No Sanity Required

Lessons Learned From Hezekiah on Faith and Failure

• Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 55:06

Last week, we wrestled with the fallout when a respected leader falls and the question it leaves behind: what hope is there for the rest of us?

This week, Brody looks at the life of King Hezekiah. He tore down idols, trusted God under the threat of Assyria, and saw miraculous deliverance, yet later stumbled in pride before Babylon. His story holds both faith and failure.

Brody also talks about approaching Scripture with humility, the daily fight with sin, and the kind of accountability that restores. It’s not about a spotless record, but about a life being continually conformed to God through sanctification.

What My Father's Fall Taught Me

Send a text

Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith.
Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

Picking Up After A Heavy Story

SPEAKER_01

In this week's episode of No Sanity Required, I'm gonna pick up where we ended things last week. That was a heavy conversation, and I've had a lot of feedback from that. I appreciate the feedback, especially from people that encouraged me that it was helpful. Um, but I wanna I want to follow up with a few more thoughts on some points of application and lessons that I think we can highlight and learn from my dad's story. But then also I want to go to the story of King Hezekiah that JB mentioned at the close of that episode last week. And I want to look at some things from King Hezekiah's life that I think could be very helpful, helpful. I think he's a guy that we can really identify with in a lot of ways. I'm thankful for people in the scripture that we identify with, guys like Peter, who, you know, we feel Peter's passion and intensity at serving the Lord in one moment and then his massive failure in another moment, I think we can identify with that. And one of the comments that was made in last week's episode or in response to last week's episode was that if if a man could have a master's degree, a ma a master's of divinity from a reputable seminary, he could have a doctoral degree from a different reputable seminary. He could be a professional, vocational, full-time pastor for almost two decades. If he could do all those things, read through the Bible till it's tattered and torn, and still fail the way that Larry Holloway failed, then what hope is there for us? And I would say there's hope in every way. There's more hope than you can even wrap your mind around. There's more hope than you or I or everybody that's ever lived needs. There's hope in abundance. And I want to look at the hope that we have and how it is that we can believe and trust and have confidence that we're not gonna fall to the degree of falling out of favor or grace with the Lord, but that we can put our hand to the plow, that we can grip the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, that we can stand on the wall, stand in the gap, we can live a life of faithfulness, even though that life might be marked by drastic failures. So I'm gonna do a couple of episodes here. This week we're gonna look at King Hezekiah. I'm gonna follow that up with an episode on King David and his response to the Lord in Psalm 51. And hopefully those will be very helpful in us understanding how it is that we that we navigate this complicated relationship that we have with sin, this complicated relationship that we have with doubt. What it all boils down to is not letting sin reign over me, not letting sin have dominion over me, but recognizing that I'm in a war and every single day I got to get up and fight. And some days I'm gonna take some shots. The greatest champions of all time have been knocked down. Many of them have been knocked out, and every single battle is not gonna be won, but I'm gonna fight with determination that I can win that battle and that I know I can win it if I walk in the Spirit and do it by the strength that the Lord supplies and provides. And we can learn those lessons. I'm gonna look today at King Hezekiah and hopefully it'll be helpful and encouraging. And this is gonna be a beyond the flannel graph as we just drop the tailgate, open the scriptures, and dive into an amazing story about a man that I think we can all identify with and learn from. Welcome to this week's episode of No Sanity Required.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to No Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe.

Sin’s Creep And Daily Warfare

Accountability And Gentle Correction

Pornography’s Destruction And Spiritual Danger

Charting A Life’s Trajectory

Setting The Stage: Assyria And Israel

Syncretism And Judgment In Samaria

Enter Hezekiah: Reform And Trust

Tribute, Fear, And A Siege

Isaiah’s Word And 185,000 Fall

Pride Before Babylon And Future Loss

Illness, Mercy, And Fifteen Years

SPEAKER_01

By the way, I've had a lot of requests recently to do an episode about Israel, modern Israel, modern Israel's government uh verses or compared to ancient Israel, um, what should the Christian's relationship be to modern Israel? Uh, things like that. So we'll probably do that at some point. Um we've not done it yet because it's it's not something that it's just not a priority on our list of the materials that we want to cover. Uh we have we have a pretty exhaustive list. We have a lot of guests coming on this spring. We have a lot of content that we really want to dive into and and uh subjects and passages that we want to talk about and cover. So I'm excited about the lineup, but today I want to follow up last week's episode by just saying I don't want you to be discouraged, don't want you to be encouraged. And a couple of main takeaways to to I think as we reflect on last week's episode. One is when you approach the scripture, it's important, and we made this point in that episode, it's important to approach the scripture in humility, I think with a degree of fear, with an admiration and a respect. We approach the scripture not as a textbook, it is not first and foremost academics or apologetics. It is the word of life for us. Uh the scripture tells us that all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable in so many ways for correcting us, for giving conviction to us, for training and leading us in righteousness. And I I want to approach the scripture. I would encourage you to read the Bible through and to and to do it as often as you can. Um, but I would also encourage you to not make that an exercise in just legalistic spirituality or religious behavior. But but read the scriptures as you would sit and meet with a sage, a king, a prophet, a priest that has authority over your life, but also has care and instruction for your life. And sit at the feet of Jesus when you open his word and read it. I think one of the things that uh people that fall into a very legalistic mindset about scripture, one of the things that they have to be careful of, or that they rather that they fall into is to open the word of God to teach it or to to go at somebody with it. I recently had a really good friend and we were having a conversation and he got accusatory and I got defensive, and we were sort of um working through that. But there was a point where I said, I felt I felt like at there was a point where you were coming at me, and I don't respond well to that. I respond well to conflict and I can work through difficult conversations, but don't come at me and I won't come at you. Let's sit down and have a conversation. Well, when it comes to the scripture, I gotta be careful that I don't take the word of God and then go at someone else with it. So as a as a preacher or a teacher, for those of us that teach the Bible, whether we're parents teaching our children or we're pastors teaching a congregation, I don't take the word of God and go at those people with it. I take the word of God and I say, thus saith the Lord. And then I, after I have submitted to that text and humbly responded to it myself, I then turn and look into the eyes of those hearers and I teach them what the scripture says, but I'm only saying what the scripture's saying. The Bible says that the word of God is living and active, and it's sharper than a double-edged sword. And if it's living and active, and if it's eternal in its nature and characteristics, the scripture says that the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our Lord stands forever. And if those things are true, and they are, then what I'm giving people is the word of God that is living and active. And so it's not my word, and so I don't need to come at them with it. I need to simply unlock the gate or the door and let the lion out. You know, let the word of God do its good work. And I think one of the things that happened that happens in in the lives of pastors and teachers, especially those that that veer off course, is that, man, they they stop submitting to the scripture. They no longer fear the Lord, they stop hating their sin. These are characteristics that that we've got to make sure that we we stay aware of. The relationship that a Christian has with sin is a very complicated relationship because it's real and it's there. And John says, if we say that we don't have sin in 1 John 1, if we say that we don't sin and we say that we don't have sin, then we're lying. We're liars and we're calling God a liar, and that's simply not true. I have sin in my life that I need to confront and deal with every day, but there's a creep effect of that sin. It creeps up and it and it grows if I allow it to. I've got to stay aware of it. I've got to constantly you see these passages of scripture like Psalm 51, where David says, I know my sin, it's ever before me. Or uh Paul saying in um in Romans chapter 13, to make no provision or opportunity for the flesh. Paul saying in Romans 8, put to death the deeds of the flesh, or make no provision for the flesh. Um I'm not under the dominion and power of sin. I have a relationship with sin, but I don't need to make opportunity or provision for it in my life, and I need to recognize that it's an enemy that I'm at war with. And the way that I understand this and the way it's helpful for me to process, and it's what we teach students, is I'm no longer under the penalty of sin. I'm no longer under the penalty of sin. I do, however, have to recognize the presence of sin in my life and root it out, which will sometimes lead me into combat against the power of sin, a spiritual warfare, the power of sin. I'm working, I'm fighting against the power of sin. So no longer under the penalty of sin. What's the penalty of sin? Death and hell and condemnation. I'm no longer under that. But I am at war with sin, so I'm working to fight against the power of sin. This is why Paul says we wrestle not against flesh and blood. We war not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. It's a it's spiritual and demonic forces that I'm wrestling with, that I'm at war with. And then I'm I've got to be aware of the presence of sin. And this is why John says in 1 John, if we say we don't have sin, we're lying. But if we confess our sin, he says in the next verse, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin. And so I gotta be aware of sin and I constantly bring that before the Lord and I constantly put it in front of me and I'm aware of it. Part of what I need for this to be, I think part of what's important here is accountability, transparency with others, people that'll speak into my life, people that'll say hard things to me. Most men don't like this. Most people in leadership don't want to be in a situation where someone might be able to confront something in their life, but I got to live that way. And I want to surround myself with people that care about me. I recently had a really strong friend and brother. I don't think I've mentioned this on here before, but he thought he saw me in a compromising situation with a woman that wasn't my wife. He thought that I was alone in a private place with this woman. And that was because uh I butt dialed this guy with my phone. I'd called him, talked to him, and then I accidentally re-dialed him. And I was having a conversation with several people, um, and it was work-related, but he only heard one voice and it was a female, and he recognized that voice, and he thought that I was alone someplace in a specific place with this woman. So he just he said, Hey man, I need to talk to you this couple days later. I said, What's going on? He said, Were you alone with so-and-so? And I was like, No, I wasn't alone with her. Um, and and by the way, the neck we've got an episode that we recorded this past Friday um where we talk about boundaries and parameters for men and women who are married, particularly people in ministry and in leadership. But no, I wouldn't be in a compromising situation with with that with that woman, with a with a woman that's not my wife. I wouldn't be alone in a you know, in a un not unsupervised, but you know what I'm saying? I wouldn't be alone with that person. Um, I would, I would, that would that would be outside of the parameters that I've got set. And so there's a need for accountability, but then also a need for people in our lives that'll say hard things, ask hard questions. I told that brother afterwards, I was like, hey man, I texted him later that day and I said, I it means a lot to me that you asked me about that. That tells me that you were watching out for me because he wasn't judgmental, he was genuinely concerned. So we need people in our lives that'll that'll ask hard questions and speak hard truths, and that's important. I don't think my dad had that. I think uh I think he had some folks that he was close with, but I don't think that he wasn't submitting to that kind of hard accountability and transparency. And I think that's that's important. So this is you'll see this principle throughout the scripture. One place is in uh Galatians 6, it says, bear one another's burdens, and in doing this you fulfill the law of Christ. And in that same passage, he says, brothers, if if one of you or a brother is overtaken in a fault or a sin, you who are spiritual, um let me let me just read this. I want to read this to you in the NLT. I've never read it on here in the NLT. Y'all, by the way, I've been just digging this New Living Translation. I love it. I can't recommend it enough. It's for us knuckle draggers, it's oh man, it's so easy to understand. This is Galatians 6.1 in the New Living Translation. Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly, and in the footnote, that word godly means is uh spiritual, or you, you know, you who are brothers in Christ. Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other's burdens and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you're too important to help someone, you're only fooling yourself. You're not that important. Love the way that's worded. Um, but it's a reminder that we're to we're to help each other on the right path. Listen to what James says about, and this is I'm kind of I'm speaking of being on the path, I'm off the path of what I want to cover in this episode. So this is going to go a little long now, I'd say, but um, that's okay. I really wanted to share these thoughts in response to last week's episode. Uh confess your sin. Let's see. This is James chapter five, verse 16. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. Um, and so then later in that he says, uh just a few verses down from there, my dear brothers and sisters, if someone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back, you can be sure that whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins. So in these in these passages, you've got this these principles of accountability and brotherhood and helping one another and encouraging one another. And so I think that's important. That's a takeaway. That's something we learned. So to that young man that said, What is the hope if this man could fall like this? Well, the hope is we lean into the truth of scripture and and God keeps us from falling in that same manner. Uh, here's the second takeaway from my dad's story is that pornography kills. It rapes the mind, it destroys your reality, it distorts and perverts God's plan for sexuality. I dare say there are very few of us listening to this right now who haven't been affected by pornography personally. We've all been affected in one way or another. Now I'm sure there might be someone here that's that's never fallen into that sin or struggled with that sin, but I dare say very few of us. I know for me it was a sin that I was exposed to at a very young age, and that being the age of about five or six through a neighbor boy who was eight. Uh, he they lived across the road from us, and his dad was uh into show horses. They had these show horses and they had a really big barn, and in that barn was uh a stack, uh a crate of Playboy magazines. Now, we've all heard a story similar to that, and for the younger generation, that may sound a little bit crazy because there's no need for something like that now because you've got accessibility with your telephone. Um but back then, when I was a kid, the way that you looked at pornography was through print material. This was even, we're talking about even before VHS tapes existed. So unless you had some sort of satellite TV programming, which back then looked way different than it does now, just it was not it was not an option. It was not something that you were gonna see. Um and so I saw at a young age a lot of pornographic images, and I'll tell you this that that pornography impacted me very demonically as a six-year-old kid. When I when I was exposed to that, um, because at that age, you know, it it was such a distorted thing in my mind because I hadn't been through puberty yet. And I remember that it affected me in a very negative and demonic way to the point that I would have these night terrors where I would wake up and I would be laying in bed unable to move, and I'm six years old, and there would be one of these women that I'd seen in these magazines would be standing at the end of my bed or sitting at the end of my bed staring at me, but it was not pleasant. It was very it was a very evil or wicked sort of feeling and presence. I think it was demonic. I think sexual perversion, when you look in the Old Testament, and don't do not miss what I'm saying here. When you look throughout the Old Testament, the sexual perversion of the pagan nations always ran in the same vein as their idol worship, their demonic activity. There was always like perverse sexual um deviance. And and so, you know, these pagan nations would would use prostitution and orgies in their worship services. Uh, even in the Corinthian church, there was prostitution, there were cult prostitutes. And you see in the New Testament, some of the scriptures address these things. Have you ever been reading in the New Testament and you see where it says, you know, stay away from orgies, and you're like, what in the world? Why would they say something like this? This is the idea of staying away from a place where there's, you know, large-scale sexual perversion going on. I think, and I think you could make an argument that in our era it looks different. In that era, people would come together for these big sexual these sex parties in the Roman Empire and the Greek and and and even further back in those uh cultures or these sexual perversions that would be mingled with the worship of their deities. But I think a warning for us would be when you're engaging in internet or online pornography, you're interacting in in an orgy or in a in a in a manner that others are interacting. Don't you know if you're watching a pornographic video and you're engaging in sexual acts, others are doing that same thing to that video. That's that's what Paul would call an orgy, I think. Now I might be off and you let me know if you think that's off, but sexual perversions are, man, they are addressed in scripture. And so I believe that when a pornography addiction hooks its claws into a person, man, if they don't fight hard to get out from under that, it's gonna destroy them. And I think that's what that that's my when I say I think that's what happened to my dad, I'm telling you that's what he told me. I mean, that came out of his mouth. He said to me one time, he explained to me that um the way that a heroin addict or uh some other drug addict is constantly chasing that the high from that dope, the dopamine dump, and then the the the high that they get from that drug, that you that's what a sex addict is doing. He's he's chasing that same high, and it's a dopamine rush, and it's all neurological as much as it's it's physiological in every way, but it's neurological in in the effect that it has on your brain and brain function. And so so I remember having that conversation with him, and um, and and it was like, man, this is very destructive, and and this is this is uh not just something that imprisons you, but it perverts and distorts and and and destroys you. And so I I I want to be clear that I think that the fight that many of us may have would be a fight for sexual purity in our minds and in what we see. So um so that's the second takeaway from from that is pornography, it destroys, it rapes the mind, it kills relationships, it perverts and distorts, and it ruins the way people are able to interact. It just does. And so that's the second takeaway. Um and then the the third thing that I would I would just transition into today's topic or content episode is this look at the trajectory of your life. I want you to I want you to visualize in your mind's eye right now something. Imagine you're looking at a wall, and on that wall, a white and there's a whiteboard, you know, a grease board, a whiteboard hanging on that wall. And I want you to imagine that the left side of that wall, it's it imagine a graph or a chart. So going up the left side of that wall and going across the base of that wall is that, you know, imagine that L shape. And in the bottom left corner is the day of your birth. It's the day of your birth. And the top right corner of that of that whiteboard is when you stand before the Lord. And as a Christian, what does that line look like for you? Is it a straight line where the trajectory is a constantly upward-moving trajectory? For some people, that the dot at the end is down there along that bottom line, and you just kind of flatline and stay in a flatlined place. But if you can imagine the trajectory of your life is a constantly progressing upward trajectory where you're growing more and more and more into the image of Christ. I hope this image is making sense. Now stay with me in this picture. So you're looking at this whiteboard and it's a graph, and from the bottom left corner to the top right corner is a line that goes at a 45-degree upward trajectory across this whiteboard. You could do the same thing on a piece of notebook paper if you turned it sideways. Now imagine that you can zoom in on that line. And what you find when you zoom in on that line is the closer you get into that line, the more you see there's some dips, there's some downward turns where you're going up, up, up, and all of a sudden, boom, you take a hard downward turn and you go down, and then boom, you turn and you come back up. So it's a zigzagging line, but the more you zoom out, the more you just see one long trajectory. The more you zoom in, the more you realize there were highs and lows along the way. Okay, imagine your life is like that. And if we zoom out and we looked at your life, the trajectory of your life is one of faithfulness, even though there's some lows and some crashes along the way. And we see examples of this in the scripture with men like Abraham. The scripture says Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. But but Abraham was he had some major failures and flaws. I mean, think about his adultery. You think about him giving his wife away to be another man's wife. I mean, this guy, he had major flaws, and yet he's he's marked by the trajectory of his life, which is one of faithfulness and obedience. And so I think we can learn from that, and uh, and and we can learn in an encouraging way. And so the other life that I think we can we can look at the trajectory of that that I want to spend the rest of our time here with is the that of King Hezekiah. And you find his story in 2 Kings really beginning in verse 18. But if we back up to verse I'm sorry, chapter 18, but if we back up to chapter 17, we get a little bit of um context and insight. So if we go back to chapter 17 to set the stage, what you've got is a divided kingdom in Israel. Um most of our listeners are probably going to be familiar to some degree with Israelite history, but there was a time after the reign of King Solomon, who was the son of King David, where this twelve this nation of twelve tribes fragmented and had a civil war and became two nations. So imagine if the United States during the civil war in this country, imagine if that war had ended in a successful secession of the Southern states, and you ended up with the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, and then each nation then established its own presidency, its own government, its own economy. But then at times there would be peace between the two countries. Kind of, I guess kind of like there's there's peace between the United States and the United Kingdom. Great Britain and the and and the United States are allies, even though at one point we fought a war. That's kind of how it was in Israel. And so there were seasons of um cooperation and and and peace, and then there were seasons of war. In these two kingdoms, there was a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. The southern kingdom is called the kingdom of Judah. And Hezekiah was a king in Judah, and there were about 20 kings in the history of each of these countries. Um, the 20 kings in the north, none of them followed the Lord. And in the south, about one in every three kings would follow the Lord. And so God judged both nations eventually, but he judged the northern kingdom first. And the southern kingdom experienced uh almost 200 years of of freedom after the northern kingdom fell. So for you know, you put that in the context of America. I mean, we're only about that that age now. You know, we're just a little bit older than the the number of years that the southern kingdom of Judah had autonomy and freedom while the northern kingdom of Israel was in captivity. But but what we do is we what I want to do is I want to pick up the story where the northern kingdom of Israel, the Bible says in 2 Kings 17, Hoshea son of Elah, began to rule over Israel in the twelfth year of King Ahaz's reign in Judah. He reigned in Samaria nine years. He did what was evil in the Lord's sight, but not to the same extent as the kings of Israel who ruled before him. King Shalomazar of Assyria attacked King Hoshea. I'll explain these names in a minute. So Hoshea was forced to pay heavy tribute to Assyria. So if you know much about Assyria, the Assyrians were a very powerful, sort of localized but world empire. You know, the world was so small back then, and the Assyrians they dominated a large portion of the world. You can do your own, um, you can do your own homework on that. The Assyrian Empire was the center of that empire would have been Babylon, which is you know so figurative throughout scripture. But the Assyrians were like when you remember the story of Jonah, the city of Nineveh, that was Assyria. And so Jonah, he didn't want to go take God's salvation to the Assyrians because he hated them, because they were pagans who did terrible things to God's people. And this is one of those stories where they did terrible things to God's people. 2 Kings 17, they they take over the people of Israel. And what they do when they do this, if you study 2 Kings 17, is they tear down any sign of like the spiritual worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel, and they uh they do terrible things to the people of Israel. I mean, terrible things. Like it says, this disaster came on the people of Israel because they worshipped other gods. They sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them safely out of Egypt, and had rescued them from the power of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. They had followed the practices of the pagan nations the Yah the Lord had driven, that Yahweh had driven from the land ahead of them, as well as the practices the kings of Israel had introduced. The people of Israel had also done secretly many things that were not pleasing to the Lord their God. They built pagan shrines for themselves and their towns from the smallest outpost to the largest walled city. They set up sacred pillars and ashera poles at the top of every hill and every and under every green tree. They offered sacrifices on all the hilltops just like the nations the Lord had driven from the land ahead of them. So the people of Israel had done many evil things arousing the Lord's anger. Yes, they worshipped idols despite the Lord's specific and repeated warnings. Again and again the Lord has sent his prophets and seers to warn both Israel and Judah, turn from your evil ways, obey my commands and decrees, the entire law that I commanded your ancestors to obey, and that I gave you through my servants the prophets. But the Israelites would not listen. They were as stubborn as their ancestors who had refused to believe in the Lord their God. They rejected his decrees and covenant the covenant he had made with their ancestors, and they despised all his warnings. They worshipped worthless idols, so they became worthless themselves. They followed the example of the nations around them, disobeying the Lord's command not to imitate them. They rejected all the commands of the Lord their God, and made two calves from metal. They set up an asheropole and worshipped Baal, or Baal, as most of us call him, worshiped Baal and all the forces of heaven. They even sacrificed their own sons and daughters in the fire. They consulted fortune tellers and practiced sorcery and sold themselves to evil, arousing the Lord's anger. Because the Lord was very angry with Israel, he swept them away from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah remained in the land. But even the people of Judah refused to obey the commands of the Lord their God, for they followed the evil practices that Israel had introduced. The Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel. He punished them by handing them over to their attackers until he had banished Israel from his presence. For when the Lord tore Israel away from the kingdom of David, they chose Jeroboam, son of Nebot, as their king. But Jeroboam drew Israel away from following the Lord and made them commit a great sin. And the people of Israel persisted in all the evil ways of Jeroboam. They did not turn from these sins until the Lord finally swept them away from his presence, just as all his prophets had warned. So Israel was exiled from their land to Assyria, where they remain to this day. The king of Assyria transported groups of people from Babylon, Kutha, Ava, Hamath, and Sephravam, and resettled them in the towns of Samaria, replacing the people of Israel. They took possession of Samaria and lived in its towns. But since these foreign settlers did not worship the Lord when they arrived, the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. That's a crazy little line in the story. So a message was sent to the king of Assyria. There's a principle here. I'm going to stop right here and say a couple things. So just to make sure you understand what's going on in the story, because of years of pagan worship and sexual perversion, you hear twice there he mentioned Asherah poles. These were phallic type idols that were used in the worship of pagan deities. You hear him mention there that they they sacrificed their own children into the fires. We know that those fires were the fires that burned in sacrificial offerings to a god called Mulloch, which was a demon god that the pagans worshipped. You hear him mention Baal or Baal there. So the Israelites had gone the way of the world. They were doing what the world was doing, worshiping in the way the world was worshiping, practicing the sexual perversions that the world was practicing. We know from other passages that they had taken pagan prostitutes and wives. And um, so there was just a lot of perversion in the land. So God sent judgment, and he sent judgment in the form of Assyria. There's another prophet that writes about this, his name's Habakkuk, where he's crying out to God and he's saying, Why don't you judge your people? They're so they're so idolatrous, and we've preached and they reject our message. And God says, Oh, I'm gonna judge them. I'm gonna judge them by the hand of the Assyrians. I'm gonna send the Assyrians to judge them. And it really freaks Habakkuk out. He's like, Oh man, you're gonna judge these people by sending a pagan nation that's gonna rape and pillage and destroy lives and homes. And man, I just wanted you to bring some sort of I don't know what he thought judgment meant, but when God tells him what he's gonna do, he freaks out. And God says, Oh, don't worry, I'm gonna judge the Assyrians for judging Israel. And you get this, you get this glimpse into the way God often will work in his sovereign plan. He'll use the the evil works of men in a way that ultimately brings about his good or his glory and the good of his people. So the Assyrians come in and they they basically destroy Israelite life, which the Israelites had already destroyed it by worshiping these pagan deities. The Assyrians destroy, they they inhabit their their cities, they haul all their people off. There's one scene where they haul all of these Israelites off to these and they put them in these refugee camps, these exile camps along this river, this tributary. So imagine just a muddy, imagine a desolate wasteland with a river running through the middle of it that's muddy and dirty, and just encampments like concentration camps along these river this river, and it's just horrible living conditions. That's where all of the inhabitants of Israel are moved to, and then their their nicer lands and fields and farms are then taken over by these pagan people. And this it's like basically it's a reverse of what God had done with Israel when they came into the promised land. So if you go back, when they came into the promised land, God said, I'm gonna give you farms and vineyards you didn't plant, I'm gonna give you houses you didn't build, cities you didn't establish, and you're gonna inhabit those. Well, now the same thing is happening to Israel. Another uh people have come and taken over their farms and vineyards and lands and cities and houses, and so that's what's happening. So um then God sends judgment on the Assyrians. So it's crazy. Just because it feels like, man, where's God, where's the justice in all this? Because the Israelites are being punished, doesn't mean that God isn't going to judge those Assyrians that are doing the committing these atrocities. And he does that, and he sends lines to these lions come in among the people and are killing them. It's crazy. And so then the Assyrians are like, well, it's because we've angered the God of the Israelites. And so they bring in these Israelite priests, and they're like, hey, we need what we need is we need some holy men here to basically blend the worship of our deities with the deity of this land. And it's a crazy scene. It says, uh, let me let me read. One of the priests who had been exiled from Samaria returned to Bethel and taught the new residents how to worship the Lord. So you got this priest that comes back and says, Okay, let me teach y'all how to worship Yahweh. And he begins to teach them how the Israelites worship the Lord. But these various groups of foreigners also continued to worship their own gods. So you end up with this sort of synchronistic, let's worship our pagan deities, but let's also sacrifice, you know, according to the Levitical law, and they're blending these religions. I saw this when I was in Togo, West Africa, when we were originally scouting that area to see if it was an area that we were gonna partner with some folks to to do some work there. And we did, we eventually did, and now there's a snowbird family that lives there. But there was um there was a temple, the temple to the python, because the religion there is voodoo, and in voodoo they worship the serpent. They worship Satan, they worship demons, they worship the serpent. The snake is the deity. And so we're at the temple of the python, and I'm talking to this priest, and there's there's 300 pythons in this temple. I mean, you're literally I'm you're standing on the edge of the room, and you can see 300 pythons laying in the floor. Y'all, it's the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. There's snakes. We're in a round, but this round circular temple, and there's 300 pythons laying in the floor, and they use them in these different ways in their worship practices. And so I I explained to this priest the proto-evangelion, the first gospel proclaimed in Genesis 3, which is that the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. And I explained that Jesus has come and crushed the head of the serpent. And this priest literally points across the street from this temple, and across the street there's a large Catholic church. And he said, I go to Mass there on Sundays, but or on Saturday evenings, I think it was. And he said, But we worship here at the temple to the python on Thursdays and Sundays. And it was this idea of syncretism. Let's worship multiple deities, let's not, let's kind of spread our affections out, let's spread our allegiances out to make sure we cover our bases. That's what the Assyrians were doing. And so it's it was just sheer chaos in Israel at this time. But meanwhile, in the in the country to the south, in Judah, there's a king that has come to the throne as a young man, and his name is Hezekiah. And we get introduced to him in 2 Kings 18. And that this is where after these after this entire episode here, this is where I want to land. I want to learn some things from Hezekiah that I think will give us some encouragement in our own lives. Second Kings 18, one Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, began to rule over Judah in the third year of King Hoshea's reign in Israel. So that king in Israel that got conquered and defeated by the Assyrians, he's reigning at the same time that this guy, Hezekiah, is reigning, and they're just reigning in neighboring countries. And their reigns start within three years of each other. So within one modern presidential term, you've got these guys are contemporaries. He was twenty-five years old when he became king. Now, to be clear, they didn't have four-year terms then. It was you were king for life, you know, as a monarchy. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. So this guy reigned for almost three decades as king. So he was in his fifties when he died. His mother was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. He did what was pleasing in the Lord's sight, just as his ancestor David had done. He removed the pagan shrines, smashed the sacred pillars, cut down the Asherah poles, he broke up the bronze serpent that Moses had made because of the people of Israel, because the people of Israel had been offering sacrifices to it. The bronze serpent was called Nahushton. Hezekiah trusted in Yahweh, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before or after his time. He remained faithful to the Lord in everything, and he carefully obeyed all the commands the Lord had given Moses. So the Lord was with him, and Hezekiah was successful in everything he did. He revolted against the king of Assyria and refused to pay him tribute. He also conquered the Philistines as far distant as Gaza and its territory from their smallest outpost to their largest walled city. So you read the description of this man, and it's like he honored the Lord. He was faithful, he was obedient, he went, he he followed the ways of Yahweh, he was faithful all the days of his life. That's how he's introduced. But if you read the next few chapters of the Bible, what you learn is that this man flopped and floundered and failed often. And it's really interesting that he's described as a faithful person. Again, it reminds me of Abraham, who is called, you know, the example of faithfulness. So what happens is this guy, Hezekiah, is king when that invasion that we just read about in northern, in northern Israel takes place. This this Assyrian king, he turns on the southern kingdom of Judah. And so after he conquers Israel and exiles all their people and puts them in these refugee camps, he's like, Let's go get their neighbor, let's go get Judah, their sister nation to the south. So a few years later, he goes, uh, he he brings his army and his name's King Sennacherib, and he comes to attack the fortified towns of Judah, and and and he conquers them. And he sends a message back to this this uh um King Hezekiah sends a message to the king of Lakish and says, Hey, you're conquering my cities, let me pay you some tribute to leave us alone. So here, this man who's described as faithful to the Lord, when this pagan king starts to attack his cities rather than trust the Lord and and and mobilize his army and go to fight him, he says, Let me send you some tribute. And what he does next is mind-blowing. He strips the gold and silver from the temple. He takes all the treasures of Egypt that God had sent with the Israelites to use in their temple and to use um in their worship. And he gives all of it, he packs it up and he sends it as like a tribute slash ransom to this king from Assyria and says, Don't attack us. Here, we'll give you a bunch of money and just leave us alone. Look, you got all of our wealthy, uh, expensive treasures. Now just leave us alone, let us be. Well, you can't negotiate with somebody like that. So that just infuri invigorates that guy. So then he's like, Oh, it don't work that way, boss. Well, we're gonna take all your gold, we're gonna take all your silver, and we're still gonna come and we're gonna take your cities, we're gonna take your women and children, we're gonna rape your girls and make them our our the wives of our men. we're gonna we're gonna destroy your society as you know it we're gonna we're gonna enslave the men that are are worth enslaving and we'll kill off the rest of them and so then Hezekiah man he's freaking out and so he goes to he goes to the prophet Isaiah there's this scene in the story where the the the captain or the commander of the Assyrian army he comes near to the walls of the city um to to negotiate surrender because they've got Jerusalem under siege and King Hezekiah sends his his chief of staff and two other guys like three cabinet members he sends them out to negotiate with this guy and this guy basically tells him hey we're getting ready to destroy your city and he starts to yell to the people in the city where they can hear him and he's telling them what he's going to do just to invoke fear just sheer horror you know and so um there's this freakout moment and King Hezekiah just turns to the Lord and he's just pleading with the Lord and he's begging God to deliver him and um and then he goes to Isaiah the prophet and he's like what are we supposed to do? And then Isaiah says don't worry God's going to deliver you and so he gets a word from the Lord that they're gonna be delivered and it's crazy because this is the story you might be familiar with it where that night the angel of the Lord goes through the Assyrian army encampment. There's 185,000 soldiers that have surrounded that city. At one point he's taunting King Hezekiah and he's like hey we'll give you we'll give you a couple thousand chariots and horses but you don't even have enough men to mount an army to fight us. This is going to be easy. We're gonna walk through this city and do what we want to do. And that night this angel of the Lord goes out and 185,000 troops are struck down and they die. I don't know what happened I don't know what that looked like I just know 1850 the whole army is decimated. And that king and that the he's gone he had left to go on another campaign and he gets killed by a couple of his sons and you can you can cross reference this into there there's a couple of ancient documents that have been unearthed anthropologically and archaeologically that um that tell this story but he's killed by a couple of his sons and the Assyrian Empire begins to disintegrate and fall apart and it's crazy. Like this is the beginning of the end for them and God preserves Hezekiah and Israel. So you're like okay here's a man that he had a he had a moment he had a glitch he tried to negotiate with this guy rather than trust the Lord but the Lord um still ended up you know delivering him because he eventually did turn to the Lord and then right after that another story happens where the king of Babylon sends an envoy an entourage to come visit with him and Babylon's this sort of upstart this up and coming nation that's kind of branching off from within the Assyrian Empire that's going to overthrow the Assyrian Empire and they're actually a much more sophisticated nation that becomes a very sophisticated empire. And they send an envoy to talk with King Hezekiah and he he makes a terrible mistake and he's very boastful and arrogant to them. And as a result God says man you've messed up and what's going to happen now because of your pride is that your your grandsons a hundred years from now are going to be castrated and turned into eunuchs in the court of the king of Babylon and that happens it happens in the book of Daniel Daniel and those guys are the grandsons to this king Hezekiah so a hundred years later Daniel and all of the most promising young men of Judah are carried away into Babylon they're castrated they're made eunuchs and put into the slave service to the king and so Hezekiah's arrogance and pride in that moment not only does it does it cost Judah but it like it it costs generations of his ancestors or his descendants rather and so this guy Hezekiah man he's just got this up and down up and down up and down struggle in his life say all that to say go back to the way he's described and he's described as someone who is faithful. There's even one story in Hezekiah in Hezekiah's story there's one scene where it's crazy he uh he's he gets diagnosed with a terminal illness and he pleads he goes before the Lord he humbles himself and so we see his humility and he asks God to deliver him and God spares his life and gives him 15 more years of life it's pretty crazy and he's very obedient and humble and submissive to the Lord in that but I want to go back it says Hezekiah trusted in the Lord. This is how he's introduced to us the God of Israel there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah either before or after his time he remained faithful to the Lord in everything. So the Lord was with him. So it says that even though it also says that he um tried to negotiate with the pagan king and he and he gave away all the greatest temple gifts and treasury that God had given as that those that was an incredible gift from the Lord when they came out of is uh out of Egypt and he just gave it as as tribute to this pagan king. That wasn't God's design or plan for that but that's what he did. And so you see these huge you know hiccups in his ministry in his life and and at what you know at that one point he's marked more by fear than courage and then at the end of his life uh towards the end of his life then he has that moment of arrogance with the Babylonian envoy and and yet the Lord says hey I got you man you the overarching trajectory of his life is one of faithfulness. Same thing with Peter Peter denies the Lord three times Peter has the crash in the ocean when he tries to walk on the water Peter is confronted by Paul because he's years after Jesus's ascension Peter has kind of fallen back into his old ways you look at this guy's life and you're like man this guy was up and down and we see that often so what I want us to be encouraged by is the examples in scripture like King David, King Hezekiah, the Apostle Peter, men that made huge mistakes and yet the Lord was very faithful through their lives and the trajectory on that chart if you zoom in on the graph the trajectory of your life there's going to be some ups and downs some highs and lows but if we zoom out and look at the big picture the trajectory of your life can be one of faithfulness and I hope that it will be as a husband as a wife as a father as a son as a brother as a sister as a daughter as a mom whatever whatever role you're playing as an employer as a supervisor as a teacher coach pastor as a self-employed person it's spending most of your time alone whatever you whatever God's called you into you can be faithful in the big things and the little things and just remember we that was a principle we talked about in last week's episode little things are big things the little things pile up and you so you've got to guard and watch your holiness and make no opportunity for the flesh I love I love this verse Okay here it is first John chapter three this this passage these few verses dear children don't let anyone deceive you about this when people do what is right it shows that they are righteous even as Christ is righteous. But when people keep on sinning it shows that they belong to the devil who has been sinning since the beginning but the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil those who have who have been born into God's family do not make a practice of sinning because God's life is in them. So they can't keep on sinning because they're children of God. So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers does not belong to God. So the the message he's given there is hey the the trajectory of your life is not to practice sinning. In other words to make that your habit or your practice and then to to remember that 1 Thessalonians chapter one says that Jesus is the one who's rescued us from the terrors of coming judgment or from the judgment to come there's a judgment that's coming and as Christians we've been set free from condemnation so we need to live in in that freedom and just live in the freedom that Christ has given us and promised to us and and know that man we greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world the scripture says in 1 John and that in Romans 8 through Christ we overwhelmingly conquer your relationship with sin is now one of of battle and war and uh and entanglement and there are going to be times where you're gonna fall make mistakes but the trajectory of your life can be one of faithfulness and like Hezekiah and David you make those mistakes you just turn back to the Lord and you continue growing you can do that you really can come to God's word in humility submit to it daily it is life for your soul and your mind and and um you can remain faithful I'm telling you man there are those examples who remain fa who have remained faithful and you can become one of those examples. That's my goal is to be faithful to the end. I just want to be faithful always to the end knowing that there will be failures along the way and and you can rejoice in that and be excited about it. It's worth celebrating so I hope that you will thank you for listening for for joining uh this journey on no sanity required it's it's something that we're continuing to learn as we go and as we're starting to film a lot of these episodes didn't film this one but as we're starting to film and prepare our YouTube channel and Instagram and all that I'm excited to start getting that stuff up and running and we're just collecting content right now for that but um just appreciate your feedback and your support and just kind of blown away by how big this thing's gotten and how many people are being impacted weekly by it and just reminded that the Lord's using it and I'm thankful for that. So we want to be faithful with it. So pray for us we appreciate you and um we're so grateful that you tune in. Y'all have an awesome week we'll see you in the next episode thanks for listening to No Sanity Required.

SPEAKER_00

Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating it really helps. Visit us at swooutfitters.com to see all of our programming and resources and we'll see you next week on No Sanity Required.

Contributor

Brody Holloway

Host