2 Kings 19:1-35 - Homiletics

The wisdom of trust in God, and the foolishness of trust in self.

The contrast between the devout, God-fearing, God-trusting Hezekiah, and the proud, self-trusting, self-asserting Sennacherib is one of the most striking and instructive in Scripture. The two are set one over against the other in the most graphic way.

I. THE PICTURE OF HEZEKIAH shows him:

1. Jealous of God ' s honor. Sennacherib's words against God strike him with horror, appear to him such shocking blasphemy, that he rends his clothes and covers himself with sackcloth ( 2 Kings 19:1 ), as if he would wipe out the insult offered to God by one of his creatures' arrogancy, by causing to be presented before him the profoundest self-abasement and self-humiliation on the part of another.

2. Sensible of his own weakness . The day is "a day of trouble, of rebuke, and of contumely." Israel is despised, insulted, disgraced, and yet can do nothing. The time of her utmost trial has come, and she has "no strength' to carry her through the crisis.

3. Trustful in God ' s power to save . If God will, Hezekiah does not doubt he can "reprove" Sennacherib's words—disperse them, scatter them, show them to be vain words, words of naught.

4. Reliant on the power of prayer . "Wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left." Prayer is the only key that can unlock a door of escape. He himself resorts to prayer ( 2 Kings 19:15 ), and he exhorts Isaiah to do the same. If he himself is sinful, Isaiah is a righteous man, God's prophet, and "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" ( James 5:16 ).

II. THE PICTURE OF SENNACHERIB shows him:

1. A hater and reviler of God . "Let not thy God … deceive thee" (verse 10). As though God ever deceived, as though he were not the Truth itself. Sennacherib represents him as either a poor braggart who could not do what he had promised, or a malevolent being intentionally beguiling men, to their ruin. "Jehovah," he says, "has sent him against Jerusalem," has bidden him "go up and destroy it ( 2 Kings 18:25 ), while at the same time he was deluding Hezekiah with promises of deliverance.

2. Absolutely confident in his own strength . Who can stand against the Assyrians? Who has ever been able to resist them? "Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered at all his land out of the hand of the King of Assyria?" (verse 33). And if not, "shalt thou be delivered?" He sets his own strength against Hezekiah's weakness (verses 23, 24), and regards himself as irresistible. His will is law. What can hinder it? Not armies—least of all Egyptian armies—not mountains, not rivers, not deserts. Intoxicated with success, he thinks there is no power equal to him either in earth or heaven. The gods of the nations have all failed. Hezekiah's God will fail equally.

3. Secure of the future , and without any thought of suing for Divine aid . Why should Sennacherib sue? Success had always attended him in the past; surely "tomorrow would be as today," only "yet more abundant." He does not appear to give even his own gods a thought. Conventional ascription of his victories to Asshur may be found in his inscriptions; but, as Isaiah lays bare to us the workings of his innermost soul (verse 23, 24), there is no leaning on any higher power, no recognition of anything behind his own greatness and material strength, no suspicion even of the possibility of a reverse. He is a god to himself; he commands the future; everything must necessarily go well with him. The event shows the wisdom of Hezekiah's trust and the utter folly of Sennacherib's. "Out of the depths" Hezekiah "cries unto the Lord," and "the Lord hears his voice." "With the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption." Hezekiah may in the past have wavered, have listened to evil counselors, have paid his court to Pharaoh, and put his trust in the broken reed Egypt; but now, at any rate, he has repented of such evil courses, he has put them away from him, and thrown himself wholly upon God. His words (verses 15-19) have the unmistakable ring of sincerity and truth. To God he looks, and to him only. His strength is become perfected in his weakness; with the result that God hears his prayer (verse 20), and grants the unparalleled deliverance related in verse 35. Sennacherib, on the other hand, finds in a moment the whole ground of his self-confidence fail. It was as the master of many legions that he had thought to bend all things to his will. Bereft of his legions, he is nothing. Today a mighty conqueror carrying everything before him, unfeignedly astonished that any one should dare to disobey his commands; on the morrow he is a wretched fugitive, hurrying homewards as fast as his chariot-steeds will bear him, only anxious to escape from the foes whom he so lately despised, and to bury his shame and his disgrace within the walls of his distant palace. In his pride and his self-trust he had thrown out a challenge to God. God took up the challenge, and struck him down to the earth. The circumstances of the catastrophe are unique in the world's history; but the lesson is one that the events of history have taught again and again. At the height of his pride and arrogancy and self-trust, the ungodly conqueror is stricken with failure, humiliated, beaten down to the ground, shown that, after all, he is a mere man, and that the fates of nations are not in his power, but in the hand of One whose name is "the Most High," and who ruleth in all the kingdoms of the earth.