The Enemy from God's Perspective

Sometimes you and your enemies need a reminder of who your God is. That is what happens for Hezekiah when Isaiah sends word that the threat posed by Sennecharib is nothing at all and he needn't fear. The language is poetic, grand, and devastating for the threatening potentate considered by many in the world to be the most powerful man on Earth. 

God has a different perspective.

2 Kings 19:20–22 (ESV) Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard. 21 This is the word that the LORD has spoken concerning him: 

    “She despises you, she scorns you— the virgin daughter of Zion; 

    she wags her head behind you— the daughter of Jerusalem. 

    22 “Whom have you mocked and reviled? 

    Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights? 

    Against the Holy One of Israel!

You have to love the beginning of God's assurance to Hezekiah. The threat against him was really a threat against the Lord! Herein lies the benefit of living your life for the glory of God. He has a way of taking care of His own reputation. If you live for yourself, there's really no guarantee. That is what Sennacherib found out.

In the second portion of the prophetic word, Isaiah condemns Sennacherib's vain glory-seeking exploits. 

2 Kings 19:23–24 (ESV) By your messengers you have mocked the Lord, and you have said, ‘With my many chariots I have gone up the heights of the mountains, to the far recesses of Lebanon; I felled its tallest cedars, its choicest cypresses; I entered its farthest lodging place, its most fruitful forest. 24 I dug wells and drank foreign waters, and I dried up with the sole of my foot all the streams of Egypt.’

Assyria has strong armies and many chariots. Assyria has indeed demolished many other kingdoms and took their treasures out from under them. In their own mind, Assyria probably figured all this made them a nation that was unstoppable and undefeatable. But the next line of Isaiah's prophecy blows that idea out of the water.

2 Kings 19:25–26 (ESV) “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? 

    I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, 

    that you should turn fortified cities into heaps of ruins, 

    26 while their inhabitants, shorn of strength, 

    are dismayed and confounded, and have become like plants of the field and like tender grass, 

    like grass on the housetops, blighted before it is grown.

Wow. All that Assyria had accomplished and even the way in which they were an instrument of judgment upon Northern Israel was determined beforehand by the Lord. Please remember this, Christian. Your Father knows the end from the beginning and He's in the business of using the devil's evil for His ultimate purpose and good for you. 

God confirms He's Lord not only of Israel's fate but that of Assyria's as well:

2 Kings 19:27–28 (ESV) “But I know your sitting down and your going out and coming in, and your raging against me. 28 Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.

The chapter ends with the death of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers and the assassination of Sennacherib himself at the hands of his own sons. 

What are we asked to see in this passage? We are asked to see how the Lord sees our enemies. They are not a threat to Him but a tool for His plan and purpose. NOTHING... absolutely NOTHING should give us more hope than that. Ultimately, our hope is in the death of God's own Son at the hand of His enemies. That death and those enemies were used to save our souls. 

Praise be to God!