Isaiah, 37:21-38

Good morning. That was a test. Good morning. OK. All right. Just checking. All right. I want to make sure there's somebody out there to talk to. All right. We'll be going momentarily into this passage, looking through the longer section of Scripture that this is just the focal point for.

I want to announce that starting in October, we're going to be continuing, of course, the Romans elective going through September of next year. And we certainly hope and expect those who have been in that elective will continue with it. We're going to offer the identification truths beginning in October, continuing through June 2007. And then marriage, family, and finances through June 2007. So those three electives, Romans continuing, and then the second to beginning, and then continuing on through June next year.

Sign up in the lobby, a foyer, narthex, intermediate vestibule, or whatever you want to call that thing out there. OK. There are some sign-up sheets and pens alongside them. So please go ahead and enter your name there on a line if you're intending to take those. It's very helpful for us to know, you know, how many are signing up so that we can have materials ready because a number of these have materials that we have to prepare for. We also like to have enough room for you so we don't have everybody crammed into a closet or something. Okay? All right. Now, into the passage here. We had Courtney read this for us. We're actually going to start prior to that. And just to review and make sure we're all on the same page.

This is part three of Assyria all over again. The Assyrian army had come into Judah and had been tromping through the cities. And it had been the 14th year of this King Hezekiah, who is again a character in today's passage. Sennacherib, who was the king of Assyria, who had led the military assault on the small nation of Judah.

This is the generalized route. He came down along the coast, and then after going south through Judah, was looping back up, trying to head anyway in the direction of Jerusalem. He had been last at Lachish and Libna and then was intending to move towards Jerusalem where he'd already sent warning through his emissary Rabshakeh. And as we saw last week, he also sent a letter Okay, Rabshakeh had come up and spoken to the people in Hebrew, so in their own native tongue, in order that everybody might hear the message. And what he wanted to do was to get them shaken, to get them to separate from their allegiance with their king. And so he spoke to them in their native tongue in an attempt to do so. And so Hezekiah, on hearing of this threat from Rabshakeh, went down right along the wall, speaking to the people where the houses were located. The word comes to the palace where Hezekiah is. Hezekiah says, I know what to do. He heads up and prays up at the temple. That's his response.

Now, Sennacherib had come from Assyria. And the Lord says, I'm going to bring something to turn Sennacherib around. And so Cherhaka from Egypt and Ethiopia comes to the north here and he heads toward Sennacherib and that decides, Sennacherib makes him decide to turn around, head back for Assyria. There's some other things that go on too that help change his mind. We'll take a look at that shortly.

When that happens, Sennacherib says, I'll send a threat letter to Hezekiah. So now Hezekiah, after hearing first his emissary, Sennacherib's emissary, now this threat letter arrives. And so what does Hezekiah do? He goes from his palace up to the temple again and begins to pray. He also sends people over to Hezekiah to have, excuse me, to Isaiah, to have Isaiah pray as well. And instead of, Hezekiah singing the blues for the Jews. He could have gone there and said, oh, it's so bad for us. Nah, nah, nah, nah. Right? He didn't do that. Instead, he goes and prays to the Lord.

And he says, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, You who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone of all the kingdoms of the earth have made heaven and earth. So here's Hezekiah, and what does he do? He talks about who God is, and what he has done. That's his focus.

We made note of it this morning in our polemics class and we were talking about how neat it is that Hezekiah starts off not with, Lord, I've got a big problem. Lord, you need to know about this. Lord, I need to inform you, FYI, right? No, he says, Lord, I want to acknowledge who you are and what you've done. Have you got a big problem? Good place to start. who God is and what He's done. Now, we start in the passage today, Isaiah 37, verse 21.

So Isaiah, the son of Amos, sent word to Hezekiah, so here's his message back to Hezekiah after the request for prayer, saying, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, because you have prayed to me about Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, this is the word that the Lord has spoken to you.

So now, Hezekiah had sent these representatives. Here's Isaiah, who is now responding. This is the starting point for today's passage. He's responding to Hezekiah's request for prayer. And it's with an answer back. Not just saying, Hezekiah, don't worry, I'll pray. But saying, Hezekiah, you need to know what the Lord is saying here. That's where he begins. Here is what he brings. He says, Here's the Lord's word, it says, She has despised you and mocked you, the virgin daughter of Zion. She has shaken her head against you, the daughter of Jerusalem. This is speaking of the king of Assyria in feminine terms here.

This is a Hebrew poetry pattern, which of course we never make a big deal of. You know how that goes. All right, so this is a Hebrew poetry pattern. With the Hebrew poetry, one of the points we've made is unlike poetry in our own culture and coming out of the Greek background that we have in our own culture, where we rhyme sounds, The Hebrew is commonly rhyming meanings, and that's done here as well. So here is, she has despised you and mocked you, which helps us understand the kind of a little more obscure cultural term, she has shaken her head behind you. That doesn't quite register with us as clearly. How do we understand it?

Those two are rhyming. So the shaking the head behind you is to despise you and mock you. That was the Hebrew expression for despising and mocking. So here is Sennacherib who is speaking despisingly, mockingly. These are equivalent Hebrew expressions. And Zion and Jerusalem are also synonyms. They're used as equivalent expressions. Here's the next verses, 23 through 24. Questions are asked here. Whom have you reproached and blasphemed? Speaking of the King Sennacherib. And against whom have you raised your voice and haughtily lifted up your eyes? Against the Holy One of Israel. Do you know who you've blasphemed? Do you understand it? Sennacherib's thinking, oh, there's just another one of these piddly little local gods. And Isaiah's saying, uh-uh, you made a really big mistake. You just stepped in yogurt. Alright, you've got a big problem.

Assyria was proud of its military might. As the archaeologists excavate the palaces, we find that the palaces are repeatedly filled with accounts, murals on the walls of their cruelties, murals on the walls of their defeats and military victories. They were exceedingly proud And I'll show you a little record in a minute where it goes on for paragraphs about how great the king is, calling him all sorts of things that you could hardly imagine when you look at the things he had done. He had been insolent against the Lord and it would not be overlooked.

Here in verses 25 through 27, I dug wells and drank waters, and with the sole of my feet I dried up all the rivers of Egypt. Have you not heard? Long ago I did it, from ancient times I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass that you should turn fortified cities into ruinous heaps. the king of Assyria was not recognizing was that this wasn't all his doing.

These things were happening because the Lord had allowed it to come to pass, not because the king of Assyria was so phenomenally great. In the end, Assyria did have a lot of military accomplishments, a lot that they could brag about, I suppose, if cruelty is a good thing. But it was because God had allowed it to come about. God had brought it to pass, and not because they were so great of themselves.

We'll see in verse 26 what happens to people in nations is no surprise to God. God isn't looking at this and saying, Oh, look what they've done! Oh, heaven sakes, what a surprise! God's not doing that. Verse 26 lays it out. Long ago. The Lord knew this long before it came to pass.

Have you not heard? Have you got a clue? Is that the Hebrew way of saying it? Have you got a clue, Sennacherib? Have you got any idea? Verses 28 and 29. I know you're sitting down and you're going out and you're coming in and you're raging against me. but because of your raging against me and because of your arrogance has come up to my ears, therefore I will put my hook in your nose and my bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back to the way which you came." This is a Hebrew poetry pattern.

Of course, we never make a big deal of that. God knows all, the first part of that passage. God knows all, including all that we don't know. Everything we think we know, God knows that. All the things that we don't know, God knows that too. None of it is a surprise to Him. None of it catches Him off guard. The Lord doesn't say, Oh heavens! The Lord knows about it all. Because of your raging against Me, because of your arrogance, God is ultimately in control of human affairs. Do you see what He says there?

I will put My hook in your nose and My bridle in your lips, You may think you're calling the shots, Sennacherib, but you're not doing anything I haven't allowed you to do. You think you're making decisions, I'm in charge. I will turn you back by the way you came. Guess what? He's going to put Sennacherib in reverse. Right like that. Zoom, zoom, zoom. Backwards he goes.

God knows all that's going on in the human realm. No surprises. We don't pray to inform God, Hey God, by the way, I just want to let you know. We don't let God know what's happening. He's aware of it all. That's why Hezekiah doesn't come to the Lord and say, Lord, do you know this and this and this and this and this and this is happening? No. He starts off with who the Lord is and what the Lord knows and what the Lord has done. We pray not to inform God about what's happening, not because God doesn't know, and not because God doesn't care. We pray as a matter of fellowship. We pray because the Lord has, by His own design and desire, seen fit to have us involved with Him.

Isn't that amazing? Does He have to? Would He need to? No. He has chosen to have us be involved in praying about things and about how things turn out. He wants us to share heart to heart with Him. He wants us, in the prayer, to glorify Him, which is exactly what Hezekiah did to start off with. God is going to use that prayer to change us and to reveal things to us. It's not for us to tell God what's happening, as if He didn't know. but for God instead to inform us, for us to be changed, for us to learn in the process. Verses 30-32, the ones that Courtney read for us here.

This shall be the sign for you. You will eat this year what grows of itself, and the second year what springs from the same. In the third year, so reap and plant vineyards and eat their fruit. What is this talking about? You see, God, through Isaiah, had given signs before.

You notice He says this is a sign. Of course, you know what signs I'm talking about, don't you? Right, you know the signs. You're aware of what these signs are all about. No, not those. No, this is signs that verify the truth of the prophecies given. Sometimes those prophecies, in this case, are given very short term.

They're going to know within the next few years whether this is true or not. They're going to find out, Isaiah, you are speaking the truth and it's from God, or Isaiah, you are not speaking the truth from God, which rock would you like to get hit with first? They're going to know whether he's a true or a false prophet. Of course, Hezekiah is convinced that he's a true prophet. But that was what they could tell. They could see a near-term fulfillment and therefore conclude this man is indeed a prophet of God.

This is a Jewish pattern, it's something that we see in the Old Testament, we see referred to here in the New Testament, John 2.18 and 1 Corinthians 1.22.

In the church, however, we're to walk by faith. It's interesting, after the time of the apostles where signs and wonders were given as verification, The signs and wonders are not something that the Lord does as an ordinary thing in the course of church. There will be signs and wonders again, that'll be when the Antichrist comes. But for now, we're to walk by faith.

I want to sing a song for you about that, but it's a really, really old song and I can't find the words for it, so we'll see if we can get to that later. You will eat this year what grows of itself, What was going to happen is there was going to be a growth out of the things that were just there on the ground. Whatever had been left, whatever grows by itself out of the wild, that was what they were going to be eating.

So why are these things called signs? Why would this be thought of as a sign? Isn't eating and the usual agriculture just normal stuff? Isn't that just usual life? Why would these things that seem pretty normal, be so momentous? Why would they be called a sign? Well, you see, after a massive military attack, you think the Assyrians are going to be really nice to the vineyards and the orchards? No. They're going to run through it, trample it. If there's any fruit on a bough, they'll just bust it.

I've seen it with the bears. The bears do that. They do that with hives too. But that's what the Assyrians are going to do. If there's some vineyards in the way of their chariots, they just go right over it. Rip everything to shreds. This is what the Assyrians are going to do. And the Judeans can't protect anything, right? They're behind a walled city, so they can't get to it. So everything is ripped up. That's what's going to happen.

Typically, the nation that survived these times where all the crops and the vineyards and the orchards had been all ripped up and neglected would have starvation and subsistence living during that time. because it was hard to get enough crops off of everything.

They would wait sometimes, typically many years for things to come back to normal production, because it would take time to get the vineyards back up to health and get the trees growing again, things of that sort. For Hezekiah to hear that his people would be fed sufficiently during those first two years without getting anything planted and restored, that is really good news. To hear that the crops would be back to normal after only two years was miraculous. Ordinarily it would take a number of years to get the vineyards and the orchards back up to normal, to get things replanted and reestablished.

So this was miraculous news. That's why it's a sign. To actually have enough to eat when everything's been ripped to shreds and to have everything restored by the third year was phenomenal. Now, so when God was offering this as a sign, this was actually God blessing Judah above what would normally be expected. He says, Hezekiah, you're worried now that the Assyrians are going to be out of the picture, that your people are going to be starving for years. He said, don't worry, I'm going to take care of them.

And not only that, it's going to be miraculous and you're going to know it. Think of this, we referred back to before and we'll do here again with Deuteronomy 28. It starts off with Moses telling the people of Israel before they go into the land, now it shall be if you diligently obey the Lord. If you obey the Lord, what will happen? Then you will be blessed. Then these blessings will come upon you. Verse 4, blessed shall be the offspring of your body and the produce of your ground.

What's going to happen? Hezekiah, because you're coming to me, trusting in me, what am I going to do? I'm going to bless you like I told you I would. That's what's happening. You're going to have phenomenal production. This is going to be a restoration of agricultural productivity beyond anything you would have expected. I'm going to bless you because you came to me trusting me. I'm going to restore things phenomenally beyond anything that you would normally expect. Because you came to me. Because you trusted me. Because you acknowledged me for who I am. The Lord says, I will bless you abundantly.

So Isaiah 37.30 describes that fulfillment.

31. The surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward. So here's the remnant in Judah will, by God's blessing, establish themselves in miraculous productive capacity in the land, take root downward, and they will bear fruit abundantly to God's glory and in Israel's fulfillment of God's eternal purpose for them. See, Israel has its place, and those who will be fulfilling that, and have fulfilled that, are not disappointed with Israel's place.

We also, in the church, have a different place, don't we? So here, we look at Deuteronomy 28 again. If you diligently obey the Lord your God, then I'll bless you. Verse 4, blessed shall be the offspring of your body. Therefore, we have the fulfillment in 31 and 32.

So now, think about this. Does this apply to us? How do you apply this to us? For us who are in the church, are we also supposed to fulfill God's eternal purpose by taking root downward and bearing fruit upward? Is that the same for you and me? Let's think about this a minute. Is that what God has in mind? Is that what's supposed to happen? Let's think.

Take root downward, bear fruit upward. What does that look like? Oh yeah, take root downward and bear fruit. Oh, I know why my joints are getting stiff. Yeah, that's it. That's what's supposed to happen, right? You get this real stiff feeling in your joints and that's what it is. More tree-like, that's what we're supposed to be. Maybe not, that's the feminine side. Is being a couch potato a good start? Maybe not. Alright, what does apply?

Romans 7.4 lays out something for us here.

Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law. So notice, here's the Jews. When they obey the Lord and look to the law and honor the law, they bear fruit. Now to the church, how does that happen? Die to the law through the body of Christ so that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead in order that you might bear fruit to God. To the Jews, It's their obedience that bears fruit. To us in the Church, we have died to the law so that we might live to the Lord and bear fruit for Him. Isn't that amazing? The Lord has borne fruit for Him differently, in opposite ways, between Israel and the Church. His design is different. Each is intended to glorify Him. to bring Him glory, to declare and to share His glory.

Ephesians 2.6, this is about your seeding in the heavenlies. And raised us up with Him and seeded us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. So do we take root downward? No. We're seeded upward. How about that? So we have a different relationship to the law that bears fruit. We're also, not to take root downward, but to be seated upward. And that's the place from which we bear fruit.

Ephesians 3.17, where your roots are. Ever hear about somebody saying, I'm going to try to go back to my roots? Here's where your roots are. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you being rooted and grounded in love. You've been rooted and grounded in the Lord's love. That's the place from which you bear fruit. In the Lord's love. In the seating we have in Him. In a place alive to God and dead to the law. Amazing. Amazing stuff. And amazing contrast too. Now, notice at the end of verse 32, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. This is a key point.

This isn't going to be fulfilled in Judah because human beings determine it's going to be. The people of Judah don't get together and say, hey, let's really get some good crops going and we'll just do phenomenally well. No, this happens because the Lord blesses them above anything they could possibly expect. Is that not what the Lord has done with us? Is it not His doing?

Remember Ephesians 1.3? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who's blessed? Blessed be Him, because He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. He's done it. He has done it. He's the one who accomplishes it. The principle. God is the one who blesses, and blessings and glory are due Him for doing so. Elagatos. Good wording.

In verses 33 through 35, therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, he will not come to this city or shoot an arrow there, and he will not come before it with a shield or throw up a siege ramp against it. By the way that he came and by the same he will return along the coastal route in reverse. And he will not come to this city, declares the Lord, for I will defend this city to save it for my own sake and for my servant David's sake. Every single one of Sennacherib's chariots would be specially custom installed with a transmission that only goes in reverse.

How about that? Okay? Backing up. These are promises of God that are also recorded in 2 Kings 19.32. The exact same promises are recorded there as well. And just to have it clear, 1 and 2 Kings, you know where that's found? You know 1 and 2 Kings, don't you? There's 1 and 2 Kings. Okay. All right.

Now, they're also recorded in kind of by generalization in the Assyrian records. And by the way, there's three separate Assyrian records that record the same thing, the same event. It puts a little Assyrian spin on it, but they're recorded nonetheless. It talks about coming up to Jerusalem, but not overtaking it. It talks about, you know, shutting up Hezekiah and his city, but unlike all the other bragging and claiming, they didn't overcome it and defeat it.

So, we'll get to that in a minute here. Okay? So hold me to that. Okay. For I will defend this city to save it for my own sake and for David's sake. Think about it. What's at stake in God's promises? God promises something. What's at stake? What's the issue there?

It's God's glory. That truth was at the root of Hezekiah's appeal. Hezekiah didn't come rushing in just spilling out all his woes and worries. Instead, he first glorified the Lord. Because in the end, that's what's at stake anyway. The Lord's glory. God's eternal purpose is what's at stake. God's glory will be revealed and declared and shared that he might be glorified in fulfillment of God's eternal purpose. And what's going to happen here in Jerusalem and around it will be in fulfillment of God's eternal purpose. That's what's at stake. God's glory.

Verses 36 and 37. Then the angel of the Lord went out and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. Uh-oh. And when men arose early in the morning, and this might at first seem a little comical, but you have to realize that there were more than 185,000 soldiers.

So it's the one that arose, not the dead ones arose, they're dead. But it's the other ones that arose and look around, hey, we got a whole bunch of our buddies that aren't getting up. And so you can imagine one of these guys, hey, wake up, wake up, wake up. And everybody's going around trying to wake people up and they're not waking up. And they don't understand why, but it's not happening. Okay.

So here, this was most of Sennacherib's military force. We know from some assessments and counts of the military force that he had, this was most of his military force he lost in one night. His total force approached the number of troops that we just sent to Iraq a few years back. Okay. So we're talking to send that many to a little nation like Judah, which is a lot smaller in Iraq, He had a high concentration of soldiers, and most of them did not go back to Assyria. Most of them didn't go home. So, probably this left him without the overwhelming force that he had. I would say, probably, maybe, almost certainly. He did not have the overwhelming force that he left with.

The angel of the Lord, I would put forth here, is not just an angel sent by God, But I would put forth to you, and I won't cover it here, but there is a handout to your right as we exit the room. You're free to take one. This spells that out in more detail. From the evidence in the Old Testament, I would say, is the appearance of the pre-incarnate Christ as appeared to Abraham and Gideon and Elijah. We have a few passages here, a few more passages in that handout that is available to you there. So if you're looking for a handout, Now, in spite of all this bragging, here is Sennacherib.

He didn't arrive home with this swelling pride and basking in the glow of victory, not with 185,000 soldiers still back in Judah. He lost most of his fighting force in one night. Can you imagine what that would do? Imagine trying to go home and explain that? How do you explain that to the guys back home? In one night. And it wasn't even a battle. Real tough to explain. Now, remember that little running clock we had there? Let's go to it. It's time. Here's the deal.

Nineveh is the capital of Assyria for this period of time and for a portion of the history. It is located in and near the modern city of Mosul. I understand Matt Kirby was posted there at one point. So that's Mosul. Here are the city walls and one area where the city walls have been restored to give you an idea what that would have looked like to come up against the walls of Nineveh.

Here's an aerial map, and by the way, those aerial maps are real hard to find anywhere in the Middle East. I found it just, they seem to resist putting those up on the web, but anyway, and then here's that gate that you see. The red line is the city wall that goes around Nineveh. That is, by the way, the same Nineveh that Jonah had gone to about a century and so before. There was a moat around the city walls, at least part of it and possibly all of it.

Here is an example. Here is the broken down part of the old wall. Here's a part that's been restored, and this is probably an area that was the moat until it got partially filled in. Here's the area where there was a find in what is called the Taylor Prism. We'll show a larger picture of it here shortly. This is the way that area looked. It's kind of an agricultural area, although there are built up areas nearby, as you can see from the air photo.

Here's a larger picture of the Taylor Prism. And what's interesting, this is a prism that has about 500 lines of cuneiform writing. It was written about a dozen years after the time of this event that we see here recorded in Isaiah 37. And in that prism, Sennacherib boasts that he shut up Hezekiah the Judahite. Within Jerusalem is royal city like a caged bird.

What did he not claim? Victory. Because he couldn't. The other cities, 46 of them, he claimed victory. On this one he did not. He said only that he shut him up. Only thing is, actually the Lord shut Sennacherib up. He had to walk away because he lost 185,000 soldiers in a night.

It confirms by its silence by its lack of claim the biblical record. It just has the Assyrian spin on it. Here is Sennacherib's palace located in this part of the same part of Nineveh and that palace you can visit today and what you see on some of the walls that are remaining is the account of his attack on Judah. It doesn't claim victory over Jerusalem.

Alright now here's verses 37 and 38 Isaiah's prophecy about the death of Sennacherib was fulfilled 20 years later because Isaiah said, Sennacherib's own sons will take him out. That was fulfilled 20 years later to the year two of his own sons killed him and ran off into the mountains of Ararat and basically in Kurdish country now and one of his other sons then ruled in his place. So this was fulfilled and it's fulfilled on the Assyrian and Babylonian accounts. Think of it, Hezekiah went to his temple and what happened? The Lord answered his prayer. Sennacherib went to his temple and the Lord answered Hezekiah's prayer. Sennacherib was taken out by his own sons.

So what do we do with it? We have this historical account, we say that's night, that happened 2,700 years ago. What do I do with that now? We're not likely to be walled up in Jerusalem, at least I hope you aren't, with some enemy coming against you. But we will encounter various trials. When you encounter, is the way James puts it.

We'll have a variety of real life opportunities to trust the Lord. And for God to show Himself faithful. For God to fulfill His eternal purpose in us. He will show himself faithful not by avoiding every trial, but by showing himself faithful in the midst of the trial, through it.

And the thing that we can count on, and this is wonderful, the trials have a purpose. It's the problem that the unbeliever has. He goes through a hassle and all it is is just a hassle. And it's just something to get through or avoid if you can. But for the believer, imagine every trial has a purpose. God doesn't just sort of spin the wheel and say, here, try this one. No. Trials are purposeful. We may not understand the purpose in each case, but we know the Lord does, and we can trust in Him to have purpose in every one of those trials.

This account shows us God is not limited by the time frames in which we pray. We think, okay, I began praying here. God's limited to working things out from that time. One of the things that comes out here, God already had in progress before Hezekiah even started to pray about the problem, a solution. We pointed this out last week. By the time Hezekiah started praying, the answer was already coming. The Lord is not waiting for us to pray to begin acting. He may already have things in place. But the Lord still desires that we pray. The Lord still wants us to acknowledge His glory. The Lord still wants us to have fellowship with Him through this. What else?

God's answer to an overwhelming army of soldiers. How overwhelming is your problem? 185,000 soldiers worth? The largest army in the world at the time, comparable to the force we sent into Iraq a few years ago. When that many people are coming after you, God doesn't see it as a problem. the pre-incarnate Christ, His answer. For anything else, it's overwhelming. For us, it is the Christ with whom we've been seated. God intends fulfillment of His eternal purpose for the Gentiles and for Israel, and for us in the Church, however, we do have some distinct advantages that Hezekiah didn't have.

We don't have to go looking for signs. No, we don't have to go looking for signs. We walk by faith and not by sight. We don't have to go looking for signs. We walk by faith and not by sight. Faith in what the Lord has already said. Faith in what the Lord has already done. Faith in who we are in Him. Faith in His ability. Faith in His capacity and not our own. Alright, and then what? We're already fully blessed, irreversibly, untouchably in the heavens. We're already in Christ by God's doing. He's brought it to pass.

This is the same God who acted on the part of Hezekiah. Just one man praying. There is also an appropriate time to ask for assistance within the church body That's something that the Lord has set up here. Hezekiah asked for Isaiah to help in whatever way Isaiah was willing, particularly with prayer. And Isaiah offered prophecy, which Hezekiah really hadn't even asked for, but still he'd asked for assistance. Hezekiah was willing to ask and God was fully honored in that. He honored Hezekiah's request.

There are times when you and I, are appropriate to look for and call upon godly involvement, others in the body. We've been gifted appropriately in various circumstances. The New Testament has this word parakaleo, to call alongside. It's a word that is translated in various contexts in different ways, but it's coming alongside that the Lord himself does and that we in the body are called to do.

Let's see how Paul writes to the church at Rome, Romans 12.1, Therefore I urge you, parakaleo, come calling alongside, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. To the church at Corinth, Now I exhort you, parakaleo, again, I come alongside you. Brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.

Coming alongside. Counseling. This is the biblical word for counseling. There's a kind of a secular definition in our culture. This is the biblical word. Coming alongside. Notice that in the context that he's given, they have a meaning also of teaching. Coming alongside to teach. to exhort, to urge. Second Corinthians, same church, a year later.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts. Here's another nuance of this word parakaleo, to come alongside, who comes alongside to comfort. in all our afflictions, so we will be able to comfort to come alongside those who are in any affliction with a comfort which we ourselves are comforted by God. God comes alongside, we have a ministry of coming alongside others as well. Here's the parakaleo, not the word, but the concept in Galatians 6, 1 through 5.

Brethren, if anyone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual should just absolutely sabotage and wreck the guy who felt no. We should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Bear one another's burdens, and by the way, that means large burdens, overwhelming burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. For each one will bear his own small load.

So what's at stake spiritually? We encounter a problem. There may be a lot of instances where we and others are prone to just look at the earthly issues. But what's at stake spiritually? See, that's what Hezekiah did. He could have thought, I've just got to come up with an earthly answer. He said, no, there's a lot spiritually at stake. As a matter of fact, that's the most important thing. When he first got the threats, including Rabshakeh's face-to-face threat, when he first got the letter, it was threatening. He went and called his military people, right? No. He went to the temple and he sent people to Isaiah to pray. Spiritual solution. He looked first and said, what's the spiritual issue here?

That's most important. What if we only deal with our problems from a human standpoint? What if we only look at this earth's time and resources as the answer? It makes good spiritual sense to start with this perspective. Who is God and what is His character?

Since I'm a believer in Christ, I've been made to be in Christ, what difference does that make in the circumstance that I'm in right now? Or the one that's coming? What difference does that make? I would venture to tell you it makes a huge difference, a massive difference. because whatever is happening is happening for eternal purpose and not just because I just had a hassle happen to me.

Crucified, buried, raised, ascended and seated with Christ. That's my history. And if you're a believer here this morning, it's yours too. You think about the history you had? Nah, this is your history. You've been identified with Him. That's your history right there.

There's your home. That's home. That's the place to deal with problems from. That's the place to begin. That's the perfect perspective to have. The perfect place to look from to deal with the next hassle coming down the tracks. We're right in front of you. Let's pray.

Lord, we look at this account and we certainly see a huge, massive crisis before Hezekiah. And Lord, how wonderful that he could look and see your tremendous faithfulness. And the apparent earthly limitations were absolutely no problem at all. And how marvelous to see how Hezekiah looked to who you were and what you had done. And we do this morning ask that you would draw our hearts and minds to look to who you are and what you've done. And Lord, what an unfathomable ways you've blessed us. How marvelous the things that you've done. We thank you so much for them all. In Jesus' name, Amen.