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Part 3: The Temptation of Hezekiah

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of temptation in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.


This morning we look at Hezekiah. There are three large sections of the Old Testament that deal with Hezekiah, and if I were to read them all at a measured pace, it would take about 40 minutes, so let me list for you the references, and perhaps you’ll have time later in the day to read these chapters through on your own. I will simply read select sections. The three passages are 2 Kings 18–20; 2 Chronicles 29–32, and Isaiah 36–39. Beginning at 2 Kings 18 …

“In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother’s name was Abijaha daughter of Zechariah. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done.” This does not mean his immediate father but his father many times removed to the head of the dynasty.

“He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles.” He got rid of idolatry in the land. “He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it.” In other words, even the formally correct heritage of God-given revelation had, in certain respects, become idolatrous, and he was shrewd enough to see even those idols had to be gotten rid of.

“Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses. And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.” He came out from under the authority of the superpower of the day. “From watchtower to fortified city, he defeated the Philistines, as far as Gaza and its territory.”

Then verse 13:

“In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.” Now starts this long account of how the superpower first attacks the North and then comes to the South to Judah, to Hezekiah, and Jerusalem and there is a long time of besieging. Eventually, those powers are forced away and come back again. During that time Hezekiah just doesn’t know what to do. He’s holed up in this city for perhaps two years. Certainly, an extended period of time.

He tries to answer this superpower with minimal military forces at his disposal. The field commander (verse 19) taunts Hezekiah. “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 strategy and military strength—but you speak only empty words.” ’ ” Verse 22: “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?’ ”

In other words, there is a misunderstanding of what Hezekiah has done.

“Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them!” It’s like saying, “I’ll give you the tanks if you guys have any troops to actually use them.”

Verse 26: “Then Eliakim son of Hilkiah, and Shebna and Joah said to the field commander, ‘Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, since we understand it. Don’t speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people on the wall.’ ” In other words, “We don’t want our own people undermined by hearing these taunts from the opposing troops. At least have the courtesy to speak to us in your language which we can understand.”

“But the commander replied, ‘Was it only to your master and you that my master sent me to say these things, and not to the men sitting on the wall?’ ” The voices go up. The amplifiers come out. “Then the commander stood and called out in Hebrew, ‘Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! This is what the king says: Do not let Hezekiah deceive you.’ ” Tremendous pressures on this man, and eventually, these troops are forced to withdraw, but a letter comes. A letter comes saying, “At the end of the day, these troops are coming back.”

Hezekiah takes these letters and stands before the Lord and prays and beseeches God’s face. We read (chapter 19, verse 14), “Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: ‘O Lord, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Give ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God.

It is true, O Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by men’s hands. Now, O Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God.’ ” Verse 20: “Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah …” from God himself reassuring him God is going to answer victoriously, and out of this terrible pressure the nation emerges triumphant.

Then chapter 20. “In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, ‘This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.’ Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, ‘Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: ‘Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, “This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.” ’ ”

Then there are some signs God gives that this is, in fact, what he will do. Verse 12: “At that time Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of Hezekiah’s illness. Hezekiah received the messengers and showed them all that was in his storehouses—the silver, the gold, the spices and the fine olive oil—his armory and everything found among his treasures. There was nothing in his palace or in all his kingdom that Hezekiah did not show them.

Then Isaiah the prophet went to King Hezekiah and asked, ‘What did those men say, and where did they come from?’ ‘From a distant land,’ Hezekiah replied. ‘They came from Babylon.’ ” You must understand, at this point, Assyria was the superpower. Babylon was just rising, but Babylon would become the superpower, and this eventually laid the seeds for Babylon’s attack on Judah. At this point, Babylon is not yet a superpower.

“The prophet asked, ‘What did they see in your palace?’ ‘They saw everything in my palace,’ Hezekiah said. ‘There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them.’ Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, ‘Hear the word of the Lord: The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon.

Nothing will be left, says the Lord. And some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood who will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’ ‘The word of the Lord you have spoken is good,’ Hezekiah replied. For he thought, ‘Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?’ ”

Second Chronicles, chapter 32, verses 24 to the end. This recounts the near death of Hezekiah from a slightly different angle. “In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. He prayed to the Lord, who answered him and gave him a miraculous sign. But Hezekiah’s heart was proud and he did not respond to the kindness shown him; therefore the Lord’s wrath was on him and on Judah and Jerusalem.

Then Hezekiah repented of the pride of his heart, as did the people of Jerusalem; therefore the Lord’s wrath did not come on them during the days of Hezekiah. Hezekiah had very great riches and honor, and he made treasuries for his silver and gold and for his precious stones, spices, shields and all kinds of valuables. He also made buildings to store the harvest of grain, new wine and olive oil; and he made stalls for various kinds of cattle, and pens for the flocks.

He built villages and acquired great numbers of flocks and herds, for God had given him very great riches. It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channeled the water down to the west side of the City of David.” That enabled the city to withstand terrible sieges because it had an inside fresh water supply.

“He succeeded in everything he undertook. But when envoys were sent by the rulers of Babylon to ask him about the miraculous sign that had occurred in the land, God left him to test him and to know everything that was in his heart. The other events of Hezekiah’s reign and his acts of devotion are written in the vision of the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. Hezekiah rested with his fathers and was buried on the hill where the tombs of David’s descendants are. All Judah and the people of Jerusalem honored him when he died. And Manasseh his son succeeded him as king.”

So reads the Word of God.

There is something in many people that likes to have a clear-cut distinction not only between good and evil but between good people and bad people, between good movements and bad movements. Not for them, the ambiguous plays and dramas of the last 30 or 40 years. You know the kind of thing I mean.

You start off. Apparently, you have a good guy and a bad guy, and then as the play moves on, they reverse roles and the bad person becomes the good person and vice versa. By the end, it’s all mixed up, and it’s not quite clear who wins and who loses and who is good and who is bad. Sort of a moral muck everywhere. No. We want a John Wayne type film. You know who is good and who is bad. You know who is going to win. There’s something secure about that.

Similarly, although we don’t put it in such quite crass terms, sometimes you’re asked the question, “What do you think of the charismatics?” or “What do you think of the Vineyard?” or “What do you think of Presbyterians?” No. That’s too close to home! What people mean when they ask that question is, “Is this all from God or is it all from the pit?”

Very frequently, it isn’t quite that easy. There are very few movements, even movements of God in history, that are all good simply because God uses human means, human agents, and we sin and rebel. In the early church in the wake of Pentecost, you’re only three chapters further on before you come across Ananias and Sapphira and the murmuring because it doesn’t seem to be just how the food is being distributed.

Likewise, in individuals, it is extremely important to recognize that you and I, saved by grace and being prepared for heaven, still do not have the old nature so eradicated that we’re guaranteed perfection this side of the consummation and it is hard for many of us to come to terms with this and think through what it means.

Some of us think there are super-saints out there who are above temptation. They’ve walked with the Lord so long or they’ve been so filled with the Spirit or so instructed at the best seminaries in the land or whatever, that quite frankly, they sort of float above the temptations we lesser mortals have to confront.

Because we think that, we, then, may project an image of ourselves being in the same place when deep down we know, of course, that’s not the case, but we have to project this sort of image because it’s part of the successful image our society admires. Then we begin to get a two-track Christianity, showing in this area and living in this area. Then we’re even more uncomfortable, a little more deceitful.

To all of us who fall into any of these sorts of traps, the temptation of Hezekiah offers many salutary lessons, for here was a man mightily used of God. By any standards, a great saint whose end was ignominious who, in certain crucial temptations, failed horribly. What can we learn from him?

1. It is possible to be, basically, a faithful and fruitful servant of the living God in many areas and, yet, to fail miserably in some others.

I’m not recommending this, but it is possible, and it should not take much Bible reading to discover it. There is Abraham, a man of faith, a man of God, a praying man. Yet, twice he lies in the matter of his wife. Half-truths because he’s basically scared.

David, a man of astonishing courage, a great poet, singer of the songs of Israel, an administrator, a courageous fighter. In many ways an extraordinarily humble man, not wrecking simple vengeance when he had the power to do so. A God-orientated man not opposing Saul but recognizing God has his own timing with his own anointed. Not exacting vengeance on enemies. There is so much that is commendable about this man. Then, there’s Bathsheba and Uriah and the numbering of the people of God.

Then there’s Job. Godly. Almost embarrassingly godly. Read those opening chapters. Praying preemptively for his children. Not waiting till a crisis comes but, lest perhaps, there should be any sin in their hearts, he will intercede before God for them. What a father! Even when he loses everything including his 10 children and then loses his health and his wife nags him, “Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not also receive disaster? The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

But gradually, as those miserable comforters wear away at him and wear away at him and wear away at him, although he’s right on so many issues, eventually he projects a whole image in which he comes to believe that God owes him answers until there are those terrifying chapters at the end of the book when God answers from heaven.

Or Eli, such a good and godly man who didn’t have the moral guts to discipline his own family. Or Barnabas, son of encouragement. What a gift in the church who was compromised in Antioch! Galatians 2. Just not perceptive enough to see what’s going on theologically, and he’s just washed away with the tide.

So Hezekiah. We simply must not minimize his achievements in 2 Kings 18 and 19. His temptation comes after a life of fruitful and strategic service. He is farsighted beyond anyone between David and himself. When the others start reformations, they’re all half-baked compared with this man. They get rid of some idols but not others. This man is thorough, and he’s not only negative (he not only destroys certain things), but we read he holds fasts to the Lord. He does not cease to follow him. He keeps the commands the Lord has given Moses.

Then, at the end of his life, he has this temptation to show off and he does. Some of us would like to think as we get older temptations will become less. They will decrease. I have some news for you, young men. It’s not the way it works. Temptations change a little as you get older (that’s true), but they don’t decrease in intensity so far as I can see. They just change their focus.

When you’re young, you’re tempted to cheat on exams, fool around with girls. You’re tempted with pride. Then, you get married, and you’re tempted to cheat or you’re tempted to be a bully or you’re tempted to strip yourself from the kind of commitment that loves your wife as Christ loves the church, which means self-sacrificially and for her good. You start thinking she owes it all to you. After all, you’re the head of the home, aren’t you?

Then the children come along, and you’re tempted in a whole lot of new ways. Sometimes to wring their necks. Sometimes just to leave the little runts to your wife while you get on with the important things of life. Namely, all your interests. Then you work through that one, and you press on a little bit. Now they’re teenagers and they’re beginning to date. Then they’re getting married, and you have a whole new set of temptations and worries and concerns and pressures.

Then you face the first family bereavement. All you have to do is live long enough and you’re going to be bereaved. You either die early or you live long and are bereaved. That’s what’s going to happen, people. You think, finally, “They’re through college, out of the house and married. I can go and visit my grandchildren. It will be fun to see them. It will be fun to leave them.”

Then your daughter’s marriage breaks up. Oh, it may not happen exactly like that to you, but it happens for many people. Good men. Lloyd-Jones had two daughters. One of them was Elizabeth Catherwood and her husband Sir Fred Catherwood, vice president of the European Parliament. Godly, faithful. The other one had a tragic, difficult marriage that broke Lloyd-Jones’ heart.

May I tell you another story from my dad? I didn’t know my dad kept journals. He wasn’t very good at keeping journals. My father had one of these picky brains that was not good at the strategic level, so he did everything by pickiness. He didn’t have a filing system; he had a piling system.

In his journals, when he kept them, he was honest, and after he died, I came across all these papers. I’m going to write a book someday, The Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor. At the end of his life, in the last year or year and a half, he didn’t know he was going to die. He was in good health till six weeks before he died. He preached six and a half weeks before he died.

You find passages like, “Lord God, save me from the sins of old men.” Written at the age of 81. You who are 25, you don’t know what I’m talking about. At my age, I’m beginning to find out. You who are older than I, you know exactly what I’m talking about. There are different sins at different stages. I know, at one level, it’s all sin. Sin is sin.

But you can be an old man and suddenly develop a whole new set of sins: condescension, legalistic mentalities, dreams about yesteryear, endless wasted time watching TV, frivolous spending of money, nurturing old bitterness, keeping score, questioning God’s sovereignty as your friends die off and you are left alone, coping with the emptiness of bereavement.

“God, keep me from the sins of old men,” five months before he died. He used to write his diaries half in English and half in French. He’d switch back and forth, depending on which expression came out better for what he wanted to say. It’s the way he quoted hymns, too. It makes it very hard to read his poetry. “I’m so ashamed that after knowing the Lord for so many years I am not holier of heart and mind. My only hope on the last day is this:

Alas, and did my Savior bleed

and did my Sovereign die?

Would he devote that sacred head

for such a worm as I?

Was it for crime that I had done

He groaned upon the tree?

Amazing pity, grace unknown

And love beyond degree.

It is possible to be a faithful and fruitful servant of the Lord in many areas and, then, to fail miserably in some others. Christians are in it for all of life and for the long haul. It will not do to be wonderfully triumphant in some area of life and let another area go to pot. It is essential to fight on all fronts.

2. God’s people, not least his “successful” people, face peculiar temptations in three areas.

A) False priorities

Second Kings 20:1–3. Especially, a false evaluation of priorities in the light of impending death. “In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, ‘This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.’ ” He does not say, “Well, that is wonderful of the Lord to help me clean up my checkbook and organize my insurance policies so my wife will have an easy time.” None of that! “This is a wonderful courtesy the Lord has extended to me.”

“Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, ‘Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly.” How different is this from the stance of Simeon? “Now let your servant depart in peace.” Think of Paul in Philippians, chapter 1. “To depart and be with Christ is far better.”

About five years ago, I contracted a disease. The doctors told me it was likely to take me out, but they weren’t quite sure. Well, obviously, they were wrong, but I didn’t know it at the time. I was just getting over that, and I went to Africa for some ministry and came down with typhoid which was not nice.

Some people were praying for me and earnestly beseeching God’s face for healing. I just couldn’t ask for it, or I could ask for it only in the most tentative sort of way. It’s not because I was so homesick for heaven or because I’m so godly. It wasn’t any of those sorts of things. I remembered Hezekiah. Here was a man who got his extra 15 years and blew it. For all eternity, wouldn’t it have been better if he had gone out when the Lord had first said instead of getting the 15 years and destroying his entire reputation for godliness and integrity the way he did?

Do you remember the words of the old hymn? “Oh, let me never, never outlive my love for Thee.” There have been a lot of clergy in the last few years who have made shipwreck of their lives and their ministry. What I began to pray, therefore, was, “I have young children. I don’t want to leave yet. It would be very hard for Joy, my wife, but Lord God, if by staying in my life I will destroy what I have taught in my books and in my sermons, if I am to end up like a Hezekiah, take me out now. I don’t want to stay.”

For Christians, there are worse things than dying. It’s a question, ultimately, of priorities. What this suggests is you cannot possibly get your priorities straight (you cannot possibly do it) unless you set all of them in the light of eternity. It is astonishing how often, not only in the Old Testament but especially in the New, how much spirituality turns on living with eternity’s values in view.

You can face persecution if you know there’s a reward down there. You can face suffering if you know that forever there’s an eternal weight of glory. You can withstand temptation if you know one day you will be above temptation. But if all of your assessment of Christian life and power is determined by your three-score years and ten, if all your values turn on your comforts here and the length of your lifespan here, you will distort your values. That is inevitable.

That’s a subject to which I wish to return at much greater length tomorrow, for James makes a great deal of it. So does 1 Peter. So does Paul. False priorities. Instead of seeing life lived for the glory of God, to the eternal praise of God, for the good of Christ’s people and with eternity’s values in view, we measure everything by our own comforts, by our own sense of fulfillment, and by our own three-score and ten, and everything will shift.

B) Self-righteousness

It’s not that no one else is self-righteous, but it is certainly not uncommon that those who have known great victories in the Lord are open to a certain kind of barter mentality with God. Listen to Hezekiah in chapter 20. “ ‘Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly.”

“God, you owe me.” How much better to take the stance of the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 and in 1 Corinthians 4? In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul asks, “What have you but what you receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if somehow it’s yours?” Your genes? Your background? Your heritage?

“Oh, well, there’s still my ability to work. I have worked hard.” Well, yes, but that is partly genetic, and it’s partly your heritage, and it’s partly your temperament, and it’s partly the circumstances that God has brought into your life. God is not the God of the gaps who was not in charge of these things too. If you work hard and have the energy, who has given you the health? Who has given you the makeup and the drive and the background? What have you but what you received?

If you have known something of fruitfulness and righteousness, from a biblical point of view, that’s incentive to thank God. It certainly isn’t any excuse for bartering with God. “Look, God. I’ve done all these things for you.” It’s like Peter. “Lord, we’ve left everything to follow you. What do we get in the kingdom?” Isn’t it pathetic? Beside the cross, isn’t that pathetic?

Three or four weeks ago, I was speaking at the Bethlehem Pastors’ Conference in Minneapolis. At this conference, they often have a missionary there to recount some of his work for Christ’s sake in some corner of the world most of us don’t think about. They had a missionary there by the name of Doug who is head of Action International.

Doug is fighting cancer. He had recently come off an extended bout of chemo and his resistance was way down. He was told to protect himself. Instead, he went out with the team he organized to go to Rwanda. Doctors told him, if he went, he’d never get back. He didn’t have enough resistance left to fight the disease. He had two sick children in his arms when he got there. Somebody took a picture. He sent it back to the doctor and said, “I’m still here.”

Doug is a wonderful brother, but as he fights cancer.… You know how chemotherapy does strange things and makes people react differently. In his case, his fingers would suddenly burst open and start spurting blood. He would have violent illness. His 22-year-old son was not coping watching his dad suffer like this. Just unable to talk about it and unable to deal with it.

One day the son broke down and said, “Dad, I just wish I could take your pain.” The father turned to him and said, “My dear son, I don’t have any pain to share.” He said, “I beg your pardon?” He said, “I only have the pain God has given me. I don’t have any to share. This is the path God has given me.”

Isn’t that grand? No feeling of entitlement because he has worked in the poorest of the poor areas of the world. Action International ministry does nothing but work with the poorest of the poor. It’s working with the street urchins in Manila. It’s working with the drug crazies in San Paolo. It’s working in places like Rwanda. That’s all it does spreading the gospel and bringing relief. That’s all it does. Surely, if anybody has the right to say, “Well, God you owe me a bit …”

“I only have the pain God has given me. I don’t have any to share.” You must understand, Doug is not saying, “I like it.” He says, “Quite frankly, I wish God would just take me home and I’d be done with it, but as long as he leaves me here, I serve a God who says all things work together for good to those who are the called of God. I serve a sovereign God who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able but will, with the temptation, make a way of escape that you may be able to bear it.” No self-righteousness.

C) Pride

Chapter 20, verses 12 to 18. Showing off. Some of us show off even when we’re young. It’s part of our fallenness. It’s part of our sinfulness. But sometimes it’s after we are, by all appearances, more successful that we’re particularly tempted to show off, and we may do so in extremely spiritual verbiage. “Well, yes. God really has blessed me, you know.” Then you go on for about 40 minutes on all the blessings. At the end of the day, you’re not quite sure if you’re really showing off God or you’re really showing off the blessings.

There’s a sense in which Hezekiah, you might say, could feel a certain kind of justifiable pride at his accomplishments, until, finally, you realize this man’s pride led to the terrible destruction of Jerusalem. Do you remember the Gibeonite affair? The people were seduced in the days of the entrance into the land simply because the people did not seek the face of God. They had been successful at Jericho. They had been successful at Ai. The enemy was falling like tenpins. Then along come the Gibeonites and they get snookered because they do not seek the face of God. They think they can handle this one.

I know of a Christian leader … If I mentioned his name, many of you would know him. He was a very fruitful pastor. Brought a church from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand and more. Has administered all kinds of major Christian organization. But I first knew him and worked with him 12 or 13 years ago. If anyone in his organization had a criticism or a suggestion, he’d take him out for lunch or get one of his subordinates to take him out for lunch to find out what was eating him, put him on a committee to look into it.

In the last 10 years, I’ve detected a terrible shift. Now if you criticize him or make a suggestion, he just cuts you out. You’re sidelined. The result is the only people around him are yes men, people who fawn all over him and tell him how wonderful he is. He started so well, but his very success, and he has known great success, has so corroded his sense of perspective that, at the end of the day, he’s now open to a whole new range of sins that just weren’t even there for him to fall into when he was a young man.

D) Complacency and personal comfort

Chapter 20, verse 19. This has to be one of the ugliest texts on Hezekiah’s life anywhere in these chapters. When the word of Isaiah finally comes to him and says, “Because of your sin, ultimately, Jerusalem will be destroyed,” what does he say? Chapter 20, verse 19: “ ‘The word of the Lord you have spoken is good,’ Hezekiah replied. For he thought, ‘Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?’ ”

That is appalling. I want to suggest to you some of the outrage we feel, some of the distress we experience today as America begins to come apart at the seams reflects the same kind of love of creature comfort. Do you want me to tell you how to write a book and make a lot of money? I know quite a lot about writing books. I don’t know much about making money, but I’ll tell you how to write a book and make a lot of money.

Some of us in the faculty lounge were sitting around and just talking to one another about book writing, and we came up with the title that would sell the most books in the theological arena: Money, Sex, and Power in the Millennium. I’ll tell you how to write a book that will make almost as much money. There are quite a few books like this being written.

Write a book telling everything that’s wrong with America. Take the worst stories from education, from the judicial system, from philosophy, from the drugs on the streets to corrupt police, the judicial abuse of power, the worst stories you can find anywhere. Cast it as a kind of betrayal of the American heritage. Be very angry and indignant. You will make millions.

I’m not for a moment suggesting all of the analysis of such books is wrong. On the other hand, the kind of emotions those books stir tend to have much more to do with our sense of betrayal and loss of creature comforts than they do with passionate love of the gospel and the spreading of the gospel so those whom we demonize on the left will hear the gospel and be saved.

The early church faced an immensely pluralistic world (that’s what the Roman Empire was like), but they had no sense of betrayal or, “The Roman Empire owes me.” They were just a small, persecuted minority, and by God’s grace and the power of the Spirit, they were able to change the world, but today, because we have come from a heritage where we have known many Judeo-Christian values in the society and in the culture, we want to preserve them all, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’m not for a moment suggesting there are no legal steps we should take or no political action we should think about or no evils we should oppose. I’m not suggesting any of that, but if all of that is done in a framework in which basically we’re saying, “You demonized people are taking away what’s mine,” at what point do we say, “And Jesus loves you”? Where do you proclaim the gospel in this?

I don’t mean to be cynical, but supposing for argument’s sake, we somehow managed to ram through Congress an abortion amendment that overturned Roe vs. Wade. Then wonder of wonders, we got enough states on it that we put through an amendment. Do you want me tell you what would happen? Unless the Lord gives us revival, in a few years what would happen is exactly what happened to prohibition, because unless you change human hearts, you do not for the long term change human society. You just do not do it.

The question must be, while we are trying to be faithful and righteous and godly in the passing of laws and in the administration of justice and upholding that which is good in our society and heritage, what can we do to proclaim the gospel of God that transforms men and women from the inside out?

If we do not maintain that vision, we can be as angry as you like, but we’ll lose everything. Complacency. A desire for creature comforts. In my lifetime (what happens after that, that’s somebody else’s problem), when we succumb to such temptations we may place ourselves in such desperate plight that God will simply leave us for a bit, too, or answer our prayers as a sign of judgment. “If that’s the kind of society you want, see how you like it.”

He leaves Hezekiah, we’re told, to see what was in his heart. Do you recall the Psalms? When the people of God asked for meat in the desert, we are told, “He sent them the meat they asked for but sent leanness into their souls.”

2. The antidote to such temptations

The fundamental antidote, which will occupy much more of our time in the next two sessions, is to seek God’s face, to know him better, to adopt his priorities, to develop a godly pattern of life, and all of this is made clear from the earlier account of Hezekiah’s life. Look back at chapter 18. It’s so sad he did not adopt his own lessons.

Compare chapter 18, verses 1 to 4 with chapter 18, verses 5 and following. Chapter 18, verses 1 to 4 … All the things Hezekiah is against. Chapter 18, verse 5 and following.… All the kinds of things he is for. Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. He held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow him. He was discerning enough he understood you must overcome evil with good. You can never, never, never overcome evil by simply overcoming evil. You cannot beat temptation by a merely negative attack.

You recall the story Jesus tells of the man who had a demon. The man is exorcised. The demon is gone. By the power of God, the man is free, but instead, then, of asking, “Lord God, fill me with your blessed Holy Spirit,” the man is just an empty shell, and seven worse demons come along.

So also, you cannot beat lust, you cannot beat addictive habits, you cannot beat bitterness, you cannot beat hatred, and you cannot beat greed unless you replace it with other things. While you’re fighting negatively, you must also be adopting other things. Isn’t that what Paul says? Overcome evil with good. You don’t just overcome evil; you overcome evil with good. That’s what this man was like.

Moreover, he was faithful in the initial stages in the little things, not just the big things. To the very details of what traps there were in Israel that could cause idolatry, he had sorted them all out. By the end of his life, it wasn’t like that. He was faithful in this mighty episode with Sennacherib, but the little things in his life had all gone sliding.

There are some people like that in ministry and in leadership. They think because they’re doing a good job in the church or because they’re successful in their business, therefore, the smaller details of life, as they perceive them (what they do with their children or what they do with their thought life or how they spend their money) … Those things aren’t quite so important because, “I’m doing the Lord’s work, and in the big issues, I’m basically right.” Not so this man. Not in the early stages. He was faithful in the small things.

There is a wonderful passage in Deuteronomy that looks forward to the time when there will be kings in Israel. When Deuteronomy was written there were no kings in Israel, but provision is made as to what those kings will do once they are appointed. We read in Deuteronomy, chapter 17, verse 18, “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law …”

That’s the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. There are no printing machines. You can’t go down to the Bible store and buy the latest version. No. He’s going to take a quill pen and copy out Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy by hand. That’s what the law says.

“He is to write for himself a copy of this law taken from that of the priests who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel.”

Can you imagine how Israel’s history would have been different if all the kings had done that? Can you imagine how America’s history would be different if all Christian men took the Word with similar seriousness? We cannot be godly and disciplined in the area of temptation and sin and the pursuit of righteousness if we depend on an emotional high from Sunday to Sunday or, perhaps, men’s retreat once a year. Not even Promise Keepers is going to help.

To know God’s mind, to think God’s thoughts after him, you just have to put aside time, and if you don’t copy it down with a quill pen, maybe you’ll do it on a computer or at least read it again and again and again until you hide God’s Word in your heart. There are ways of doing it. I’m sure there are men in this room who have never read the Bible right through.

If you read four chapters a day, give or take, in one year you read through all of the Old Testament once plus the Psalms and the New Testament twice. There’s a whole scheme for doing that written, for example, in the last century by a godly Scottish minister, Murray M’Cheyne. The godly Mr. M’Cheyne he was called. If you do this again and again and again, it will transform you.

I knew a man in the ministry a number of years ago who fell into adultery. His conscience began to work on him. What he did was take down a concordance from his shelf, opened it up, and looked up every passage in the Bible on adultery and on fornication. He looked them all up and read them right through. He wept and wept. He’s out of the ministry; he did preserve his marriage. He did return to the Lord. My only regret is that when he was tempted he didn’t do that. Why didn’t he look up all those passages then?

The faithful, faithful, faithful rehearsing of all of God’s mind on issue after issue after issue eventually stamps our way of looking at things. I don’t believe Hezekiah would have fallen as he did if he was still faithfully reading the Word of God day after day after day meditatively, brokenly, and humbly. It has often been said, “This book will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from this book.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, perhaps the most wonderful antidote is the sheer dependency, the baby-like faith Hezekiah displayed when he was right up against it. Isn’t his prayer wonderful? When Sennacherib is threatening and the letter comes in taunting and he takes the letter and lays it out before the Lord, “Lord, look at this thing. What am I supposed to do with this? It’s not just me, Lord. It’s your covenant people. Your own promises are at stake here. I can’t handle this! What will you do, Lord?”

Isn’t there a wonderful kind of simplicity of trust and elementary faith? So also, the people of God in every generation learn that victorious Christian living is not a matter of trying hard and screwing up your stomach muscles. It is a matter of walking by faith, abandoning yourself to the living God, and asking him to revitalize you and to strengthen you, to fill you afresh to make you discerning beyond your years and capacity and experience to make you wise unto salvation to enable you to persevere.

This sense of dependency on the Lord that seeks God’s face. For us who live this side of the cross, do we not have all the more incentive so to do? These are themes we will explore in the next two sessions. “He who did not refuse us his own Son but freely gave him up for us all, how should he not also with him freely give us all things?” Let us pray.

Lord God, help us to take sin seriously, to view it increasingly from the perspective of your throne, to see its odium and heinousness, its betrayal and deceit. Yet, grant equally that we may see how utterly attractive is holiness, righteousness, humility, love, joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit.

Above all, we beseech you, grant that we may see it is the Lord Christ himself who, by his death and resurrection on our behalf, paid for our guilt and secured our place before you and bequeathed to us his blessed Spirit who alone enables us and frees us to stand before you forgiven with moral incentive, with inner strength to confront the temptations from within and the temptations from without.

Help us, we ask, to live with eternity’s values in view and to avoid the kind of self-centered complacency into which Hezekiah ultimately fell. Not the sins of gross rebellion, not the sins of a wild affair but the sins of smugness, the sins of creature comforts, the sins of a desire simply for a quiet life, the sins of pride. Lord God, help us to fight those. For Jesus’ sake, amen.

 

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.