The Power of Influence

Welcome to our women's Bible study on 1st and 2nd Kings, which is entitled Learning from Leaders. And today we're going to cover 2nd Kings, chapters 18 to 21, which is primarily learning from the life of Hezekiah. I'm not sure I have ever run into a baby Hezekiah. Does anyone have a child in their family named Hezekiah? It's just not one of those Bible names that moms like to use, but it's a great it's a great namesake. Let's take a look at our chart of kings for today, week today. Of course, on the Israel side, on the kings of Israel side, they've all been taken into captivity in Syria. And so nothing there. On the Judah side, we have Hezekiah, his son Manasseh, and his son Ammon. And so that's what we're going to be looking at today. So chapter 18, verse 1, begins this way.

Now, it's noteworthy for us here to remember that Hezekiah is the son of Ahaz. Ahaz. And so he led right on the tails of him. Now, everyone who had been living through the days of Ahaz lived through some pretty terrible times. And they probably thought Judah was finished. It was the end of the world. They had a rotten leader. Nothing is ever going to get better again. Israel, when Hezekiah started ruling, had not yet been taken captive into Assyria, but things were a mess up there. And things had been a mess in Judah as well because Ahaz had made things a mess. For example, he had made a treaty with the king of Assyria to give all this gold and silver. So gold and silver was going out the back door on the regular to the king of Assyria. And do you remember he had seen that very beautiful progressive altar in Damascus and wrote back and said, I want that in the temple of the Lord. And so no one, no God fearing people in Judah probably thought they could ever recover from such terrible leadership. But we find in verse three, it says

Now, one of the choices that he made is given there. He rebelled against the king of Assyria, and he would not serve him, which means he stopped sending the gold and the silver to the king of Assyria like his dad had done. So just to kind of recap, the first half of his reign, the first 14 years, was pretty prosperous times in Judah. Six years into his reign, Assyria had besieged Samaria and led Israel off into captivity. That was last week's lesson. But there wasn't that much fuss with Judah yet until eight more years into his reign, and then the fuss started with Judah. Things began to change. Middle of verse 13, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah, and he took them. Now, this was a bold move. So Hezekiah had said, no more gold, no more silver. I'm stopping this. So Sennacherib said, OK, I'll just take your towns then. If you're not going to do what your dad did, then I'll just come in and take your towns. That's kind of a declaration of war, you know. So Hezekiah started with some diplomacy. In the middle of verse 14, he told Sennacherib, look, if I've done wrong, withdraw from me. Whatever you impose on me, I will bear. And the king of Assyria required 300 talents of silver and 30 talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house. And at that time, Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the doorpost that Hezekiah, king of Judah, had overlaid, and he gave it to the king of Assyria. And I think about the people who actually physically did that work, like craftsmen, building, overlaying these doors with gold must have been a great task to do. What about the guys who had to strip it all down and then send it out the door? Must have been. But I feel like Hezekiah was doing it for a good reason. It's like someone is threatening your kids and you get out the checkbooks. Like, what do you want? Because you're protecting. He was trying to protect these cities that Assyria was taking. And, you know, he probably naively hoped that the silver and gold going to Assyria was going to satisfy their appetite. They would stop fussing and everybody would live in peace again. But bullies are never satisfied and they will always come back for more. And that's one thing we learn in this passage. Bullies are never satisfied. But there's another thing that we learn that begins here and it's very important for us. And that is the parallel that we see between Hezekiah's enemy, who was the king of Assyria, and our spiritual enemy, who is Satan. And we're going to begin to look at those parallels. Just like the king of Assyria, Satan is a bully. He's never satisfied. He will never give up until we completely bend to his wishes, his worldview, because that's his nature. The Bible says his nature is to steal, to kill and to destroy. So I've decided to make our chart this week based on that concept. The chart is going to show us some of Hezekiah's problems in life, his problems and solutions. So the first thing that we see here, problem number one, is the voice of the enemy. So let's see in our text what that looked like in the moment. Verse 17, the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rabsuris and the Rabschika with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And they went up and they came to Jerusalem. And when they arrived, they came and they stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the washer's field. Now, notice the king did not come himself. He used other people to convey his message. And have you noticed in our lives that Satan uses other people to convey his message to us? It's shocking sometimes how much the voice of our friends or our family or people around us sounds like the voice of the enemy. You know, they don't they probably don't mean to cast doubt in our hearts. They probably don't mean to. Maybe they're unaware of really what their words convey. They don't mean to. Maybe they do mean to. I don't know. But look at verse 19. And the Rabschika said, say to Hezekiah, thus says the great king, the king of Assyria, on what do you rest this trust of yours? And here's problem number two for this week, when trust is tested. And I decided to make that the title for this week's lesson. When our trust is tested, the question that he asked is a really fair question. On what do you rest this trust of yours? In verse 20, it goes on to say, in whom do you now trust? Like that's a good question to ask people. So we're Christians, we're Americans. Our dollar bill says in God we trust. That's the Sunday school answer. You know, who do you trust? In God we trust. So funny story. I landed on Wednesday and I went to my daughter's house in Meridian and we had dinner before I came home. And my little five year old granddaughter, Rosie, had decided to make a gospel presentation. And so she had tickets that she had done and she hands us all tickets after dinner to come into the living room for her gospel presentation. And so we all hand in our tickets and we sit down and she has a magic marker for a microphone. And she's beginning to explain to all of us why it was so important that Jesus came into the world at Christmas. Because we're all sinners. We all have sin. And he came to die so that we could be forgiven of our sins and live with him. And then she says, she says, I would like to know who in this room has put their trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. And like all of our hands are just shooting right up. And my son said, well, there's a lot of peer pressure going on here. But anyway, she was asking the question, in whom do you trust? And we all knew the proper answer, like we better say, yes. I told Nelly, I said, she is ready to teach Sunday school. Just get her a Sunday school class, she's ready to go. But how do we really respond, okay, when something or someone comes along to test our trust? Hezekiah's trust here, the people's trust, wasn't even tested by truth. It will be tested by false assumptions, untrue statements, and threats. And sometimes that's how it is for us, too. So what I'm going to do here now is put on the slide, I have six false assumptions and untrue statements that were thrown at Hezekiah and his people, and I'm just giving you all of them at once so that you can take a picture if you want, you don't have to take your time writing them down. But this is what we see, this is what I saw in the passage, six ways that our trust is tested. Untrue statement number one, that they really didn't even trust in God. Here's how it came out in verse 21, behold, you're trusting now in Egypt that broken reed of a staff. Well, that wasn't true, they weren't trusting in Egypt. But in our lives, somebody tosses out an untrue statement to us or some kind of an assumption and it throws us off our feet and we think, well, where'd you get that from? Why are you doing that? And what is it? It's a distraction. It's just a spiritual distraction. It's like, it's not even true, but we can get high centered on it and like, okay, I got to stop and I got to figure this all out now. And so we can't afford to entertain emotional or spiritual distractions. Look at untrue statement number two, was that God was mad at them. Verse 22, if you say to me, we trust in the Lord our God, is not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed? So this was completely ignorant on their part. They said, you removed all the high places and altars, God's mad at you because you did that. Well, that's ignorant. Of course, God wasn't mad at them. But again, this untrue statement to get them thrown off their feet and to get them, you know, kind of off on a distraction. And it shows sometimes how very little the voice of the enemy even understands about our relationship with God. Untrue statement number three, that God had made plans to destroy them. And here's what they said, verse 25, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, go up against this land and destroy it. And the voice of the enemy here said that God told them to punish Judah. That was not true. It's so easy sometimes for someone's words to get us to believe that God is mad at us. God has sent punishment our way for something that we did or something that we didn't do. And we begin to entertain this idea. God's mad at me. He's waiting. He's lurking around the corner to bring punishment on me. And we seem to be hardwired to want to believe that. I find that that's kind of a natural thing with human beings. We just kind of naturally think, God's going to punish me pretty soon. Well, in this story, one of Hezekiah's officials here, he said, can you please not talk in the language of the people because you're really upsetting them. Well, that's exactly what they intended to do. And so in verse 28, the rabbi stood up and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah, hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. And then he launched three more volleys at them. So untrue statement number four was that their leader was deceiving them. Look at verse 29. He said, do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying, the Lord will surely deliver us and the city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Now Hezekiah was not there when these words were spoken. And so accusing him was the enemy's way of bringing division. He's not there to defend himself. So he just starts saying things bad about Hezekiah. And that happens in our lives too. The enemy will use someone's words to sow division between people, particularly when they're not there to defend themselves, accusing them to one another. And then here comes untrue statement number five, that they would actually prosper in another world, that the enemy's world isn't really so different than God's world. And look how the words are formed. Verse 31, do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, make your peace with me and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat of his own vine, his own fig tree, and drink water from his own cistern until I come and take you away to a land just like your own, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live and not die. And so what they were saying is, it's going to be so good when we take you to Assyria. It's going to be just like what you've experienced here. You're going to love it. And sometimes we face that same temptation, that our enemy wears us down, telling us that life in the ways of the world actually is really similar to in the ways of the Lord. And if we would just sort of compromise a little bit, we'd be happy. We'd be prosperous. We would be flourishing if we just would go along with the ways of the world. Untrue statement number six, which is actually more of a threat, resistance would be futile. Wasn't there an old, like Star Trek, like the Borg, resistance is futile? That's what I think of. Ezekiel, verse 32, do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying the Lord will deliver us. Has any of the gods of any of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? So they boasted that no one has ever been able to stand before them. This is their destiny. And sometimes we think too, when we look around, we're like, living the life of a Christian is futile. Like, there's, everybody is on the other side. It just seems so overwhelming to us, but it was really a threat here. But what I love about this narrative is that the people of Judah are way smarter than they look and they seemed prepared for all these falsehoods, all these assumptions, and even the threats. Look at verse 36, but the people were silent and they answered not a word, for the king's command was, do not answer him. Then Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebna the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder, came to Hezekiah with their clothes torn and told them all the words of the rabshakeh. Now before we head into chapter 19, I want to just take a minute here to once again talk about how familiar to us all of these accusations can be. And so we ask ourselves the question, does my inner voice ever tell me that God's mad at me and that that's the reason for the trouble in my life? Have I ever wondered if what I have put my trust in is real? I bet almost every one of your kids came to you at some point and said, I wonder if what we believe is real. I wonder if it's the real way, right? Is God's word and his way even true? Is it worth it? And then have other people's words, family or friends, ever made me think, you know, I might be happier if I just relaxed my views in life and just sort of followed into the other side. So if these thoughts have never crossed your mind, that's great, but they will. There will be a time when your trust is tested. And that is the point of this lesson, when trust is tested, because it will happen. What I really like is the answer here that they gave, Hezekiah's command was, do not answer him. Do not answer. Do not engage the voice of the enemy. I really like that because I feel like in some of my experience, Christians maybe erred a little bit on the side of just starting in with a fight, you know, just ready for a fight. Like I'm going to fight the enemy. I like this advice quite a bit here. Do not answer him. Just move along. Okay. Well, what, what should we do then? If we're not going to give answer, what should we do? Well, let's see. That's what chapter 19 is about. So let's move right into what Hezekiah did in the midst of this trouble. Okay. Verse one says, as soon as King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes and he covered himself with sackcloth. And he went into the house of the Lord and he sent Eliakim and Shebna and the senior priest covered with sackcloth to the prophet Isaiah. So I want to, I want us to note the steps that Hezekiah took instead of answering the voice of the enemy. This is what he did. Back to our chart here that shows the solutions to the troubles that he was facing. Solution number one, he humbled himself. And his sign of humbling himself was tearing his clothes and putting on sackcloth. That was an expression on the outside of what was happening on the inside. And what was happening on the inside was humility. The last thing we need, what we can't afford to do when our faith is tested, when our trust is tested, is to remain prideful. The last thing we need to do is say, I got this. No, we don't. We don't got it. Like, we need to come humbly before the Lord. Next thing he did, number two, he retreated to a safe place in order to focus. And I love that Hezekiah immediately went to the house of the Lord. Where do you go when you are troubled with something? Do you have a safe place like that? Do you go for a walk? Do you get out into nature? Do you do the Susanna Wesley thing and take your apron and put it over your head and get with the Lord? Do you have some place? It doesn't have to be some grand place. You don't have to go find a cathedral, but some place that you feel like this is me and the Lord. If you don't ever, if you've never created a place like that, do it. It can be a corner of your bedroom. It can be your porch. It can be someplace. But I like going to a place known to you and the Lord in order to refocus. And then third, he sought the help of like-minded people. Hezekiah sent for Isaiah, and he didn't sugarcoat the message. He goes, we are in trouble. Like, this is big trouble here. This is like at the point of giving birth to a child and the strength is gone. That's how big this trouble is. And I think that we can learn from that, too, to seek out the help of like-minded people. When we are facing big trouble, whether it's emotional trouble, like my faith is weak or it's being tested right now or whatever it is, to seek out like-minded people and explain and say, I feel like I'm kind of at the end of myself here. Can you help me with this? Now, we can't be at critical mass every day and come to our friends every day, or we're going to wear them out. But if we can reserve it for the big things like this, I think that that's a good idea. So along comes here the assurance by God that he was seen. That's kind of a phrase that we like to use today. People need to know that they are seen. And it's good. Like, God wanted Hezekiah to know that he was seen. Look at verse 6, Isaiah said to them, say to your master, thus says the Lord, do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard. Behold, verse 7, I will put a spirit in him, meaning the king of Assyria, so that he will hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land. And Sennacherib did hear a rumor, and he did head out to his own land, but first he wrote a letter, and he sent it back. See, he wasn't done yet, and to continue the threats. And it said something like this in the middle of verse 10, he goes, don't let your God, in whom you trust, deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. And in verse 11, you've heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the lands, devoting them to destruction, and you shall be delivered. And so we see here that Hezekiah's steps that he took, those things that we wrote down, those solutions, they didn't create a once and done thing. Like just doing those things, it's not like, okay, everything's better. Life is good now. No, there were still challenges. This time they came in the form of a letter, and that's been my experience in life, too. Like when I realize there's trouble, and just taking some of those steps, just going to be with the Lord, doesn't mean that I get up from that place with the Lord, and it's like, oh, now it's good. It's all well. Let's go and play. No, there is a season of perseverance that usually ensues, and that is what the fourth thing that we learn here, solution, is perseverance in prayer, and this is maybe the useful, most useful part of the whole lesson, is that Hezekiah prayed. Verse 14, Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it, and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord, and he spread it before the Lord, and Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and we'll read his prayer in a minute, but take note of these steps, these really useful steps, and what we can learn. You can't ignore trouble. When trouble comes your way, you can't just ignore it and say, it'll go away. It'll be better tomorrow. No, it probably won't. You know, Hezekiah received the letter, and he read it. He looked at the trouble. He actually looked at it, and then we need, again, a place of perspective. It says, Hezekiah went to the house of the Lord. He took his trouble to the house of the Lord, and this is the best phrase. I love this. This has been so useful in my life. He says, it says here, he spread it before the Lord. He took the letter. He took the trouble, whatever it is, to the house of the Lord, and he laid it out in front of the Lord. This is humility. This, when you lay something out to the Lord, it expresses to Him, I don't got this. You know, I can't do, I'm not, I can't fix this and then come to you all shiny and, and, you know, taking care of it. It means, this is my trouble, and if you don't help, I won't get help. And then he prayed. Now, let's read his prayer. Starting in the middle of verse 15,

Isn't that an amazing prayer? That is so sweet, and I love the phases of that prayer, that he begins with worship and adoration and exalting the Lord high above everything that's going on, and then he goes into the topic that he has laid before the Lord and said, look, this is the trouble and this is no good, and we need you, and then he ends again with adoration and prayer. You know, there's a lot of models for prayer, but if we can just remember that, it's like worship, trouble, worship. I think we'll be good. Like, that's a simplification of how to pray that I think works. So then we have, in verses 20 to 32, we have this kind of long, somewhat poetic prophecy about Sennacherib's past, present, and future, and it talks about his scorn for God's people, his mocking, his pride in thinking that he was the one that ruled over the nations. But in this prophecy, God was reminding Hezekiah that people aren't really in charge of the affairs of their own life like they think they are. Even kings aren't in charge. God is the one who is in charge. God is the one who is behind all things. I'll just kind of give a few bullet points in verse 25. He said, have you not heard that I determined it long ago, I planned from days of old what I now bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins? Verse 28, because you have raged against me, he's talking to the king of Assyria here, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way in which you came. Verse 32, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there. By the way that he came, he shall return, for I will defend this city to save it for my sake and for the sake of my servant David. And so the most beautiful thing about that prophecy that I see from the Lord through Isaiah given to Hezekiah, what does it say? I see you, I see your trouble, I'm in charge. And that's such a beautiful thing for us to process about the places in life that we really don't want to be. It's like God's in charge. I see, I see, I know. So what was the result? Verse 35, and that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when the people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. And then Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed and went home and lived at Nineveh. And what was the end of that story? As he was worshiping at the house of Nishrak, his god, Adramelech, and Cherezer, his son struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat and Esarhaddon, his son reigned in his place. And so that's how God resolved that whole problem. Now if I had been smarter, I would have made that one lesson, and I would have made the next part another week's lesson, but I wasn't smart. And so I know that this is going to be long this morning, but now we're going to do Hezekiah part two, which I will retitle Finishing Well, or like they used to do with Rocky and Bullwinkle, how they'd have these funny subtitles. How not to take God's blessings for granted, okay? Chapter 20. In those days, Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet came to him and said, thus says the Lord, set your house in order for you shall die, you shall not recover. how would you respond to that message? That's something to think about. Well let's see how Hezekiah responded. Verse 2, Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and he prayed to the Lord saying, Now O Lord, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with the whole heart and I have done what is good in your sight. And Hezekiah wept bitterly. I can really empathize with that reaction. Like if I got the call from the lab that used the word terminal or if I got was sitting with the oncologist and he used the word stage four, I would respond just like Hezekiah. Like give it a try. Like Lord please help. You know I would pray the same prayer. Verse 4, And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him. Go back, say to Hezekiah, the leader of my people, thus says the Lord, the God of David your father. And now I want you to notice six things here that God says to Hezekiah that he will do for him. It's amazing. I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. I will add 15 years to your life. I will deliver you and the city out of the hand of the king of Assyria. And I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David's sake. Did Hezekiah deserve all of those blessings? We're not told why God looked on him so kindly. And I don't think that this is a formula for every single Christian and every single health issue. If it was a formula then we would all live forever. But we do die at some point, right? But God simply determined here that this was not Hezekiah's time and that he wanted to bless him. God turned around to bless him. And the most important thing here that we want to see is what did Hezekiah do with those blessings? What did he do with those blessings? Well what happened is Isaiah made this natural remedy from figs. I'm sure people have tried to copy that somehow. And then this supernatural sign was given. Verse 11, Isaiah called to the Lord and he brought the shadow back ten steps by which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz. So that was a pretty big deal. I mean the Sun doesn't go backwards just every day. That's a big deal. So we wonder if this spectacular sign in the heavens made headlines around the world. Probably. And it seems like it maybe got quite a bit of attention in Persia. So look at verse 12. At that time the king of Babylon now sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah for he heard that Hezekiah had been sick. All right. Now 2nd Chronicles tells us very important information about this diplomatic visit. So I'm going to put it on the screen for you. This is 2nd Chronicles 32 verse 31. And it says, In the matter of the envoys of the princes of Babylon, who had been sent to him to inquire about the sign that had been done in the land, God left him to himself in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart. Okay. Back into our 2nd Kings passage. Let's see if we can find out what was in his heart. Verse 13. And Hezekiah welcomed them, meaning the envoys from Babylon, and he showed them all of his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show him. And we're going to pause right here because I want to review first, before we go on, the blessings that had been given to Hezekiah. Let's review, first of all, the miraculous sparing of the city by killing 185,000 of the troops. And then there was this miraculous healing from a terminal illness. And there was this miraculous sign of the sun going the way it's not supposed to go. And over all of this, God had given Hezekiah quite a bit of time to become prosperous. So what do you think about how Hezekiah responded then with those envoys? Well, in verse 14, Isaiah the prophet came to Hezekiah and he said to him, what did these men say? Where did they come from? What have they seen in your house? And Hezekiah answered, they have seen all that is in my house. There is nothing of my storehouses that I did not show them. And I don't think Hezekiah was picking up on the tone that Isaiah was giving here, but he kept talking about things as if they belonged to him. And I think we are intended to see a contrast between what God had just said to him about what he was going to do. I will, I will, I will. And now we see my house, my storehouses. That's a problem. Okay? That's a problem. And the Lord sometimes blesses us in an extravagant way. Last week, I was blessed in a over-the-top, extravagant way. Okay? And we can be tempted to just move along with our life as if nothing extraordinary just happened to us. Or worse yet, we can think that we sort of deserve those blessings, and we deserve the next blessings that come our way too. Or worse, worse yet, we think it was because of our skill or our charm or our smarts that we, like people who are smart and know how to do things, they get blessed like this, as if it was us. But the most important thing to remember in the midst of our blessings is to make return according to the benefit done to us. And that's a phrase that we're going to see here in just a minute. That's how 2 Chronicles put it. I'm going to show you again from 2 Chronicles, chapter 32, verse 25. But Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. His heart had turned proud. He did not make return to the Lord for the blessings that God had given him. But all is not lost, because the next verse says, verse 26, but Hezekiah then humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah. And you know, that is the way our life goes, too. Sometimes we get proud, but we can never be too proud, too far gone, to then turn back and humble ourselves. You know, Hezekiah was a leader, and I think sometimes that God deals with leaders with a little bit more strictness. But Hezekiah was also soft-hearted, and he came to realize the error that he had fallen into. And that's a really important thing for us to remember. This passage shows us that God is always merciful toward those who repent, toward those who humble themselves. God will never say, well, yeah, you did a lot of cool things, but look, you got proud. I don't care. Too late. Too late. Don't tell me. He'll never say that. If we humble ourselves, He'll say, okay, He's merciful. Verse 16, we're back in 2 Kings, and then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord, behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and all which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons will come, who come from you, will, whom, I'm sorry, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they will be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. In other words, they will not be able to procreate. And by the way, this will all happen in next week's lesson, as we wrap up this chapter, this book of the Bible. Verse 19, then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, the word of the Lord that you've spoken is good, for he thought, why not, if there will be peace and security in my days? And we wrap up the life of Hezekiah in verse 20, the rest of the deeds of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made the pool, and the conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the kings of Judah? And Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and Manasseh, his son, reigned in his place. And very, very quickly, we'll cover those last two kings. Chapter 21, Manasseh was 12 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem. So he gets the prize for the longest king on your chart that you listed. And chapter 21 is a very, very difficult read. You know, I'm just gonna bullet point some of the dreadful things that Manasseh did. But first, verse 2 is a summary, and it says, he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And these are some of the despicable practices. I'm just bullet pointing. He rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah had destroyed, and we're thinking, oh, good grief. We finally got those destroyed, and then here comes the sun and builds them back up again. And he erected altars for Baal, and he made an Asherah. He worshipped the host of heaven and served him. He built altars for the host of heaven in the courts of the house of the Lord. He burned his son as an offering. He used fortune-telling and dealt with mediums and necromancers. He put a carved image of Asherah in the house of the Lord. And so verse nine says that Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations had done whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel. They not only did more evil than Israel had done, as we were reading through that, that's one level, they did more evil than all the Canaanite nations that were there that God said, wipe them out and I want you to have this land. They were more evil than the Amorites. They were worse, this guy was like a Satan worshiper and mafia all rolled into one and making the worst of the worst here. In verse 10, the Lord said to his prophets, because Manasseh, King of Judah has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all of the Amorites did. Middle of verse 12, behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle and he described it as taking a dirty dish, wiping it out, turning it upside down because he had to. These were God's people that were completely, you know, not portraying God's character. In verse 19, Ammon, his son was 22 years old when he began to reign and he reigned two years in Jerusalem he was evil as well and his servants finally put him to death. So I want you to think about this. Judah had 57 years at this point of demonic, dreadful leadership over God's people. Now, that's kind of like a whole lifetime for a whole bunch of us. That's like, you would only know that, that's all you would ever know politically in your life was this meh, this mess. And I'm sure the people thought it could never, look at how far we have gone, it would never change. It could never change because as human beings we tend to think that what is has always been, right? And it always will be but that is not a true statement. What is doesn't necessarily have to move forward and this kind of resonates with me because maybe there's something that's just gone on, well, look, our country, okay? We have those thoughts. We look at this and we say it's getting worse and worse and worse, there's no possible way it can ever be different on a different trajectory than what it is. No, it can. We have Josiah next week. God, with God, it is never on a train, a loose train with no brakes, okay? That is what we have to remember, that the Lord, with the Lord, hope is not, the end of the world is not always eminent, okay? And I think that that's really interesting so let's peek here in verse 24 at the relief that the Lord brought the people of the land made Josiah, his son, king in his place and that's next week's lesson. It's gonna be a wonderful lesson, however, that won't last forever but with the Lord, there's always hope but what I wanna do as we wrap up is just think about this concept of finishing well and how God has blessed us and how we make returns. So the questions we should ask is, has God blessed you in some way? Do you take it for granted or have you made return according to the benefit given you? And how is the Lord working in your heart right now and whispering to you to make return according to the benefit that he has given you? So Lord, we bring these things before you and it's a powerful thought and we definitely want to be people that don't take you for granted, we don't take your blessings for granted and in whatever way you have blessed us or done good things for you, our hearts are we wanna make return for that. Help us not to be complacent, help us not to just think that, oh, God blesses me, he'll keep blessing me. We know that your blessings are good but we also wanna turn around and bless others and invest in your kingdom because you have blessed us, Lord. Lord, thank you for this lesson. So many rich details of Hezekiah's life and I pray that you would just help us to sift it through and bring to the surface the things that you want us to take forward into this week. And yeah, we just thank you, Lord. We love you in Jesus' name, amen.