104 - Security; False Utopic Dreams vs. The Faithful God [B]

Security; False Utopic Dreams vs. The Faithful God. 2 Kings 18:5-12

We never know when we are going to face a crisis. We never know whether the crisis or the challenge that comes our way is something that is going to be just a minor irritant, something that will be cleared up maybe in the next matter of days, or whether it is actually going to turn into something that will perhaps wreck all of our expectations and hopes and dreams in life. We never know what will happen when we wake up in the morning what the day might bring. Some days it might be joy and happiness when things are relatively stable and we feel like we have accomplished something and gone forward, but there are those times in life when we face certain situations and things happen. There are storms of life, whether they are literal storms that come along through a hurricane, tornado or flood—natural disasters that seem to have peppered the news a lot lately. The economy of the world, not to mention the economy of the United States that is stretched beyond any reasonable limit with its debt so exorbitant that it is unreasonable to expect to be able to pay it off and have a solvent currency, puts all of us in the realm of jeopardy financially. Our hopes and dreams for retirement, for financial stability, literally disappear over night through various things that can transpire—instabilities in the markets, war, disasters that we can't imagine. So we have to ask a question: On what do we really base our hopes and our expectations and security? Any of these things can, and do, come along in the course of our lives and other people's lives, not to mention the more personal things that can occur by just going to the doctor and being told we are now in stage three cancer and not much can be done about it, or coming home to find out that due to a gas leak the house burned down, or many of the other things that can happen.

We don't like to think about these things. People tend to be very optimistic, maybe too optimistic, and think that everything is going to go along because we are products of a culture that created an unrealistic view of life. We in American have had the privilege of living in the most affluent, prosperous society that has existed in the history of the human race. We have more free time, more luxuries, the luxury of more disposable income and time that any people in all of history. We often delude ourselves into thinking that as things have been in the past so they will be in the future, and we live in a culture that because of at the root of the worldview that dominates American culture that has denied the reality that the Bible talks about of living in a fallen and imperfect world, a world that has been placed under the curse and judgment of sin, we think that the culture by rejecting those ideas thinks that somehow we can find security and stability if we can just control the environment, if we can just control the political-social environment, if we can just control and prevent war, then somehow we can have stability and security in life. And when we live in a pipe dream like that we will be radically disappointed. This is evident throughout our culture that there are so many of us who live in the realm of unrealistic expectations, and when we live in a world of unrealistic expectations then when those expectations are not met there is crushing defeat, disappointment, anger and resentment. All of this cultural anger that we see, the suppressed anger that comes boiling up every now and then, is because for the most part when people reject any kind of absolute truth, any sort of absolute knowledge, and a God who can provide real security—not in circumstances, not in the details of life—they must put their hopes, dreams and sense of security in somehow controlling the details of life. And who is better to control those details of life than the government! Right? If we just pass a law, if we just get the right person in power then they can control things. To place upon them an expectation that they can control the consequences of a natural disaster goes beyond all realms of expectation. The government cannot control the weather; the environment cannot ultimately be controlled by government dictum or by charismatic leaders. Too often in history people have put their hopes and dreams in governments, empires and personalities.

That is what lies at the heart of the challenge that we read about in 2 Kings chapter 18. We are beginning our study of the Assyrian crisis that comes to the southern kingdom of Judah on 701 BC. In the title, "False Utopic Dreams vs. The Faithful God," if we erase out the second part of that and get rid of "The Faithful God," then all we can do is put our ultimate hopes for security and stability and happiness in the creation somewhere, which is the biblical definition of idolatry—expecting God's creation to do what only God can do. Everything in God's creation changes. God does not change, God being outside of creation; therefore He alone can have stability, and He alone can provide the kind of certainty that the creation itself cannot provide.

In the Old Testament there is a word that is used that, depending upon its word endings and its various cognates, can mean faithfulness, truth, and stability and certainty, because the root of that word has to do with that which provides an absolute, unshakeable foundation. That is the Hebrew noun emeth, also amen which relates to belief. It is an objective belief in objective reality based on the character of God. So we can either put our hopes for security in man or in the institutions of man, or individual human beings, or some sort of utopic ideal—Marxism, socialism, and various other isms which emphasize some kind of societal perfection—which all denies at its very core the reality of evil. If you don't have an absolute God of absolute righteousness then you don't have a basis for talking about evil, because you don't have an external reference point by which you can define good or evil. Good and evil are defined in Scripture from the vantage point of an absolute character of God, and evil is defined in Scripture foundationally not in terms of some action that goes beyond the norm of bad things that people do, evil is defined in terms of disloyalty to God. That is why when we read in Kings that so and so did evil in the sight of the Lord it always goes back to idolatry, an act of disloyalty toward God and putting hopes and dreams and faith in something other than God. This is ultimately what brought divine discipline upon the northern kingdom of Israel as well as the southern kingdom of Judah.

We are in a time here in 2 Kings 18 that is around 701 BC, a date for the invasion of the southern kingdom of Judah by Sennacherib, the ruler of the Assyrian empire at that time. It is coming to the end of the eighth century BC and it is at the end of the seventh century BC, or 605 just short of 100 years later, that Nebuchadnezzar the ruler of the next major empire, the Babylonians, will come in for his first major conquest of the southern kingdom. So it is around 100 years later that there is this crisis that culminates in the destruction of Judah in 586, at which time Jeremiah will write a lament over the destruction of Jerusalem. The principles that he outlines in Lamentations chapter three are just as appropriate for our time of study of Hezekiah.

This is the key to having a mental attitude of stability and security that is not in things that we think will give us security, but where the focus is in the Lord. Lamentations 3:21 ^NASB "This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope." No crisis is too big for the grace of God, no catastrophe is too big for confidence and hope in God. [22] "The LORD'S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail." Even in the midst of judgment there is no anger, no resentment, no bitterness towards God; rather the focus is on His grace and compassion—that even in judgment God is compassionate because the purpose of discipline is always restoration. [23] "{They} are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness." That word translated "faithfulness" is the form of the word that is also translated "truth" and is related to that word fro objective belief. It indicates something that is grounded on that which is unshakeable, that which is indestructible. So the focus here is on the faithfulness of God which is the foundation for our hope—not in government, not in human institutions, not in social security, not in a strong military. [24] "'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul, 'Therefore I have hope in Him.' [25] The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, To the person who seeks Him. [26] {It is} good that he waits silently For the salvation of the LORD."

This is the same mentality of young king Hezekiah. We have seen that what prepares them ultimately for the crisis that comes in 701 is the spiritual revival in the true biblical sense of the term—spiritual rededication to God in the nation—under the leadership of Hezekiah when he first became king in 715. He prepared the nation first by cleansing the temple, reopening the temple; the people responded in obedience by destroying the idols and all of the alternate worship sites. In other words, what has to happen for a culture to shift is that it is not just an academic shift in belief but the thought systems—the worldviews, the value systems, the ethical systems that are the outgrowth of those false worldviews—have to be destroyed. This is the significance of the people in the southern kingdom going out and destroying these temples. This is the same idea that the apostle Paul expresses in 2 Corinthians 10 that we are to take every thought captive for Christ. We are destroying fortresses and every lofty thing lifted up against the Word of God. It is ultimately a combat between thought systems. This sets the stage for understanding the real battle—the real core foundational issue in the battle—that takes place between Sennacherib and the Assyrians and Hezekiah and the Jews. When we get into the later part of this chapter and the section dealing with what the representatives of Sennacherib say: How can you trust Hezekiah? We have defeated all these other cultures, their gods didn't help them; your God is not going to help you.

This is the same basic argument we hear all the time: How do you know Christianity is true? It's just like every other religion and all of that is, as Marx says, the opiate of the masses. It really has no objective value; religion is just something that is going to have subjective meaning for you. What the Rabshakeh will say to the Jews is: Don't trust in God; don't put your faith and hope in Him, He can't deliver you. Of course he will learn otherwise because the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is just as real at that time as He was to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and He is the God who is still in control of the history of mankind. 

2 Kings 18:5 ^NASB "He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel; so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor {among those} who were before him." Hezekiah is superseded only by king David in the kings of Israel. The next verse goes on to explain how it is that God can evaluate him with such a high mark. [6] "For he clung to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses." It says in Deuteronomy that if you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength then that is demonstrated by keeping the commandments. The same is true in the New Testament. Jesus said: "If you love me you will keep my commandments." God doesn't change between the testaments.

The word "trust" in verse 5 is in a past tense form but it is the Hebrew word batach which is used many times in the Old Testament, but it is a different focus on trust than, for example, the word "belief" in amen. The latter refers to an objective belief in God where as batach focuses more on a subjective aspect. There are no clear similar words in other languages other than in Arabic which has a word which has to do with stretched-out or something that is tight and gives the basic idea of something that is firm or solid and unshakeable. That relates also to the foundational idea that is in the word amen, that which gives stability. In Hebrew the usage of the word batach it focuses more on the subjective dimension of faith in that it provides a sense of wellbeing and security which results from having placed one's confidence in something or someone that is unshakeable. So the focus is not on the subjective sense of believing God but in the subjective result of that in that it provides us with stability and security and confidence in times of crisis, so that we do not fall apart, push the panic button and get all upset, but that we can relax because our confidence is in God.

It is interesting that when the rabbis translated the Old Testament into Greek—the Septuagint—they did not translate batach with the Greek word for belief but rather they translated batach with the Greek word for hope. Think about that. Why would they do that? Because that brings out the essence of the idea in this subjective view of faith and trust here: we can have confidence and be secure in our life only because our hope is in God. The Greek word elpis [e)lpij], "hope," focuses on a confident future expectation. The biblical idea of hope is a confident certainty, an expectation that things will occur in a certain way. We can only think that way if the one who made the promise can actually guarantee its results. So the trust that we are focusing on here with Hezekiah is that he has a confident hope, his security is not in anything temporal. That doesn't mean he didn't have a strong military; he did. He did other things as he saw the Assyrian threat progress, so it doesn't mean that he didn't take proper precautions, it means that ultimately he takes normal procedures but his hope and confidence is ultimately in God as the one who is the ultimate guarantor of his security.

Hezekiah "clung to [held fast to] the Lord." This is the Hebrew word which means to cleave to something. The most famous use of this word is at the end of Genesis chapter two where Moses says that for this reason men are to leave their parents and cleave to their wife. It does have a sexual connotation in places but in other places it just talks about loyalty and affection and binding one's self to someone else through a promise or a commitment. Jeremiah 13:11 states that the Lord caused the Israelites to cleave to Him.    

2 Kings 18:7 ^NASB "And the LORD was with him; wherever he went he prospered. And he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him." What does that thought have to do with the previous thought? God prospered him, and that seems to all be talking about one thing, and then all of a sudden out of left field we have "he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him." The reason he rebelled against the king of Assyria was because of his spiritual allegiance to God, and he realized that even though his father had paid tribute to Assyria and had leaned upon that as source of security, that wasn't their source of security. Their only source of security was God and it was a violation of the covenant with God to trust in Assyria, Egypt, or any other human source in order to provide them with a sense of security.

What this reminds us of is that when we face certain crises, certain situations in life, ultimately the only source of stability is trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. We must recognize that there is a connection between hope and trust, in the sense of security, and in obedience and the consequences of divine blessing. The trouble is we can't measure these empirically. We can't go out and say that if we are obedient to this degree then God blesses us to that degree. What the Scripture says is that if we are obedient to the Lord and walking with Him then He is is our strength and shield. He is the one who gives us protection and no matter what else is happening around us we are protected by the Lord; we are protected by that wall of fire and it doesn't matter what else is going on, God is the one who protects us.

As we look at this we will see that Hezekiah will face a personal challenge and a national challenge, and he has to use the same techniques, the same spiritual skills to face this crisis that we do in any crisis that comes our way. It relates basically to two foundational doctrines. One is the sufficiency of God's power, i.e. God's power is all we need to protect us from any circumstance or situation in life. That doesn't mean that of we go into battle or if there is a catastrophe that we won't lose our life or possessions. It doesn't mean that all of our hopes and dreams won't be dashed. What it means is that we as individuals will be protected by God. It may be God's plan for us not to realize those hopes and dreams and aspirations that we have had because His plan is something else.

What happens so often is that we seek security in money and what money can buy, in the military, in the police, in friends, in jobs, in technology. Politically governments seek security in alliances and foreign powers, through various treaties and other things. None of that provides the security that only God can provide. There are certain principles and promises that we have to remember and that were on Hezekiah's mind when he was young. For example, Psalm 146:3 ^NASB "Do not trust in princes, In mortal man, in whom there is no salvation [help]." Jeremiah 17:5, 7 ^NASB "Thus says the LORD, "Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind And makes flesh his strength, And whose heart turns away from the LORD…. Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD And whose trust [hope: confident expectation] is the LORD." This is the way Hezekiah thought early on. Psalm 18:2 ^NASB "The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge [batach]; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." [30] "As for God, His way is blameless; The word of the LORD is tried [proven]; He is a shield to all who take refuge [batach] in Him." Psalm 91:2 ^NASB "I will say to the LORD, 'My refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust!' … [4] He will cover you with His pinions, And under His wings you may seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark." He alone gives us security because He never changes. Everything else in life changes.

At this early stage in his life Hezekiah recognized the principle that if God is for us who can be against us. So if God is our security then whatever measures we take God is going to protect us because He is our source of security. But if our source of security is in the things of this world then that will always fail us and we will always be disciplined, our expectations will never be realized and when those hard times come—whether they are personal or national—the only thing that gives us hope and stability is God because He alone is the one who is in charge. Hezekiah will learn this, but he forgets it and has to be reminded.      

Illustrations