When Faith Gets Real

“When the royal spokesman heard that the king of Assyria had pulled out of Lachish, he left and found him fighting against Libnah. The king had heard concerning King Tirhakah of Cush, “He has set out to fight against you.” So when he heard this, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, “Say this to King Hezekiah of Judah: ‘Don’t let your God, on whom you rely, deceive you by promising that Jerusalem won’t be handed over to the king of Assyria. Look, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries: they completely destroyed them. Will you be rescued? Did the gods of the nations that my predecessors destroyed rescue them — Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the Edenites in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, or Ivvah? ’” Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers’ hands, read it, then went up to the Lord’s temple and spread it out before the Lord. Then Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: Lord of Armies, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you are God  — you alone  — of all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. Listen closely, Lord, and hear; open your eyes, Lord, and see. Hear all the words that Sennacherib has sent to mock the living God. Lord, it is true that the kings of Assyria have devastated all these countries and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but made from wood and stone by human hands. So they have destroyed them. Now, Lord our God, save us from his power so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, Lord, are God  — you alone. Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: “The Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Because you prayed to me about King Sennacherib of Assyria, this is the word the Lord has spoken against him: Virgin Daughter Zion despises you and scorns you; Daughter Jerusalem shakes her head behind your back. Who is it you have mocked and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel! …Therefore, this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria: He will not enter this city, shoot an arrow here, come before it with a shield, or build up a siege ramp against it. He will go back the way he came, and he will not enter this city. This is the Lord’s declaration. I will defend this city and rescue it for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.” Then the angel of the Lord went out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies! So King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and left. He returned home and lived in Nineveh. One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat. Then his son Esar-haddon became king in his place.” (Isaiah‬ ‭37‬:‭8‬-‭23‬, ‭33‬-‭38‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

Key principle: Real faith never panics and all true prayer is preoccupied with God, His glory, His honor, His sovereignty and His will in and over our lives.

Well, we’ve reached the end of a major section of Isaiah. This chapter closes out the section on the “Oracles Against the Nations” and it does so in a very poignant and decisive way. It brings our need for faith and its focus to a razor sharp edge: will we walk in faith and trust the LORD our God even when it doesn’t seem to make sense? Really, that’s the whole point of faith. To walk with God when everyone else is walking away. To stand in opposition to human wisdom and understanding because it is at odds with God’s Word. This is the faith we’ve been given by our spiritual ancestors and it is the faith we’ve been called to walk in, today.

Last week, we ended with God’s revelation that Sennacherib would “fall by the sword” in his own land. But his army is still encamped around Jerusalem. We have God’s promise, but we’re still awaiting its fulfillment. That’s where faith lives, where biblical faith is real. Faith is what we cling to and walk with in the tension between the promise and the fulfillment of God’s Word. This is where we find Hezekiah, Isaiah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem in our focal passage. It’s also where we find ourselves. We are living in the tension between the promise and the reality of His promise. “Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.” (Hebrews‬ ‭11‬:‭1‬ ‭CSB‬‬) Faith is living with the tension that what we hope for is, ultimately, our reality. 

Hope built on the foundation of our faithful God is what kills doubt, destroys fear and breathes life into faith. 

The enemy knows this and always attempts to kill our faith and resurrect our doubts. Notice how the Assyrian king, Sennacherib uses this, “Don’t let your God, on whom you rely, deceive you by promising that Jerusalem won’t be handed over to me. Look, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries: they completely destroyed them. Will you be rescued? Did their gods rescue them? Where are their kings now?” (Is. 37:9-13) He tries to use human perception, understanding, logic and reasoning to resurrect Hezekiah’s doubts, reignite his fears and turn his back on faith in the LORD. That’s still his tactic, today.

God calls us to walk with Him in faith and experience the fulfillment of His promises as we embrace a hope that flies in the face of our understanding and logic. He says, “sell out to me, give me all of your trust and hope and I will give you life.” Imagine facing your fears and doubts as God calls you to faith with the enemy encamped around you. You look out your window and all you see are Assyrian tents, flags and warriors and God says, “trust Me!” The enemy says, “you can’t trust your god, look at how everyone else’s gods have failed them. Believe me, you’re a fool to believe all that stuff.” Far too often, the voice of the enemy rings loudest in our ears. But if you’re a believer then faith is there, quietly calling you to believe and trust the Lord. Unfortunately, the enemy’s voice is most often loudest in our heads and that’s where prayer comes in.

Hezekiah has heard the threats of Sennacherib, but he has finally refused to let the voices of doubt influence and guide him. Instead, he heads to the place of prayer – the Temple of God. He’s ready to lay the pride filled threats of the enemy on the altar of the LORD. What you might find interesting is that Hezekiah takes the actual letter from the Assyrian king and spreads it out before the LORD and references it in his prayer. But before we get to God’s response to the enemy’s threats, I need you to hear Hezekiah’s prayerful approach to God: “LORD of Armies, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you are God – you alone – of all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth.”

The first thing Hezekiah does is to affirm God’s might, power, and sovereign authority over himself and every other king and kingdom on the earth. There are no other gods, You alone are God and have created all that exists. Reality is not what we see or believe, but what You declare with Your own voice and bring into existence through Your own power and might. Hezekiah’s words are not spoken to inform God of these things, but to declare before God that he knows and submits himself to these eternal truths. 

This is the very reason and the same way in which Jesus taught us to pray: “Father in heaven, You alone are holy. May you rule over me and my life and may I do Your will in the same way You rule over heaven and Your angels do Your will without hesitation or question. May I lean on You and depend upon you for every need I have, each day of my life. Forgive me in all the ways I am disobedient to You in the same manner that I forgive others. Keep me and protect me from evil and its influence upon me.”

But Hezekiah’s prayer doesn’t just acknowledge who God is, it is an acknowledgment that these “other gods” are nothing but the creation of men’s hands, minds, and hearts and man’s will to rule over himself, his own destiny and God’s creation. It is an acknowledgment that these false gods have utterly failed to deliver their adherents from Sennacherib. So Hezekiah’s prayer is, in many ways, an acknowledgment of Hezekiah’s own failures in trusting Jerusalem’s future to false hopes, false gods, false saviors. When we fail to confess our sin, it stands in proud defiance before God. When we confess it, it falls in humble submission before Him and we are able to receive His mercy, cleansing and forgiveness. 

Do we acknowledge these things in our prayers or just throw out our desires and needs and walk away with false assumptions of victory? Just remember, the same Jesus who taught us how to pray like Hezekiah did also tells us that our prayers shouldn’t be the “babbling” of unbelievers who think they’ll be heard because of their “many words.” That implies that believers have the capacity to pray like unbelievers, full of babbling and empty words. Are our prayers hollow, devoid of any desire for God’s will and God’s glory and filled with words, desires and requests that seek our own will, our own glory, power and achievement? Are our prayers still filled with prideful arrogance and willful sin instead of contrite confession and humble repentance? 

Our prayers need to end the same way Hezekiah’s prayer ended: “Those false gods are all destroyed. Now, LORD our God, save us from his power so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You, LORD, are God – YOU alone!”

Now, God gives His answer through Isaiah: “Because you prayed to me about king Sennacherib of Assyria, this is the word the LORD has spoken against him…” God references Jerusalem as His “virgin daughter” and Sennacherib will not have his way with her. This part is worth quoting: God asks Sennacherib, “Who is it you have mocked and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the Holy One of Israel!” 

Oh Sennacherib, do you know who you’re dealing with? Not some little, false god of one of these countries you’ve destroyed. No, you’re now dealing with HIM! The Holy ONE of Israel. The one you’ve mocked but who now mocks you. You’ve made bold, lofty claims about your conquests, power and strength by cutting down the tallest cedars and choicest cypresses of Lebanon’s forests. You claim to have driven your chariots to the tops of the highest mountains and drank water from wells you dug in foreign lands. You even claim to have caused the waters of the Nile to have dried up simply by stepping in them.

The LORD responds: Who am I, in comparison to those lofty claims? Have you not heard? I’m the one who designed it long ago; who planned it in days gone by. I have now caused it to happen, allowed you to crush fortified cities into piles of rubble that lie powerless afterwards. But I know you, everything about you. I know all you do and everywhere you go. I also know your raging against me and your arrogance has reached my ears. Listen closely to these final words to Sennacherib: “I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth; I will make you go back the way you came.” In other words, “You’re mine and now that you’ve accomplished what I had planned for you, I’ll put my hook in your nose and lead you back the way you came.”

In prayer, we must NEVER forget who we serve and to whom we pray. He is the sovereign LORD, the One who made us and everything we see. He is the One who knows us intimately, who knows all we do, all we think, imagine and truly desire. But why is man so stubbornly opposed to the absolute sovereignty of God? Why must we insist that we have the freedom of self-will? Because it elevates our importance to the level of God, it makes us His equal. It gives us exactly what Adam and Eve desired from the fruit in the garden, the ability to determine our own destiny. 

But when we are willing to die to that desire, then, and only then, we release our true identity and destiny as children of Almighty God. Then we are able to become what we ought to desire and what fulfills our deepest needs and our God-given purpose. We seem to hate the idea of God’s absolute sovereignty because we desire to control it. God WILL be and MUST be absolutely sovereign or He isn’t worthy of our worship. The only real question is whether He puts a ring in our noses and leads us where He is going or whether we kneel before Him and then follow Him. Don’t miss this, even belated faith is met by His faithfulness.

That brings us to Hezekiah’s belated faith and dependence upon God. Notice, God didn’t respond with an “I told you so” or “it’s about time” when Hezekiah knelt in faith-filled prayer before Him. What Hezekiah receives is a promise of sustenance from God for the remnant as they take root, grow and begin to bear fruit. When we take root in God and the promises of His word, then we find the security and stability to grow in faith. As the secure, stable people of God we develop a deeply rooted, mature faith in God that bears fruit upward, fruit that brings eternal glory to God. This isn’t something we’re accomplishing, but something He is accomplishing in us and through us. “The zeal of the LORD of Armies will accomplish this.”

“I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians‬ ‭1‬:‭6‬, ‭9‬-‭11‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

Finally, we are told the final outcome of this epic drama. You can read the full description here, but in summary Isaiah says: “…he [Sennacherib] will not enter this city. …I will defend this city and rescue it for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.” King Sennacherib’s army inexplicably suffered the loss of 185,000 men that night at the hand of the “angel of the LORD.” There are two things I want to highlight in this brief summary and I need you to consider them carefully. They are closely related…

First, God displays His power and sovereignty over Sennacherib for the sake of His own glory. Sennacherib had stood proudly defiant before God’s people and their king bragging about his actions, their foolish and misplaced “faith” in their God and His intention of showing the world how utterly worthless their trust in the LORD was. We don’t need to defend God’s honor and glory, He’s quite capable and willing to do this for Himself. This also states that God’s response is “for the sake of my servant David.” This is referencing the Davidic covenant, the promise that a descendant of David will forever reign over the people of God. You can rest assured, God keeps His promises.

There are two possible ways to understand this promise, 1) a descendant of David will always be on the throne over the physical nation of Israel; 2) a descendant of David will be placed on the eternal throne of God’s kingdom. Obviously, I believe this promise is ultimately fulfilled in the second premise and Jesus is that king. God is going to defend and protect this city and rescue it for the sake of His own glory and for the sake of the fulfillment of His covenant with David to establish the eternal King of kings, Jesus the Messiah. God in human flesh, reigning over His people of faith for all eternity.

Next, God exacted His judgment upon Sennacherib by sending a messenger to carry out the sentence. That’s what the word “angel” means: a messenger who speaks for the LORD God. It is possible to read verse 35 like this: ‘I will defend this city and rescue it for My sake and for the sake of My Servant who comes as fulfillment of David’s promise.’ Then the messenger comes and delivers God’s just and righteous judgment. You may think I’m stretching this, but I believe that messenger who delivered God’s judgment upon Sennacherib is the Servant of God’s promise – the pre-incarnate Christ. Why? Because Jesus is the one charged with carrying out God’s righteous judgment upon mankind. Let me simply say, it was not a fair fight. 

These are Jesus’ words, not mine: “The Father, in fact, judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all people may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” (John‬ ‭5‬:‭22‬-‭23‬ ‭CSB‬‬)

The world loves it when we speak about the incredible love God displayed to the world through His Son, Jesus. But this same Son who is the epitome of God’s love, is also the righteous judge of mankind. Our faith must deal with the reality of both truths. God loves us SO much He sent His Son Jesus to rescue us, but when we turn aside from faith, refuse Him and His rescue efforts, we stand under His just and righteous judgment.

So, this is where faith gets real. Do we fall before God in humble prayer and real faith in His deliverance, or do we believe the lie the enemy whispers about God’s inability to do anything about the situation. The choice Hezekiah faced is the same one you and I face, do we believe the lie of the enemy or believe the promise of our God? I trust God, do you?