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, “Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” ¹¹ Look! You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by utterly destroying them; and shall you be delivered? ¹² Have the gods of the nations delivered those whom my fathers have destroyed, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? ¹³ Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?’ ” – 2 Kings 19:10-13

Judah was destined to be conquered and sent into exile, however not by these Assyrians. Maybe if King Hezekiah had not put strong effort to turn the people of Judah around spiritually, his reign would have taken a turn for the worst, but to quote Pete Mitchell in TOPGUN Maverick, “Maybe so, sir, but not today.“

At the beginning of 2 Kings 18 we have this historical reference to King Hezekiah’s reforms and why the king did what was right in the sight of the Lord:

 Now it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea the son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. ² He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah. ³ And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done.

⁴ He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan. ⁵ He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him. ⁶ For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses. ⁷ The Lord was with him; he prospered wherever he went. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. ⁸ He subdued the Philistines, as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city.

Notice that the people of Judah had fallen into such idolatry, they became worse than the pagan nations they had conquered centuries before. The pagan worshipping Israelites decided, among many other false religious practices, to take the bronze serpent pole that God instructed Moses to make, turned it into an idol and began worshipping IT as though it had some inherent power. They even gave it a name “Nahushtan”. The pole was constructed in the times of the Exodus from Egypt, which to various sources was about 1300 B.C. which means it was a 600 year old historical relic that King Hezekiah destroyed.

In these passages found in 2 KINGS chapter 18 and 19, we have some important lessons:

1. We know King Hezekiah who “did what was right in the sight of God” sought to bring his people in obedience to God’s spiritual and moral laws, especially the first and second commandments given in Exodus 20 (and other passages).
2. We know that King Sennacherib, who blasphemes and mocks God, will get the “hook” from God and will need to withdrawal from Judah, back to Assyria in both humiliation, defeat and to receive further judgment from God.
3. We know that God, as the Lord of Hosts, does not mean He is a celestial maitre-d. Lord of Hosts means He is the Commander of the heavenly army of angels. Here, you have one illustration of the unmatched terrible and swift sword of God in that one angel is capable of destroying an army of 185,000.
4. You mess with God at your own risk.

³⁶ So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went away, returned home, and remained at Nineveh. ³⁷ Now it came to pass, as he was worshiping in the temple of Nisroch his god, that his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword…

– 2 Kings 19:36-37a

***

For a detailed explanation of who Jesus Christ is from the Bible’s perspective go to the video in this website , “Who is Jesus Christ?”

CKY

***

Copyright © 2023 ChallenYee.com  Some Rights Reserved