Day 182: Don't Feast on This

Welcome to Day 182 of the Bible 365 Podcast! I'm so excited you are joining me on this journey through the entire Bible this year. Reminder that each episode in 2026 will have a brand new devotional.

Today we'll be reading through 2 Kings 18:13-37, 19; Acts 21:1-17; Psalm 149; and Proverbs 18:8. Invite a family member or friend to join you as we grow in our knowledge of God through His Word.

I'm so glad that you are here!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to day 182 of the Bible 365 podcast. My name is Randy Goudo, and today we're going to be reading through 2 Kings chapter 18 verses 13 through 37 and chapter 19, Acts chapter 21, verses 1 through 17, Psalm chapter 149, and Proverbs chapter 18, verse 8. The translation I'm using throughout this podcast is the Berean Standard Bible, also known as the BSB. Let's read. 2 Kings chapter 18, verses 13 through 37. In the fourteenth year of Hezekiah's reign, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, attacked and captured all the fortified cities of Judah. So Hezekiah, king of Judah, sent word to the king of Assyria at Lakish, saying, I have done wrong, withdraw from me, and I will pay whatever you demand from me. And the king of Assyria exacted from Hezekiah, king of Judah, three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the royal palace. At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold with which he had plated the doors and doorpost of the temple of the Lord, and he gave it to the king of Assyria. Nevertheless, the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rapsaris, and the Rabshaka, along with a great army, from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. They advanced up to Jerusalem and stationed themselves by the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the launderer's field. Then they called for the king, and Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator, Shabnah the scribe, and Joah, son of Asaph the recorder, went out to them. The Rabshaka said to them, Tell Hezekiah that this is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says. What is the basis of this confidence of yours? You claim to have a strategy and strength for war, but these are empty words. In whom are you now trusting that you have rebelled against me? Look now, you are trusting in Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff that will pierce the hand of anyone who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to all who trust in him. But if you say to me, We trust in the Lord our God, is he not the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, You must worship before this altar in Jerusalem. Now therefore, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you two thousand horses, if you can put riders on them. For how can you repel a single officer among the least of my master's servants, when you depend on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? So now, was it apart from the Lord that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord himself said to me, Go up against this land and destroy it. Then Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, along with Shebna and Joah, said to the Rabshaka, Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Do not speak with us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall. But the Rabshaka replied, Has my master sent me to speak these words only to you and your master, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are destined with you to eat their own dong and drink their own urine? Then the Rabshaka stood and called out loudly in Hebrew, Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. This is what the king says. Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you from my hand. Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the Lord when he says, The Lord will surely deliver us. This city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Do not listen to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says. Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and his own fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, so that you may live and not die. But do not listen to Hezekiah, for he misleads you when he says, The Lord will deliver us. Has the God of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Sephiravaeim, Hina, and Ivah? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? Who among all the gods of these lands has delivered his land from my hand? How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand? But the people remained silent and did not answer a word, for Hezekiah had commanded, Do not answer him. Then Hilkiah's son Eliakim, the palace administrator, Shabna the scribe, and Asaph's son Joah the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn, and they relayed to him the words of the Rapshaka. 2 Kings chapter 19. On hearing this report, King Hezekiah tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and entered the house of the Lord. And he sent Eliakim the palace administrator, Shebna the scribe, and the leading priest, all wearing sackcloth, to the prophet Isaiah, son of Amos to tell him, This is what Hezekiah says. Today is a day of distress, rebuke, and disgrace. For children have come to the point of birth, but there is no strength to deliver them. Perhaps the Lord your God will hear all the words of the Rabshaka, whom his master, the king of Assyria, has sent to defy the living God, and he will rebuke him for the words that the Lord your God has heard. Therefore, lift up a prayer for the remnant that still survives. So the servants of King Hezekiah went to Isaiah, who replied, Tell your master that this is what the Lord says. Do not be afraid of the words you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own land, where I will cause him to fall by the sword. When the Rabshaka heard that the king of Assyria had left Lachish, he withdrew and found the king fighting against Libna. Now Sennacherib had been warned about Turhakah, king of Cush. Look, he has set out to fight against you. So Sennacherib again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying, Give this message to Hezekiah, king of Judah. Do not let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you by saying that Jerusalem will not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria? Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the other countries, devoting them to destruction. Will you then be spared? Did the gods of the nations destroyed by my fathers rescue those nations? The gods of Gozan, Haran, and Rezeph? And of the people in Eden and Telassar? Where are the kings of Hamath, Arpad, Sephurvaim, Hena, and Iva? So Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers, read it, and went up to the house of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord. O Lord, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the heavens and the earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. Open your eyes, O Lord, and see. Listen to the words that Sennacherib has sent to defy the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste these nations and their lands. They have cast their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods, but only wood and stone, the work of human hands. And now, O Lord our God, please save us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, our God. Then Isaiah, son of Amos, sent a message to Hezekiah. This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. I have heard your prayer concerning Sennacherib, king of Assyria. This is the word that the Lord has spoken against him. The virgin daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you. The daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind you. Whom have you taunted and blasphemed? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride? Against the holy one of Israel. Through your servants you have taunted the Lord, and you have said, With my many chariots I have ascended to the heights of the mountains, to the remote peaks of Lebanon. I have cut down its tallest cedars, the finest of its cypresses. I have reached its farthest outpost, the densest of its forest. I have dug wells and drunk foreign waters. With the soles of my feet I have dried up all the streams of Egypt. Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it. In days of old I planned it. Now I have brought it to pass, that you should crush fortified cities into piles of rubble. Therefore their inhabitants, devoid of power, are dismayed and ashamed. They are like plants in the field, tender green shoots, grass on the rooftops, scorched before it is grown. But I know you're sitting down, you're going out and coming in, and you're raging against me. Because your rage and arrogance against me have reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth. I will send you back the way you came. And this will be a sign to you, O Hezekiah. This year you will eat what grows on its own, and in the second year what springs from the same. But in the third year you will sow and reap. You will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah will again take root below and bear fruit above. For a remnant will go forth from Jerusalem and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. So this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria. He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow into it. He will not come before it with the shield or build up a siege ramp against it. He will go back the way he came, and he will not enter this city, declares the Lord. I will defend this city and save it for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David. And that very night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down one hundred and eighty five thousand men in the camp of the Assyrians. When the people got up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies. So Sennacherib, king of Assyria, broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. One day, while he was worshipping in the temple of his god Nishrach, his sons Adrimelech and Sharesar put him to the sword and escaped to the land of Ararat, and his son Isar Hadan reigned in his place. Acts 21, verses 1 through 17. After we had torn ourselves away from them, we sailed directly to Kaz, and the next day on to Rhodes, and from there to Paterah. Finding a ship crossing over to Phoenicia, we boarded it and set sail. After sighting Cyprus and passing south of it, we sailed on to Syria and landed at Tyre, where the ship was to unload its cargo. We sought out the disciples in Tyre and stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they kept telling Paul not to go up to Jerusalem, but when our time there had ended, we set out on our journey. All the disciples, with their wives and children, accompanied us out of the city and knelt down on the beach to pray with us. And after we had said our farewells, we went aboard the ship and they returned home. When we had finished our voyage from Tyre, we landed at Ptolemaeus, where we greeted the brothers and stayed with them for a day. Leaving the next day, we went on to Caesarea and stayed at the home of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. After we had been there several days, a prophet named Agabas came down from Judea. Coming over to us, he took Paul's belt, bound his own feet and hands, and said, The Holy Spirit says, In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and hand him over to the Gentiles. When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. When he would not be dissuaded, we quieted down and said, The Lord's will be done. After these days we packed up and went on to Jerusalem. Some of the disciples from Caesarea accompanied us, and they took us to stay at the home of Nasan the Cypriot, an early disciple. When we arrived in Jerusalem, the brothers welcomed us joyfully. Psalm 149. Hallelujah! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly. Let Israel rejoice in their maker, let the children of Zion rejoice in their king. Let them praise his name with dancing, and make music to him with tambourine and harp. For the Lord takes pleasure in his people, he adorns the afflicted with salvation. Let the saints exult in glory, let them shout for joy upon their beds. May the high praises of God be in their mouths, and a double-edged sword in their hands, to inflict vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with shackles of iron, to execute the judgment written against them. This honor is for all his saints. Hallelujah. Proverbs eighteen, verse eight. The words of a gossip are like choice morsels that go down into the inmost being. Today's devotional is coming from that last verse which we just read, Proverbs chapter 18, verse 8. It says, The words of a gossip are like choice morsels that go down into the inmost being. In the ESV it says, The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels, they go down into the inner parts of the body. And now the NLT. Rumors are dainty morsels that sink deep into one's heart. I love reading various translations of this verse because I need a really good picture and understanding, a reminder of just how dangerous and bad gossip is. Being a gossiper, giving my ear to gossip, uh being privy to these whispering words that are floating around, the Bible says that those words, the very words that are being spoken are like delicious or choice, dainty morsels, and they don't just float around, but they go down into the inmost being, the inner parts of the body, deep into one's heart. They sink down there. You know, it's so easy to keep our ears open to our closest friends, to listen to, participate in those gossiping words, the words of a whisperer, those rumors that can be destructive to another person. It incapacitates our ability to pray for that person because all we can do is think and imagine the worst about that person. And you know, those words, they don't just go away, they sink down deep into the heart. I'm reminded of times that I've heard some whispering, rumor, words, gossip about somebody, and later found out that it wasn't true. And it was still difficult to shake those words that are heard because they don't just leave your ear, they sink down deep. I wonder how many times I have been that whisperer spreading gossip, spreading those ungodly words, those rumors that sunk down deep into somebody else's heart, and also how many times I've allowed my ears to be wide open, not realizing that I wasn't just hearing something, but I was having a meal. I was feasting on some delicious, dainty choice morsels that went down into my inmost being, the inner parts of my body into my heart. Today, by the grace of God, I want to be the kind of man who can reject that and not participate in that. Let's pray. Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus. Your word says that the words of a gossip are like choice morsels that go down into the inmost being. I ask you to forgive us for those times that we have participated in, and even give an ear to these whispering words of gossip and rumors. Help us to be men and women of courage and fortitude that we don't allow ourselves to participate or hear those things. Draw us close by the presence of your Holy Spirit and reveal your Son to us. We ask all these things in the precious name of Jesus. Amen. Well, I sure hope you enjoyed today's devotional. If you're getting something out of the Bible 365 podcast, consider sharing it with your family and with your friends. Please continue to pray for me. I am praying for you. Have a great day, and I'll see you tomorrow with day one eighty three.