Reggie Weems’ Blog

Teana recently told me about a woman who complained her that New York City gym was now overflowing in the early morning work hours, with unemployed Wall Street analysts and stock brokers.  What can we learn from Wall Street and the King of Assyria?

 
Poor Sennacherib (705-681 b.c.).  He was the earth’s greatest king…but only for a short time.  In 701 b.c., after conquering every nation and tribe between Assyrian (Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran)) and Judah (southern Israel), Sennacherib surrounded Jerusalem in an effort to squelch Hezekiah’s Egyptian-backed rebellion. 
Sennacherib’s own war journal reads, “Because Hezekiah, king of Judah, would not submit to my yoke, I came up against him, and by force of arms and by the might of my power I took 46 of his strong fenced cities; and of the smaller towns which were scattered about, I took and plundered a countless number. From these places I took and carried off 200,156 persons, old and young, male and female, together with horses and mules, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, a countless multitude; and Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape…”
Hezekiah attempted to ‘buy off’ Sennarcherib by paying him the tribute money owed to the heathen king but, by that time, Sennacherib was so angry and had invested so much time, energy and money into the conquest, he laid siege to the city and waited, terrorizing the Israelites with continuing threats. 

 
Sennacherib’s great mistake was insulting the Hebrews’ God, Yahweh or, as the Scripture records, “the king of Assyria has sent to mock the living God” (2 Kings 18:4).  Sennacherib himself compared Jerusalem’s God to the lifeless, faux gods of every nation between Assyrian and Jerusalem.  In a letter to the people in Jerusalem, the Assyrian king wrote, “Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. 11 Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? 12 Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’” (2 Kings 19) Hezekiah didn’t miss the sarcasm.  He prayed to God, “O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. 16 Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God….” (19:15-16).  God responded, “I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.” (19:34).   And he did.  That night, one angel destroyed 185,000 Assyrians.  Sennacherib returned home (his war journals say nothing of the military defeat; only that he heard distressing news in Ninevah and had to return there) only to be murdered by his own sons right in front of his god, Nisroch.  In this case, it wasn’t the Nis that rocked but Yahweh!  (Get it?)

 
Oh well, kings may come and kings may go; whether the kings of Assyria or the kings of Wall Street.  As quickly as one angel can destroy 185,000 Assyrians, the stock market can crash and recover.  Gas prices can come down and then a hurricane can destroy coastal refineries. There are fortunes to be made and lost every day but one no day is God, not God.  There is only one Sovereign and according to the next great king of the earth after Sennacherib, the Babylonian, Nebuchadnezzar, “his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; 35 all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” (Daniel 4:34-35). 

 
So it is that every Christian should not trust in Egypt, or Assyria, or Samaria or any earthly power but in the name of the Lord our God.  For your future, don’t bet on Sennarcherib or Wall Street but trust in God.  To encourage your heart, read Psalm 46 for Judah’s great exaltation of God after He rescued them from Sennacherib.  Then, ‘be still and know.’  ‘Be still and know!”  There is only one King, one Lord, one God and we are His! 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.