Sunday 16th February
Read Psalm 96
If you don’t have a bible at home you can find the readings on a website such as www.biblegateway.com or an app such as YouVersion
This Psalm needs no comment at all. Glory in verses 1-10
1 Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth.
2 Sing to the LORD, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
3 Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvellous deeds among all peoples.
4 For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but the LORD made the heavens.
6 Splendour and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary.
7 Ascribe to the LORD, all you families of nations,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength.
8 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
9 Worship the LORD in the splendour of his holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
10 Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns. ”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
READINGS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD
As you read the Bible Stop; Read; Ponder; and Pray.
Monday 2 Kings 17:24-41
The Israelites were taken away from the land God promised them and resettled elsewhere; however the King of Assyria did not leave it at that, he brought other peoples and settled them in the land in place of the Israelites. This act was to completely expunge the people from their place in the land. They became the “Lost tribes of Israel”.
In place of them the foreign peoples brought their own religious practices and their own gods whom they started to worship (v29-31) but things didn’t go well with them as wild animals attacked them. It’s very probable that the land had become wild in the absence of the Israelites however the message sent to the King of Assyria was that it was because the newbies didn’t know the god of the land and that he should send someone back who could instruct them. A priest who had been captive in Assyria was sent to them to instruct them in the worship of the Lord however each national group made their own arrangements which included bits of Israelite practices and their own. The Samaritans grew up as syncretistic mixed national groups which became the future hated people of the Jews.
There are places in the world today which used to be Christian but through their departure from true Christian belief and practice are nowhere in the Christian landscape. It ought to be a word of warning to us in Britain not to depend on ourselves rather than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Tuesday 2 Kings 18:1-8
We come now to Hezekiah, the good King of Judah, of whom it is said, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done” (v3). Other Kings had also been seen as good Kings but Hezekiah did more in that as well as worshipping the Lord he removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles, all indicative of the false worship the peoples had offered to other gods. We notice also something he did about a relic of the early age of the people in the wilderness long before they entered the promised land. It can be read about in Numbers 21 where God commanded Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole which if the people who were ill with snake bites could look they would be healed. Unfortunately, it became an idol and over the generations came to be worshipped as a god called Nehushtan.
It is always possible for things started in the Church with good intention and purpose to become fixed as so important as to become a stumbling block to proper worship and devotion to God. Many of the ways we do things – the “aye beens” – become barriers to true worship of and obedience to God.
The writer says that there was no-one like Hezekiah among the Kings of Judah either before or after; the Lord was with him and he was successful in whatever he undertook. What an obituary to have.
These initial verses tell us of the capture of Samaria and the deportation of the people by the Assyrians. V12 concludes with “They neither listened to the commands nor carried them out” – what a warning to a people in whatever age and circumstance.
Ten years later Sennacherib of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and set about besieging Jerusalem. Hezekiah paid over an amount of money to him which resulted in a temporary lifting of the siege but didn’t end Sennacherib’s intention to have Jerusalem as well. The following verses tell of Sennacherib sending his field commander to make his demand to Hezekiah and it is an interesting read showing the too-ing and fro-ing of discussion between them. Hezekiah’s officials who did the negotiation on the wall, tore their clothes in anguish and went back to tell the King. His response comes in the next chapter.
In chapter 19 we read of Hezekiah’s grief as he hears from his officials what Sennacherib intends to do to Jerusalem and the first thing he does is send his officials to Isaiah the prophet. When things are hard it s always to God and to his messengers that we need to turn and not to earthly means of escape which will always turn out to fail. Hezekiah asks Isaiah to pray for him and the remnant of Israel that survives because the crushing power of Assyria, though pressing down on this little nation, is fundamentally against God.
Isaiah’s reply to the officials is to tell their master the King not to be afraid of what the commanders of the forces have been threatening because they will leave off the siege when they hear of other problems elsewhere that they will have to attend to (v7).
This happens and the siege forces withdraw however not without further threat from Sennacherib who says, “I’ll be back!”, and reminds Hezekiah of all the other Kings who have fallen before him and he shouldn’t depend on the God he depends on. We’ll hear what Hezekiah does with that letter in the next reading. But let this reading be an encouragement to pray in whatever situations we are in today.
Picture Hezekiah reading the letter from the commander of the Assyrian forces camped outside Jerusalem. His leading men were in sackcloth, bemoaning their hard-pressed situation; Hezekiah takes the letter and goes up to the temple spreading it out before the Lord. What an example to God’s people of whatever age. And then he prays, focussing on God first he declares who God is – “You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the world” – and then tells him to see what Sennacherib has said about the Israelites and through them about God himself.
Having done that, and cognisant of the earthly power of the Assyrians (v17,18), he simply asks God to deliver them. The reason he asks this is not just to preserve his little Kingdom but so that all the kingdoms of the Earth might know that the Lord is God. All our prayers ought to have this in mind as an end in sight.
Saturday 2 Kings 19:20-37
From v20 we have Isaiah’s reply telling Hezekiah that his prayer has been heard and will be answered and then we have the long section to the end of the chapter containing Isaiah’s prophetical message in Hebrew poetry.
To begin with the boasts of Assyria are recounted where she speaks of all the kingdoms she has conquered. This is followed in v25 by God telling Assyria that all her conquests have been ordained by God :-
“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 have turned fortified cities
into piles of stone.”
This may seem strange to our ears but it is the Word of God that all things, even the rise of cruel powers, are through the hand and power of God. However he wants this bully nation to know that God is not ignorant of all it is doing , “But I know where you are and when you come and go and how you rage against me” (v27) and he tells them that his judgement will come – “I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth” (v28)
Then the message turns to Hezekiah with promises of blessing to come (v29-31) and a promise that Sennacherib’s forces will not enter Jerusalem or build siege ramps against its walls because God will protect it.
After Isaiah’s message from God the writer tells of how this seeming impossibility came about – “That night the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp” (v35). Whatever happened the Assyrians did not overrun Jerusalem, the Assyrian Prism records, “Hezekiah the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke” and merely mentions the money paid to him by Hezekiah which we saw already. It is unlikely, considering their boastfulness, that they would record a disaster such as the biblical record recounts.
The death of Sennacherib at the hands of his sons is how the chapter closes. According to Assyrian records, he was assassinated in 681 BC, twenty years after the 701 BC invasion of Judah.
