2 Kings 19

Judah finally has a good king- Hezekiah. Israel was just taken over and enslaved by Assyria, and now the king of Assyria is trying to do the same thing to Judah. When Hezekiah found out he, “went into the House of the Lord…and [prayed] O Lord God of Israel, the One who dwells between the cherubim, You are God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth, You have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear, open Your eyes, O Lord, and see and hear the words of Sennacherib, which has sent to reproach the Living God.”

This is such a great prayer, and one I prayed myself after reading it. God doesn’t dwell between the cherubim anymore, but dwells in our hearts and we can substitute “Sennacherib” for any enemy or hardship we are facing.

Sennacherib has not only threatened the livelihood of Hezekiah and the people of Judah, but he has completely attacked the name of the Lord. Hezekiah is praying for God to show Himself, and stand up for His name AND save the people of Judah. When someone is assaulting the Lord or our faith (we all know those friends and family) we don’t need to yell and scream and fight. We just need to pray. When our enemies are attacking us, or making life hard (co-workers, bosses, bureaucracy), we just need to pray. God will do what glorifies Him- He will do what is right. Our job is to pray and obey. Sennacherib is literally sending messengers to stand in the streets yelling and denouncing the Lord and Hezekiah doesn’t go to the streets to fight back, but instead he “went into the House of the Lord.”

God heard Hezekiah’s prayer and showed Himself in a mighty way to Sennacherib and was like, “who are you talking about? Who are you blaspheming? Me! And now you’ll pay for it and see how real I am.” (paraphrase). Hezekiah only had to pray and be faithful and the Lord did the rest. When we pray, God will act.

Sennacherib’s army ended up being all killed in one night by an angel of the Lord. Sennacherib was killed in his hometown by his own sons.

One last cool thing is that Jesus was prophesied in verses 30 and 31, “out of Jerusalem there shall go a remnant.”

The biggest takeaway from this chapter is to fight our battles on our knees (Charles Stanley). God wants us to bring all of our problems to Him and we should because when we are on the Lord’s side, we will win every time.