God listens to the honest and humble prayers of His followers. This is a Bible study teaching for “God Hears” on 2 Kings 19 from the “Explore the Bible” series from Lifeway.
We’re continuing our study in 2 Kings and looking at how God worked in and through the lives of the people of Israel. We’ve been seeing how he honors those who follow his instructions, but how judgment falls when we go our own way or try to trust in our own power.
The title of today’s lesson is “God Hears” and the lesson is from 2 Kings 19.
We’ve learned how David’s kingdom was divided into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Both kingdoms had a mix of both good and bad, but the Northern kingdom had a heavier percentage of wicked rulers. Today’s lesson is about Hezekiah, who is a little further down the line of the kings of Judah than we were last week. The leader guide has a great overview of the context of Hezekiah’s reign and I’m going to read that:
King Hezekiah became king of Judah and acted to turn the nation back to God (2 Kings 18:1-6). He challenged the priests and Levites to help him bring about spiritual renewal (2 Chron. 29:3-19). The king restored the sacrificial system, and the Levites and people praised God and celebrated (29:20-36). He invited all Israel and Judah to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem (30:1-6). Many northern citizens mocked Hezekiah’s invitation, but others came (30:7-12). The people celebrated the Passover at a level they had not done since Solomon’s days (30:13-27).
Early in Hezekiah’s reign, Assyria conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel (2 Kings 18:9-12). When Assyria’s king Sennacherib invaded Judah, Hezekiah initially capitulated to his demands (18:13-16). Sennacherib sent a massive army and delegation to Jerusalem to encourage surrender and warn the people not to trust Hezekiah’s assurances of deliverance (18:17-37).
So we see that there had been a spiritual renewal, what we would call a revival. Hezekiah returned to God’s ways and the people were returning to God as well. However, just because we obey God, it doesn’t mean that we won’t experience opposition or trials.
Assyria was the world power of the time and Sennacherib was conquering everything in his path. He sent a message to Hezekiah telling him to totally surrender and not to be a fool thinking that his God could save him. That is where we being in chapter 19.
19 When King Hezekiah heard their report, he tore his clothes and put on burlap and went into the Temple of the Lord. 2 And he sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the court secretary, and the leading priests, all dressed in burlap, to the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz. 3 They told him, “This is what King Hezekiah says: Today is a day of trouble, insults, and disgrace. It is like when a child is ready to be born, but the mother has no strength to deliver the baby. 4 But perhaps the Lord your God has heard the Assyrian chief of staff, sent by the king to defy the living God, and will punish him for his words. Oh, pray for those of us who are left!”
We can tell from this that Hezekiah and his advisors were terrified. This is the verse that stood out to me. “Today is a day of trouble, insults, and disgrace. It is like when a child is ready to be born, but the mother has no strength to deliver the baby.”
It wasn’t just about the threat of being taking into servitude by the Assyrians, it was that Hezekiah had been telling people to return to God, that Yahweh was greater than the gods of the surround nations, and here came Sennacherib to threaten them. “Like when a child is ready to be born, but the mother has no strength to deliver the baby.” The blessing, the good thing is there, but death stands at the door because we have no strength to get through the door on our own.
That is where Hezekiah was. God had promised blessings to those who followed him, but Sennacherib was threatening to wipe them out before the blessing could bear fruit. Hezekiah knew that he couldn’t stand up to the Assyrian army. So Hezekiah went to the one person that he knew had God’s ear. He sent word to the prophet Isaiah.
5 After King Hezekiah’s officials delivered the king’s message to Isaiah, 6 the prophet replied, “Say to your master, ‘This is what the Lord says: Do not be disturbed by this blasphemous speech against me from the Assyrian king’s messengers. 7 Listen! I myself will move against him, and the king will receive a message that he is needed at home. So he will return to his land, where I will have him killed with a sword.’”
Isaiah told Hezekiah, “Don’t stress about it, God is going to deal with him.” I contribute to An Unexpected Journal, which is a quarterly journal dedicated to cultural apologetics that some friends and I that graduated from the apologetics program at Houston Baptist University started in 2018. We publish on different topics, and the spring issue was on Dragons. You might ask, how is this connected to Hezekiah and Sennacherib. It is, I promise. One of the contributors to the issue was Ted Wright with Epic Archaeology, and he wrote a really awesome essay on the history of dragons in the ancient near east as well as in literature. His essay explains a couple of the accounts of serpents in Exodus are really a polemic against the gods of Egypt. All the way through the Bible, people like Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, and Pharoah are challenging God, thinking they are greater, and God shows up and shows that he has power over all. That he hears us and that we can trust him to bring us through.
8 Meanwhile, the Assyrian chief of staff left Jerusalem and went to consult the king of Assyria, who had left Lachish and was attacking Libnah.
9 Soon afterward King Sennacherib received word that King Tirhakah of Ethiopia was leading an army to fight against him. Before leaving to meet the attack, he sent messengers back to Hezekiah in Jerusalem with this message:
10 “This message is for King Hezekiah of Judah. Don’t let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you with promises that Jerusalem will not be captured by the king of Assyria. 11 You know perfectly well what the kings of Assyria have done wherever they have gone. They have completely destroyed everyone who stood in their way! Why should you be any different? 12 Have the gods of other nations rescued them—such nations as Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Tel-assar? My predecessors destroyed them all! 13 What happened to the king of Hamath and the king of Arpad? What happened to the kings of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah?”
14 After Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it, he went up to the Lord’s Temple and spread it out before the Lord. 15 And Hezekiah prayed this prayer before the Lord: “O Lord, God of Israel, you are enthroned between the mighty cherubim! You alone are God of all the kingdoms of the earth. You alone created the heavens and the earth. 16 Bend down, O Lord, and listen! Open your eyes, O Lord, and see! Listen to Sennacherib’s words of defiance against the living God.
17 “It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all these nations. 18 And they have thrown the gods of these nations into the fire and burned them. But of course the Assyrians could destroy them! They were not gods at all—only idols of wood and stone shaped by human hands. 19 Now, O Lord our God, rescue us from his power; then all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you alone, O Lord, are God.”
Let’s look at Hezekiah’s response. He received a threat from Sennacherib and sent word to Isaiah for guidance. Isaiah told him that God would deliver him. Hezekiah receives another threat, and he prays himself, lays out the message to God and says look at this, Sennacherib is calling you a liar and weak. Defend your own name. Hezekiah made his case directly to God this time.
Hezekiah didn’t send word to Isaiah a second time, but Isaiah sent a message to him. Hezekiah prayed to God, God heard him, and sent Isaiah this message for Hezekiah.
20 Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent this message to Hezekiah: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I have heard your prayer about King Sennacherib of Assyria. 21 And the Lord has spoken this word against him:
“The virgin daughter of Zion
despises you and laughs at you.
The daughter of Jerusalem
shakes her head in derision as you flee.22 “Whom have you been defying and ridiculing?
Against whom did you raise your voice?
At whom did you look with such haughty eyes?
It was the Holy One of Israel!23 By your messengers you have defied the Lord.
You have said, ‘With my many chariots
I have conquered the highest mountains—
yes, the remotest peaks of Lebanon.I have cut down its tallest cedars
and its finest cypress trees.
I have reached its farthest corners
and explored its deepest forests.24 I have dug wells in many foreign lands
and refreshed myself with their water.
With the sole of my foot
I stopped up all the rivers of Egypt!’25 “But have you not heard?
I decided this long ago.
Long ago I planned it,
and now I am making it happen.
I planned for you to crush fortified cities
into heaps of rubble.26 That is why their people have so little power
and are so frightened and confused.
They are as weak as grass,
as easily trampled as tender green shoots.
They are like grass sprouting on a housetop,
scorched before it can grow lush and tall.27 “But I know you well—
where you stay
and when you come and go.
I know the way you have raged against me.
28 And because of your raging against me
and your arrogance, which I have heard for myself,
I will put my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth.
I will make you return
by the same road on which you came.”29 Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Here is the proof that what I say is true:
“This year you will eat only what grows up by itself,
and next year you will eat what springs up from that.
But in the third year you will plant crops and harvest them;
you will tend vineyards and eat their fruit.30 And you who are left in Judah,
who have escaped the ravages of the siege,
will put roots down in your own soil
and will grow up and flourish.31 For a remnant of my people will spread out from Jerusalem,
a group of survivors from Mount Zion.
The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies
will make this happen!32 “And this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria:
“His armies will not enter Jerusalem.
They will not even shoot an arrow at it.
They will not march outside its gates with their shields
nor build banks of earth against its walls.33 The king will return to his own country
by the same road on which he came.
He will not enter this city,
says the Lord.34 For my own honor and for the sake of my servant David,
I will defend this city and protect it.”35 That night the angel of the Lord went out to the Assyrian camp and killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. When the surviving Assyrians woke up the next morning, they found corpses everywhere. 36 Then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land. He went home to his capital of Nineveh and stayed there.
37 One day while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with their swords. They then escaped to the land of Ararat, and another son, Esarhaddon, became the next king of Assyria.
One year, at the end of the year, I asked my third graders what they remember from class. Out of everything, this is what they remembered. That Sennacherib was stabbed in the back in the temple of his god.
This is where Sennacherib should have been safe right? We know that in that time people saw gods as being sort of attached to locations in a way. When a country had victory over another, that was seen as evidence that their god was stronger. Assyria was the major world power, Sennacherib should have been safe in the temple of his god. He should have been safe among his own family. But he wasn’t.
Yahweh wiped out the strength of the Assyrian army when 185,000 died in a single night. The text doesn’t say what exactly caused their deaths other than “the angel of the Lord,” but I think it was likely that a plague swept through. Herodotus wrote about the ending of the siege and said that it was a “multitude of field mice” that swarmed the Assyrian camp and ate things like quivers and bowstrings that caused the Assyrians to flee.
But, what is interesting is that Sennacherib didn’t take a warning from his army being wiped out. Even afterward, he was still boasting of his might and saying that he allowed Hezekiah to stay as ruler over Jerusalem after Hezekiah bought him off. We know this because we have not one, not two, but three steles giving slightly varying accounts of this, which make up the Annals of Sennacherib. Even with this defeat, this sign that Yahweh would deliver Jersualem, Sennacherib did not learn humility. In the end, he was assassinated by his own sons.
I think there are two big takeaways from this. The first is that even the biggest power can fall. Sennacherib thought he was secure in his power, and God brought him low. We may not be world leaders, but we need to acknowledge that we all answer to God.
The second is that regardless of the circumstances, we should be laying out our problems before God like Hezekiah did after he had tried to buy off Sennacherib, which obviously didn’t work.
Last, it’s important to remember what God has done and to testify to his goodness. Is there anyone that would like to share what God has done for them recently?
This Bible lesson was originally taught by Carla Alvarez on August 21, 2022 in the Kingdom Citizens Bible study Class at the Second Baptist North campus in Kingwood, Texas.