26 Then Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah and Joah, said to Rabshakeh, “Speak now to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; and do not speak with us in Judean in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.”27 But Rabshakeh said to them, “Has my master sent me only to your master and to you to speak these words, and not to the men who sit on the wall, doomed to eat their own dung and drink their own urine with you?”
28 Then Rabshakeh stood and cried with a loud voice in Judean, saying, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. 29 Thus says the king, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you from my hand;30 nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, “The Lord will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” 31 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, “Make your peace with me and come out to me, and eat each of his vine and each of his fig tree and drink each of the waters of his own cistern, 32 until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live and not die.” But do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you, saying, “The Lord will deliver us.” 2 Kings 18:26-32
1. Notice that our enemy and the enemy of God and our leaders, speaks in a language that we can understand. He could have just spoken to the leaders but he wants us to hear him.
2. Our enemy tries to influence us into not trusting our leaders in their leadership but especially when our leaders try to help us trust God for our deliverance and provision.
3. The enemy, under threat of our destruction, offers us (read entices us) into making peace with him or make an agreement with him to trust in our own provision, our own deliverance and relying on self. Until he comes to take us away to a better place, a new land like our own with all the promises of the good things we had.
Wait, haven’t we already tried this by relying on self? Isn’t that how we got into this mess? And that promise of being taken to a new land like our own is from the father of lies who loves to mix partial truth with lies. We definitely will be taken away alright but by our own lust and love of the world and self, the very thing we agreed with the enemy to do but we will not end up in a place filled with the promises he is making but rather of emptiness, sorrow, hardship, pain, bitterness and slavery…again.
We must not listen to the enemy when he is pressing in with lies because
“Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 “For he will be like a bush in the desert And will not see when prosperity comes, But will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, A land of salt without inhabitant.
7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord And whose trust is the Lord.
8 “For he will be like a tree planted by the water, That extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit.
Jeremiah 17:5-8
Are there lies of the enemy that you need to purge from your life in order to be set apart?
If trusting the Lord makes us into a tree planted by water with roots going deep helping us fight off famine, what roots are you enhancing during this 40 day fast? Trust, Hope, Faith, Love, Prayer, Intimacy…
“Once we truly see God at work, we will never be concerned again about the things that happen, because we are actually trusting in our Father in heaven, whom the world cannot see.”
Today’s Oswald Chamber’s quote on utmost.org / myutmost instagram: