The
gravest mistake that Sennacherib had committed was to insult God. In the letter
he sent to intimidate Hezekiah, he was casting an aspersion on God’s ability to
help Judah. Having received and read Sennacherib's taunting letter, any lesser
person would be greatly petrified and left frozen stiff. But not for Hezekiah. He
knew that the only person that could help him over his daunting problem was the
covenant God of Israel. His first response after reading the letter was to take
it into the house of the LORD and
there spread it before His presence and pray to Him. Hezekiah was demonstrating
his total trust in God.
Acknowledging God’s sovereignty, the king called
Him the LORD of
hosts, the God of Israel, the One who is forever enthroned above the cherubim. Hezekiah
was calling on the Creator God who has control over all of heaven and
earth. The request he was making was not based on the merit of his own
goodness, but on the name and honor of God. He even asked God to take note of
the derogatory insults Sennacherib had hurled against Him in the letter.
Hezekiah also recognized the record of Assyria’s conquest and superiority and
knew that they had destroyed many idols of the nations. But he was sure that
those idols had no real power for they were merely wood and stone products of
man’s hand and were nowhere like the LORD, the true God. He then requested for God to
intervene with His mighty power and deliver Judah from the hand of Sennacherib.
Hezekiah’s objective was for all nations to acknowledge the Sovereignty of the
LORD God.
Like Hezekiah, all of us want to experience victory
over our circumstances that seem larger than we can handle. Our victory over
them depends largely on who we turn to seek the victory. As people who trust in
the Mighty God, our first option must be to go to Him and not make Him our last
resort. For when we recognize our LORD for who He is and seek to honor Him, there is
no situation in life that should terrify us. Our victory over every
circumstance we face in life depends largely on our ability to recognize the
bigness of our God. When we realize that He is with us in every circumstance of
life, we will never need to feel overwhelmed at all. Two questions we need to
ask when we face what seems like an insurmountable problem are: (1) How big is
our God? (2) Is He with us in that encounter? Remember, He is always available
and wants to see us through no matter how big we see our problem to be. Victory
is in our hands when we trust God to see us through!
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