FeedSheep Podcast

Unwavering Trust - How your story can be impacted by King Hezekiah

• Dan Schilling • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Experience the power of trust as we journey through the life of King Hezekiah, revealing the profound impact faith can have in overcoming adversity. We promise to guide you through the pivotal moments of Hezekiah's reign, drawing parallels to our own lives, and showing how trust in God can help us confront our biggest fears and challenges. We'll be peeling back the layers of the world's false promises and the devil's deceptions, emphasizing the joy of choosing life by abiding in God.

As we recount the epic battle between Hezekiah and the fearsome Assyrian king, Sennacherib, we'll uncover the profound lessons of humility, dependence on God, and the miracle of divine intervention. Here's a promise; you'll leave with a deeper understanding of the importance of shifting our trust away from worldly things and placing it wholly on God. This story also serves as a reminder of the power of repentance and the grace of God's protection and provision. 

Prepare to be inspired as we share the extraordinary story of Gladys Alward, a missionary who, in the throes of World War II, trusted God and carried His message across China. We delve into her faith-filled journey, drawing inspiration and motivation from her unwavering trust in God despite the lurking danger. Let's be encouraged to foster a deeper relationship with God, entrust our lives to Him, and faithfully respond to His call, just as Gladys did. Trust us; this episode is one you won't want to miss.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to the Feat Sheep podcast, dedicated to help you hear God's voice, follow His lead and thrive as a disciple. I'm Dan Schilling, your guide on this adventure, so glad to have you with us today. Let's dive in and discover that path to a thriving life. Hey, welcome to Feat Sheep podcast. We're back again. We had a rich discussion on our previous episode and decided to break it into two episodes, so I just want to encourage you today as we pick back up. The second part of this discussion that Mike and I had is we're looking at the story of Hezekiah and second kings, and it's just an amazing journey that we see this king, who was one of the kings of Judah, who was following the ways of God closer than many of his predecessors, and how God intervenes in his life because he placed his trust. It says that he trusted God like no one before or after, and we're going to see how God intervenes. It comes to his rescue, if you will, because he placed his trust in open. I know you may be facing some things right now. I think I need that type of intervention by God, so we want to encourage you on your journey, building those trust muscles and seeing God work in you and whatever you're facing right now. So we want to help you here. Follow grab. So let's pick up on our discussion. Interesting, because Deuteronomy also has the same.

Speaker 1:

I said before you life and death. Choose life. I heard a guy say this one time. It's like God gives you a multiple choice test and then gives you the answer. I said before you life and death. Choose life A, life B, death, choose A. And yet what happens is the majority of us still choose B, which is I'm going to do it the way of the world or do it my own way. And, interesting enough, this messenger says hey, choose life, choose the way of the Assyrian. That is life. Your God's way has a Kaia's way. That's death.

Speaker 2:

And we know that the reality of this promise, what concord nation is given this right? It's like oh hey, we're going to come treat you so well slaves. Yes, the reality isn't. It wouldn't be anything like that. But even see the picture of the Israelites as they leave Egypt as slaves and they're groaning to Moses and the wilderness and saying, pretending like they had this posh, comfortable lifestyle with grain and herbs and food. And you guys were slaves and we were beaten and they made us like make 10 times as much when they got mad and wait a minute.

Speaker 2:

And the promise is never as good as it seems.

Speaker 1:

A promise, a false promise, and not in the ways of God and in the ways of man.

Speaker 2:

No, no, no the promise of the world Like the promise is do it this way Don't depend on that and you're going to have everything you want. Like, why would you want? It's like the promised land versus Egypt. We'll go back to Egypt. That's going to be better. No, the vine and fig tree is in the promised land.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but the devil is still trying to do that same thing with us today and the culture and the world around us. The deception oh, you don't want to be like those Christians because that means your life's going to be terrible. I mean, you're not going to have all the fun things of life and you're not going to get fun Again. Maybe I don't have all the what people call fun things, but we've talked about helping people here, follow and thrive. And as we want to be on that journey here, follow and thrive, that thriving is not found in all these temporal comforts they're not bad things to have but the thriving actually comes when we are putting our hope, our trust, walking in a here and follow relationship with the God of the universe.

Speaker 2:

Choose life instead of death. True life, true life, that's right.

Speaker 1:

So, let's keep going. What's he going to continue to say next? Let's see.

Speaker 2:

I don't listen to Hezekiah when he tries to mislead you by saying the Lord will rescue us. Have the gods of any other nations ever saved their people from the king of Assyria? What happened to the gods of Hamath and Arpad? What about the gods of Sifrvayim, hina and Eva? Did any God rescue Samaria from my power? What God of any nation has ever been able to save its people from my power? So what makes you think that the Lord can rescue Jerusalem from me? And the people were silent, did not utter a word because Hezekiah had commanded them do not answer him. And then says then Eli-Kayyem and the son of Hezekiah, the palace administrator, shabna, the court secretary these guys get their resumes read a lot, apparently.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, why it repeated so many times? And Joah still the royal historian son of Asaph went back to Hezekiah. They tore their clothes in despair and they went in to see the king and told him what the Assyrian chief of staff had said.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, another continued assault. Don't believe in a way of saying we are the supreme authority, we rule and no one else can. So don't be foolish, all right, it's like that somebody's negotiating with you, trying to tell you who your identity is. And what's interesting to me as I think about this for a second, michael is Hezekiah. Raised by a mom whose name means my father is the Lord, and when you know who your daddy is, hezekiah probably had a real good understanding of knowing who God, his father was as a protector, as a provider, and these things probably even from his mom, presupposing this based on who her dad was and who she was, and maybe who she had and how. What we see in him in his early days of his reign as king, and what we're going to see from him here in chapter 19, and how he responds to this essentially assault that's being threatened upon them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think that choosing life and death, the importance of understanding where life is, is so important. And so his picture is his father and he knows his father and he's pursuing that, and it's a very different picture than thinking that life here and now is where you're going to find whatever it is you're looking for. Again, thinking about Abraham and Isaac and the passage of all these people that says they were seeking a better country, that is a heavenly time. Yes, right, they're seeking something else. Their hope wasn't here and they were going to the place where God is preparing a city for them and a place for them. And when that is life, then these things of I'll give you your honey and your food and whatever you want here, but you realize that's temporal, even if it satisfies me for a moment, and so we have to come back to that.

Speaker 2:

I have to know God as my father. God is trustworthy and trust the promises that he's given.

Speaker 1:

And when these things come into our life, as we're going to see here next is where do I go? Right, and you know, when I'm on the playground and if I know my dad is not too far away and somebody's threatening to beat me up, I go run into the safety or the shelter, so to say, of his wings. Right, like just so. What I love about this next thing is, this is what we see Hezekiah do, and so let's pick up here in verse one though this is second Kings 19, verse one.

Speaker 2:

All right. When King Hezekiah heard their report, he tors, closed, put on burlap and went into the temple of the Lord and he sent a like I am the palace administrator, shabna, the court secretary and the leading priest, all dressed in burlap to the prophet Isaiah, son of Amos. 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.

Speaker 2:

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. After King Hezekiah's officials delivered the king's message to Isaiah, the prophet replied, said your master, this is what the Lord says. Do not be disturbed by this blasphemous speech against me from the Assyrian king's messengers. Listen, I myself will move against them 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.

Speaker 1:

So what we're going to see here in this next portion is the outcome. But just for a second, let's look at these here as we kind of process through what we want to see in each of our lives, of building our trust muscles. So the first thing that we really saw is that he needed to ignore the naysayers. Right, sometimes you can't be and not ignore, like you don't hear it, because obviously he's oh no, this is not good, struggled, struggle, but don't like. Oh man, we're, it's over. But he the next thing I think that you see him do is he humbles himself, and these leaders also humble themselves, and that's what that? That place of tearing the clothes but on the burlap, that it's that place of oh God, we have, we're nothing without you, right, and posturing of our heart, and have them then go.

Speaker 1:

I think the next thing that I see here is a part of that process of building our trust muscles is to seek counsel, right, and so in that era, you, the prophet, go beseech him. Okay, god, speak to us. What do you? How do you want to communicate your word to us in this season? And so I was there today.

Speaker 1:

The good news, michael, that we know is that we have a Holy Spirit, we have had Jesus, who is the son. Make provision by his blood so that we can enter into the presence of God, have that relationship with the Holy Spirit, so we now can go and ask we don't have to go through, not that we can't have people prophetically speaking to our life still, even today, but that we can go get counsel from the most high when we're faced with an impossible situation. Because this is a pretty impossible situation. They're facing the superpower of the world at the time. Who's threatening them? And they don't have many people. It's not like they are a big nation, big army. So they know they're in trouble mathematically or medically. Right, they know like we're not a good spot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they're not going to win. No, yeah it's maybe the trash talk isn't so good when you're that much better. It's like a varsity team trash talking, a junior high team. You're like good for you guys. You're great, you're going to beat up on a bunch of 12 year olds.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

The other thing here I think that is important to see is they didn't deny the trouble they were in. They admitted it and they mourned it and they went and said we need help and they remember where their only place of help was and hope. And sometimes I think we get to these places where we need to be taken, to a place where we literally we have no choice because there's nothing else that will help us, there's no other solution we have. And I find comfort in these that God still is gracious to them. If it took that for them to turn to God and say help us, and he still helps them. Yes, he's drawing us, even in when it takes us a long time to get to that place.

Speaker 1:

We said this something in the previous episode or two. Maybe that it's easy to say we trust God until we're in a place where we have to trust him, and sometimes we have to be willing to allow God to take us to a scenario like this where you say, man, there's no way. But God, god, if you don't show up, okay, great. I'm glad you finally read it, cause the dangerous is when we think we don't.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I got this one, I can take care of this one, and we can see throughout the history of the Israelites, whether it's in the kingdom of Judah or you know that they would get their confidence in themselves and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have to send you off to another land because you're not willing to just to trust me, to be under my authority, to show your love and affection toward me. You're gonna show your love and affection towards these other nations, their gods, their protection, which is what, like the whole thing about Egypt we saw a little bit ago, like God doesn't want us to put our hope and trust in the things that are in the world around us, and he allows us, if we're willing, to be taken to a place sometimes and say, okay, I got nothing else but you, because he loves us and it's not he wants to harm us. It's to bring us to a closer, intimate relationship with him as our heavenly father.

Speaker 2:

Which is why it's so hard. Power and prestige and possessions, and all of these things that can be used for the glory of God and can be used for good things to help humanity flourish all of these things, but inherent in each one of them is the tendency to start thinking it's about me, it's about my provision, it's about my power, my whatever, and failing to remember oh wait, who gave it to me, where, who put me in this position, and so that's the caution of so often we have to be taken to these places where we don't have those, to realize that actually it is God who's doing it, and so we have a harder time seeing that when it's no, it's that guy in power, we need to go to him and ask him, because he's got the one power. It's like, no, you've got the one in power.

Speaker 1:

I wanna land a plane here just to give a couple of quick things, and we're gonna get to the kind of a crescendo of the outcome of the story, which is probably one of the coolest things here. So Sennacherib is the king and he sends a message in verse 10, don't let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you with the promises that we're not gonna come take care of you. We're not in a good way, we're gonna come eliminate you. And you know perfectly well verse 11, you know that everywhere we've gone, we've done this right. You know who we are. We always win, and don't believe on any of this other nonsense. None of their gods have ever rescued them either. And he lists a bunch of that, and then it says it has a.

Speaker 1:

Kaia receives this message, goes then after he gets that message and goes back to Lord and prays and says God, you are the God, you're the God of all creation, you're the. Your kingdom is above all kingdoms. You're the created heavens, earth. So hear what he's saying, and you know this. He's not taking us. He's talking against you and acknowledging, yes, it's true, they have done all this, but you're God. And so I just wanna say this.

Speaker 1:

There's sometimes in our life, when these things are all coming at us. We're hearing all this and there's that I've heard people say that then there's, but God can, he's not limited, he's not wanting us. So the God, don't you see all this? Like we said, like with Abraham, god don't you know, if I kill the son, the promise is gonna be hard to fulfill, isn't it? But I am the giver of life. And that's where I think that one part where it says Abraham believe that he could, that Isaac could be raised from the dead.

Speaker 1:

It's okay, god, I trust you, I'll take that next step of my journey and my faith, and I believe that's what God's always looking for us, not from us, he doesn't need it from us but he wants for us to experience. Because when that happens, we have, like you said in that Hebrews 11, those moments that are those impressionable moments and us as clay right, that just goes. And we have, like that, 700 families that turned away and like for us oh my gosh, god, you made a way, and I didn't even know how impossible it was, but you made a way where there is no way People can put their hope in all kinds of things, kind of what you're going on here to say but you're the God who rescues us, takes care of us. Everybody will know, if you take care of us in this situation, that you, god, are the one alone. Lord, god of all the kingdoms of the earth.

Speaker 1:

So I just I love that, I love what he's doing there. And then we're not gonna read through this, we're gonna wrap up here. Isaiah essentially sends a message to Hezekiah and gives him a new. You all can look through that. Let's have you read 35 and 36, which is really fulfillment, because we read earlier he said I'm gonna send him back to his nation.

Speaker 2:

So let's pick up there 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, and then King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and returned to his own land. He went home to his capital of Nineveh and stayed there.

Speaker 1:

We can see that in the next part actually says that he was worshiping in a temple and his sons kill him, which was prophesied. But, michael, I can't help but think about this story. Every time I look at it it just makes me smile to think, oh my gosh, these guys are military guys. I don't know if they're seal train type guys, but they would be elite. You think soldiers? Right, to some extent these guys are battle trained ready. And somebody even whispers you're awake that literally in the middle of the night, 185,000 dudes that you're ready to go into battle with are life sucked out of them. And when you wake up you didn't hear it, you didn't, not a peep. The God is the giver of life and breath, literally without even waking up. Anybody can take the life out of 185,000. Not that I wish anybody dead, but you say God's authority in our life, the protection for us to take care of us, that you can do anything he needs to do to show us I'm gonna take care of you.

Speaker 2:

And truly fought on their behalf. They didn't have any gold left. That was one part of what we skipped, and I have anything I have to offer this king. All they had was to surrender and become slaves or go out and be slaughtered, Like those were the two options. So they thought it's like Abraham again. I have two options, like I can ignore, disobey God, or I can go kill my son. There's my two only options. Maybe God will do something. He had enough faith to know that God has oftentimes a plan we can't see.

Speaker 1:

I just wanna tie this up and finish today with this thought is these ways that our trust muscles are built are through humility, through really repentance, turning from all those distractions of things that are trying to keep us from the things God wants for us, ignoring those things around us that are trying to distract us, the naysayers, the things that are trying to keep us from that.

Speaker 1:

That we seek counsel, that we go, lay our burden before the Lord. We lay it between at the altar of God, but also at the hands of other people around us, and say, would you show me, is there anything I'm missing? Is there anything that I need in this journey so that my trust in him can be built? And then, really, the last thing I wanna just mention here is that when things happen, that we thank God for the results and that sometimes we just get to see a God's sovereign hand, whether it's I made a way for you, even though there were 700 other families who wanted to get in this school, or I'm gonna take care of these 185,000, and that wasn't killing people to school, obviously, but like that he provides in a way that helps us to see that I am going to take care of and provide for you and everything you need.

Speaker 1:

So final thoughts for us today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm just real briefly. I'm reminded of a missionary story, gladys Alward, and she was this basically housekeeper who wanted to go to China and couldn't go over with anybody, so she bought a ticket and went. Her story of even getting there is pretty miraculous. It was during the beginning of World War II and when Japan invaded China and that type of extraordinarily dangerous and violent and here she is by herself, finds a woman she went to meet and this woman dies and she's alone in the remote parts of China and is trying to run this in to minister, to people in all, and has no idea how to fund it because no one even basically knows she's there, wow, and she's thinking how do I provide?

Speaker 2:

And in walks the head of the governor effectively and says you're my new foot inspector. I mean because it became illegal to have bound feet at that point and she fit the criteria that he needed and effectively he didn't ask her if she would. It was a conscripting of this is what you are, but it enabled her to go out to every. She had to go to every single village and every single farm and inspect the feet and so she got to show the gospel with every single person and every single farm, and just think about the idea of this woman literally went with nothing. She went with two pennies and God provided in a place that she had no resources to call upon.

Speaker 1:

You got to imagine her family probably wasn't like, oh great idea. Like you're a woman going, do you even speak Chinese? No, she didn't. Do you even have all the things in life right, the practical things that you could say, what are you doing? And yet, when we get to eternity, that to me that's another one of those Hebrews 11 stories that are continuing on right.

Speaker 1:

This isn't to try to make any of us feel guilty or condemned or we're not but what things might God want to plant inside of us that are going to live far beyond us for the sake of His kingdom? And not just to come, but what he wants to do inside of us, and that I guarantee you, even though there probably were some days she thought, well, what am I doing? But in the midst of that time, when she's getting to go around and share the gospel and do the things like God, thank you so much, thank you. I had no idea and she could have just said I could play it safe, I could stay at home and just, I'll go to church and go to my Bible studies.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if you're wrong or evil, but I think God wants to show up in our life in a magnificent way and sometimes we're keeping from because this area of trust. You don't want to see that happen. I don't want to see it in my own life. I don't want to see it in the lives of you, michael, or anybody else that we're on this journey with. Let me pray for us for the wrap up.

Speaker 1:

Thank you that it is your desire for us to walk in intimacy with you. And God, today, help us. We don't have the strength, we can't overcome these things around us, these things that seem so present, so real, like you're going to get beat up if you go do this, you're going to be hurt if you go do that. So, god, we don't want to do these things because we think you're going to love us more, care for us more, because we know that's already been established. But you want us to experience a greater intimacy with you and fulfillment of life. You want us to hear your voice and to follow your lead and thrive as disciples, followers of you. And so, god, have your way, lead us and guide us. Help us today to draw closer to you in this way, just availing ourselves today, where we're at. It might not be to go to China, but just today, to be faithful to what you call us to. So help us, give us the strength to do that. We love you. Thanks for our time. We love you In Jesus' name, amen, amen.

Speaker 1:

Hey, thanks for tuning in to the Fiji Podcast. We'll see you again next time. Good night,

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Dan Schilling

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