Welcome to this Daily PBJ devotional. Read Numbers 12 and 13, Isaiah 37, and Psalms 54 through 56 today. This devotional is about Isaiah 37. on hearing this report, King Hezekiah tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and entered the house of the Lord. And he sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe, and the leading priests, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz, to tell him, This is what Hezekiah says, will hear the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to defy the living God, and he will rebuke him for the words that the Lord your God has heard. Therefore lift up a prayer for the remnant that still survives. So the servants of King Hezekiah went to Isaiah, who replied, Tell your master that this is what the Lord says. Do not be afraid of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own land, where I will cause him to fall by the sword. When the Rabshakeh heard that the king of Assyria had left Ligish, he withdrew and found the king fighting against Libna. Now Sennacherib had been warned about Tirhaka, king of Cush. He has set out to fight against you. On hearing this, Sennacherib sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, Give this message to Hezekiah, king of Judah. Do not let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you by saying that Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria. Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the other countries, devoting them to destruction. Will you then be spared? Did the gods of the nations destroyed by my fathers rescue those nations? The gods of Gozan, Haran, and Rezeph? And the people of Eden and Talasar? Where are the kings of Hamath, Arpad, Sepharvaim, Hena, and Iva? So Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers, read it, and went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you alone are God over all the nations of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see. Listen to all the words that Sennacherib has sent to defy the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all these countries and their lands. They have cast their gods into the fire and destroyed them. For they were not gods, but only wood and stone, the work of human hands. And now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God. Then Isaiah, son of Amoz, sent a message to Hezekiah. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib, king of Assyria, this is the word that the Lord has spoken against him. The virgin daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you. The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind you. Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel. Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, and you have said, With my many chariots I have ascended to the heights of the mountains, to the remote peaks of Lebanon, I have cut down its tallest cedars, the finest of its cypresses. I have reached its farthest heights, the densest of its forests. I have dug wells and drunk foreign waters. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt. Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it. In days of old I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass. that you should crush fortified cities into piles of rubble. Therefore their inhabitants, devoid of power, are dismayed and ashamed. They are like plants in the field, tender green shoots, grass on the rooftops, scorched before it is grown. But I know you're sitting down, you're going out and coming in, and you're raging against me. Because your rage and arrogance against me have reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose, and my bit in your mouth. I will send you back the way you came. And this will be a sign to you, O Hezekiah. This year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what springs from the same. But in the third year you will sow and reap, and will plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. and the surviving remnant of the house of Judah, will again take root below and bear fruit above. For a remnant will go forth from Jerusalem, and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the Lord will accomplish this. So this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria. He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow into it. He will not come before it with a shield or build up a siege ramp against it. He will go back the way he came, and he will not enter this city, declares the Lord. I will defend this city and save it for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David. Then the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies. So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. One day, while he was worshipping in the temple of his god Nishrak, his sons Adramelech and Andsharezer put him to the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat, and his son Esarhaddon reigned in his place. This is God's Word. Yesterday's reading from Isaiah 36 described how the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, attacked the southern kingdom of Judah and put the city of Jerusalem under siege. Having successfully stopped the flow of water into the city, the Assyrians invited the people of Jerusalem to surrender before they died of dehydration and starvation. Here in Isaiah 37, Hezekiah the king of Judah showed great spiritual leadership. Instead of mustering his army and trying to fire them up with a rousing speech, Hezekiah recognized that God was the only possible route to deliverance. Hezekiah began his demonstration of spiritual leadership by humbling himself personally before the Lord by putting on the garments of humility and going to the Lord's holy temple. We saw that in verse 1. Then he sent some of his deputies themselves clothed in humble sackcloth to Isaiah the prophet in verse 2. Their message to Isaiah in verse 3 was not, get us out of this, or even pray for us. Instead, they acknowledged how desperate their situation and need for God was in verse 3, and pointed out to Isaiah that the Assyrians had spoken words of ridicule against the one true God, the God of Israel. We saw that in verse 4a. As a result, these men asked Isaiah to pray that God would preserve his people from this dangerous moment in their history. We saw that in verse 5. Isaiah responded by assuring Hezekiah's officials that God would fight for Israel and repay the Assyrians for their blasphemy. We saw that in verses 5 through 7. Meanwhile, Sennacherib sent a personal letter to Hezekiah, once again denying that God would deliver them and calling on Hezekiah to surrender. We saw that in verses 9 through 13. Hezekiah took the letter he received and brought it before the Lord, as we saw in verse 14. He prayed and began his prayer by praising God for who he is. We saw that in verses 15 and 16. And then Hezekiah called on God to deliver his people, as we saw in verses 18 through 20. At the end of Hezekiah's prayer, he said the words that God always wants to hear, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, Lord, are the only God. As he called on God to fight for his people, Hezekiah tied his request to the demonstration of God's glory as we saw in verse 20. God answered Hezekiah's prayer in verses 21 through 38. And here we are, thousands of years later, reading about what God did and praising God in our hearts for His almighty power and defense of His people. When we ask God for something in prayer, do we ever think about what God would get out of answering our prayers? The biggest human need that we can think of is insignificant. compared to the importance of magnifying the glory of God and calling people to surrender to Him for salvation. God is loving and compassionate toward His people, but His main objective in this world is to spread the knowledge of Himself throughout the world. Do we ask God to use our weaknesses, our needs, and the answers to prayer that we seek from him in ways that help spread the knowledge of God through the gospel, and then therefore bring worship to God? Or is our praying self-seeking, concerned mostly or only with getting what we want from God for our own relief or for our own life enhancement? The kind of prayer that God loves to answer is one that recognizes God's purposes in this world and aligns the answer that we seek with the advancement of God's agenda in some way. If God were to give you today the answer you've been asking from Him for years, how would that answer to prayer spread the knowledge of Him in the world? Tying our requests to what God is concerned about, His kingdom, is important to Him and may be the thing that causes Him to choose to answer our requests. Think about what you find yourself asking from God in prayer. Is the answer you want really just a way to make yourself comfortable? Or do you see how God's answering your prayer might have an impact on the real reasons Christ came into the human race? Do you see how God is glorified when He answers in such difficult situations? When you pray, connect your prayers to the promises of God and to God's mission to reach His chosen ones around the world. And see then if God does not answer more quickly more completely and more thoroughly in your life. If you found this devotional helpful, go to my website dailypbj.com slash subscribe and enter your email address. This is completely free and you can unsubscribe at any time. There's an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email. But if you subscribe, every day you'll receive an email from me and that email will contain a link to the daily readings in scripture that I read out here so you can be in God's Word every day. And the same email will contain a link to these devotionals in audio, video, and transcript form. And that will help you apply what you read to yourself. Give it a try. I think it'll help you establish a daily Bible reading habit. Please consider supporting me financially if you think this work is worthy, and if you think that it'll help others, and if it's helping you, go to dailypbj.com slash support for more information about that. Please share this with someone else who might be helped in their praying and their faith by it. And I'll see you next time. May God bless you. Hope you have a great day today.