No King But God

Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: “LORD, the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Give ear, LORD, and hear; open your eyes, LORD, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God. It is true, LORD, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by human hands. Now, LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone, LORD, are God.” (2 Kings 19:14-19 NIV)

The Northern Kingdom of Israel was ruled by a series of unfaithful, idolatrous kings. The worst of the worst was king Ahab and his evil wife, Jezebel. God sent nine prophets to the nineteen kings of Israel, warning of judgment and urging them to repent. They did not, and Israel was conquered and taken into exile in 722 BC.

The Southern Kingdom of Judah was ruled by a series of both good kings and evil kings. Perhaps the most faithful of Judah's rulers was Hezekiah, who ruled during the fall of the Northern Kingdom, and was faced with the impending invasion of Assyria, which was intent on conquering Judah, too.

Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, sent envoys with a nasty, threatening letter to Jerusalem, and essentially told Hezekiah to surrender because no other god had been able to deliver its people from the might of Assyria, so Judah would fall just like all of them. Hezekiah's faithful response: he went to the temple of Yahweh, spread out the letter before God and prayed for God to deliver Judah from the Assyrians. Hezekiah believed there was no god but Yahweh, and no king but God.

Yahweh delivered Judah from the Assyrians, in spectacular fashion:

That night the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king. (2 Kings 19:35-37 NIV)

The Living God once again proved to His people that He was their protector and He was their victory. Sadly, when Hezekiah died, his young son, Manasseh, ruled Judah as one of the most evil and idolatrous kings in her history.

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, following the detestable practices of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites. He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. He built altars in the temple of the LORD, of which the LORD had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.” In the two courts of the temple of the LORD, he built altars to all the starry hosts. He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the LORD, arousing His anger. (2 Kings 21:1-6 NIV)

Even with the faithfulness of kings like Hezekiah, God's people kept returning to idols. Even after demonstrations of Yahweh's love and protection for them, the people continued to seek the favor of the foreign gods around them. Finally, God handed them over to the judgment of exile in Babylon in 586 BC. But this exile was to be discipline, not destruction. God would bring His people back and restore their nation—not because they deserved to be restored, but because God keeps His promises.

Like the story of the mixed faithfulness of the kings of Judah, we find ourselves with ups and downs in our faithfulness to Jesus Christ. While we do not keep idols in our houses and bow to them in worship, we trust in idolatrous things alongside, and sometimes instead of Jesus far too often. We seek meaning and purpose and peace in life from wealth and pleasure and fame and power, instead of finding them in a deep relationship with Christ and loving relationships with one another.

God sent Isaiah to Judah to call His people back to Himself and to point to His ultimate redemption that was coming in His Anointed One (Messiah) who would redeem us on a cross outside Jerusalem. The Messiah would not be a conquering king—He would be a suffering servant, who would lay down His life as the perfect sacrifice for sin, and then walk out of the grave to conquer death for His people. Seven hundred years before Jesus was born, Isaiah had this vision of God's Anointed One:

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem. Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open his mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth. (Isaiah 53:1-7 NIV)

God is pleased when we have the faith and attitude of king Hezekiah, turning to Him alone for deliverance and trusting Him alone for redemption. We are to have no king but King Jesus! In Matthew 6:33, Jesus puts it this way: "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." Let's seek no King but Jesus, and no kingdom but the Kingdom of God. Let's accept His Lordship in every area of our lives. Let's put Jesus on the throne of our hearts and live out the motto: No king but King Jesus!