Mammamel
07-24-2009, 08:35 PM
And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab-saris, and the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the Washer's Field.
And when they called for the king, there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder.
And the Rabshakeh said to them, "Say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours?
Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me?
Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.
But if you say to me, "We trust in the LORD our God," is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, "You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem"?
Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them.
How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master's servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?
Moreover, 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.'"
Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah, and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, "Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall."
But the Rabshakeh said to them, "Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine?"
Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: "Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria!
Thus says the king: '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 this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.'
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, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern,
until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, 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 do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, The LORD will deliver us.
Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?
Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?'"
But the people were silent and answered him 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 him the words of the Rabshakeh.
I read this today. A man, a great leader challenged the people of God. “Forget God, follow me and everything will be better” The parallels between this event and our current times astounded me. It hit me hard. People heard a sales pitch, make a deal with me and every one will have peace and prosperity. How did the people of Judah respond? They didn’t. They turned to God instead. Instead of taking the easy path, they went to God and trusted Him. How did God reply?
This is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him: "She despises you, she scorns you-- the virgin daughter of Zion; she wags her head behind you-- the daughter of Jerusalem.
"Whom have you mocked and reviled? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights? Against the Holy One of Israel!
By your messengers you have mocked the Lord, and you have said, 'With my many chariots I have gone up the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon; I felled its tallest cedars, its choicest cypresses; I entered its farthest lodging place, its most fruitful forest.
I dug wells and drank foreign waters, and I dried up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt.'
"Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins, while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and confounded, and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, like grass on the housetops, blighted before it is grown.
"But I know your sitting down and your going out and coming in, and your raging against me.
Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.
"And this shall be the sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.
And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward.
For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD will do this.
"Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it.
By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the LORD.
For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David."
And that night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.
Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived at Nineveh.
And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.
This is what is happening to America now. “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins, while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and confounded, and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, like grass on the housetops, blighted before it is grown.”
This is why it is happening. “"But I know your sitting down and your going out and coming in, and your raging against me.
Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.”
God will bring us through this. He has so promised, He is our shepherd. However we must return solidly to Him, worship Him, trust Him and depend on Him. Not ourselves, not our government, our GOD. Until we do this, things will just get worse. Stop worrying, start praying and start doing what is right in God’s eyes, not in society’s eyes.
Remember the words of Paul.
1Co 6:12 "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything.
1Co 10:23 "All things are lawful," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up.
Too many people are sitting by letting the chips fall where they may. God is in control, but as the old hymn says, He has no hands but our hands to do His work today. He has no feet but our feet to lead men in His way. We need to stand up and say enough. We are one nation under GOD, we need to stop letting the loudest among us dictate otherwise. Christians, real ones, have the “silent majority” for far too long. Let your voice be heard, with your vote, with your money and with your time.
And when they called for the king, there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder.
And the Rabshakeh said to them, "Say to Hezekiah, 'Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours?
Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me?
Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him.
But if you say to me, "We trust in the LORD our God," is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, "You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem"?
Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them.
How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master's servants, when you trust in Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?
Moreover, 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.'"
Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah, and Joah, said to the Rabshakeh, "Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it. Do not speak to us in the language of Judah within the hearing of the people who are on the wall."
But the Rabshakeh said to them, "Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed with you to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine?"
Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: "Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria!
Thus says the king: '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 this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.'
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, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern,
until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, 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 do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, The LORD will deliver us.
Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?
Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand?
Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?'"
But the people were silent and answered him 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 him the words of the Rabshakeh.
I read this today. A man, a great leader challenged the people of God. “Forget God, follow me and everything will be better” The parallels between this event and our current times astounded me. It hit me hard. People heard a sales pitch, make a deal with me and every one will have peace and prosperity. How did the people of Judah respond? They didn’t. They turned to God instead. Instead of taking the easy path, they went to God and trusted Him. How did God reply?
This is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him: "She despises you, she scorns you-- the virgin daughter of Zion; she wags her head behind you-- the daughter of Jerusalem.
"Whom have you mocked and reviled? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights? Against the Holy One of Israel!
By your messengers you have mocked the Lord, and you have said, 'With my many chariots I have gone up the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon; I felled its tallest cedars, its choicest cypresses; I entered its farthest lodging place, its most fruitful forest.
I dug wells and drank foreign waters, and I dried up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt.'
"Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins, while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and confounded, and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, like grass on the housetops, blighted before it is grown.
"But I know your sitting down and your going out and coming in, and your raging against me.
Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.
"And this shall be the sign for you: this year eat what grows of itself, and in the second year what springs of the same. Then in the third year sow and reap and plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.
And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward.
For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD will do this.
"Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it.
By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the LORD.
For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David."
And that night the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies.
Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived at Nineveh.
And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place.
This is what is happening to America now. “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins, while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, are dismayed and confounded, and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, like grass on the housetops, blighted before it is grown.”
This is why it is happening. “"But I know your sitting down and your going out and coming in, and your raging against me.
Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.”
God will bring us through this. He has so promised, He is our shepherd. However we must return solidly to Him, worship Him, trust Him and depend on Him. Not ourselves, not our government, our GOD. Until we do this, things will just get worse. Stop worrying, start praying and start doing what is right in God’s eyes, not in society’s eyes.
Remember the words of Paul.
1Co 6:12 "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything.
1Co 10:23 "All things are lawful," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up.
Too many people are sitting by letting the chips fall where they may. God is in control, but as the old hymn says, He has no hands but our hands to do His work today. He has no feet but our feet to lead men in His way. We need to stand up and say enough. We are one nation under GOD, we need to stop letting the loudest among us dictate otherwise. Christians, real ones, have the “silent majority” for far too long. Let your voice be heard, with your vote, with your money and with your time.