After suffering humiliation from Sennacherib, who entered Judah and laid siege to Jerusalem in order to subdue it, King Hezekiah took a firm stance against the Assyrian monarch and told the Israelites that there would be no surrender. They would trust in the Lord, who would fight their wars. Following the lead of the prophet Isaiah, Hezekiah scorned Sennacherib, who came to him boasting. Faced with the response of the ruler of Judah, the king of Assyria realized that the fight would be hard!

           Hezekiah rested in God, who sent an angel that night to every point where his enemies were. In a plan made in heaven, the Lord took the lives of 185,000 of the enemy's soldiers. The next morning, Hezekiah demanded that the Assyrian camps be checked to see if the best fighters, the elite of that army, had died. Sennacherib returned home without shooting an arrow!

           The sad thing is that this great deed became the norm for God's people. Before long, the Israelites were no longer looking for Him, and this fulfilled a prophecy given by Moses some 2,700 to 2,800 years earlier: But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, you grew thick, you are obese! Then he forsook God, who made him, and scornfully esteemed the Rock of his salvation (Deuteronomy 32.15). Jeshurun is the beloved and refers to Israel. May this never happen again!

           In the days when Moses led Israel through the desert, from Goshen to near Jericho, God was at the head of Israel, but over the years, after the death of Moses, came the judges raised up by the Lord to govern His people. When Samuel was a judge, they asked for a king, because they wanted to be like the other nations; so God gave Saul to take on that position. After Solomon's death, his son Rehoboam took the throne and the kingdom was divided into two: Judah and Israel.

           From then on, most of the kings of Samaria were idolaters and, in Judah, there were also bad and wicked rulers. A great man of God, Hezekiah was the 13th king of Judah, who led Israel to resist the “irresistible” Sennacherib. What Hezekiah said to the people applies to all of us: the certainty that we will not be destroyed is guaranteed in the Word. The arm of flesh is with the enemy, but the Lord is with us to fight our wars!

           As happened that day, when Israel rested in Hezekiah's words, there must also be this confidence in the church, at home and wherever the holy people live. We must learn from God how to respond to the onslaughts of evil against us. If we let fear dominate, we will never be free. Regarding His work in the lives of his believers, Jesus declared: Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed (John 8:36). Stand on the Word and be free!

             We have the faith to fight and resist any adversary, as David did: Moreover David said, 'The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear; He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you (1 Samuel 17.37).

           In Christ, with love,

           R. R. Soares