Protecting the Water Source

Let's turn in our Bibles to 2 Chronicles 32, please. I have been enjoying some lessons that we can learn from kings, the kings of Israel and kings of Judah. We're just gonna look at two of them, Ahaz and then his son Hezekiah, two very different individuals.

One did right and one did evil, of course. It's always interesting, I love it in the Word of God when God will use physical things to convey spiritual truth. And with these two men, Hezekiah and Ahaz, we're gonna find there were events that happened at a spring in both of their lives.

And one went the wrong way and the other went the proper way. So I'm just gonna read some scattered sections to try to get a little bit of the flavor of the story. So 2 Chronicles 32 and verse number one, this has to do with Hezekiah.

After these things and the establishment thereof, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came and entered into Judah and he camped against the fenced cities and thought to win them for himself. And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem, he took counsel with his princes and his mighty men, notice, to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city and they did help him. So there was gathered much people together who stopped all the fountains and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, why should the king of Assyria come and find much water? Now, notice what he says in verse seven, be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him, for there is more with us than with him.

With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and fight our battles. Now we can read about this angel that came and destroyed a large number of them, but I want you to go down to verse number 30, because once again, this reference to water comes up again. Verse number 30, this same Hezekiah also stopped the upper water course of Gihon and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David.

And Hezekiah prospered in all his works. Let's go to chapter 30. Let's go to actually 2 Kings chapter 20, please.

2 Kings chapter 20, 2 Kings chapter 20 and look at verse number 20. And once again, we have a reference to this water linked with this king at the end of his life. 2 Kings 20 and verse 20, and the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and all his might and how he made a pool and a conduit and brought water into the city.

Are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? Go to chapter 18. And I just want you to notice something that is said about Hezekiah that's not said about any other king. It's something that I would covet in my own life to be able to trust God like this.

2 Kings chapter 18 and look at verse number five. Actually, we'll just pick up at verse three. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord according to all that David his father did.

He removed the high places and break the images and cut down the groves and break in pieces the brazen serpent. You might remember that from numbers 21 that Moses had made for onto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it. Quite a thing to think that they turned that brazen serpent into an idol and they were worshiping.

This is the environment this man was coming to the throne. In verse five, he trusted in the Lord God of Israel so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah nor any that were before him. So this man is marked by a heart that is just trusting in his God.

That is a lovely thing. Let's go to Isaiah chapter seven. I'm gonna read a few verses now about his father, Ahaz.

And Ahaz was not a good king. Isaiah chapter seven, what's happening in Isaiah chapter seven Ahaz is of course king of Judah in the south. The nation is divided.

There's 10 tribes in the north and there's two tribes in the south. And Ahaz is the king linked with Jerusalem. But up north, there is another king and he's trying to make allegiance with the Syrians.

So if you were to look at the map of Israel and look a little bit at their history, the nation of Israel was always surrounded by enemies. Egypt in the south, you come up to the north, you got Assyria, you got the Assyrians, you got Babylon and so on and so forth. They didn't live in a vacuum.

And they're much like our lives. We live in a world and there's all these different pressures on us to make alliances. And that is really Ahaz.

And Ahaz instead of depending upon the Lord, he starts to reach out to these other nations. And what's happening at this particular time in Isaiah chapter seven, here is the Assyrian nation, Syria, I should say nation, and the Assyrians are becoming quite big and they're starting to put pressure on the Syrians. And what the Syrian king does, he comes to the king over the 10 tribes and he says, let's bring our armies together so that we can stand against the Assyrians.

And what they would like to do is they would like to as well have the other two tribes down in the South. So these two individuals, the king of Syria and the king of the 10 tribes in the North, they make a plan. They're gonna come down with force into Jerusalem and they're gonna dispose Ahaz on the throne.

And they're gonna put their own puppet on the throne so that he will take the armies, link the two tribes and they'll all join together. Now that's just the backdrop of the story. Let's just look at Isaiah seven and verse number one.

And this will kind of give you a summary of what I just said. And it came to pass in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, the king of Judah, that Rezan, the king of Syria, and Pekah, Pekah is going to be the king of Israel, went up toward Jerusalem to war against it, but could not prevail against it. And it was told the house of David saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim.

Ephraim was the largest tribe up North in the 10 tribes and Samaria was its capital. Some of these words will help you see what's going on here. And his heart was moved and the heart of his people as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.

So this was causing quite a bit of fear down in the South. The two tribes, they were looking northward and they saw the country of Syria, they saw the 10 tribes coming together and starting to move down upon them, what caused quite a bit of concern. So they're wondering what to do.

Interesting where Isaiah comes in the prophet. God is now going to send Isaiah to this king of the 10 tribes, sorry, of the two tribes down in the South and he's going to try to encourage them, trust God. Don't be afraid of this allegiance, okay? So that's what's happening.

Look at verse number five, this is where Isaiah meets him. This very same water hole that I was reading with his son Hezekiah. Verse three, then said the Lord unto Isaiah, go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou and, this is one of his sons.

I won't embarrass myself this early in the morning so we'll just say his son. At the end of the conduit of the upper pole in the highway of the fuller's field, fuller's field. This is where they did a lot of their washing and they're dying of their clothes.

That's where the word fuller comes from. And say unto him, take heed and be quiet. Fear not, neither be faint hearted for the two tails of these smoking firebrands for the fierce anger of risen with Syria and the son of Rameleilah.

So God is saying these two countries that are coming together, Syria and the 10 tribes, they're just like smoking firebrands. They're about to go out. Do not pay any attention to it.

Come down again now to verse number seven. Thus saith the Lord God, it shall not stand. Neither shall it come to pass.

And then he predicts the destruction of Syria and actually the destruction of the 10 tribes up north. Look at verse number 10. Moreover, the Lord spake again unto Ahaz saying, ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God.

Ask it either in the depth or in the height above. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. Now that is quite a statement coming from that man.

Ahaz was a wicked king and he had done a lot in his life to tempt God. What he did here was he put up a cloak of deceit. He had his mind already made up.

I am going to turn to the nations for help. The only one that he had available to him was the Assyrians. So Ahaz want to make a confederacy with the Assyrians against Syria and the 10 tribes.

And he throws up to the prophet after he's been told of God, just ask a sign of me. Whatever sign you want, God says, Ahaz, I'll give it to you to prove to you that they will not take you over. Oh, oh, I wouldn't want to tempt the Lord, he says.

Because he had his mind made up. I'm going to the Assyrians. So just keep all these details in your mind.

But look at the sign that was given by God, a very interesting thing. Verse number 13. And he said, hear ye now, O house of David.

Is it a small thing? This is God speaking through Isaiah. Is it a small thing for you to weary men? But will ye weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel.

Now, have you ever noticed that verse that's quoted in the Gospel of Matthew in relation to the birth of Lord Jesus? This is the backdrop of that statement. This statement, this promise, which is going to be fulfilled with the Virgin Mary having a child is going right back to Genesis chapter three. The promise that God made of a coming deliverer.

The seed of the woman will bruise the serpent's head. See, what God was telling this man was this. You're the king of Judah.

And that promise that was made in Genesis chapter three and eventually comes into the family Judah and all the kings out of him, out of his family, eventually would come hundreds of years into the future. This promise deliverer, God was telling him, there's no way that these folks up North are gonna take you out because I will preserve you. I will not let my promises fall flat on the ground.

I find it amazing. And then I started thinking about myself, can I get this blind? God can't help me. Sometimes brother and sister, we can come up against things that are so big and we need to be constantly reminded that God is bigger than whatever we face.

This is what Isaiah, God through Isaiah was trying to do to this King Ahaz. But unfortunately he had his mind made up. I cannot trust God.

I need to turn to the mighty nation of the Assyrians and put my confidence in them. You wanna know the sad thing that happens? I think it was a tremendous lesson to Hezekiah. After Ahaz goes off the scene, Hezekiah, his son watches as the very nation his father leaned on, the Assyrians, they marched in and carried off the 10 tribes into captivity.

And that's something I always remember when we trust something other than God, it'll come back and bite us. We are to live by faith. That's easy to say.

I understand it's easy to say that when the sun is shining, there's no clouds in the sky. But I love it how these practical stories are given to us in the Bible because these people are just like you and I and we need to be encouraged. And that's what I hope will be the result of my little message here today.

Turn over now to chapter, well, just further in the chapter because there's an interesting thing to show God's power dealing with the nations. Verse number 17, the Lord shall bring upon thee and upon thy people and upon thy father's house that have not come from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah, even the king of Assyria. So here's God predicting, okay, you're gonna trust this man? He's gonna wipe out these people.

Verse number 18, and it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall hiss. That's our word for whistle, okay? That's what it means. For the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria, and they shall come and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys and in the holes of the rocks and so on.

So God is trying to show this man and show us. Isaiah chapter 40, what are the nations to our God? They're just a drop in the bucket. You pour water out of a bucket, and there there's just maybe one final little bead of water that's running out, and it just drops out.

Isaiah chapter 40, God says the old fashioned scales, if you get down on the sun, you see a little tiny skiff of dust on the top of the scale. God says, that's what the nations of the world are to me. And here's another illustration.

God says, when I want to use that mighty nation of Egypt, I only whistle, and they come. You do that to a dog. That's how weak these nations are.

God says, when I want to use the Assyrians for my purpose, he calls them a bee. He calls Egypt the house fly, and he calls the Assyrians a bee, because the Assyrians were the hardest on the nation of Israel. They had a fierce bite.

But God says, when I want to use them, and they come just like that, no hesitation. My dog at home can not come when I whistle, not the case with God and the nations. Why wouldn't this man trust God with that much power? What got into his head to make him resist trusting God, going to earthly powers? Well, sometimes we all got to search our hearts for that.

Now, here's what the Lord says, it's not very solemn in chapter eight, verse number five. The Lord spake also unto me. It seems after this meeting, maybe God now is going to try to encourage his own prophet, his own servant.

And look what he says to him. The Lord spake also unto me. It's nice when God speaks directly to us.

Again, saying, for as much as this people, Israel to the north, the 10 tribes, making an allegiance with Syria, refuses, here is that water, the waters of Shiloh that go softly and rejoice in Risen and Ramiella. Now that's the alliance between the 10 tribes in the north and Syria. Verse seven, now, therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river.

That's the Assyrians, strong and many, even the king of Assyria in all his glory. And he shall come up over all his channels and go over all his banks, and he shall pass through Judah. He shall overflow and go over.

He shall reach even to the neck, and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Emmanuel. God is predicting the 10 tribes in the north to be carried off into captivity by the very country that Ahaz wanted to trust. So you say, well, Scott, what does all this mean? Well, this is where we kind of bring the physical to emphasize the spiritual.

That water, of course, is called Hezekiah's Tunnel today. If you've ever been over to Israel, you can go on a tour and you can actually go down and you can walk through Hezekiah's Tunnel. It's a fascinating thing.

The city of Jerusalem only had one water source. Very strange what God did. When God gave David the right to go and take the city of Jerusalem to be his capital, there was something that God was gonna teach David for his whole life.

The water source was outside the city, wasn't inside the city. Now, humanly speaking, that was a very dumb move. You always want your water source protected so you would have it inside the city, not outside the city walls.

Because just as Hezekiah understood, if this army comes to me, they got my water source. It's outside the city. We're all walled up in the city.

There's the water source. All they got to do is cut it off and we die of thirst. So here's what God was teaching David and us.

God likens Himself to that fountain. It's outside the city walls. It's protected by Him.

Now, when you come to Ahaz, Ahaz finds himself right by this bubbling spring. And that's where Isaiah goes out to meet him. That's where Isaiah, God through Isaiah, tries to encourage this man.

And that's where God says, listen, I'm like that little bubbling spring. I go gentle, I go quiet. It's coming out of a source that you can't see.

And when Ahaz refused that, that's when God now turned to the Assyrians and He said, the river will come. Not just a little river. You're refusing the little bubbling spring.

You're resting on the river. That river will come and it will flow over all its banks and it'll come right in and wipe you all out. Quite a contrast, isn't it? So here's where the story gets interesting.

I wonder if Hezekiah didn't learn from his father's mistakes. Because now we read something about Hezekiah that we read about no other king. He trusted God like nobody trusted God like him.

Do you know what Hezekiah, his son, did with that little bubbling spring? The first thing he did was we have to protect it. That's where Hezekiah's tunnel comes from. So outside the city wall before Hezekiah, there was a hole in the ground and there's this water just bubbling up and it's flowing toward the city and they used to collect it and do everything with it.

Hezekiah said, we gotta hide this water source. So let's dig way down. And he actually had two teams.

This is a archeological miracle today. He had one team in the city starting to dig from what they call the king's pool. And then he had another team out here starting to dig right from where the bubbling spring was.

And at some spots, this tunnel is down 130 feet. Other spots, it's like 30 feet. And if you were to look at it from point to point as the crow flies, it'd be 1200 feet.

But the way they dug it, it was like an S, over 1800 feet. So these two teams started, I believe God helped them to do it, down they went and they started to dig. They didn't have the instruments that we have today, but they did have the God of heaven.

And as they dug, they met in the middle. And they tell us today that they were only off four inches, which is easy to adjust. And therefore, the bubbling spring is now underground, flowing underground, under the wall of the city and coming right into the city.

Fills up the king's pool and it's protected. I ask you, and I ask myself, am I protecting the bubbling spring? You say, what do you mean? Is this your best friend? The Bible, are you going daily to it? Allowing the soft flowing bubbling spring to just encourage? Or are we starting to lean upon humanism, methods of men, ideas of men. That's the lesson that God was teaching through Ahaz and through his son, Hezekiah.

And it's interesting when you, a number of times, Chronicles, Kings, Isaiah, you come to the end of Hezekiah's life. And it's something that the spirit of God by the writer goes right back to what he did with the water course. What am I doing with the water? Isn't it lovely how the word of God is likened to water? I've heard brother Brody a number of times talk about running water, emphasizes a different aspect of the word of God.

Still water emphasizes another aspect of the word of God. Dear child of God, you and I cannot maintain a spiritual life on physical food from the world. It can only be maintained through spiritual food.

Don't turn it into a 20 minute whatever and you're on the way to work and you can't remember where you read. Oh, you say, that's easy for you preachers to say because you have all day to read. Oh, okay.

You have no idea what goes on in our life. Sometimes I miss reading every day and I start to feel it. Sometimes I'm preparing so much to give ministry.

For you, I've got nothing for me. And any preacher here would tell you, after you've been away for a gospel meeting or a series of ministry, you go home, you're exhausted. Mentally, physically, and you're hungry.

And what a joy to just sit with the Bible and just to be able to just take in the bubbling spring. Dear child of God, I wanna end with what was said by Hezekiah. With him, there's an arm of flesh, that's the world.

But with us, we have the God of heaven. And he wants to help us and he will.