In the first lesson for this
morning's service, you heard of king Hezekiah's fear and perplexity;
of the Lord's answer to him by Isaiah, and of the great and wonderful
destruction of the Assyrian army, of which my text tells you. Of
course you have a right to ask: "This which happened in a foreign
country more than two thousand years ago, what has it to do with us?"
And, of course, my preaching about it will be of no use whatsoever,
unless I can show you what it has to do with us; what lesson we
English here, in the year 1851, are to draw, from the help which God
sent the Jews.
But to find out that, we must hear the whole story. Before we can
find out why God drove the Assyrians out of Judaea, we must find out,
it seems to me, why He sent them, or allowed them to come into
Judaea; and to find out that, we must first see how the Jews were
behaving in those times, and what sort of state their country was in;
and we must find out, too, what sort of a man this great king of
Assyria was, and what sort of thoughts were in his heart.
Now, by the favour of God, we can find out this. You will see, in
the first thirty-seven chapters of Isaiah's prophecies, a full
account of the ways of the Jews in that time, and the reasons why God
allowed so fearful a danger to come upon them.
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