https://youtu.be/768iYhdk6jo
John 3:19-20
Heb 10:30-31; For we know the one who said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people."31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Prov 6:16-19; (NET) There are six things that the Lord hates, even seven things that are an abomination to him:
17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
18 a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that are swift to run to evil,
19 a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who spreads discord among family members.
Psalm 125:1-5; (NET) Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion; it cannot be upended and will endure forever.
2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, now and forevermore.
3 Indeed, the scepter of a wicked king will not settle upon the allotted land of the godly. Otherwise the godly might do what is wrong.
4 Do good, O Lord, to those who are good, to the morally upright!
5 As for those who are bent on traveling a sinful path, may the Lord remove them, along with those who behave wickedly! May Israel experience peace!
Psalm 91:1-9; (NET) 1 As for you, the one who lives in the shelter of the sovereign One, and resides in the protective shadow of the mighty king -
2 I say this about the Lord, my shelter and my stronghold, my God in whom I trust
3 he will certainly rescue you from the snare of the hunter and from the destructive plague.
4 He will shelter you with his wings; you will find safety under his wings. His faithfulness is like a shield or a protective wall.
5 You need not fear the terrors of the night, the arrow that flies by day,
6 the plague that comes in the darkness, or the disease that comes at noon.
7 Though a thousand may fall beside you, and a multitude on your right side, it will not reach you.
8 Certainly you with your very own eyes see the Nemesis of the wicked.
9 because you have taken refuge in the Lord, my shelter, the sovereign One.
Isa 26:3-4; You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you: because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength.
Never forget that Jesus always plays chicken with the devil and his lying sycophants and snatches glorious victory from the jaws of what the false narrative of the public lie falsely alleges to be unavoidable imminent defeat. Psa 23:4; 2Cor 12:9-10; 2Cor 13:8;
We are presently in a study of Jonah, Nineveh and Nemesis and now Israel Judah Assyria and Nemesis where we see God's policy of grace before judgment. God always provides the opportunity for repentance before he executes judgment.
Some principles we can derive from of our brief study of Jonah, Nineveh, Israel, Judah, Assyria and Nemesis is that anyone can repent, because God extends His mercy even to the merciless and help to the helpless but judgment is always waiting in the wings because ultimately the truth wins because God is truth and He cannot deny himself. 2Cor 13:8; John 17:17; 2Tim 2:13;
Last time in the context of Hezekiah's prayer for God to Glorify Himself we have taken up a brief study of he Shekinah Glory of God. We noted that in the Church Age we have the mandate to "keep on becoming imitators of Christ") from glory to glory (from the humanity of Christ living in the prototype divine dynasphere to the momentum of the believer in the operational spiritual power system. Eph 5:1;
This also means from the glory of the escrow blessing that is guaranteed by the indwelling of Christ to the glory of escrow blessings in eternity that is guaranteed by the fact that Jesus Christ now lives behind the veil inside the Holy of Holies) as it were from the Spirit of the Lord."
In the Church Age God the Holy Spirit permanently indwells every believer to create and maintain a temple for the glory of the indwelling (shekan) of Jesus Christ.
1Cor 3:16; "You are the temple of God." A temple must have the Shekinah Glory as the guarantee of escrow blessing. This is why you must be a temple. The Holy Spirit takes our body and makes it into a spiritual temple for the indwelling of Jesus Christ as the guarantee of blessing in time.
The indwelling of Christ is the guarantee that our escrow blessings for time are available to us now. This provides a spiritual freedom based on and exclusively enabled by God's power that was never available previously.
This indwelling creates a conflict between the Holy Spirit and the old sin nature regarding who will control the believer's soul, Gal 5:15-25;
Nothing the believer does can destroy the spiritual temple that God the Holy Spirit has built in their body. God the Holy Spirit built the temple, and He maintains the temple without regard to what the believer does.
1Cor 6:19-20; "Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body."
2Cor 6:16; "For we are the temple of the living God, just as God has said, `I will dwell in them and walk among them; I will be their God and they will be My people.'" Lev 26 is quoted, which relates the indwelling of Christ to the Shekinah Glory.
This brings us back to Hezekiah's prayer. Isa 37:14-20;NET) Hezekiah took the letter from the messengers and read it. Then Hezekiah went up to the Lord's temple and spread it out before the Lord. v15 Hezekiah prayed before the Lord:
v16 "O Lord who commands armies, O God of Israel, who is enthroned on the cherubim! You alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You made the sky and the earth.
v17 Pay attention, Lord, and hear! Open your eyes, Lord, and observe! Listen to this entire message Sennacherib sent and how he taunts the living God!
v18 It is true, Lord, that the kings of Assyria have destroyed all the nations and their lands.
v19 They have burned the gods of the nations, for they are not really gods, but only the product of human hands manufactured from wood and stone. That is why the Assyrians could destroy them.
v20 Now, O Lord our God, rescue us from his power, so all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord."
Hezekiah asked God to intervene for His glory, so that the other nations would know that He, the Lord of Israel, is the true God. Hezekiah requested deliverance from the Assyrians so that nations everywhere would acknowledge God's sovereignty over everything including the Assyrian army.
Isa 37:21-35; (NET) Isaiah son of Amoz sent this message to Hezekiah: "This is what the Lord God of Israel says: 'Because you prayed to me concerning King Sennacherib of Assyria,
22 this is what the Lord says about him: "The virgin daughter Zion despises you - she makes fun of you; daughter Jerusalem shakes her head after you.
23 Whom have you taunted and hurled insults at? At whom have you shouted and looked so arrogantly? At the Holy One of Israel!
24 Through your messengers you taunted the sovereign master, 'With my many chariots I climbed up the high mountains, the slopes of Lebanon. I cut down its tall cedars and its best evergreens. I invaded its most remote regions, its thickest woods.
25 I dug wells and drank water. With the soles of my feet I dried up all the rivers of Egypt.'
26 Certainly you must have heard! Long ago I worked it out, in ancient times I planned it, and now I am bringing it to pass. The plan is this: Fortified cities will crash into heaps of ruins.
27 Their residents are powerless; they are terrified and ashamed. They are as short-lived as plants in the field or green vegetation. They are as short-lived as grass on the rooftops when it is scorched by the east wind.
28 I know where you live and everything you do and how you rage against me.
29 Because you rage against me and the uproar you create has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose, and my bridle between your lips, and I will lead you back the way you came."
30 "This will be your reminder that I have spoken the truth: This year you will eat what grows wild, and next year what grows on its own. But the year after that you will plant seed and harvest crops; you will plant vines and consume their produce.
31 Those who remain in Judah will take root in the ground and bear fruit.
32 "For a remnant will leave Jerusalem; survivors will come out of Mount Zion. The intense devotion of the Lord who commands armies will accomplish this.
33 So this is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria: 'He will not enter this city, nor will he shoot an arrow here. He will not attack it with his shielded warriors, nor will he build siege works against it.
34 He will go back the way he came - he will not enter this city,' says the Lord.
35 I will shield this city and rescue it for the sake of my reputation and because of my promise to David my servant."'"
Responding to Hezekiah's prayer, the Lord sent a message to him through Isaiah that the Assyrian army would be defeated
The message included three parts. First, the Assyrians would be driven back. Deliverance would come to Jerusalem (the Virgin Daughter of Zion); because Assyria would flee. The tables would be turned and Zion would mock Assyria.
This would come about as an answer to Hezekiah's prayer and as punishment on the Assyrians for their blasphemy and arrogance. Sennacherib claimed to have felled the choicest tall cedars and pines in the heights (mountains and hills) of Lebanon.
He also claimed to have conquered Egypt though because he had defeated the Egyptians in Philistia. Those successes came only because the Lord allowed them under his permissive will.
The nations Sennacherib conquered were weak and like grass on flat housetops (Psa 129:6) readily scorched by the sun. But now the Lord, knowing Sennacherib's rage, would cause him to go back to his land as if he were being led like an animal in disgrace.
This is fitting because the Assyrians were known for leading their captives by hooks in their noses.
Second, God assured Hezekiah that a remnant would remain (v30-32) and that life would go on as usual. For the next two years life would be difficult as they sought to get their crops back to normal, but in the third year (the normal time it takes for a vineyard to begin producing grapes) there would be a bountiful harvest. The Lord would do this because of his unfailing love for Judah.
Third, in the message God had previously sent to the king of Assyria, God told him that he would not be permitted to set foot inside the city of Jerusalem or even build a siege ramp against its walls. He would have to return home because the Lord God would personally defend Jerusalem.
Isa 37:36-38;The Lord's messenger went out and killed 185,000 troops in the Assyrian camp. When they got up early the next morning, there were all the corpses!
37 So King Sennacherib of Assyria broke camp and went his way. He went home and stayed in Nineveh.
38 One day, as he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer struck him down with the sword. They ran away to the land of Ararat; his son Esarhaddon replaced him as king.
The destruction of the Assyrian army that was predicted by Isaiah in Isa 30:27-33; Isa 31:8-9; and Isa 33:1,18-19l is almost anticlimactic, The overnight slaughter did not come from the hand of an enemy but by the Angel of the LORD, who killed 185,000 soldiers..
Sennacherib fled back to Assyria and was assassinated 20 years later (681BC) by two of his sons. The end of Assyria came suddenly in 612BC when Cyaxares, the king of the Medes, and Nabopolassar, then ruler of Babylon, joined forces with the Scythians to take Nineveh.
The Medes launched a surprise attack from the Iranian Plateau; the Chaldeans came across the Tigris-Euphrates Valley; the Sycthians swept out of the north, from the direction of the Caspian Sea. The capture of Nineveh marked the total collapse of the empire.
Within three months, Assyria and the capital city of Nineveh that had been founded by Nimrod after the flood ceased to exist. God's Word was vindicated. "Behold, I am against you," the Lord of hosts proclaimed against Assyria.
Other than artifacts no trace of the Assyrian Empire remains to this day. This amazing fact of secular history, combined with divine revelation, is documented in The Cambridge Ancient History published by Cambridge University Press.
The disappearance of the Assyrian people will always remain a unique and striking phenomenon in ancient history. Other, similar, kingdoms and empires have passed away, but the people have lived on.
It is true that recent discoveries have shown that poverty-stricken communities perpetuated the old Assyrian names at various places, for instance on the ruined site of Ashur, for many centuries, but the essential truth remains the same.
A nation that had existed for two thousand years and had ruled a wide area completely lost its independent identity.
Even in lands where, as Edward Gibbon in his book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has remarked, the people are of a libidinous complexion, the Assyrians seem to have been unduly devoted to practices that can only end in national suicide . . .
No other land seems to have been sacked and pillaged so completely as was Assyria; and no other people, with the possible exception of the Northern kingdom of Israel, was ever so completely enslaved.
Another way that the fall of Assyria is unique is that after centuries of military domination in Mesopotamia, and after decades of imperial power, it is almost impossible for the modern historian to trace any lasting Assyrian influence on the history of succeeding generations.
Now that is Nemesis.... and apart from repentance it is where client nation USA is rapidly headed.
2Chron 7:14; if my people, who belong to me, humble themselves, pray, seek to please me, and repudiate their sinful practices, then I will respond from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.