When There's Nothing You Can Do | Historical Books | 2 Kings 18:13-36

Welcome to 10 Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. At some point in your life, you'll hit a moment where you realize that there's nothing you can do. The circumstances vary. Maybe it's a diagnosis that you can't overcome. Maybe it's a financial ruin that you're not going to be able to come back from. Maybe it's a lost job. You can't get back. A lost marriage. A lost relationship. In my own experience, when I come to those moments, when I realize I'm helpless and there's nothing that I can do, well, it's almost never the case that I come to those moments not having done something to try to avoid the situation. And yet, despite my best efforts, I still ended up in precisely the place I'd hoped to avoid, the place where I say, "There's nothing I can do. I am helpless." In today's passage, King Hezekiah finds himself in one of those places. The Mesopotamian empire of Neo-Assyria is expanding its footprint, and now it's aiming to take one of the crown jewels of the Middle East, Egypt. It was the bread basket of the Middle East. Now the problem is that the Arabian desert and the Red Sea stood between Assyria and its ultimate goal of taking Egypt. This meant that the only way they could take Egypt was by traveling through a narrow land bridge that sat between the Arabian desert and the Mediterranean Sea, and if you don't know your geography, that's Israel. If Assyria wanted to take Egypt, there was no way to do it without taking Jerusalem first. Worse yet for Assyria, if they wanted Egypt, operating a massive military was incredibly costly. The only way to increase revenue and have more soldiers was either taxation, which would often cause internal revolts, or you could just conquer more lands and take the wealth of other nations. And lastly, you could just extract more resources from the vassal states that couldn't muster enough force to fight against you. They couldn't cause a revolt. And Assyria basically opted for all three, attacked people, it conquered other lands, and it extracted resources from its weaker vassal states. Now yesterday, we learned how Assyria's first incursion to Judah was mostly just to extract resources. They conquered the cities of Judah, and then they demanded gold and silver from Hezekiah, or they said we won't stop, we'll take Jerusalem too. It was essentially an ancient Near Eastern protection racket. You know, the mafia shows up and demands payment, and they say if you pay me, then I'll protect you. But if you refuse, I'll attack you. What happens when the mafia needs more money? Well they come back and they say that their protection fees have actually gone up. And this is basically what happens to Hezekiah. Initially, when Assyria comes in, they say pay up or get beaten. Well, he agrees. He pays 3,300 tons of silver to Assyria, and 330 tons of gold. And at this point, he's so desperate for resources that he strips the temple doors of their gold overlays. So what's happening here? Hezekiah is doing everything he can to avoid a worst case scenario, to avoid a place where he'd have to say there's nothing else I can do, I am hopeless, to avoid having the world's most powerful empire knocking on Jerusalem's door, besieging them, and then watching his city die of starvation. But despite his best efforts, Hezekiah still ends up in the very scenario he was trying to avoid. Time after he pays all of this money to Assyria, what does Assyria do? Well, they're the mafia. They show back up again. They say, you know what? Protection fees are going up. And this time, they don't just want his resources, they want total control of Judah. Why? So they can have a straight shot to Egypt. And Hezekiah knows there's nothing he can do. This is the most powerful military in the world. And Hezekiah isn't the only one who knows this. The people of Jerusalem know. Eventually, the field commander of Assyria's army shows up outside of the city and gives a long speech mocking Hezekiah. I mean, just check this out in verse 23. Come now, Hezekiah. Make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria. He says, I'll give you 2,000 horses if you can put riders on them. How can you repulse one officer of the least of my master's officials, even though you're depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen? His point is clear. Judah is helpless. They can't even defend themselves without Egypt's help. And as the commander points out, Egypt won't be able to do much. They only end up hurting the very people who lean on them. So what would you do if you were Hezekiah? How would you respond when you know that there's nothing you can do to fix the problem? We'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what happens. But today, I just want us to enter into Hezekiah's mind space. How lost, how desperate, and how confused he must feel. I mean, Hezekiah has been a good king. He's walked in God's covenant. And he's the king over God's people. So what do you think he's thinking? I mean, I think he's probably wondering, has God abandoned him? Is God about to give Judah over to the Assyrians, just like he gave the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians? It's clear that Assyria's king and henchmen want Hezekiah to think exactly that. They tell them that God's the one who sent them. But as they keep talking, it's obvious they don't think this is the case, because they make the point that not even God himself could help Hezekiah. Hezekiah is helpless. The field commander cries out to the gathered people of Judah, "Don't listen to Hezekiah, for he is misleading you when he says, 'The Lord will deliver us.'" Has the God of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sefervame, Hina, and Yvah? Have they rescued Samaria from my hand? Who of all the gods of these countries has been able to save his land from me? How then can the Lord deliver Jerusalem from my hand? So again, they're making Hezekiah ask, they're making the people ask, can God rescue them? Does God even want to rescue them? I mean, what if this is God's punishment? None of the people here have the benefit of hindsight. They don't know how the story ends. They're just living in the moment. And the Assyrians have just said that the siege will be so bad that they will run out of food and they'll be forced to eat their own excrement and drink their own urine. I think if you could hear Hezekiah's thoughts, you might just hear one sentence repeated over and over again. I feel helpless. I feel helpless. I feel like I've done everything I could and I feel helpless. And here's what I want to posit to you, especially if you're facing the possibility of a terrible scenario that you can't get out of. If you're right now wondering, where's God and what's He going to do? Here's what I want to posit to you. What if God wants you to be helpless? What if God wants you to be needy? Not in some sadistic way, like He's trying to torture you or hurt you, but what if He's a good Father who in His good wisdom wants to put you in scenarios, just like Hezekiah's, so that you can not only say but also feel those words of deep desolation, "I am helpless. I feel helpless." Why would God do that? I think the answer is that on our own, left to our own devices, we often think that we can handle things without God. On our own, we often think that we are not helpless. We think, "I can handle this. I can do this on my own. I have what it takes." And people who think like that, never, ever, ever turn to God for help. Jesus said it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. So what happens if we never realize that we're sick? Well, we'll never turn to the good doctor, and even more importantly, we'll never learn firsthand that the doctor does heal. So sometimes I wonder if it might be the greatest grace imaginable for God to put us in situations where we actually see our need, situations that actually show us our helplessness, situations where you really have to see whether you trust God or trust yourself, situations where you learn that He's not like the deaf, dumb, and powerless idols that other people worship. No, He is the living God who can meet your needs, but you'll never know if you don't know that you're needy. What if God wants to show up for you in a way that He can never show up if you didn't know you were needy? What if God wants you to turn to Him and find that He's the one who impossibly divides season half? He's the one who rescues slaves. He's the one who dies for sins and rises to eternal life, and so you can trust Him when you feel helpless. You see, I believe there are few words more beautiful and true than I am helpless. It's the words that every infant cries without words to a parent, "I am helpless. I am needy. Please pick me up. Please take care of me." And so now I think God is inviting you and me through whatever situation we find ourselves in to do precisely that, to cry out to Him, to say that we're helpless, and to know that He will not abandon you. He picks you up, He carries you, He meets your needs, He supplies you strength, even and especially when you're helpless.