That is very hard to guess, but I won’t tell you the answer yet. The king’s name was Hezekiah, and he was twenty-five years old when he was made king. His father, Ahaz, was a very wicked king who kept losing battles and trying all over to get help. He gave presents to the enemy king -all sorts of valuable things from the house of the Lord and from his own house, but it was all of no use. The enemy only gave him more trouble, and he died without salvation. The country was in bad shape.
That was when Hezekiah became king. The first thing he did was open the doors of the house of the Lord and repair them. Then he prepared the priests for the worship of the Lord.
Now that was a very good start. The Lord should come first in the life of every good king, and He should come first in your life too. Today we can’t really come into the holy presence of the Lord the way Hezekiah did, because there isn’t any golden temple to go to and no altar for animal sacrifices. But God tells us that since Jesus died we don’t need animal sacrifices. We can now come into God’s presence by the blood of Jesus. He became the perfect sacrifice for sins on the cross. God will accept Jesus as the sacrifice for your sins if you will accept Him as your sacrifice.
But Hezekiah had his troubles. The king of Assyria who came against him was a very bold and boastful king. He boasted to the people, “I’ve conquered everybody else, and I can conquer you. Don’t listen to Hezekiah. Don’t let him tell you to trust in the Lord.”
But here’s what Hezekiah did, and this is the answer that you could not guess. Hezekiah trusted the Lord! In fact, he trusted the Lord more than any king before him or after him. God records this in the Bible, and it’s still there in 2 Kings 18:55He 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. (2 Kings 18:5), after 3000 years. God must have valued it a lot.
And God values it if you will trust Him. Trust Him right over the top of your troubles. Trust Him because His Word says, “The Son of God . . . loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:2020I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)). Trust Him because He has promised that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, and what God says is the truth!
The king of Assyria boasted that no god could save anyone from his power - “and how much less shall your God deliver you out of [my] hand?” And he wrote letters against the Lord. But Hezekiah knew what to do with those letters. He spread them out before the Lord, and he and Isaiah prayed and cried to the Lord about the problem.
Do you know what happened next? The Lord sent an angel who killed all the mighty men and all the leaders and captains in the camp of the enemy. And the enemy king returned to his own land defeated and ashamed.
But the enemy king didn’t seem to learn anything by his defeat. He went back to the house of his evil god, and his very own sons took his life there with their swords.
It’s a sad story, but the best thing to learn and remember is that Hezekiah trusted the Lord, and that is exactly what He wants you to do too. God has told us that we will have problems in this sinful world, but the devil and all his demons cannot defeat anyone who is simply trusting the Lord. “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid” (Isaiah 12:22Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the Lord JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation. (Isaiah 12:2)). This is a good verse to memorize.