Good morning, Foundry. My name is Fox Bryan. Today I will be doing the weekly scripture reading, which is Isaiah 37, 14, through 20. Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it.
And Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord. O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, and thrown above the chair of them, you are the God, you are the Lord, of all the kingdoms of the earth, you have made heaven and earth. And climb your ear, O Lord, and hear.
Open your eyes, O Lord, and see. And hear all the words of Sennacherum, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Israel have laid waste of all the nations in their lands and have cast their gods into the fire. For they were no gods, but the work of men's hands wouldn't stone.
Therefore, they were destroyed. So now O Lord our God, save us from His hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord. This word is true and you can't be trusted. Thanks, Fox.
I always feel bad when I make people say all the weird names, all the weird stuff. When I was a kid, when I was a kid, my great-grandfather, after a career in the army, retired and bought a farm outside of Hattiesburg, Mississippi in the 1920s. And he raised his whole family there, my grandmother, and her sister, and my great-uncle, Burl, one of the coolest names out there, Burl. But they raised everybody there.
And then their kids came and lived there. And then their grandkids, my generation, we were all there. And we had multiple generations of steelmans and holstons and brooks, and all grew up roaming those woods and learning all the fun things and doing all the fun things you can find around farms. And at one point in time when I was a kid, there were four different houses on the property that belonged to people in my family.
So you could always go find a place to get a coke when your mom said you couldn't have one. You could do that there. And I learned to hunt on that property. And there was this giant oak tree that you always could find squirrels in.
No matter what, there was always squirrels there. And then when I was a little guy, my grandfather, and my great-uncle, and my other great-uncle, and a couple of other members of the family of their age, decided to start a commercial Christmas tree farm on the property. So I kind of, at middle school age, was surrounded by about 500 acres of Christmas trees. But then I also held these old grizzled marine World War II veterans that would teach 13-year-olds all the things you want to learn from grizzled marine World War II veterans.
And we learned all sorts of things on mothers. We're not very happy about it, because we're working on the Christmas tree farm. But when I was in college, my family decided to start selling the property off to a couple of developers. And now there's two subdivisions where our family property was.
I remember my dad calling to tell me that we're making this decision. I was a little upset, because that lane was a special place to me. It's also a special place my dad grew about. They're doing the same things I did.
But my dad said, listen, I just need you to trust us. Like we've made this decision, and we felt this is the best decision for the whole family. Who at that point in time was there's 50 or 60 of us? All came from my grandfather and my granny.
And then his three kids are now over 50 people that that that property was going to affect. I'll tell you what, every single great-grant child of my generation, everyone went to college. You know, it opened up things in my larger family that we never would have had access to. But all this dancing just trusts us.
We're making the right decision. But what's so weird is that oak tree that's always covered in squirrels is now in somebody's front yard. And every time we go back, I'm only going back a couple of times. My heart can't take it yet.
But every time I go back, I go find that oak tree. I can't remember where it is now. Like, I don't know where it is in the neighborhood. It's just going to drive around until I see it.
It's still covered in squirrels, but you can't shoot squirrels in somebody's front yard. In the middle of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, probably managed you a little bit. But there's just something about places, right? There's something about places that we have memories of that attach us to part of who we are.
And last week, we talked about Hezekiah and how he woke up. And it's what seemed to be on the first day of his life as king that he had to make a decision to be different. But that feet on the ground moment was not sudden and instant. It was a result of him growing up and seeing the effects of the decisions his father, A, has had made.
And this morning, what I want us to talk about is how we make decisions when it's our turn to make decisions. Because decisions can be tough. And just like we talked about last week, Hezekiah understood what trust meant and how trusting is an empowering emotion. But this morning, what I want us to really think about is this, that how we trust reveals how we believe.
So let's talk about how Hezekiah found trusting strength and how he made these decisions when it was his turn to lead God's people through a tremendously difficult situation. See, Hezekiah isn't a pickle. The few years, and this is 15 or so years past where we saw him last week. But he's in a tough space.
The Assyrian army has come down and has been moving all of the way through where he lives. They've been conquering all these tiny little neighboring kingdoms. They've been putting people underneath their power. And Hezekiah and Jerusalem is pretty much the only ones left.
They're locked into a power struggle. And they've just been decimated by the Assyrian army. And so now, what Hezekiah, he's meeting with the representative of Assyria, at a unique place in Jerusalem. They're standing at the pool of Siloam.
Where we find later in the Gospels, Jesus performing miracles. But the pool of Siloam used to be outside of the walls of the city of Jerusalem. And as Hezekiah has known that this will happen one day, he's expanded the walls of the city of Jerusalem. And they're now inside of Jerusalem.
So they're there meeting with this Assyrian field commander. And all of Jerusalem is standing above them on the city walls to listen to what this field commander has to say to Hezekiah. This is from Isaiah 36, verses 4 through 11. The field commander says to him, tell Hezekiah, this is what the great king, the king of Assyria says, on what are you basing this confidence of yours?
You say you have counsel and might of war, but you speak only empty words on whom are you depending that you rebel against me? Look, I know you're depending on Egypt. That splintered reed of a staff was pierces the hand of anyone who leans on it, such as the Pharaoh king of Egypt, you all who depend on Him. But if you say to me, we are depending on the Lord our God, isn't he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, you must worship before this altar?
Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. I will give you 2,000 horses if you can even put riders on them. How then can you repulse one officer of the least of my master's officials, even though you are depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? Furthermore, I have come to attack and destroy this land without the Lord.
The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it. Then I like him, Shebna and Joe, I say to the field commander, please speak to your servants in Aramaic since we understand it. Don't speak to us in Hebrew and the hearing of the people on the wall. See, the Assyrians were masters of warfare.
I remember the movie 300, and that wild and crazy army of Xerxes, we've seen that. So those guys in that movie were trying to be like the Assyrians. Like they were legendary on how big they were, how mean they were, how evil they were, and all the wild things that they were willing to do. Actually, the guys in the band had fun reading my nerdy book, The Ancient Near East, Volume One, Anthology of Text and Pictures.
Earlier, but let me read from you, King Sinacra Ribs account of this campaign that is going on right now in our story. And so this is from Sinacra Ribs scrolls that's been archeologist uncovered. So as to Hezekiah the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke. So I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities, walled forts and the countless small villages in their vicinity and conquered them by means of a well stamped earth ramps and battering ramps brought near to the walls, combined with the attack of foot soldiers using mines, breeches while at Sapper work.
I drove out 200,150 people, young and old. Himself Hezekiah, I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in the cage and I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were leaving the city's gates. His towns which I pondered, I took away from his country and gave them over to his enemies. So you see, there's a good line here.
As a kind of self, the terror inspiring splendor of my lordship had overwhelmed and whose irregular elite troops he had brought into Jerusalem's royal residence or the strength in it and deserted him and then sent later to me 30 talents of gold. So you see, like this historical record of what's going on with the Sinacra, he called himself the king of the world and he specialized in warfare. But besides warfare, they also specialized in propaganda. So we just read for you, like imagine all of Jerusalem which has swelled up to around 25,000 people, all of their leaders are standing on the city walls and you have Hezekiah and his official saying, Hey listen, let's talk a different language because they don't hear us right now.
You have the steel printer just trying to terrify them in the submission and saying, all these things that Hezekiah has done, which he says is to make you trust God more, this is actually making God mad. So we see just the subterfuge that's going on. But Hezekiah held fast. And this is how Hezekiah held fast.
He was scared and we're gonna get to his moment of fear what Fox read for us earlier. We're gonna get to that. But he held fast, could you see this meeting place where they were, this pool of Siloam was the exact same place that Hezekiah's own father, Ahez, had bowed down to the Assyrians a generation before and made the decision to lead God's people down a path of idolatry and false worship and trusting in another empire for their security instead of God. Same place, Hezekiah knew it.
The prophet Isaiah who was standing there with Hezekiah had been standing next to his father, Ahez, when his father Ahez had made that decision, Ahez chose to not listen. Hezekiah was determined to listen. He trusted God. He knew it was His turn to make this decision.
This was the big decision. This was the moment that His entire reign depended on and had been building up towards Him. How we trust shows, how we believe. Now let's look at how Hezekiah reacted after this.
I'm gonna say, it's not, He's not scared. Oh, He's scared. We're about to see what his fear ends up looking like. So let me ask you this question.
Have you ever been in a situation where you feel completely lost? Like that you don't know what to do? How do we react in those moments? Like what does that look like in our life?
As Hezekiah goes and has this letter that's given to Him by the steel friend that says, hey, none of your cities are left. We just burned this city named Lequiche to the ground. It's south of you. Oh, that's where all your chariots were.
So you lost your whole backup. He gives him this letter. It probably says you were the only one left standing. And he goes into the temple and he goes to the altar before God.
And here's, this is where we see the essential orientation of Hezekiah. He's not scared. I imagine he's terrified. But we see his response here.
And the way that he engages with God is wildly different. He spreads this letter out in front of the altar. And what he says is what Fox read for us just now. It's almost as though Hezekiah says, do you see this?
This is what this guy is saying about you. Surely this has to be answered. It doesn't just speak of defeat, but it says that you're not a real God. It's not just about military strength, but it's about who actually controls the world.
So an actor called himself the king of the world. And this Assyrian king is not just a deceiver, but he's blaspheming. I can think of Hezekiah's process might be, perhaps God will have heard the challenges laid out by these people and He will act in answer. And this is where we get to a tough part of the story.
It's tough because it challenges us to think a little bit deeper, at least to think about the process. And I'll be honest with you, this is the sort of thing that I've been seeing in scripture the last couple of years. I'm trying to wrap my head around what this means, because it's not neat and pretty and fits into an easy package. So we go back to Ahezekiah's father.
This is Isaiah 7, so it's a generation before. This is about the time that he decided to make the wrong decision. This is what it says. Again, the Lord spoke to Ahezek, ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or the highest heights.
But Ahezek said, I will not ask. I will not put the Lord to the test. And I say, listen, you want to see a sign so you know I'm real and it's true? Ask me for a sign.
Like you don't doubt, ask me to do something so you will believe. And Ahezek has this, he needs stuff so nice and neat in package. He won't even ask for anything. He has this weird understanding of who God is and how God works and how God doesn't work.
And he won't even engage when God's asking Him to engage. Can we change God's mind? I can see the look on your face. I don't know what's the right answer, Chad.
We're going to put the room into two sections. Trust me. I get the look on your eyes. I have the same look on my eyes right now.
Can we change God's mind? When we start reading these things, how do you change God? How does this whole thing work? You know, Chad has always been told that God knows everything out in front of me.
And he knows exactly what's going to happen. And in my decision, just to make sure I keep on making the right decisions. But that doesn't mean God sounds a little like inflexible and like not where our own choice doesn't matter that much. Do you see the problems inside of that line of thinking when we're going there?
But there's also this thing that we see across scripture about our willful holiness. And when we do things that cause blessing to happen. And some of you might have been church your whole life or single, Chad, that sounds like works righteousness. This is about grace, not actions.
What's good? It's all made you five, eight through none. I will listen to what God, the Lord says. He promises peace to his people, his faithful servants, but let them not turn to folly.
Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. And where fear him is not be scared of God, but be aware of who he is in responding to that. See, there's just something about what happens when we contend for the presence of God and we realize that our holiness changes things. That's complicated.
It's not neat and pretty. It doesn't, you can't tie it up in a box and define it with three bullet points. But our world can't be neat and tied up in a little box to find with bullet points. We see just the complexity of this whole situation, but we see in this story, we also have to push into the presence of God.
That yes, God is omnipresent and omniscient. He's everywhere at all times in the fullest sense of his being. He's always fully here. He's always exactly the same yesterday, today and forever.
He's just as much here in this room right now. Is he is any place in the world, any given point in time? It's the omnipresence of God, but we also know about the manifest presence of God. When God reveals himself in a unique way and gives a specific outpouring to a specific group of people because of a specific situation in a place of time in a specific place, that there's something about the manifest presence of God, how it's in a relationship with the attention of his holy people.
How do we react when we feel absolutely lost? What can we learn from Hezekiah? From his moment of absolutely lost. And to pull into our moments of absolutely lost.
How we trust is how we believe. Hezekiah pushed into the presence of God. He declared who God was. He also talked about the reality of his problem.
And the whole story, it finishes like this. While the Assyrian army is camped outside of Jerusalem, Isaiah 37, 36 to 38, then the angel of the Lord went out and put to death 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning, they were all dead bodies. So Sanakarib King of Assyria broke camp and withdrew, he returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
One day while he was worshiping the temple of his God, Nisra'q, his sons, Adramahlek, in Sha'ad, Sha'ri'ezar, Gifvakshin, not the only one of the weird names. Sha'ri'ezar killed him with the sword and they escaped to the land of Arat. And Ezra had on succeeded, his son succeeded him, it's king. So around 25,000 people in Jerusalem, we see 185,000 killed and there's enough to have to pick up and leave.
And God took care of the problem, the problem that, I mean, when I tell y'all, Hezekiah's archeological records, Hezekiah spent probably 10 years fortifying Jerusalem for this siege. He expanded a wall and almost tripled the size of Jerusalem. So it could be defended, this pool of Siloam we talked about, it used to be outside the city walls. He brought it into the city walls and built more walls around it.
And then this is really crazy because it actually something happened a couple weeks ago about this. They started digging a tunnel from the pool of Siloam to the center of Jerusalem. So they could have water no matter what in the siege. And they literally started in two places and just kept their fingers crossed 3000 years ago.
They could dig the holes and meet in the middle. When they uncovered Hezekiah's tunnel about 100 years ago, they found this huge inscription with Hezekiah's name on it detailing this whole project. And Turkey has had it for 100 years. They just gave it back to Israel two weeks ago.
So Israel could have this. Like every single thing Hezekiah had been doing for years and years and years and years and years was preparing to defend Jerusalem against the siege with the Assyrians. They come here, it's for the moment he's been waiting for. I'm sure he's just saying, God help him not to smite us, whatever smiting means.
Not waking up in the morning and finding 185,000 dead people. Almost six times the size of the city. So here's how we can take on the example of Hezekiah and his trust. Number one, we can pray specific prayers.
I love this idea of him laying this letter out before God, before the altar. Hezekiah gets right down to it and he says exactly what he needs. He names the things that are on his mind, the things that he's worried about, the whole truth of the matter. He's declaring who God is.
He's also declaring, this is what's troubling me. And this is what's trying to draw my trust away. And he names what he knows God can do. So how can we pray more specifically?
I think sometimes we feel like praying specific prayers is a selfish thing and we shouldn't be doing. Is anybody else kind of feel that sometimes? Like we're asking for a little bit too much. You got a lot of stuff on your concern right now.
Just be cool to me. How about that? I think some of the greatest examples I've ever seen of answered prayers have been when people have prayed extremely specifically, extremely specifically. Specificity and trust go hand in hand because we are laying out the things that we are struggling with that are causing us to not trust.
The second thing is this, to name how we haven't helped ourselves. All throughout this story. And both of these chapters are listed on the home sheet. It's a wild thing to read.
We got copies of us back on the back table. There's a bunch of questions about learning how to do this. I encourage you to grab one of those or get one on the line later on the week. But this whole story you see Hezekiah being really clear that he's aware of how God's people have misbehaved.
He will admit sin. He will mince the actions of his father. He will mince the lack of untrust that God's people have had. Hezekiah's whole mission has been to restore worship and to make a large statement about the trust of God's people.
Now part of us going to God specifically is being specific about the places where we have tried our best and it just did not seem to work. In so many ways that's a confession saying, this is where I tried to trust in myself and I'm beginning to learn my lesson through that. I know that this hasn't worked because I'm still practicing self trust in this moment. Sometimes clarity only happens with confession.
The last thing we can do is this. We can make this, what decisions are we going to make differently? I don't think Hezekiah planned for a decade for him to have a showdown with the Assyrians in the exact same place his father had. But that moment when Hezekiah was standing there in the same place and faced with the same question his father had, that had to get to him a little bit.
He knew this was going to happen, but just the irony of every single thing being the same and being in that place where his father had made the decision to trust in another nation rather than trust in God. That waking up in the morning, idea we've been talking about, that's all about his achai is commitment to make decisions based off of the ultimate security and the ultimate power of God. So what are the places you're in right now? Like what is that spot?
Anybody who's gone down the rabbit trail of family systems theory might know what I'm talking about. But what are those things where we've been making the same decisions everybody else is making and we know where they've led to? And we all know we need to change something. You know in that moment, A has his father had said, you know what, I'm gonna keep all my options open.
And by saying, I'm gonna keep all my options open, the decision he was making was to just not make a decision. His achai is saying, I'm going to absolutely continue trusting in God because every decision I made up to this point has been about trusting. And I'm gonna trust that he can do something wildly different than I can do, that his protection is outside of my means, is outside of my imagination perhaps. And I know that me taking this step is gonna end up being a greater sense of blessing than me being scared and me caving and me making the easiest decision that continues us down this path we've been in for so far long.
So what is that place for you? What are those places where you have a decision that you can make, not just for you, but for your family, for those around you that are alive right now that you can know, but then also those ones that you do not know. What are the ways that we make decisions that have generational consequences? And how we choose to take our faithfulness and bless those who come after us because of the way that we were willing to trust in God.
Let's pray. Father, God, we thank you that we've not had to fortify our homes to defend ourselves against the Assyrians. But God, we also realize that it's easy to see when a large enemy is in front of us. But God, sometimes there are small things that we don't realize how dangerous they can be, how they can slowly begin to chip away at who we are, they can chip away at our trust, they can chip away and just whisper in our ear, hey, you've got this on your own.
You don't need sacrifice to get this. But God, help us to see how we find strength in the small things. And God, how faithfulness is the long game and how making those small decisions about faithfulness and trust, God, what that does is that just builds up a foundation that is unbreakable for when those big moments come. And God, when those big moments come, we will not have to be activating some emotion or some spiritual discipline that has never been touched in our life.
But we will simply just continue to say yes to you as we have continued to say yes for a long time. So Father, I just pray for clarity of mind and heart and eyes, for clarity to see the ways that we are being invited into a life of trust. A life where we know that you are carving out a path for us ahead, inviting us to simply follow you. It's gonna be pray, amen.
What stand can you worship me together?