Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Today on Hope From the Word, Pastor Bill Luebkemann makes us aware of the devil's schemes.

Bill Luebkemann: When you bargain with the devil, you are never going to come out ahead. When Adam and Eve bargained with the devil, they did not come out ahead. They thought they were getting a good deal, but they did not. Look, if somebody is discouraging you in your walk with the Lord, it is from the devil, that is where its origin is.

If you are walking with the Lord and something is coming against that and tearing you away and discouraging you, you can bet that the ultimate one behind that is the devil. Because that is what he does. He wants to separate us from God.

Guest (Male): Calvary Chapel of Marlton is pleased to welcome you to Hope From the Word. We will be joined by Pastor Bill Luebkemann in a second. Pastor Bill has been teaching from Second Kings lately and today we will again concentrate our study on chapter 18.

The reign of King Hezekiah was noteworthy for several reasons, including the fact that he was one of the godliest kings of this era. If you have been studying along, you will recall just how many wicked kings there were. So let us see the importance of obeying the Lord in all things and steering away from idolatrous behavior. Turn to Second Kings chapter 18 and we will join Pastor Bill at verse 9.

Bill Luebkemann: In King Hezekiah's fourth year, which was the seventh year of Hosea, son of Ela, King of Israel, Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, marched against Samaria and laid siege to it. At the end of three years, the Assyrians took it.

So Samaria was captured in Hezekiah's sixth year, which was the ninth year of Hosea, king of Israel. The king of Assyria deported Israel to Assyria and settled them in Hala, in Gozan on the Habor River and in towns of the Medes. This happened because they had not obeyed the Lord their God, but had violated his covenant, all that Moses, the servant of the Lord commanded. They neither listened to the commands nor carried them out. Look, we are not going to spend a whole lot of time on this because this is just a repeat of the last chapter that we did last week.

It is just a repeat of that chapter. King Hezekiah in the Kingdom of Judah was in his fourth year, so he had finished three years. Up in the Northern Kingdom, Hosea was in his seventh year, he had finished six years. And that is when the king of Assyria came down against Samaria, against the Northern Kingdom, laid siege to it for three years and conquered it and carried away all the folks from the Northern Kingdom.

Now the way I read this, Hezekiah was already faithful to God prior to this point, but I think this had to make him even more faithful to God. I mean, this had to be sobering. This had to be a warning. Watch out that this does not happen to you. I mean, they were being judged for their own actions. It says that in verse 12. This happened because they had not obeyed the Lord their God but had violated his covenant.

All that Moses, the servant of the Lord commanded. Remember, their forefathers had made a covenant. That is a two-way deal. You know, it is a legal contract. If you ever had business law 101 in college, you know that a contract in order to be valid has to have consideration on both sides. You know, I am going to do this if you do that. That is a contract.

Contracts cannot be one-sided. You sign a contract that says, I am going to do this for you and you are not going to do anything for me, it is not a valid contract, it will not hold up in court. It is not legal. But if I am going to do this for you, you are going to pay me this much money, there is consideration in both directions. Something is being done for the other party in both directions.

It is a legal contract and that is really what happened here. God had a covenant with their ancestors and he said, look, here is the deal. You follow me, you do not have any problems. You live in the land flowing with milk and honey, everything goes well. You do not follow me, you are going to get carried away into other places.

And they did it anyway. And if you look around the world today, you can see all kinds of people suffering the results of all kinds of sin in their lives, but they still have not learned the same lesson either. You can look at this and then you can look around in the news today and see the same types of things are going on today.

They did not follow the commands of their God. They did not keep their covenant. They did not keep their end of the bargain. They neither listened to the commands nor carried them out. They not only did not do them, they did not even listen to them. We do not even want to hear it. Do not tell us about it. If we do not hear it, we do not have to do it, you know, ignorance of the law is no excuse. And it is not an excuse here either.

In the 14th year, let us jump ahead a few years now. In the 14th year of King Hezekiah's reign, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. So Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish. Now look, this was in the 14th year. This earlier thing started in the fourth year and lasted for three years. So on the fourth, fifth, and sixth year of Hezekiah's reign, the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom.

Then, eight years later, they come back again. Eight years have gone by, it is now the 14th year. And the king of Assyria, his name is Sennacherib, he comes along and he attacks the fortified cities in Judah and captures the fortified cities.

So what does Hezekiah do? Does he go to the Lord? Now, this seems to be to me one area where he maybe slipped up a little tiny bit. It does not really say that he went to the Lord. He decides to give in to placate this guy. So Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish.

By the way, archaeologists have uncovered in Lachish a pit with the remains of 1500 or so people that were killed by the Assyrians during this raid. You can go to the British Museum and they have a relief painting or carving or something there showing the Assyrians attacking the city. They have another one showing the Assyrians walking out with all their booty on oxcarts. And these paintings, reliefs, whatever they are, pictures have survived all these years. They were from Sennacherib's palace or castle or whatever it was. These events are really really happened.

So Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish, I have done wrong. Withdraw from me and I will pay whatever you demand of me. The king of Assyria exacted from Hezekiah, king of Judah, 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold.

So Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the temple of the Lord and in the treasuries of the royal palace. At this time, Hezekiah, king of Judah, stripped off the gold with which he had covered the doors and doorposts of the temple of the Lord and gave it to the king of Assyria. What a sorry chapter. This is kind of like King of Assyria versus Israel round two here.

And this guy here kind of tosses in the towel. He is nervous. And maybe nervous with good maybe with good reason, you know, the Northern Kingdom got exterminated. He is down here with a smaller kingdom in the South. Now the Assyrians are coming after him. I cannot help but wonder what would have happened if he had gone to the Lord a little bit sooner. They do go to the Lord. We are not going to get to it tonight, but we will see next week that the Lord does rescue them from this. You can read ahead if you want to cheat and then you will find out what happened.

The king of Assyria sent his supreme commander, his field officer, and his field commander with a large army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They came up to Jerusalem and stopped at the aqueduct of the Upper Pool on the road to the washerman's field. They called for the king and Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator, Shebna, the secretary and Joab, son of Asaph, the recorder, went out to them.

So here comes the King of Assyria's army comes up here. His supreme commander, his chief officer, and his field commander. So these are the top guys in his army. And they march on up to Israel and they bring with them a large army, so they are, they march right on up to Jerusalem rather. They are right outside of Jerusalem, ready to walk in the front door, standing by the main water supply here. Which would have been very critical to them, especially in a time of a siege or in some time of war.

And they called for the king to come out and talk to them. Now this is after the king had paid, this is after Hezekiah paid the king of Assyria all this money to buy him off. But it does not do him any good. It just makes the king of Assyria more bold. So they have already sent him all the gold and all the silver they could find and it was not good enough. He said that will be okay. Now he is going back on his word to King of Assyria.

And he sends these people there. And they call out, we want to talk to the king, send your king out here. And the king sends out these three guys. The palace administrator, the secretary, and the recorder. So three important officials that go out to meet him. And they have this encounter outside of the city of Jerusalem with the three leaders of Assyria. Numerous other people are watching, we will find out. The news media is here, the trucks with the satellite dishes and everything is being broadcast all over Judah.

The field commander said to them, tell Hezekiah, this is what the great king, the king of Assyria says, on what are you basing this confidence of yours? You say you have strategy and military strength, but you speak only empty words. On whom are you depending that you rebel against me? So now, apparently, even though he has paid all this money, that is not good enough. The king of Assyria is still treating this as if this guy is rebelling. And I am not sure, maybe some other words were exchanged between them, maybe some other things went downhill, maybe they had kind of a cold war going on.

But this guy has a message from the king of Assyria and says, why are you so boastful? Where is your confidence coming from? Who are you depending on? Verse 21. Look now, you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man's hand and wounds him if he leans on it. Such as Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to all who depend on him. Look, he says, you better not be depending on Egypt.

Because they will not come through for you. They are not reliable enough. They are not dependable enough. Everybody that ever depends on Egypt, they get let down in the end. And you say to me, we are depending on the Lord our God. Is not he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed? Saying to Judah and Jerusalem, you must worship before this altar in Jerusalem.

So he says, who are you depending on? Why is it you feel that you can just come against the King of Assyria? Hey, if you are depending on Egypt, you know, they never came through for anybody. Now on the other hand, if you are depending on this Lord your God, well, wait a minute. Is not he the one that, you know, the king took down all the high places? Now, some people say this whole encounter was made up here, but this is one of the reasons we know it is authentic because this guy misunderstood what was going on. Hezekiah removed the high places because God did not want him there.

But this guy thought by removing the high places, Hezekiah was insulting God. This commander, this king of Assyria, he thought, hey, if it is good to worship God in one place, it is even better to worship him in more places, right? Well, that is kind of logical. So the more the merrier. Let us get more people doing it. We will worship him everywhere. So, you better not be relying on that God of yours because you just got rid of all these altars. And he is not going to be too happy about that.

Of course, he did not understand that getting rid of the altars is exactly what God wanted them to do. Come now, he says in verse 23, make a bargain with my master, the King of Assyria. I will give you 2,000 horses if you can put riders on them. He is insulting them here. You do not even have enough, we got more horses than you have soldiers. We could give you horses, you would not know what to do with them. You would not know how to ride them or anything.

And I will tell you, I rode a horse once, said that in church on Sunday and it was a big mistake. I did not know what to do. I would say go, think start, move forward. You know, how do you make this thing go? And then it got going, how do you stop it? Stop. Whoa, you know, nothing ever worked. It was a big mistake. It did not come naturally to me. My daughter knows how to do it.

He says, make a bargain with me, but you are not worth anything. I will give you 2,000 horses if you can put riders on them. How can you repulse one officer of the least of my master's officials, even though you are depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? Furthermore, have I come to attack and destroy this place without word from the Lord? The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.

Look, so back in 24, he says, how can you turn us away? How can you repulse even the least of us if you are depending on Egypt who is good for nothing? And furthermore, he says, by the way, this Lord you are depending on, he told me to come here and attack you. Well, that may or may not be true. I mean, certainly the Lord allowed them to attack the Northern Kingdom for the purpose of judgment. And the Lord may have been allowing this and the Lord may have told them to attack. But it may have been because the Lord wanted to destroy the Assyrians in the process, which is what happened. The Lord could have easily said, yeah, go down there and attack and they got there and then.

So, you know, when you bargain with the devil, you are never going to come out ahead. When Adam and Eve bargained with the devil, they did not come out ahead. They thought they were getting a good deal, but they did not. And that is kind of like what is going up on here. This is all twisted logic here. It is earthly logic, worldly logic, it is from the devil, and he is trying to thwart them. Look, if somebody is discouraging you in your walk with the Lord, it is from the devil. That is where its origin is.

If you are walking with the Lord and something is coming against that and tearing you away and discouraging you, you can bet that the ultimate one behind that is the devil. Because that is what he does. He wants to separate us from God. And this whole plan here, this whole thing could have been orchestrated by the devil to humiliate Hezekiah, to make them not trust in the Lord, to make them question their relationship with the Lord. Is he really going to help us? Is he really there? Does he really exist?

Then Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, and Shebna and Joab said to the field commander, please speak to your servants in Aramaic since we understand it. Do not speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall. So they were outside talking, see, and all the people from Jerusalem were up on the wall watching and they did not want those people to hear the bad news that the Assyrians were saying. Because they are thinking, you know, if the people hear this bad news, they do not trust the king, they could revolt, they could kill the king, kill us and and ask for mercy from the Assyrians, we could have a mutiny, if you will.

So, I will tell you what, we know Aramaic, so why do not you use that instead of Hebrew because then the people up on the wall will not hear what we are saying. But the Assyrians, they wanted the people on the wall to hear that because they wanted them to all feel discouraged. They wanted them to feel nervous and to quake in their boots and to be worried. So the commander, verse 27, but the commander replied, was it only to your master and you that my master sent me to say these things and not to the men sitting on the wall who, like you, will have to eat their own filth and drink their own urine?

These people on the wall, they are going to be in the same trouble when we attack you. They are all going to be cooped up in there. We are going to put this city under siege. You are not going to have any water. We will cut your water supply off. You will have to be drinking your own urine. They are talking about doing that if they go to Mars, you know, NASA sends a mission to Mars, they have to recycle everything. I will not be signing up for that. We are going to, all the people on the wall are going to be in the same thing you are. They want to encourage these people to to be discouraged.

Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew. So now he is calling out loud on purpose. Make sure everybody on the wall hears this. Here is what he says. Hear the word of the great king, the King of Assyria. This is what the king says. Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you from my hand. Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord when he says, the Lord will surely deliver us. This city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.

This guy is telling the whole city there. Look, if you believe this stuff, if you believe this baloney that Hezekiah is feeding you, you are deceived. Do not let him persuade you to trust in the Lord. Do not listen to him when he says, the Lord will deliver you. Do not listen to him when he says, the Lord is going to keep us safe and protect us. Do not listen to him when he says that. Look, that is the devil speaking. If anybody ever comes to you and says, do not trust in the Lord, he will not deliver you, he does not love you anymore, he cut you off, you are nothing to him, that is the devil speaking through whoever is saying it. In this case it is these commanders here.

Do not listen to Hezekiah. This is what the king of Assyria says. Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern until I come and take you to a land like your own. A land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey. Choose life and not death. Here is what he is saying. In a word, surrender.

Surrender. Give it up. It is all over. Just surrender and everything will be fine. And what he really wants them to do is surrender to the devil, not to listen to the Lord, not to trust him. And he makes all these promises. Well, where have we heard that before? Was not it the devil that said to Adam and Eve, you know, you will not surely die. When you eat the fruit of this forbidden tree here. You are going to know the knowledge of good and evil, just like God does. You are going to become like God.

You know, that is the first sin in the Bible and the last sin and every other sin in between. We can be like God. If you want to be like God, become a Mormon because they believe when you die, you can achieve perfection and then you can start your own universe with your own planets and stars and make your own people and you can be God to them. And yeah, I did read that and that is what they believe.

But we are not going to become like God. We are not going to become gods. We are not going to work hard and work our fingers to the bone and achieve perfection and we are not going to be reincarnated 12 times until we until we do so. We are going to live once. This guy here, he is lying through his teeth and he is making them this promise that he would not keep anyway. Look, if you come out, we are going to give you everything. You are going to have your own vine and your own fig tree and everything you want.

Flat screen TV, you can watch the Super Bowl in peace. They will even send out the geek squad to hook it up just before the Super Bowl starts. And you are going to have water coming from your own cistern, no scarcity there. And then we are going to take you to another place. A great place. A land of grain and new wine, bread and vineyards, olive trees and honey. You are going to have everything you want. They already had everything they want. They were living in the promised land.

Why would they want anything more than that? What could be better than God's promised land? This is God's promised land or man's promised land? See, Adam and Eve had God's promised land before they sinned, and afterwards they had man's promised land, and man's promised land is never as good. Not even close. The reason the Assyrians carted people away was to oppress them and to get them dejected. And if they conquered the city, they wanted to move those people somewhere else, spread them all around so they were not in a cohesive group anymore. They could not rebel anymore. They just blend in with the kingdom. They move everybody around. You know, it is the same thing they do with milk. It is called homogenized.

Mix them all around and get them all to be true Assyrians. That is what we are going to do. Choose life and not death. Surrender. Do not surrender to something that is not God's plan.

Do not listen to Hezekiah, for he is misleading you when he says, the Lord will deliver us. Has the God of any nation ever 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 rescued Samaria from my hand? Who of all the gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me? How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand? Here he is giving a testimony to how great his king is.

He says, have you ever heard of any other land standing up against the king of Assyria and all these other gods? Is your God greater than all these other gods? Well, actually he is. Did they rescue Samaria just eight years ago? Did any God rescue them? See, the problem with what this guy is saying here is he is on a winning streak, he thinks. But really God is just been using him to judge some people that were not faithful to the Lord.

But Hezekiah was faithful to the Lord and the Lord was going to turn the tables around and well, you will find out next week what happens. But this is where an angel comes and just kills them all in their camp. They wake up one morning and there are dead bodies everywhere. And then the Assyrians pack up their marbles and go home.

Guest (Male): You have been listening to Hope From the Word. We are currently in Pastor Bill Luebkemann's study of Second Kings. If you would like to hear this message again, you have several options. Visit our website at CCmarlton.org, download the Hope FM app to your smartphone or tablet, or look for us wherever you find your podcasts.

If you have been thinking about visiting Calvary Chapel of Marlton where Bill serves as pastor, we would love to have you. Our service times are on Sunday mornings at 10. We also meet midweek on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. You can also live stream from home whenever you visit our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton. For more information, go to CCmarlton.org. We hope to see you soon.

Before the day is done, we would like to connect with you. Share a praise report, prayer request, or what you are learning from this series. You can easily email us from our website ccmarlton.org or just call us at 856-983-1662. There is more to come from Bill's study of Second Kings and we will have that for you next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel of Marlton.