I'm trying to take you the best I can in an orderly fashion through the reign of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was one of the most remarkable kings of Judah after David and Solomon, of course. Hezekiah not only was a godly man, we read in scripture, but if you look at 2 Kings chapter 18 verse 5, it says, he trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. We also know that he prospered The Lord prospered him according to 2 Chronicles and everything that he did. He was a remarkable builder, remarkable scientist, I guess, architect. And even today, the archaeologists are discovering his tunnels and his aqueducts and how he got water into Jerusalem to protect during the siege and some of those things. He really was a remarkable man. I'm trying to take you in an orderly fashion. Last week we looked at 2 Chronicles where we talked about how he cleaned up the mess that his father Ahaz left in the temple, rebuilt the temple, reestablished the services of the temple. 2nd Chronicles goes into great detail about the Passover, which we'll talk about in just a minute, and also how he reorganized all of the priests and all of the Levites and got all the singing services going back and all the Psalms brought back into the temple. We know that at some point along here, he was instrumental, him and his scribes, in putting together the final form of the book of Proverbs, the final form of the book of the Psalms, how many of those books reach their final form is still unclear with scholars, but we know Hezekiah did a great deal of that. We know from the sacred text itself in the book of Proverbs chapter 25 it says, These are the Proverbs that were compiled by Hezekiah, the King of Judah. So his men were also instrumental in putting together this final form of the word of God, putting all the Psalms together and putting all the Proverbs together and so on. And he brought, he reestablished the worship in Jerusalem. So God brought revival to Jerusalem. And with that being said, the question is, where on earth did Hezekiah learn all of this stuff? Where did he get it from? And we know that in Deuteronomy chapter 6, It says, hero Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall teach these things diligently to your children, it says. And as it goes down, it says, so when your children ask you in time to come, why are you doing this? What means the Passover? And what means all the sacrifices and all the ceremonies and all the feasts? Why are you doing all of this? And God said to them, then you shall teach your children this, that you were slaves in the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought you out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and he was good to you, he was gracious to you, and he gave you these laws, and these statutes, and these judgments, and this teaching, and he put all of this together for you, for your good, so that you would be joyful, so that you would praise the Lord your God, so that you wouldn't forget the Lord your God, so it would be good for you, and for your children after you. Now we know Hezekiah did not have a godly father. We know that everything in the temple was lost. The temple was destroyed. So where did this come from? And there's a fascinating verse that's repeated in 2 Kings and in 2 Chronicles. Verse number 2, 25 years old. At the end of the verse it says, his mother's name also was Abbey, the daughter of Zechariah the priest. Zechariah was the priest and his mother is mentioned here. and in 2nd Chronicles. Now in both passages it doesn't say anything particularly about Abby's character except that she was the daughter of Zachariah and we know about Zachariah's character. Zachariah was most likely the same priest that was murdered by Joash for standing up and rebuking Joash and his apostasy. And now that makes some difficulty because this would have been several decades before. But daughter can mean descended from. Abbey of the line of the priests who married in. Now we know that in the book of one advantage of doing Sunday school is you can also fill in some things that you're not going to be able to quite get to in the sermon. And one of the things in the sermon that we're gonna look at, Solomon tells his son, and this is, remember, it's compiled by Hezekiah. He says, remember the commandment of your father and don't forsake the instruction of your mother. This is what Solomon is telling his child to do. There's nothing that's a greater blessing than godly parents that instruct the children in the faith, particularly what they're supposed to instruct them in, in Deuteronomy chapter six, how God delivered us with a mighty hand, why we do the things that we do, what the Psalms mean, what the gospel is, how God is going to redeem us from our sin and misery, being taught to us by fathers and mothers from our youth. That's how it's supposed to work. And Solomon is instructing his son because he knows his son has been instructed by his mother. And Hezekiah is also instructed by his mother. And so he turns his back on what his father taught him, Ahaz, and he brings about what his mother taught him. And so he tells, he compiles those things also saying, listen to the voice of your mother. And thus we have the fifth commandment and the true meaning of the fifth commandment where he says honor your father and your mother. Now, this has taken a beating, it's fallen on hard times, mostly because of some ignorant fools who have declared themselves to be Bible teachers, and you know me, I'm going to name names even if it gets me in trouble. In the 70's there was this guy who decided he was a Bible teacher, his name was Bill Gothard, had no training, no education, and invented this whole theology and called it the Basic Youth Conflicts Institute, went around and taught all this garbage to a whole lot of people. And when it repeats enough, people think it's orthodoxy. It isn't orthodox, it's invented by Bill Gothard. As we know, because from the 80s up until now, Bill Gothard has had one sex scandal right after another, that he has an ulterior motive for what he does, but that doesn't stop millions and millions of people from following his thing. He came up with this scheme called the umbrellas. Remember the umbrellas? You've got Christ, who's the big umbrella, and then under the protection of Christ is the protection of the husband with the smaller umbrella, and then under the husband is the mother, under the husband of the, Christ's umbrella and the husband's umbrella. And then under the mother are all the children's umbrellas. It's really bizarre. It's this whole hierarchy of submission and authority. The problem is the scripture doesn't say anything about that anywhere. What the scripture says, I don't know if you've fallen into this, when you fall into this pattern of thinking of the, being as it as it comes out today it's the idea that all women are created to be subordinate to all men and therefore when a man gets to the point of 10 or 11 or 13 years old he's no longer supposed to be taught by his mother he's supposed to be taught by his mother his father and all this other garbage, piles on piles on piles and piles. The problem is scripture doesn't teach any of that. It says to young men and old men, listen to the voice of your mother, because God has determined that the gospel will be taught from generation to generation. And a mother that teaches the gospel of Jesus Christ to her children is a tremendous blessing. and a young man that does not listen to his mother for any reason and doesn't learn the gospel will be held without excuse. Hezekiah listened to the voice of his mother, this king, and the fortunes of the nation are turned around because he had a godly mother, Abbie, the daughter of Zechariah. That's Abbie as a nickname. Her full name was Abijah, and that's given in 2 Chronicles. So if any of you would like to name your daughter Abijah and nickname her Abby, you would have my permission because she would have been quite a woman. Anyway, so we read in Chronicles, there are several chapters where he goes into detail about the reforms in the temple and the reforms in the Passover and how this is all brought back. In fact, this happened after all of Israel, the northern kingdom, is taken into captivity. And if you remember, we talked about this a month or so ago, where the Assyrian armies came down and took Samaria captive and took all of Israelite captive and resettled the land of Israel. They left some of the poor of the land in Israel. Well, Hezekiah then, when he has the Passover, to reestablish that Passover, he sends messengers to the northern kingdom to invite all Israel to come to the Passover. And we know that there were a remnant left of Ephraim and Manasseh and Issachar and Naphtali that were some of the... And they said the vast majority just made fun of them. mocked them, laughed at them and sent them on their way, the poor of the land, but there were a few that came to the point that when this Passover was celebrated in Jerusalem, the sacred writer says in the book of Chronicles that there was not a Passover like it since the days of Solomon, meaning that everybody participated, all of Israel, all of Judah, everyone that came down and participated, so they're representatives of all the tribes. So up until since the days of Solomon, the days of Rehoboam, when the kingdom split, the Northern kingdom wouldn't have come down to Jerusalem because of the danger involved. But now the king had been taken captive. And so the Assyrian armies had a loose group of governors in the Northern kingdom. And so they could celebrate the Passover. Now with that being said, we're also going to get into some trouble here because the Assyrian army is still powerful. There's a lot of world events going on. and you wanna say to yourself, okay, everything is all good, everything is perfect. Hezekiah started this tremendous revival. He did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord. It says in verse number five, he trusted in the Lord God of Israel. There were none like him out of all the kings of Judah. He did everything that his father David did. He was a tremendous man. Now everything is gonna be perfect. The kingdom of God is going to come in. Everyone's going to be under their vine and under their fig tree and everything's gonna be happy and joyful. Not so fast, because the kingdom of God can't ever be brought in by legislation. If you could legislate people to love the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind, with all their strength, Hezekiah would have been successful. The fact is, all you can do is you can force people to go to Jerusalem to keep a Passover, you can force people to keep the feast days, you can force people to keep the Sabbath, but you can't force them to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Now, God was gracious, the scripture does record that there were those that came joyfully and brought the firstfruits of the flock and supported the Levites, and they celebrated and rejoiced in the Passover, but the very first chapter of Isaiah warns them. Isaiah says, what's the purpose of all these feast days? What are you doing with this? You think this is what I enjoy? You think this is what, who commanded you to do all of this? And of course they would say, well, you did. And he says, no, what I want is for you to love mercy, to love justice, to fight against oppression, to fight against evil, to not stomp the widow, to not stomp the helpless, to not be cruel to those that have no strength, that have no power. If you're not doing that, what good are all your feast days? The fact is that wicked people want to do what they want to do. They want to live in fornication and murder and idolatry and hatred and envy and strife. And they want to lash out against people. They want to oppress. They want to attack. And then they want to go to church. And they want to offer their sacrifices in church and they want to have their long speeches and they want to wear the long robes and be greeted in the marketplace and be known as being godly people. But they don't actually want to be godly people. They just want to be known as godly people. Well, God sees through all of that. So he says in Isaiah chapter 1, your land's left desolate. Your land is going to be left to you desolate because the unclean will never stay on the land. And yeah, you're keeping the sacrifices, you're keeping the feast days. Yes, I've given you a godly king so you have no more excuses, but now as long as you're oppressing and crushing and raping and murdering and stealing land, and you can list the whole list of sins in the book of Isaiah, he says, you've forsaken the God of your fathers. And so trouble continues to come. God brings the army of the Assyrians. If you remember Ahaz was a wicked man and Ahaz ruled over a wicked people. Isaiah says, I'm an unclean man and an unclean people among, sorry, among an unclean people. So the people of Judah were still idol worshipers at heart. They did not love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. And now the sins of Ahaz, we still have to deal with the sins of Ahaz. Even though Ahaz is dead, Ahaz is still the king. And when the king rebels against God, all the people suffer. Just as when the king is righteous, all the people are blessed. Ahaz, if you remember, in Isaiah chapter 7, makes a treaty with the Assyrians. And you cannot make a treaty with Assyrians and hope that everything is going to turn out okay. Because Assyrians are not nice people. Assyrians are not trustworthy people. Assyrians are vicious. God has a purpose for the Assyrians and God's purpose for the Assyrians is to bring about his own purposes. But it's to bring, judgment to the house of Israel to the house of Judah because you cannot forsake the Lord your God and still expect the blessings of the kingdom and so God is bringing the Assyrian army in chapter 8 of Isaiah it says I will whistle for them like a man whistles for the bees and out of Assyria will come the axe in my hand the Assyrian army is just the axe in God's hands but this would have been a tremendous trial of faith for the few remnant, the faithful that were left. Isaiah said, if we were not, if it wasn't for the mercy of God, if he had not left us a remnant, we would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah. That's how widespread the destruction was. The Assyrian army comes down and takes Israel captive, we know that. They came down, there's a lot of politics and I won't get into all the different nations and everything warring and fighting. The two huge powers are Egypt in the south and Assyria in the north. Up in the north with Assyria there are minor kingdoms, giving them trouble like the kingdom of the Babylonians. Ivo Meradoc was the king there. But he was completely under the control of the Assyrians and yet would still raise his ugly head every now and then. In the South, Egypt was giving trouble and so Assyria is battling all of this. And what's in the middle of all of those kingdoms, right smack in the middle of it, is the nation of Judah. You can't go anywhere without going through the nation of Judah. This is why Judah is continually under attack and under warfare. It's very interesting that The land that God chose to place his name, the city that God chose to place his name, is right in the middle of the most contested ground in the world. In order to be successful in that part of the world in any endeavor, you have to control that area. You can't go north. You can't go south. You can't go east. You can't go west without going through Jerusalem. There's the King's Highway that went right straight through it. And whoever controlled that controlled the commerce of the entire known world at the time. So it's always being contested. This is why Israel is always at war. And there is peace and prosperity when Israel is prospering. And yet there is when the king is prospering. And yet when the king is being overthrown, then there's war and trouble and Israel's hiding in caves. It's also in God's providence, the day is going to come when Messiah is going to be crucified in Jerusalem, in the center of the world. And just like Isaiah said in chapter two, the day is gonna come when all nations will flow to Jerusalem because out of Jerusalem will come the law, the instructions, the teaching of God. And so all nations will say, come, let's go to the house of the Lord. Because from Jerusalem went the apostles, throughout the whole world because the roads from Jerusalem went throughout the whole world. Anyway, I'm on a side note now. Let's see where I am. I'm going to try and focus my thoughts a little bit here. Let's see if we can draw things together a little bit. Isaiah is prophesying at this time. Hezekiah is a godly king, as I said before, he trusts the Lord, and yet the Assyrian army is still getting more powerful. Hezekiah is not the Messiah. Hezekiah is a human being. Hezekiah is a king who is sinful. Hezekiah has his pride, he has his fears, he has his doubts, and in a moment of fear, As the Assyrian army just conquers Samaria, comes down and conquers the Philistines, starts to threaten Egypt and starts making its power known, especially when it hit the Philistines, when it hit the cities of the Philistines, these powerful cities of the Philistines, All of the sudden, these great powerful kings in the cities of the Philistines are being impaled on stakes and left to die in the view of the whole world. Tortured slowly and put to death, it's vicious. And Hezekiah becomes afraid. He sees the Assyrian armies coming through and he becomes afraid. And he says to the king of Jerusalem, He says to the king of Assyria, I've sinned against you, I'll pay tribute. And he gives the gold from the temple and the silver from the temple to the king of Assyria. Verse number 15 of chapter 18, Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house. At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria. And so we see the Hezekiah. becoming fearful, becoming afraid, making a treaty with the Assyrians, thinking the Assyrians are trustworthy. And one thing he should know by now is that Assyrians aren't trustworthy. And so sure enough, we see the Assyrians not doing what they said they were going to do. The Assyrians were supposed to leave Hezekiah alone as part of his kingdom there, but they don't. Verse number 17, the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsarus and Rabshakeh from Lachish to King Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem. So let's talk about this a little bit. Lachish is a city that they have conquered. The Assyrians have conquered and they've set up their army. Millions and millions and millions and millions of people strong. It's a massive army. It's an unstoppable army. They have defeated everything all around them. They have gone through Israel, they've gone through the entire known world, they have conquered Judah, one city right after another, and now they've settled in Lachish. They've set that up as their headquarters. They are so unconcerned about Jerusalem that King Sennacherib doesn't even go to Jerusalem. King Sennacherib just sends an army. a small army from Sennacherib's point of view, but in our text it says a great army. It was about 200,000 men, very small to go lay siege on Jerusalem. This army goes with the Rabshakeh, which is probably a name of an envoy or a general, a title rather than a proper name. And this Rabshakeh goes to Jerusalem and now, The entire known world has been conquered, is under absolute Assyrian domination, except for Jerusalem is the only place. Isaiah says, you've left us like a hut in the field of cucumbers. If you look at, you pass a field, and you see that field that goes for miles and miles and miles and miles, and there in the middle of it is a tiny hut, the watch cabin, where the gardener stays, the tiny hut in the middle of it all. That was the world at the time. The field of cucumbers is the Assyrian domination. The hut is Jerusalem still standing. What hope does Hezekiah have? And yet, Hezekiah knows. that he's only got two choices. He can surrender to the Assyrians, or he can trust in the Lord. He's got Isaiah, and Isaiah says, trust in the Lord. In quiet and in peace, you'll find your rest. Be quiet, trust in the Lord. There is a contingent among the captains in Jerusalem, among the advisors in Jerusalem that have convinced Hezekiah earlier to count on Egyptians. The Egyptians will come up, the Egyptians will say, you can side in with the Egyptians. This is a factor in Hezekiah's decision-making process. But Isaiah says, chapter 20 in Isaiah, in fact, it was a very, blunt prophecy that Isaiah made. God told Isaiah, strip completely naked. and spend three years walking around completely naked. And if people say, what are you doing walking around naked? Say, this is Egypt and Ethiopia. You're putting your trust in Egypt and Ethiopia, but Assyria is going to strip them naked and take them captive. So everybody knew what God thought of Egypt and Assyria because of Isaiah the prophet. That's chapter 20 of the book of Isaiah. Anyway, so Hezekiah now is stuck. He's got Isaiah saying, trust in the Lord. Well, it's really easy to say trust in the Lord when you've got an army to back you up. But when you're in Jerusalem and you're facing the millions of people of the Assyrian army, when you've got the entire world collapsing on you, what do you do? Hezekiah cries out to the Lord, and we read this account in chapter 18, the Rabshakeh, he starts to say with a loud voice to everybody listening, don't trust Hezekiah, and he's speaking in Hebrew, don't trust Hezekiah, we're going to leave you so you're eating your own dung and your own urine, you're not going to have anything to eat, now if you come out and surrender, you can go home, you can eat your own figs, you can eat your own vines, until we take you captive. It's not going to be a big deal. We'll take you back to Assyria. We'll settle you on a nice farm. There's great food. You're going to have a great time. You'll be a part of the winning team. This is going to be a wonderful time. You can do this. Come, but don't trust Hezekiah. Hezekiah says, trust in the Lord, Jehovah, trust in Jehovah. Who is Jehovah? Jehovah is just another God. What about all the other gods? And then he starts listing all the cities and all the great nations. They trusted in their gods, where are they? Besides, what did Hezekiah do? Didn't he tear down all of Jehovah's altars? How are you gonna trust in him when he's torn down Jehovah's altars? Anyway, Hezekiah's general shout back to Rabshakeh, don't speak in Hebrew, speak in Aramaic, we'll work this out in Aramaic, because they don't want the people on the wall listening and hearing what's being said. And Rabshakeh says, I didn't come to speak to you, I came to speak to them on the wall. And he starts to talk and chapter 18 ends with verse number 36, the people held their peace, answered him not a word, For the king's commandment was, answer him not." That's absolutely brilliant. It shows Hezekiah's wisdom. It shows the trust of the people that there is a remnant that the Lord has left who are going to trust Him. They answered Him, not a word. They didn't speak back to Him. They didn't say anything. You know, not everything has to be answered. Sometimes the wisest thing you can do is not answer at all. What are you going to say to this guy? What are you going to say to the rabshakas of the world? You know, it's like David said, I forget the psalm. Psalm six, maybe. Psalm six or seven. He says, I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war. There are those who are for war. Rabshakeh has already shown what kind of a person he is. He doesn't want peace. He wants absolute destruction. He doesn't want to discuss these things. He doesn't want to, you can surrender. You can walk away from the wall and you can go out and join Rabshakeh's army. You think he's going to actually keep his word and do what he says he's going to do? What guarantee do you have? He slaughtered people by the millions. He has no conscience. He has no honor. He has no reason to keep his word at all. And Hezekiah says, don't even answer him back. Isaiah said repeatedly in your quiet, you will find rest. How hard is it to keep quiet when the whole world is raging at you? How hard is it to keep silent when you're being reproached? when the name of your God is being blasphemed, when you're being ridiculed, when you're being mocked, when you're being torn to pieces, when you're helpless, powerless, no defenses, the enemy is attacking you, you have no guarantee from God or from anyone else that this is going to turn out okay. This isn't a everything's going to be all happy. There have been millions in Judah that have already been killed, and yet they keep silent. in your quiet you will find rest because the I believe from the very beginning the faithful from the very beginning believed in the resurrection from the dead and they knew that this land this land of Jerusalem this land of Israel was simply a token of the real rest And the reason I say that is because Abraham never received his rest. He was a pilgrim and a stranger every day of his life. If he did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, how hopeless was his life? Because he never received what God promised him. And this is why Jesus said, haven't you read the scripture where God says, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? God's not the God of the dead, He's the God of the living. And Hezekiah and the people on the wall in Jerusalem knew, though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. And I'm going to keep silent. I don't know what to answer this guy. I don't know what the Lord is going to do. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how the Lord is going to sort this out. But I know that Jehovah is God. He created the heavens and the earth. We're going to look at this next week. There's a great statement by Isaiah, a song that Isaiah sings at the end of this, but we're not going to have time to get to today, where he is the creator of everything. Didn't Assyria remember that it was God that created the rivers? that they came across. It was God that created those plains. It was God that created the mountains. It was God that gave them life and breath. And God can take away that breath overnight. Doesn't Assyria remember that? And therefore Assyria can't do anything that God does not give them permission to do. Therefore, the response of the godly are though he slay me, yet I will trust him." Because God has made tremendous promises to us, the promises that we will be his people and he will be our God and that means something. Hezekiah knew that it meant something because that was the meaning of Passover. He knew, according to 2 Chronicles, which we looked at last week, that his problem was that they were out of covenant with God. And so the most important thing he needed to do as king was restore the covenant. And so he did. He said to God, you redeemed us from the land of Egypt. You called us your people so that we would call you our God. You've given us these commandments and these laws and these statutes and these instructions and you've given us this lamb and you've given us the blood of the lamb to put on the door so that we will be your people and that means something. I don't know what it means right now when I've got Rabshakeh and Sennacherib right around the corner. I don't know what that means. I don't know if I'm going to be killed. I don't know if I'm going to be impaled outside. I don't know if He's going to win here on this earth. But I know that Jehovah is the God of the earth and that means something because I am His people. And the day is going to come when we will be gathered together. There will be a new heavens and the new earth and the true enemy, the kingdom of the devil will be destroyed. However, Hezekiah knew something else. Hezekiah knew that the line of David would continue. So whatever God was going to do, it would not involve the destruction of the line of David because God made a promise to David. And so Hezekiah said, don't answer him a word. Let's wait and see what the Lord our God will say. And the Lord our God answers in chapter 19, which we will discuss next week. Let's close in prayer and then we'll see if there's questions. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word and the promises of your word. We thank you that when the whole world seems to be attacking and swarming against us that you are our God and that we can be silent and wait for the salvation of the Lord. We pray, Father, that you would be with us, that you would cause us to walk in confidence and with joy with Christ as our Savior and our King and our General. In Jesus' name, amen.