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2 Kings 18:13-14
In the fourteenth 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: "I have done wrong. Withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand of me."
Hezekiah was one of the greatest kings in Judah. Well, let’s be honest here, if you were playing ‘Kings of Israel and Judah Top Trumps’, then the only one likely to beat Hezekiah is King David.
We are told in 2 Kings 18:3 that Hezekiah did what was right in the sight of the Lord – more so than any other king. Hezekiah stopped all the worship of gods going on at the high places; and the bronze snake that Moses had made - which had started out as a good thing and then had turned into an object of worship - he also destroyed. Only David and Hezekiah were said to be successful in war, to have defeated the Philistines. In short this guy was a good king. The main thing we are told about Hezekiah is that he clung to the Lord. This verb 'to cling' is the same verb that is found in Genesis 2:24 to describe how man should cling to his wife.
All this is building somewhere, there is a lesson to be learnt. If you cling to God, if you have faith, and if you obey God, then life goes well with you. Everyone will like you, you will like yourself, birds will sing, and stuff will be good. Nice.
But chapter 18 of 2 Kings carries on… As Dale Ralph Davis said,
2 Kings 18…tells you that you can be a king who trusts and obeys Yahweh and who reforms the nation’s worship and yet your enemy may come and crush your land, deport its population, and await the moment when he can impale the king’s carcass on a stake outside the city wall. It’s helpful to faith to know that.
Some people have the idea that faith means everything is fine and that as long as you clutch on to the rabbit’s foot of your faith (except it is less tangible than a rabbit's foot) ,then nothing bad can happen. If you belive that and then something bad does happen (and it probably will), then your faith tends to fail you.
You have to have faith that God is with you in the midst of difficult times. But believeing this throws up all kinds of questions, mainly, why doesn’t God do something about these difficulties? And so we end up back at Sunday school, we’re sure the answer is Jesus; it is just that sometimes that answer feels more comfortable than at other times. Welcome to a life of faith.
There is one more thing to learn from 2 Kings 18. The King of Assyria, who was called Sennacherib, imposed a tribute on Hezekiah. Hezekiah had to pay a sum of money every year to Sennacherib if he wanted to be left alone. But then Assyria attacked anyway: never trust an Assyrian king called Sennacherib.
