I love the summaries of bible studies on www.gotquestions.org. We live in an era when we have so much information available at our fingertips. This and resources like https://bibleproject.com and https://www.biblegateway.com are just there are our fingertips.

But for all the resources I think it’s often when we open up a paper bible and flick through that we begin to get a feel for what’s where and why. It’s why I still recommend the bible that taught me to study first, the NIV Study Bible (which has just enough cheats, links, and info at the bottom of the page to mean you can keep reading the main text). The ESV study bible is good on the more academic side, and the NLT Life Application Bible good on a you can really read this and make sense of it level.

But key to it all is prayer. More than any info, or tool on how to read the bible (like Gordon Fee’s excellent How to Read the Bible Book by Book), is that incredible thing you get when you sense the Holy Spirit is your teacher, and you are being lead into depths the Spirit first inspired. It’s like a one to one tuition with the divine author.

So turning to Hezekiah and Sennacherib. There’s a great summary of his life here: https://www.gotquestions.org/Sennacherib-in-the-Bible.html which is helpful as his story spans three books of the bible. But for me the key today was to sit with the Spirit for a while before opening the text and then breathe in with my mentor words that He authored long ago, and hear whispers of their relevance today.

I get to live in a time where leaders are afraid of noisy external forces. Where church leaders are expecting a siege and a breach in their ancient spiritual defences. Where it’s easy to hear the cry to accommodate ourselves to the dominant culture so we don’t get destroyed.

But Hezekiah tells his people not to hear that voice. Not to reply to that voice. Not to give it time or credence. Instead when he sees the assault around him he joins his watchmen in ripping his clothes, (humbling himself), fasting, repenting, praying and asking for a divine miracle. This is duly promised by Isaiah and turns out to be the case.

We read Old Testament and New Testament firstly to tell us who God is, and then we can work out who He is to the world, humanity, his chosen people and to us today, and crucially what he is going to do / who he will be / how he will act in the future. In this passage we find great confidence for today because we see who God is. A God who will not be mocked, a God who will prevail, a God who will intervene, a God who loves it when his people humble themselves and pray, a God who will hear from heaven and restore the land – and sometimes does it in roundabout ways (“Sennacherib will be called away”). We also see a God who ‘confides in the those who fear Him’, (Ps 25:14), who ‘does nothing without telling his servants the prophets beforehand’ (Amos 3:7), and whose ‘sheep know his voice’ (John 10:27).

Many church and Christian leaders today face impossible odds as culture seeks to breach their gates. They face people within and without saying ‘acclimatise’. But the LORD reigns and he will prevail when we call to him and pray… he preserves the places He has built up as long as he can find a remnant who will faithfully serve Him there.