Prayer of King Hezekiah

Series 5 Prayer 2 ( Biblical Prayers for Today)

I indirectly addressed this prayer several times, the most notable was in my post  Defending the Great Name of God through Prayer. In that post the purpose was to show how we have a responsibility to defend the Name of God. That particular post more than any other was met with a lot of resistance, I think because it asks the lay Christian to come out of his comfort zone and actively engage the devices of Satan in battle, through prayer. I am  not sure why Christians, who are supposed to be praying people refuse to pray the will of God with such dogged resistance. However that was that post.

The Victory Prayer of King HezeKiah

Today we turn our attention more to the details of this  prayer and how to apply it life today. However before we can do this we must get some base information about the circumstance.

Who is Sennacerib

King Sennacherib  (suh- na-kuh-rib) was an Assyria King from around 704 to 681 B.C.. during the beginning of his reigned his massive army of around 200,000 men invaded  Judah. In an effort to convince the King of Assyria, from destroying Judah,  King Hezekiah sent all the silver found in the House of the Lord, and everything of value in his own treasury ( 2 Kings 18:15) to Sennacherib. But once the Assyrians had advanced to the walls of Judah, Rabshakeh an official of Sennacherib,  delivered a speech in which he warned the delegation of King Hezekiah to surrender without a fight.

On the advice of the prophet Isaiah King Hezekiah refused. A second message was sent to King Hezekiah demanding him to surrender without a fight, and again the Prophet advises the King not to submit to Sennecherib’s demand (2 Kings 19:32)So we pick up with the prayer of King Hezekiah

And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord, and said, O Lord God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the God, even thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; thou hast made heaven and earth.  Lord, bow down thine ear, and hear: open, Lord, thine eyes, and see: and hear the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent him to reproach the living God.  Of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands,  And have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed them.  Now therefore, O Lord our God, I beseech thee, save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord God, even thou only (2 Kings 19:15-19)

If  I can I want to jump straight to verse 17 where King Hezekiah says “it’s true the King of Assyria has destroyed and laid waste to every land that has stood against them”.  Here we see a very powerful thing; first a fear that was in the heart of King Hezekiah, and second a lie that had been accepted as the truth.

 The fear was real, there was an advancing army at the walls of Judah. However in verse 11-13 we find a lie told by the Assyrian King which Hezekiah accepted as the truth. Sennacherib gives a laundry list of the nations he destroyed and the inability of their God to protect them against his army. The lie was infered, that because the false gods could not protect the nations against King  Sennacherib's army that the God of Judah was likewise impotent aganist the army of the Assyrians.  We see because King Hezekiah tride to bribe the Assyrian that for a moment he believed that lie.  We can only imagine that the prophet Isaiah had to persuade King Hezekiah of the truth of the Gods of the nations the Assyrian army had destroyed. The truth which was that they were not gods at all, but creations of their own hands and were unable to protect. 

However, Hezekiah was not praying to some moon god, but the God that created the moon, and the sun and the stars, and the earth. His prayers were to a living God, not a god made by the hands of man, but a true and living God whose hands made man.  

 

Consider this meditation,

Meditations on Jehovah Nissi

At first I feared when all was against me, when the adversary came in like the waves of an evening tide against my peace;  pounding at the foundation of my heritage, saying I’m not a son of the almighty God. All that was wicked, even my enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, as armies circumscribe me from all sides, there no place for me to run. So I looked to the hills from winch cometh my strength.

Evil came to discomfit my life, while those I thought were my friends, like ravenous wolves bit at my hind side.  They revile me, for Your Sake, and by my past and called me as evil as they are. The chaos of the Accuser tried to confound me with doubt and by my past iniquities enticed me with wickedness. They tried to choke the salvation out of me, and chase my soul, to Sheol.

But I will run  to Golgotha and no further, would I run. Here is my confidence; I have rested my head under the blood stained banner of Jesus Christ Victory is mine.  My strength is renewed, like an eagle I am mounted up on new wings, I will not grow weary, I will not grow faint. Because I am a new creature in Christ!

O Death, where is your sting? O Sheol, where is your victory? Do you not know that Jehovah Nissi  gives me the victory through my Lord Jesus Christ?

Tc Pearsall © 2011

Please do not copy the above meditation  without the expressed written  approval of the author

Soli Deo Gloria
Your Brother in Christ
Troy “FireSpeaks” Pearsall

Other prayers in this series
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Prayer of Agur