OUR LORD ON WHOM WE BASE OUR CONFIDENCE

Isaiah 36 verses 1 - 5 says this;

In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.

 Then the king of Assyria sent his field commander with a large army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. 

When the commander stopped at the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field, Eliakim son of Hilkiah the palace administrator, Shebna the secretary, and Joah son of Asaph the recorder went out to him.

The field commander said to them, “Tell Hezekiah: “‘This is what the great king, the king of Assyria, says: On what are you basing this confidence of yours?"

The Assyrian army, having successfully captured the fortified cities of Judah, set its sights on Jerusalem but the city remained defiant and so the King of Assyria, Sennacherib, sent his field commander with a large army to confer with   King Hezekiah of Judah.

King Hezekiah sent out a delegation of palace functionaries to meet with the Assyrian field commander. 

On behalf of king Sennacherib, the field commander asked Hezekiah's delegation to relay back to their king this  immortal question;

"On what are you basing this confidence of yours?"

The Assyrian army  was puzzled because the intelligence gathered by their agents did not reveal any reason why Jerusalem would believe that they could fend off the Assyrian attack.

As far as they could tell, there were no allies marching to their aid and there were no reserves of soldiers and supplies that could detected.

The Assyrians were so mystified that they  decided to asked king Hezekiah himself what card he had hidden up his sleeve.

The Assyrians, instead of dealing with Jerusalem in a professional, military way, undertook to jeer at the idea that Jerusalem's trust in the God of Israel would make a difference in the outcome of their attack.

They blasphemed the living God saying that it would be ill-advised to base any confidence on Him.

The Assyrians were wrong.

By the next morning, the Assyrian army of 185,000 men,  was dead and their King, Sennacherib, retreated to where he came from where he was killed by his sons.

The question was, "On what was Hezekiah basing  his confidence?".

He was basing it on the Lord God Almighty.

Amen.