Read 2 Kings 19 and Hosea 12.
This devotional is about 2 Kings 19.
Yesterday we read that, after the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrians, the Assyrians made a play for the Southern Kingdom of Judah, too. At first Hezekiah tried to buy them off, but that was merely a temporary fix. The Assyrians returned and wanted total surrender, so they laid siege to Jerusalem, cutting off the food and water and urged the people to surrender.
Chapter 19, today’s reading, continued the story and told us that Hezekiah had a very simple response: he turned to God for help.
His first act was to show his complete humility and dependence on God (v. 1). Was it dignified for the king of Judah, one of David’s descendants, to tear his clothes and put on sackcloth? Of course not; Hezekiah was more concerned about the gravity of the situation than he was with maintaining his dignity.
Hezekiah’s second act of humility was to contact Isaiah and ask him to pray (vv. 2-4). Note that Hezekiah understood what was at stake. The Assyrians were not merely trying to defeat Judah in war; they were attacking Judah’s God as much as they were attacking Judah’s capital city (v. 4). Hezekiah suggested in his message to Isaiah that God might intervene because of the blasphemy spoken by Assyria’s commander. That’s key to understanding what happened later.
Isaiah responded to Hezekiah’s message with an encouraging word: Don’t be afraid of their blasphemy; this Assyrian king Sennacherib will abandon his siege when he gets concerning news from home (vv. 5-7). This prophecy through Isaiah began to be fulfilled immediately (v. 8), but Sennacherib did not leave the siege without petitioning Hezekiah—in writing—to surrender (vv. 9-13).
The demand to surrender led to Hezekiah’s third response to threat of the Assyrians: To pray directly to God for help (vv. 14-19). God responded through Isaiah with a direct answer to prayer (v. 20) and a prophecy of the downfall of Sennacherib (vv. 21-28). God’s words to Sennacherib were designed to assert His glory against the blasphemous boasts of the Assyrian king (vv. 21-26), then to make two direct promises.
The first direct promise was that Sennacherib would retreat because of what the Lord would do (vv. 27-28). The second direct promise was that Hezekiah and his kingdom would thrive again because of the Lord’s blessing (vv. 29-34). True to his word, the Lord defeated the Assyrians supernaturally (v. 35) causing Sennacherib to retreat as the Lord had prophesied (v. 36). Finally his own sons consipired against him and killed him (v. 37).
So Hezekiah was a simple guy; he had no grand scheme for defeating Assyria. He didn’t even try to muster an army to attack them. He simply humbled himself before the Lord, asked Isaiah to pray and prayed himself. Yet in his simple trust in the Lord there was great wisdom and great faith. Both his wisdom and his faith were tied to a deep belief that God was real, that what Hezekiah knew about God’s miraculous power was true, and that God was able if he chose to rescue Judah. Hezekiah’s prayer, though, was focused on God and his glory, not just begging God to fix the problem. His reason for asking for God’s help was simple: “Now, Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, Lord, are God.”
Do we care about that when we ask God to answer our prayers? Does it matter to us at all if God’s glory and fame are extended? Do we tie our requests to a desire to show more and more people that God is real? Or are we so myopically focused on our own problems that we never consider how God might be glorified by answering our request with a yes. If you look at the scripture’s teaching on prayer, you will see that what Hezekiah said in his prayer was exactly what God wants to hear. God wants our dependence on prayer to be about him and his glory. Whatever you’re praying for today, are you asking God to use his answer to you as a method to reach people for Jesus? That’s the kind of prayer God loves to answer with yes.
