Proud, arrogant, belligerent, greedy, devious – does it sound like a certain businessman who has been in the news lately, who is accused of causing much suffering to those who were under him?
Actually, I was thinking of one, Sennacherib, King of Assyria – though the mistake is understandable. Proud, arrogant, belligerent, greedy, devious Sennacherib came and attacked Jerusalem when good king Hezekiah was king of Judah. We read about it in three OT books, 2 Kings 18-19, 2 Chronicles 32 and Isaiah 36-37. All three accounts are worth reading as they each bring out some aspect of what happened. But two things impress themselves on me:
- The sin of arrogance against God and its punishment, and
- The humility of dependence upon God and its blessing.
1. Sennacherib and his army commanders displayed arrogance against, not just the Jewish people, but against, as Hezekiah put it, “the LORD … God of Israel … God over all the kingdoms of the earth … (who) made heaven and earth.” (2 Kings 19:15). We read that his ‘officers spoke further against the LORD God and against his servant Hezekiah. The king also wrote letters insulting the LORD, the God of Israel … They spoke about the God of Jerusalem as they did about the gods of the other peoples of the world – the work of men’s hands.’(2 Chron 32: 16,17,19).
Now, isn’t that somehow what people in the world today do – to them, either the God who Christians worship and serve is no more real than the god of any other religion, or else Christianity is merely on a par with other faiths. That’s why there are Interfaith Forums that try to bring understanding between different faiths or ideas that people have. There’s one in Horsham, which embraces all kinds of beliefs, including Humanism and Unitarianism. It was sadly enlightening to read the Unitarian church’s statement on their website: Our church welcomes all who seek the meaning of life. We believe that religion is wider than any one sect and deeper than any one set of opinions. Whilst having deep respect for Christian tradition, we seek exploration of all possible truths from all possible sources.
And so the clear truth – the blessed truth, of the Bible that God the Creator is the only true God and has revealed himself in love to us through his Son the Lord Jesus Christ, is lost in atheistic, humanistic and pluralistic confusion. Sennacherib claimed to have defeated all the gods of the nations, and Judah’s God would just be another victory for him. But the arrogance of unbelief and false ideas was his downfall. (2 Chron 32:21).
2. What a contrast with good king Hezekiah! Oh, he got a bit proud later on, it’s true, but then we all, like the Assyrian king, can be tempted to think more of ourselves than we should. No, it’s what the king of Judah did when he received the outrageous and vitriolic letter from his enemy that grabs me. I remember my father doing it when he received an unkind letter from someone on the fringe of the church, and I’ve done it myself, taking Hezekiah’s example. 2 Kings 19: 14 & 15 tells us he ‘received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD.’ That’s it – only the LORD God himself could sort it all out – and he did. Hezekiah humbly showed his utter dependence upon God, and, as if for God to read it himself, he lays it out before him. Can we in effect do that as we lay every burden, every unkind criticism, every worrying situation down before the Lord in prayer?
After all there’s much to worry about in the world, isn’t there? I think of the elderly lady who, after catching up on the headlines in her newspaper, would pray, “Lord, as you will have read in the paper this morning, there is such and such a problem …”, and she would lay it before her heavenly King—who knows the answer. Amen. So may we!
Steve Piggott
Elder
August 2016
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