10 “Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. 11 Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? 12 Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’”
Hezekiah’s Prayer
14 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 And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said: “O LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the 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 mock the living God. 17 Truly, O 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 were destroyed. 19 So now, O LORD our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O LORD, are God alone.”
10 “Thus shall you speak to Hezekiah king of Judah: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. 11 Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? 12 Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’”
Hezekiah’s Prayer
14 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 And Hezekiah prayed before the LORD and said: “O LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the 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 mock the living God. 17 Truly, O 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 were destroyed. 19 So now, O LORD our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O LORD, are God alone.”
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Joel Brooks:
If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to 2nd Kings chapter 19. 2nd Kings 19. About 10 years ago, I got a phone call from a pastor of a small church down in Mobile, Alabama, and he had called to talk to me about a person we both knew who had recently died. It was a woman named Sadie Twilley. She was an old friend of my dad's and, I grew up every Christmas or some week in the summer, we would go down and we would visit miss Twilly, and we would help take care of her and her house.
Joel Brooks:
And, anyway, this this pastor, he wanted to call me up just to tell me a little bit more about her. Now I've told you guys before a little bit about her. She was, she was a poor nobody in the eyes of the world. She never married. She, she lived out in the sticks.
Joel Brooks:
She built her own house. She was a very wee woman, and so her ceilings were 6 feet tall, which was problematic because she had ceiling fans. And, so when you went to visit her, you you had to you had to always be hunched over. You felt like you were going in a Hobbit home. And, but she was a dear woman, but but the reason this pastor called is he wanted me to know that for the last 7 to 8 years, every single day she had come to his office to pray for me.
Joel Brooks:
She had gotten her little Subaru, drove to his office, and everyday, she would pray for both him, and then she would pray for me. I was blown away when I heard that. He said that she knew, you know, I was just starting a ministry at that time. A ministry, a college ministry that actually grew rather rapidly, affected many people's lives. Some of you came to know the Lord through that ministry, and I would like to take full credit for it.
Joel Brooks:
I would like to say that the ministry grew because I was an amazing preacher and had some dynamic personality, you know, and all that. But but now I know it's because a little poor nobody in the eyes of the world, everyday would pour out her heart to Jesus on my behalf. People have asked me over the years who some of my heroes of the faith are, and they were somewhat surprised when I don't say like a Tim Keller or a John Piper. I say it's Sadie Twilley. And one of the things I am hoping that happens in our midst as we go through this study of great prayers of the Bible is that the Lord will raise up many people like her.
Joel Brooks:
People who believe that you don't just pray for the greater work, but prayer in itself is the greater work that we can all be engaged in. My heart's desire is that God would ignite in us over the next 10 weeks as we look through the great prayers of the Bible, hearts of prayer. So we're gonna begin by looking at this prayer from Hezekiah. Before we read the text, you should just know that this is a prayer that comes at the most pivotal moment in his entire life. It comes from a crisis, and this is the defining moment in his life.
Joel Brooks:
And we're gonna begin reading in verse 14. Says, Hezekiah received the letter from the hands of the messengers and read it, And Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and he spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, oh, Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God. You alone of all the kingdoms of the earth, you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear.
Joel Brooks:
Open your eyes, O Lord, and see. And hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, oh Lord, the kings of Syria have laid waste the nations and their lands, 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 were destroyed. So now, oh Lord our God, save us.
Joel Brooks:
Please, from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, oh Lord, are God alone. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You would pray with me. Father, I pray that through your spirit you would ignite something in us, A desire to spend more time with you, a desire to pour out our hearts before you in prayer.
Joel Brooks:
We can't muster that up on our own, so Spirit of God we ask that you would take the words that we hear, that you would empower them to have real change in us. I pray my words would fall to the ground and blow away and be remembered no more, but, Lord, your words would remain, They would do their work, and we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Now the first thing I want to say about this series on prayer is that we must not think of this as a topical study on prayer. This this is not a topical study on prayer.
Joel Brooks:
I'm not sure if you've noticed this or not, but your Bible, as much as you might want it to be, your Bible was not written topically. Your Bible I I know we all wish I had this. We wish I had little tabs at the end that just had the topics we wanted to go to. You know, the little topic tab on marriage or the little tab on work or the tab on money or the tab on sex or the tab on how to handle a difficult roommate or the tab on what to do when your husband's a pastor and he plans a church function during your birthday, you know, just just hypothetical tabs like that. That that would be really useful for us if we could just look up certain topics in the Bible that that way.
Joel Brooks:
But the Bible was not written topically and the reason it's not topical is because you cannot understand anything in your life in isolation of everything else in your life. That's not the way you're wired. That's not the way that life works. Everything is connected. How could you possibly learn about dating or marriage unless you also see how it's related to your anxieties, to your depression, to your joys, to your idolatries, to your friendships, to your parenting or your parentage, to your failures, to your experience of God's grace in your life.
Joel Brooks:
All of those things come into play when you think of marriage and dating. You are not topical. And so, the Bible is not topical. That's not how God has chosen to speak to us. So instead of a book of topics, the best way to think of the Bible is it's a book really about one grand redemptive story that's got some application points along the way.
Joel Brooks:
But we've got to know that grand story and then all the the smaller stories that make up that grand story, and then we'll find these application points along the way. But every passage you read is gonna tell you something about God, something about yourself, something about sin, something about grace, and something about God's redemptive plan for you. So there's no such thing as a passage on just a certain topic. So if you wanna understand, you know, marriage, don't just go to Ephesians 5 and say, Ephesians 5, it's about marriage. Now if you wanna understand marriage, you go to the entire bible.
Joel Brooks:
The entire bible. You gotta understand God's grand redemptive plan throughout every page if you want to understand what he has to say about marriage. And I say this because I want you to know you cannot understand prayer just by looking at the different prayers in the Bible. But you have to realize that these prayers, they're all part of the grand redemptive story, and then they're all part of the smaller stories that make that up. And so in every prayer, there is a real person and a real story and a real situation.
Joel Brooks:
Real struggles with sin, with work, with being a parent. There's weird family dynamics at play. Each of these people have unique experiences of God's grace, and you will not understand prayer unless you understand how all of these things are connected to prayer. And so that's why when we're going through these great prayers of the Bible over the next 10 weeks, we really need to dig in and to understand what's happening with these people. What is their story?
Joel Brooks:
What's their unique experience of God's grace? What are the sins that they are dealing with? What are the weird family dynamics at play? And as we understand those things, we begin to see what does this teach us about God, teach us about ourself, and teach us about God's grand redemptive plan for us? And so since this prayer here was prayed by Hezekiah, we need to understand the life of Hezekiah and what's going on with him.
Joel Brooks:
Because this prayer didn't happen in isolation from the rest of his life. As a matter of fact, this prayer you can see is the accumulation, of of his entire life. It's the culminating point. A pivotal moment in his entire life. You could say his whole life was leading up to this one moment, this one prayer.
Joel Brooks:
And it's hard to believe it because Hezekiah was born into a terrible family. His dad was king Ahaz who came to be king at the ripe old age of 20, and he quickly became the most evil king in Judah's history. Since he became king so young, he he really wanted to establish himself fast, and so he made lots of sacrifices for the kingdom. Even sacrificed his family. And by that, I don't mean he spent a lot of time away from them.
Joel Brooks:
I mean, he sacrificed them. He burned his children on the altar. He was truly a wicked king. He ended temple worship. He boarded up the temple.
Joel Brooks:
He stripped it of his gold and its silver. He set up these, pagan altars all throughout the countryside. These altars weren't at first pagan altars. They were more of think of them as convenient places to worship. I mean, they were supposed to worship at the temple, but he thought, why make people come all the way to the temple to worship?
Joel Brooks:
I could just set up something near them, a really convenient place for them to worship. But a worship at a convenience quickly becomes idolatrous. There's actually an entire sermon right there about how when there's no sacrifice and there's nothing central in worship, but we try to make worship around our schedule. Worship convenient to us. It becomes quickly idolatrous.
Joel Brooks:
But I'm not gonna preach on that yet. Maybe in 2 months, I might return here. So Ahaz was a pretty wicked king, but as bad as as as all these things is that he has done, he actually got worse. In the pivotal moment in his life at his crisis when Damascus comes knocking on his door threatening to destroy him, we read these words. In 2nd Chronicles 28.
Joel Brooks:
In the time of his distress, he became yet more faithless to the Lord. And he began to sacrifice to the gods of Damascus that had defeated him. So in the most pivotal moment of Ahaz's life, He thought this, if you can't beat them, join them. This this wave of culture if you will coming against me, I can't fight it. Who can hope to beat it?
Joel Brooks:
Rather than beat them, why not just join them? So that's how Ahaz responded. So how is it that Hezekiah responded the way that he did? Hezekiah, he became king at the ripe old age of 25. He's fresh out of college.
Joel Brooks:
He's got his bachelor of arts and sciences. Degree in philosophy and maybe history. So he realizes how worthless those things are. He's trying to get a job and luckily, he found one in government work. He becomes the ruler of Judah, and for some reason, he decides to rule Judah the exact opposite way his dad did.
Joel Brooks:
We're not sure why. Personally, I think it's because he saw his brothers get burned at the stake, and he decided, I don't want that. And he goes in the opposite direction. And so the first thing that he does is he reopens the temple. He reopens the temple.
Joel Brooks:
He establishes worship again. He doesn't even know what he's doing. He has to have people come and read to him from scripture. So he brings in the priest, and they remind him of God's law, and so he opens up the temple again, makes it central in the life of his people. He then tears down all of the pagan altars that were throughout the countryside.
Joel Brooks:
He brings back the Passover. This was a huge deal to bring back the Passover which had not been celebrated in many years because now the people were once again reminded of who they were. They're God's treasured possession And they were and they were reminded of who God was. He's the God who has saved them by the blood of the lamb, Powerfully saved them in the past. He's someone that they can trust in the future.
Joel Brooks:
And so Hezekiah brings all of that back. Now, Hezekiah was 39 years old when Assyria came knocking on his door and he prayed the prayer that we were looking at. But I want you to see is that the seeds of the that prayer happened early in his career when he was 25 years old. There he was laying the foundation. Just as Ahaz was laying the foundation when he was younger and he failed, Hezekiah is laying the foundation here.
Joel Brooks:
A godly foundation of faith to where later in life he will succeed. I want to pound this into us because when I look out right now at who we are mostly as a church, I see young working professionals. I see people about the age of Hezekiah. People trying to get established in their careers. Trying to figure out what being in the real world looks like.
Joel Brooks:
I mean now you look back at college, for those of you who went to college and you're like, that was like being on a cruise. I mean, I mean, seriously, it's like being on you you have, you know, all you can eat all the time, endless activities. You've got incredible pools with like Jacuzzis and hot tubs. I mean, it's it's a cruise. It just costs more.
Joel Brooks:
And so, now that that cruise ship has landed, and you're getting off on to real life, And for those of you who didn't go to college, you're still in the same position. You're you're you're getting on with real life and trying to figure it all out. You just don't have all the debt that all the other people have. So what does it look like to establish your careers and and to start to build a life for yourself? Let me tell you that once you're in your mid twenties, for the next 10 years, every year you will be making the biggest decision of your life.
Joel Brooks:
Every year. So you're gonna be thinking, alright, where where do I wanna live? First you have to think, where where am I gonna live? What city am I going to live in? What job am I going to take?
Joel Brooks:
What neighborhood do I wanna move in and do I wanna rent an apartment or do I wanna buy a house? How big of a mortgage should I get if I want to buy a house? And you begin feeling like like I'm playing grown up. You never actually feel like a grown up, but you feel like you're having to play grown up as you're making all of these big decisions. And then, do I wanna get married?
Joel Brooks:
Then if you get married, do I wanna have kids? Do I want to stay at home with the kids and raise them or do I want to pursue a career professionally? When you get a promotion, do do you take it even if it means moving after you've established roots? I'm telling you year after year you keep making the biggest decisions of your life. So the question is this, what is guiding you in those decisions?
Joel Brooks:
What is the influencing factor that makes you decide one way or another? I can't tell you how many people that I have talked to who are absolutely miserable in their lives. Miserable in what they're doing in their jobs. And you you talk to them and you're like, finally, why did you take this job? You hate it.
Joel Brooks:
And they look at you like, what do you mean? I mean, it the pay was incredible. I had to take it. Or I had to take this promotion. I mean, it's it was a great step up in the company.
Joel Brooks:
And it doesn't take long to realize after you're talking to someone like this that the most influential factors in their life for making decisions is power and money. And the biblical word for that is idolatry. It's idolatry. And you ask them, do you wanna change? Do are you happy with your life?
Joel Brooks:
And they're like, Man, I wish I could change, but I can't. I mean I just I mean what am I supposed to do? I can't. And they won't give it up. The biblical word for that is enslavement.
Joel Brooks:
They're enslaved to their idols. Their idols are masters over them. Jesus can set you free of that. Jesus can be the rock on which you build your entire life. There is hope for you.
Joel Brooks:
For those of you who feel trapped there, Jesus can give you a new identity. Hezekiah early on, he builds his life on the rock. The only rock that matters, the rock of God. He sets his life on the right trajectory. He centers his life on this, He centers it on the worship of Yahweh.
Joel Brooks:
He centers it on building a community of faith It's gonna anchor him. Then he removes all of the things that will distract him. The foundation he lays here at 25 is why he can pray the prayer he does at the age of 39 when the storms come. So do not fool yourself in thinking that when you get older and the crisis comes, you're gonna stand strong and firm unless you are building the foundation for that now. Are you is your life going in that trajectory?
Joel Brooks:
You need to ask yourself, what are what are the controlling factors of my life? Why is it this? Why is it that if work asks that I do more work, well, I will do it reluctantly, but I'll do it. If school asks that I do more schooling and more work, well, I do it. I'll do it reluctantly, but I'll do it.
Joel Brooks:
If sports ask that I completely reschedule my entire life in order to participate in sports, I might hate it, but I will do it. But if the church the center of worship here, if the church asks that I do anything that's even inconvenient, there's pause. Or if I have to get up early to actually spend time with the word of God and pray, it's hard. What what are the controlling factors in our life? Hear me, you're setting the trajectory now that is going to impact you in 20 years.
Joel Brooks:
If if you're married and every single night is spent in the bed looking at a screen, do not be surprised that 20 years from now you will wake up next to a stranger. You will. If your church attendance, your church involvement I should say is maybe attending a worship service half half of the Sundays of a month. Do not be surprised when your children leave the church later in life Because you've modeled that for them. You set the trajectory now.
Joel Brooks:
You lay the foundation now. So when those storms come later, you have a rock to stand on. We need to get past this idea that to become a Christian is to somehow invite Jesus into your life as if you can already have your life. You can already plan it out, do what you want to do, and then you try to fit Jesus within your preexisting life. Think of Christianity more as this.
Joel Brooks:
Not you inviting Jesus into your life, but him inviting you into his life. He's saying, you get to be a part of my life, and now you're gonna love the things that I love. You're gonna prioritize the things that I prioritize. We're gonna be together and then we're gonna build an entire new life. That's Christianity.
Joel Brooks:
This is what Hezekiah is understanding here. He's understanding at an early age, he's got to build his life on the rock that matters. So he does this at the age of 25. Just 4 years later, when he's 29 years old is the first time Assyria comes knocking on the door. And what they do is they Assyria starts going to all the cities around Jerusalem, all the city states there.
Joel Brooks:
And 1 by 1 begins taking them down. By the time Hezekiah is 39 years old, 14 years after he has been reigning as king, Assyria comes knocking on his door. It's the crisis moment. And at this point, Assyria has destroyed 46 city states in a row. 46 and 0 as the king of Assyria comes to take on Hezekiah.
Joel Brooks:
Now, when the Assyrian army arrived, they arrived with 250,000 soldiers, which is an overwhelming force. Jerusalem at this time had 10,000 people. That's it. That is 25 to 1 odds there. It was overwhelming force coming up against Jerusalem.
Joel Brooks:
A matter of fact, the, the spokesperson for the army, a guy named Reb Sheke, he comes up to Hezekiah and he's mocking him. And he goes, gosh, we we feel actually bad about even fighting y'all. It's gonna be so such a slaughter. How about this? To kinda help you out a little bit, can we at least give you 2,000 chariots and 2,000 horses in our fight against you?
Joel Brooks:
Oh, wait. You don't even have enough people to ride them. Totally mocking Jerusalem, and he he keeps taunting Jerusalem and he says, listen. All your friends have left to you. Nobody's gonna help you out.
Joel Brooks:
Egypt, are you gonna depend on Egypt? All your allies are gone. Matter of fact, the God you trust is gone. He's on our side. How else would you explain 250,000 soldiers surrounding you right now?
Joel Brooks:
God's not gonna help you out. He's helping us out. So you're alone in every possible way. And then he begins to make these empty promises. He goes, why don't you just surrender?
Joel Brooks:
I mean, we won't kill you, just surrender. Matter of fact, your life is gonna be a 100 times better if you do. He says, every person is gonna have their own fig tree. Every person is gonna have their own vineyard, and every person's gonna have their own cistern. Life is gonna be amazing if you'll just allow us in.
Joel Brooks:
And then, finally, he mocks their God if they do decide to trust in him. Says, remember, we've come across a lot of Gods, and we're 46 and o. Your God's gonna be no different. And so after he tells Hezekiah all these things and an urgent matter takes takes him away and takes the Assyrian army away for just a moment, just temporarily. And so as Rabshakeh is leaving, he sends a letter to Hezekiah, and the letter essentially says this.
Joel Brooks:
It's the letter that he received here. Essentially says, hey, you've seen who we are. You've seen all that we've done. You've seen the 250,000 soldiers we have. You know you don't have a chance.
Joel Brooks:
We're leaving for just a moment, but we'll be back. Be prepared to surrender. So Hezekiah gets that letter. He opens it up and he reads it, and he immediately runs to the temple to pray. Look at verse 14.
Joel Brooks:
Says, Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and he read it. And Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and he spread it before the Lord. I love this scene. It's actually why I picked this prayer is just because of this scene. Because it's a beautiful picture of what prayer is.
Joel Brooks:
We're just laying out our lives and we're laying out our problems before the Lord here. I mean, Hezekiah, he gets he gets this letter in the mail, and he opens it, and he's like, so he goes before God, and he's like, God, I got I got a letter today. Opened it. It was bad news. It was terrible news, and I don't know what to do.
Joel Brooks:
I don't have the resources to handle it. I don't have the time really to deal with this. There's a threat that's imminent. I I don't know what to do. So I'm I'm just gonna put the letter out in front of you.
Joel Brooks:
Let you read it. Let you take care of it. It's a beautiful picture of what prayer is. Now all the while while he's praying this, you know what else he's been doing. We we don't get this in 2nd kings, but we read about this in 2nd chronicles.
Joel Brooks:
He's been preparing for war. While he's praying, he's preparing for war. He's been making all of these swords, all of these shields. He's been fortifying all the walls to Jerusalem. He's been redirecting the stream that was outside of the city gates to, to inside the city, to protect his water source.
Joel Brooks:
He was raising funds in case he needed to pay off people. He was making all of these preparations while praying. I've heard it described this way, he prayed faithfully, and he planned fervently. He prayed faithfully, and he planned fervently. Or as the old soldier saying goes, trust God, keep the powder dry.
Joel Brooks:
Trust God, keep the powder dry. Let me ask you, is this something that you regularly do? Do you regularly go before the Lord and you just spread out your problems before him? You say, I'm not gonna make any decision until I hear from you, Lord. Do you make your desire to serve Him and to please Him the controlling factor in whatever decision that you make?
Joel Brooks:
So you you can lay before the Lord, you know, Lord, I don't know where to live. Now I've worked hard, I've explored all my options, and here is a, mean, here's a great neighborhood. It's it's really safe and and here's a Well, it's a good place to raise kids. It's got a good school system. Well, here's the neighborhood I can afford.
Joel Brooks:
Here, well, we'll just say this has a lot of ministry opportunity. And so you've done your homework. You you you've looked at all of these neighborhoods, but now you come before the Lord and you're like, but I don't know what to do. Here here it is. Lord, would you be the controlling factor of this decision?
Joel Brooks:
Where do you want me? Or perhaps you've been offered a promotion at work. Oh, which is great. You're like, promotion? It's gonna mean more money to you, but it might also mean some more time and you might have to travel some, which will take you a little bit away from your family.
Joel Brooks:
But the plus side is it's been hard to make ends meet. And now you can actually better provide for your family. You you can even start giving more to different things, more to the church. Like, what do I do? You take that and you lay it before the Lord.
Joel Brooks:
Say, Lord, what is it that you would have me to do? It's prayer. In his prayer here, Hezekiah prays for 4 things. Real quick, 4 things. In verse 15 the first thing he does is he prays to the God of Israel who is enthroned above the cherubim.
Joel Brooks:
This isn't just some generic reference to, you know, I'm praying to you God up above with the angels. This is a reference to the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat of God. It's what what Hezekiah is alluding to here is that you've made a covenant with us, God. We're your treasured possession. We have a special relationship.
Joel Brooks:
I know that you care about me and I know that you love me. Next, he reminds himself that God is the one who's in control and God's the one who has power. He prays, you are God, you alone of all the kingdoms of the earth, you made heaven and earth. In other words, Assyria says it has all the power, but I know that they are just a puppet. You're the one in control, and that my situation hasn't caught you by surprise.
Joel Brooks:
Then in verse 19, he simply prays, Lord, save us. Lord, save us. He he doesn't say how. He doesn't know how. I mean, maybe it's gonna be through an alliance.
Joel Brooks:
Maybe it's going to be through fighting. Maybe it's gonna be God fighting on their behalf. He doesn't know how, and he doesn't care how. God, however you want to do it, but you save us. And then finally in verse 19 he says, he wants to be saved for the glory of God.
Joel Brooks:
Read in verse 19 with me. He says, so now, oh Lord, our God, save us please from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, oh Lord, are God alone. He understands that the ultimate purpose of his life is to bring glory to God. That everybody would know who God is when they look at the life of Hezekiah and they see his salvation. And then after he prays those four things, he rests.
Joel Brooks:
He rests. And hear me, Christian. Do you have any idea what an extraordinary gift we have been given as children of God when we have been given the ability to rest in Him. The rest of the world would kill for that ability, to be able to rest in the midst of crisis, knowing you've done what you could do, but Lord, it's in your hands and now I rest. It's an incredible gift we have.
Joel Brooks:
The last couple of years, the Brooks family, we've had to make some pretty big decisions, and what we've done is we've done all the homework. We've tried to look at all these different things, and we've we've brought them all to the table, and then we've just prayed through them. And we just rest. After we've done, we could we could just it's in your hands, God. And it's like this burden is just lifted off us.
Joel Brooks:
Matter of fact, last week we had one of those decisions and, and so Lauren, she was praying and she laid that all down and then afterwards, no lie, she got up and she did a little jig. She did a little jig and it embarrassed our girls completely and they're like, please never do that in public. What is going on, mom? And she's like, I just feel so free. I mean, we've been wrestling with this for so long and now we just we had all our options and we just pray through it and now we get to just trust God.
Joel Brooks:
Rest, It's an incredible gift that God has given us. Ultimately, we get to rest because Christ has fought the battle for us. I know there's a lot of other smaller battles that are happening, but the big battle, the big enemies of sin and death have come and Christ has defeated those enemies for us. So no matter what we're going in going through, we can rest in Jesus. Hezekiah here, God answers his prayer, by just sending an angel and killing a 185,000 Assyrians.
Joel Brooks:
I mean, that'll do the job. God just said, you don't have to fight. You don't have to lift a finger. You don't have to do anything. I'm just going to wipe out a 185,000 of those soldiers.
Joel Brooks:
It's an amazing answer to prayer. I find it fascinating that archaeologists, they've discovered in Nineveh Sennacherib's Palace. And there's a wall there with an inscription. Inscriptions of all the 46 states, city states that Sennacherib had destroyed. You can actually go.
Joel Brooks:
It's it's at a museum in London. After, the 9 o'clock service, somebody actually came up to me and said, I went and I looked at that wall. But this wall, it describes all these states and how Sennacherib had gone and destroyed each one of them. And he goes into detail about how each one of them are destroyed and how the kings have been killed. And then it comes to Jerusalem, and what you read is this.
Joel Brooks:
Said that, they surrounded Jerusalem, and they had Hezekiah trapped like a cage, like a bird in a cage, and then that's it. It's the only city there that doesn't describe complete destruction, that doesn't describe the king being annihilated. It's just the king of Assyria trying to put the best spin he can on it. I went up there and with the army of 250,000, and I had him trapped like a bird in a cage, but then he went away. It's amazing.
Joel Brooks:
The person in this morning service said, one of the things he noticed when he when he went and he looked at that wall, with the inscriptions is that it has scorch marks all over it. He said, because Assyria was burned to the ground. The power of Assyria wouldn't last. How does this speak to the grand redemptive story of God? Well, just in one small way we see here.
Joel Brooks:
If God had not stirred up this faith in Hezekiah, who not trusted him and prayed this way, well, then Judah would have been destroyed. Which means the line of Judah would have ended, which means the messiah couldn't have come. The world could not have been saved through Jesus. This is God working and preserving his people even way back then through prayers like this. And what you find is all throughout scripture, God works using his people and using prayer to bring redemption to this world.
Joel Brooks:
Even if they don't understand how that's working at the time. So this points us to Jesus, the ultimate one who saves. If you would, pray with me. Lord Jesus, right now, I pray that through your spirit, you will stir in our hearts a deep desire to lay everything we have before you. Just say, here it is.
Joel Brooks:
Here's my life. Here's my circumstance. Here's my problem, all before you. And now I'm going to rest. Lord, give us lives in which we can live this way.