Strategies to Distract You. 2 Kings 18:19-37

 

In 2 Kings chapter eighteen we have a warfare taking place where the enemy of Judah led by Sennacherib the king of Assyria have laid siege to Jerusalem. At the beginning of this siege in order to try to easily make his conquest Sennacherib has sent his top three leaders to make a case against Judah’s ongoing resistance. He has sent them to propagandize them and the way that they approach this conquest is a way that is common to every single believer. We are all involved in warfare and every time there is a battle scenario in the Scriptures there is always application to the believer’s life because the concept of warfare or battle is one of the primary metaphors that the Scriptures use to describe the ongoing struggle or challenge of the spiritual life. We often talk about this in terms of the angelic conflict, which emphasizes the origin of this battle in terms of Lucifer’s sin of pride and arrogance against God, his rebellion against God in which he led one third of the angels to rebel against God, and the outworking in history. The outworking of that as it relates to the believer and his spiritual life is often referred to as spiritual warfare.

 

If we take a summary of what the Bible says about spiritual warfare the Scripture says that we fight three enemies. Two of them are external and on is internal—the world, the flesh and the devil. The world is an external concept relating to the ways in which human beings try to make sense out of life and try to organize the various details of life in terms of the philosophy of life that gibes them hope and meaning and ability to solve problems and challenges in their own life apart from God. So the world system is just a general term describing a multitude of world religions and philosophies that are invented by human beings in order to make life work without having to submit to the authority of the unique God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who sends His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ who is fully equal with Him is deity, to go to the cross and die for our sins.

 

So we are to submit to His authority, and the way that God looks at reality is what we often describe as divine viewpoint. All the other systems that we talk about under the terminology of the world system (cosmic thinking) are all of the different t ways that man tries to make life work apart from God. As we study satanic thinking as it is described in the Scripture the emphasis is twofold: antagonism toward God and autonomy. That is characteristic of every kind of human system of thought that is antagonistic to God. In autonomy it emphasizes man’s ability to solve problems whatever they may be, spiritual or physical, apart from God. It is emphasizing human self-ability. Antagonism to God is always the consequence of that because God is trying to teach us to be dependent upon Him as creatures created in His image and likeness with a mission to rule over the planet, and in rebellion man seeks to do this in autonomy from God and so there is constantly this warfare that takes place.

 

So when we come to any passage of Scripture where there is warfare between one nation and the people of God there are going to be principles there that relate to the spiritual warfare which we all face. No matter what we face in the spiritual life, whether it is a challenge from the world system, a challenge from Satan or demons who are ultimately behind the world system, or whether it is just a challenge from the internal enemy, the flesh or the sin nature, it doesn’t really matter what the source of the attack is, the primary objective is always to distract us from dependence upon God. The key word is Scripture that we have is Scripture for dependence upon God is “faith” or “trust.” We have seen three different words that are used in the Hebrew to emphasize trust. They emphasize leaning upon God, having our confidence based upon God, and the idea of the stability that comes from God.

 

This is crystallized for us in the challenge that comes from the Rabshakeh. This is explained in verse 19 NASBThen Rabshakeh said to them, ‘Say now to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, ‘What is this confidence that you have [trust/batach]?’” Today this is the same question that comes out of the cosmic system around us. The cosmic system around us has rejected the reality of God as an independent authority and entity beyond the creation. What we see from most people, and it has infiltrated into the thinking of many Christians in the church, is that the God that we worship is just part of a number of other equal options. That is how the Rabshakeh really thinks of God when he is challenging the Israelites in Judah. The question for us always: Are we going to depend upon God and His Word, or are we going to depend upon something within the creation—whether it is our own personal resources, personality, intelligence, friends, family, technology, money, psychology, etc? In this verse the Rabshakeh focuses the issue.

 

This is something we always have to recognize. Whenever we are facing a problem or challenge in life—and not just the big challenges—are we going to respond as God in terms of grace and humility and love and kindness, or are we going to try to solve the problem through our own attempts to intimidate, sound off, and be angry and to show our superiority based on our irritability? On what are we trusting ultimately? And when the Rabshekeh focuses this he is right, because in every issue we face, small or great, the issue ultimately is theological. It always comes down to whether we are going to do things God’s way or our way. That is the challenge, and we have to think of it that way. That should be the first thing that comes to our mind. It is a part of spiritual growth to get to the point where that thought coming to our mind isn’t the thought that we think about the next day when we say, I should have thought about that first and then I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in now. The focus on any problem is always what does God want me to do? what might be God’s purpose for me to be in this situation? Or, whatever the case may be.

 

Psalm 118:8, 9 NASB “It is better to take refuge [batach] in the LORD Than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the LORD Than to trust in princes.”

This is what is going on in 2 Kings chapter eighteen. The argument that the Rabshakeh is presenting is an argument that they need to trust in the government of Assyria, they need to put their trust in the powers of man in terms of its manifestation in the Assyrian empire. What is meant by using the term “empire” is a particularly nuanced fashion. There have been empires that don’t fit this category but most empires ultimately fall into this through arrogance. By this is meant an empire that is asserting that it can provide that which only God can provide: that it is the source of happiness, can provide a utopic environment that will satisfy everybody’s needs, wants and desires, and that the source of real happiness and meaning and stability in life is going to come from the government and the programs that the government offers.

That ultimately is what the Rabshakeh is offering to Judah. His message does emphasize the spiritual truth which is trust. He represents human viewpoint and it is important to look at his strategy here because the strategy that he is adopting to distract Hezekiah and the Jews from trusting on God is a strategy that comes at us every day from either external sources or from our own sin nature. It is a strategy that is designed to distract us from trusting exclusively in God.

2 Kings 18:22 NASB “But if you say to me, ‘We trust in the LORD [Yahweh, the personal name for God which distinguishes the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob from all other gods] our God,’ is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem’?” It was the various religious high places that the Israelites had erected around Jerusalem where they worshipped the fertility god’s and goddesses, the false gods and goddesses of the Canaanite pantheon. The Rabshakeh, just like most unbelievers, is approaching the problem as if there is no distinction between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the gods of the Canaanites or the gods of the Assyrians and other people. He is reducing God to just a little lower case g-o-d as if He is no different from any of these other gods, and this is typical of human viewpoint strategy. Once we reduce the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to just a sort of generic god like any other god we have already taken the fatal step strategically because we have put ourselves in a position of authority to judge God. That is what happened with Eve as she stepped into Satan’s trap in the garden of Eden when he raised the question and said: “Did God really say this?” He put her in a position where she had to judge God. She should have just avoided the question and said leave and get out of here. Instead she answered the question, and once she begins to think that way she has already crossed the line into setting herself up over God, and this is what always happens. Once we remove the God of the Bible, the creator God of the Old Testament, from His position of being a distinct and unique God over all of creation something has to fill that vacuum. That something that fills the vacuum is always something that is generated from the arrogance of the human soul.

In this context what is being put in that place as a replacement for God is really the power and the authority of the Assyrian empire. This is a trap to which many governments have walked in to down through the ages where they began to think they could solve all the problems and could bring in the ultimate utopic kingdom.

Whenever we are facing a challenge in life we ultimately put our hope and confidence in something to solve the problem. Often we put it in our own personality, our own native ability or intelligence, or in some human viewpoint stress management systems, something of that nature rather than God. In any situation where we are putting our ultimate confidence in something other than God and His Word we are divorcing ourselves from reality. The divine viewpoint is that God is eternal and distinct from all creation. He is unique and not like any other god, and because He is the one who created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them He defines and determines the role, function and purpose of every cell that is in that structure. When we come along and reject His description—throw away the user’s manual (the Scriptures which define reality)—we are operating on arrogance, thinking we can by or own intuition figure out how everything works, and to the degree that we are living on our arrogance we are separating ourselves from reality. Every single human being who has rejected the truth of God’s Word ultimately has had a psychotic break. They are divorced from reality and living as if their fantasy is reality. This is true of any one of us, because this is true of anyone living apart from God’s Word. When believers live apart from God’s Word and the truth of God’s Word they have basically said, I am so omniscient that I can redefine reality on my own terms and live as if that is true and it won’t fall apart.

That is what happened with Hezekiah. Earlier he was very dependent upon God; then he became arrogant and began to lean upon his own resources to solve the problem of Assyria. It is in this section between Sennacherib’s challenge and the reality that finally comes to Hezekiah that he realizes that the divine solution is the only solution. The two principles that we learn from this is that when we are in carnality we always, from one degree to another, are separated or divorced from reality, and the more entrenched in carnality and arrogance we become the more divorced from reality our thinking is; and secondly, when the believer is divorced from reality his problem-solving strategies will always begin and end with the finite resources of his own thinking.

When we face challenges in life do we want to depend on finite resources or infinite resources? That is the option: whether we are going to depend on God who is omniscient and who knows all the issues related to our problem, and He is also omnipotent so He can solve the problem, or are we going to rely on finite human reasoning and ability? We have to recognize that whenever we are depending on the broken reed of human resources it is always within the framework of a counterfeit reality, so these are counterfeit resources, counterfeit helps; they don’t really work but they have the trappings of working. They work for a while, they make us feel good for a month, they relax us for a while. That “for a while” may last for several decades but ultimately they are all broken reeds like Egypt and they will all eventually collapse.

One other thing that we learn from this passage is that these counterfeit resources are always wrapped up in some sort of religious garb. We see that in the rationale of the Rabshakeh because as he presents this argument he argues that he is the one who is actually doing the will of God. 2 Kings 18:25 NASB “Have I now come up without the LORD’S approval against this place to destroy it? The LORD said to me, ‘Go up against this land and destroy it.’” God is behind me! Come over to my side. So we have the discernment to know what religious garb is false versus the claims of Scripture. We have to recognize that can’t base it on pragmatics, what seems to work for us, because that is always deceptive.

The human viewpoint solution that the Rabshakeh is presenting to Judah and Hezekiah is that they need to just surrender. Quit trusting in this God, he can’t really save you; just give up and trust in us. So the human viewpoint solution that is offered here is to succumb to the authority of Sennacherib. He even says he can give them the powerful things that they don’t have on their own—horses and chariots. If we were an Israelite and thinking theologically this should wake us up. Who are the horses and chariots of Israel? This phrase is referred to in 2 Kings chapters two and thirteen in relation to Elijah and Elijah: it is the prophets who are the horses and the chariots of Israel. They represent God. It is a figure of speech referring to military might, and military power is in the Word of God. It is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who is behind the prophets. So the military solution of Sennacherib: we will give you military strength, we will give you what your God says He will provide for you. Again we see that the human viewpoint solution is wrapping itself up in religious terminology.

Also, this religious terminology involves the offer of various universals that are only supplied by God. In the process of doing this, by looking at God in this way is just the equivalent of all the other generic gods. The Rabshakeh makes the argument in vv. 33-35 that Judah’s God is not any different from any other god. “Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their land from my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’” The focal point of the argument is that the gods of these other peoples cannot deliver, so why do you think God can deliver?

What he is basically saying is, we can provide the solution. 2 Kings 18:31, 32 NASB “Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me, and eat each of his vine and each of his fig tree and drink each of the waters of his own cistern, 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 trees and honey, that you may live and not die.” But do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you, saying, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’” What is he offering? If you will just surrender to me I will give you everything that you need in life. It is the government, the empire, that is going to be the solution to all of their problems and will bring in this utopic state. Of course it is all false, all wrong; they couldn’t do it and even if they tried it would fail because that is not the capability of the government. But governments and empires have a tendency to take on messianic roles. They are going to provide what only the Messiah can provide, and it is only when we have the Messianic kingdom in the Millennium that we are going to achieve these kinds of things. We are not going to get it through government programs and solutions. There is a name for that, it is called socialism, and socialism is 180o contrary to anything taught in the Word of God. Socialism is a destruction of human freedom whereas Biblical truth always promotes human freedom.

The root of the problem that we see is always a challenge to God and a person’s thinking about God. The Scripture emphasizes that the God of the Bible isn’t like any other god. You can make Him like any other god—which is always the attempt of unbelievers and those who have rejected Biblical truth. Deuteronomy 6:4 NASB “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one [alone]!” Echad emphasizes a uniqueness (alone). Psalm 86:8 NASB “There is no one like You among the gods, O Lord, Nor are there any works like Yours.” Psalm 89:6 NASB “For who in the skies is comparable to the LORD? Who among the sons of the mighty [angels] is like the LORD.” What we see here is that it is only the Lord who can deliver us and only His solution can give a lasting solution. This is learned by Israel is the next chapter. 2 Kings 19:19 NASB “Now, O LORD our God, I pray, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, O LORD, are God.” Hezekiah shifts back to dependence upon God and he recognizes again that the issue is always the character of God. The challenge in every spiritual conflict is always the veracity and the integrity of God, and the only path to real spiritual success and victory in any kind of battle is recognizing the unique and distinct God of the Bible and relying upon His Word.  

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