2 Kings 18:13
In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.
14 Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish: “I have done wrong. Leave me, and whatever you impose on me I will bear.” The king of Assyria exacted three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold from Hezekiah, king of Judah.
15 Hezekiah gave him all the funds there were in the house of the LORD and in the treasuries of the king’s house.
16 At the same time, Hezekiah removed the nave doors and the uprights of the house of the LORD, which the king of Judah had ordered to be overlaid with gold and gave them to the king of Assyria.
17 The king of Assyria sent the general, the lord chamberlain, and the commander from Lachish with a great army to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They went up and came to Jerusalem, to the conduit of the upper pool on the highway of the fuller’s field, where they took their stand.
The king of Assyria confronted the children of Israel at the fullers field the gate where they wash their remnants. (Where the believer washes with the blood of the lamb). This is the place where he demanded their tribute: that they bend the knee.
**** The lord reminded me not to be distracted by the attacks or the words of the enemy. I did as the king did in 2 Kings 18. I laid my affairs before Him. He led me to even place my troubles and hopes before Him.
I asked Him what He thought after I had finished. On my hopes I even wrote down what my aspirations were for my spiritual growth over the next year. He looked at what I wrote, and He said He liked it. So, I asked Him, if He had an opportunity to change them, what would he do. He changed all of them one by one! Then he asked me how I liked His changes. I said that I did.
The first year he completed fifty percent of the plan and addressed all of my trials as well. I began to do this yearly with the Lord and He would accomplish 100 percent of the list every year thereafter.
Trust in the Lord in all of your ways. Look at your history with the Lord. He has built trust with you. He is making a move upon the enemy. Check for fruit. Go check like when Elijah sent his servant to see if there was rain after praying for it.
18 They called for the king, but Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, the master of the palace, came out, along with Shebnah the scribe and the chancellor Joah, son of Asaph.
19 The commander said to them, “Tell Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you base this trust of yours?
20 Do you think mere words substitute for strategy and might in war? In whom, then, do you place your trust, that you rebel against me?
21 Do you trust in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it? That is what Pharaoh, king of Egypt, is to all who trust in him.
22 Or do you people say to me, “It is in the LORD our God we trust!”? Is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, commanding Judah and Jerusalem, “Worship before this altar in Jerusalem”?’
23 “Now, make a wager with my lord, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses if you are able to put riders on them.
24 How then can you turn back even a captain, one of the least servants of my lord, trusting, as you do, in Egypt for chariots and horses?
25 Did I come up to destroy this place without the LORD? The LORD himself said to me: Go up and destroy that land!”
26 Then Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah and Joah said to the commander: “Please speak to your servants in Aramaic; we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within earshot of the people who are on the wall.”
27 But the commander replied: “Was it to your lord and to you that my lord sent me to speak these words? Was it not rather to those sitting on the wall, who, with you, will have to eat their own excrement and drink their urine?”
28 Then the commander stepped forward and cried out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, “Listen to the words of the great king, the king of Assyria.
29 Thus says the king: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he cannot rescue you from my hand.
30 And do not let Hezekiah induce you to trust in the LORD, saying, ‘The LORD will surely rescue us, and this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.’
31 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: Make peace with me, and surrender to me! Eat, each of you, from your vine, each from your own fig tree. Drink water, each from your own well,
32 until I arrive and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of rich olives and honey. Live, and do not die! And do not listen to Hezekiah when he would incite you by saying, ‘The LORD will rescue us.’
33 Has any of the gods of the other nations ever rescued his land from the power of the king of Assyria?
34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Did they indeed rescue Samaria from my power?
35 Which of the gods for all these lands ever rescued his land from my power? Will the LORD then rescue Jerusalem from my power?”
36 But the people remained silent and did not answer at all, for the king’s command was, “Do not answer him.”
37 Then the master of the palace, Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, Shebnah the scribe, and the chancellor Joah, son of Asaph, came to Hezekiah with their garments torn, and reported to him the words of the commander.
2 Kings 19: 1
And it came to pass, when king Hezekiah heard it, that he rent his clothes, and covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord.
2 And he sent Eliakim, which was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and the elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz.
3 And they said unto him, thus saith Hezekiah, this day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and blasphemy; for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth.
4 It may be the Lord thy God will hear all the words of Rabshakeh, whom the king of Assyria his master hath sent to reproach the living God; and will reprove the words which the Lord thy God hath heard: wherefore lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.
5 So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
6 And Isaiah said unto them, thus shall ye say to your master, Thus saith the Lord, Be not afraid of the words which thou hast heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
7 Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.
8 So Rabshakeh returned and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah: for he had heard that he had departed from Lachish.
*** What the Lord is doing: He is talking about your trust and that’s where you’ve been with him but faith is where you’re going so he’s building you in the midst of all of the things that are happening and you’re supposed to look back at what the Lord has done all this time with you to build your trust so that you will trust in him in this moment of faith, he’s enlarging your coast. He’s enlarging your tent.
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