The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold…

Sennacherib, king of Assyria, had entered Judah and encamped against all her fenced cities because he thought to take the nation for himself. The situation could not have appeared more dire for Hezekiah, Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Sennacherib was a tenacious foe, an implacable enemy. With Sennacherib was an enormous multitude of thousands upon thousands of soldiers, the fierce and cruel stormtroopers of the ancient world. Judah’s cities were besieged and fell one by one. Mighty Lachish was under siege. Assyrian soldiers spread menacingly around Jerusalem. The footmen, the horsemen, and the chariots roared and thundered around 
the city.

Arrogant, boasting, disheartening speeches emanated over the walls of Jerusalem from Sennacherib’s henchman, Rabshakeh:

14. Who was there among all the gods of those nations that my fathers utterly destroyed, that could deliver his people out of mine hand, that your God should be able to deliver you out of mine hand?

15. Now therefore let not Hezekiah deceive you, nor persuade you on this manner, neither yet believe him: for no god of any nation or kingdom was able to deliver his people out of mine hand…how much less shall your God deliver you out of mine hand? (2 Chron. 32:14–15)

Blasphemous letters that railed on Jehovah the God of Israel came from that man’s wicked hand. “As the gods of the nations of other lands have not delivered their people out of mine hand, so shall not the God of Hezekiah deliver his people out of mine hand” (v. 17).

How that antichrist raged against the Lord:

24. By the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, to the sides of Lebanon; and I will cut down the tall cedars thereof, and the choice fir trees thereof: and I will enter into the height of his border, and the forest of his Carmel.

25. I have digged, and drunk water; and with the sole of my feet have I dried up all the rivers of the besieged places. (Isa. 37:24–25)

Insatiable in his lust, vaunting in his pride: mine, mine, all mine, by my power and my ingenuity and my forces.

Another Ozymandias: King of Kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

And what was little Jerusalem before such a monster?

Oh, to be sure, the people had strengthened the walls. They had multiplied swords and spears, and the captains had readied the armies. Hurriedly they had stopped up the wells so that the king of Assyria could find no water. But if forces be compared with forces, Judah was nothing before Sennacherib’s host. In many respects she was the least of all the kingdoms he had fought against. Were not the soldiers of Syria more numerous? Were not the chariots and horsemen of many other nations mightier? And the Assyrians had swallowed up all of them.

Hezekiah said it best before the Lord: “A day of trouble and of rebuke and of blasphemy: for the children are come to the birth, and there is no strength to bring forth.” No strength was in the people for all their walls and preparations and soldiers and the abundance of arms and armor. Before that boasting monster, Rabshakeh, there was no strength in them.

But, O man, who are you that rages against the living God?

Human strength and mighty hosts.

Charging steeds and warlike boasts.

Cannot save from overthrow.

O Jerusalem, be strong and courageous. Be not afraid or dismayed for the king of Assyria or for the multitude that is with him.

With him is an arm of flesh. Only flesh!

Flesh made from the dust of the ground, and into that flesh God breathed the breath of life. Flesh is as the grass, and all its glory is as the flower of the field. Flesh rises for a time and only as high and as long as the sovereign God ordains, and it is quickly cut down. Flesh: a wind that passes away and comes not again. What is man, whose breath is in his nostrils? He is nothing except effervescent, weak, frail, faltering, failing flesh. Flesh is fleeting in all its existence.

Flesh is utterly dependent upon God, even in its opposition to him. For in him we live and move and have our being, even in opposition to him. Never is flesh independent. Flesh cannot have one breath, one beat of the heart, or one thought apart from the government of God. Never is flesh independent. Surely God made flesh rational and moral, having mind, heart, and will. And surely what man does he does willingly, and he labors in his strength; yet man is ever hemmed in by God’s sovereignty. Never is man independent. Always the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, and he turns that heart withersoever he will. Always over against man God remains God, whose counsel controls all things so that all his pleasure is done. And so he said to Pharaoh, “For this cause have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee.” And to Pharaoh, God said that he would harden Pharaoh’s heart in order to show in him all God’s wonders.

Ah, but worse, all flesh corrupted itself. By the sinful act of its own will, flesh rebelled against God its creator. Flesh allied itself with the devil. Man—who is flesh, all flesh—is corrupt to the depth of his being. He in his flesh became totally depraved, full of darkness, and he loves the lie and hates the truth. He holds the truth under in unrighteousness. God he will not worship. Idols he fashions for himself: he worships the creature rather than the creator. Most of all, man worships himself. He is an enemy of God. Subject to death is flesh—death of the body and soul and in all his life lying in sin and under the curse.

Many times God evaluated flesh: the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every imagination of his heart was only evil continually. There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understand; there is none who seek after God. Their throats are open sepulchers; with their tongues they use deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed innocent blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; there is no fear of God before their eyes.

Flesh is an arm that impotently opposes Jehovah God, an ax that vaunts itself against God who hews therewith. An arm that is able to do only what Jehovah decrees to be done, an arm that is bent on carrying out sinful designs and wicked purposes; but in the end Jehovah accomplishes his. It is an arm that is not only impotent to defeat Jehovah but also unwittingly carries out the Lord’s purpose.

So Jehovah says to the boasting Sennacherib:

25. Hast thou not heard long ago how I have done it, and of ancient times that I have formed it? now have I brought it to pass, that thou shouldest be to lay waste fenced cities into ruinous heaps.

26. Therefore their inhabitants were of small power, they were dismayed and confounded. (2 Kings 19:25–26)

And so it is always for the church of God in the world. So it was for her king. The king of Assyria was after Judah’s king. The evil Assyrian king tried to dishearten the inhabitants of Jerusalem: “Do not believe your king’s word. Do not be deceived when he tells you that Jehovah will deliver you.” That was wicked opposition to the gospel. So that wicked spirit behind Sennacherib came after the King of the church, David’s greater Son, by means of an evil arm of flesh. Allied against God’s holy child, Jesus, were Pontius Pilate and Herod and the Jews and the Gentiles and the leaders of the people. For a time it was their hour and the power of darkness. For a time they gathered in their wicked conclave to condemn Jesus for blasphemy, to rend their clothes in false grief, to deliver the Savior into the hands of the Gentiles to crucify him as a rebel and raiser of sedition. And all their wicked hands accomplished was their own condemnation. For the stone the builders refused became the head stone of the corner. This was Jehovah’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Can the true church of Jesus Christ in the world expect anything different? She is as a hut in a garden of cucumbers and as a besieged city. From time to time she faces a mighty host gathered by Satan for the purposes of overthrowing the church, taking it for himself, and making it his synagogue. The world of ungodly men raises threats of overthrow against the church. The false church surrounds the true church like a pack of wolves intent on her destruction and the silencing of her testimony and the murder of all her members. And the members of the false church have their hour and the power of darkness. They have their time when they stand boldly and threateningly and by all appearances invincibly over against the church and the truth. Shall it go any different for the church than it did for David, who said that daily his enemies would swallow him up? They are many that fight against me! Every day they wrest my words; all their thoughts are against me for evil; they gather themselves together; they hide themselves; they mark my steps; they wait for my soul.

In God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.

Be strong and courageous, be not afraid or dismayed.

There is more with us than with them.

With us is Jehovah our God.

And how does such puny, insignificant, iniquitous flesh vaunt itself and rail on the living God? Jehovah of hosts, Jehovah is his name, the i am that i am. The eternal, unchanging, omnipotent, sovereign, righteous, holy, one and only God. Before him all the nations of the earth are as the small dust of the balance and as the drop of the bucket in insignificance. He is the God who made all things and whose are all things, so that of him and through him and to him are all things. He is the God who governs and controls all, even when devils and wicked men act unjustly, so that all is done according to his determinate counsel and by the strength of his hand.

Jehovah, who is the gracious, merciful, faithful God of the covenant, the God who loves his people and is faithful to his word, the God who forgives their sins and takes them as his own to be a God unto them. He is with us. God with us. Immanuel. That is Jesus. He was there in Jerusalem. The Angel of Jehovah…

Always he was with his people in the Old Testament. He came to speak with Abraham about the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. He was with the host of angels that met Jacob at the camp of the Lord in Mahanaim because Jacob wrestled with him one night. He was in the midst of Israel in the fiery furnace of Egypt, so that the people, as the bush on fire, could not be consumed. He strode through Egypt to kill all the firstborn of man and beast but entered not into the houses with blood on doorposts and lintels. He was with the Israelites as they passed through the sea—the Angel of God, whose angry look from the cloud took off the wheels of Pharaoh’s host, discomfited his horses and horsemen, and overthrew that contumacious sovereign in the midst of the sea. Jehovah went before his people in the desert in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, whose glory shown in Moses’ day.

He was with them in Jerusalem too.

He is always with his church. God with us.

He will help us: he will be a faithful covenant friend to us. He will fight our battles. Jesus. Is that not the key? God came to us in Jesus in faithfulness to his covenant promise. Not any longer with the nature of angels but with the nature of man. God became flesh. He fought our battles for us. The great battle against sin, death, hell, the grave, and the power of darkness. The great battle that flesh could not fight in that it was weak, corrupt, and sinful. In the flesh he strengthens the flesh. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. There was the great battle. There was the great deliverance of which all deliverances in the Old Testament were types and shadows. There God showed himself a help and strong to fight our battles.

And there at the cross and in the resurrection of Christ is the church’s sure ground for certain victory in all her battles. There he crushed the enemy with an overwhelming defeat, a victory whose force is felt to the very present. The church will face mighty battles against charging steeds and warlike boasts of the enemy. God with us—Jesus Christ crucified and slain—promises certain victory, even in the face of overwhelming forces.

Be not afraid or dismayed.

Be strong and courageous.

So it was in Jerusalem. The people rested in the words of Hezekiah, king of Judah. He spoke to them of God and of his faithful covenant promise and of his great power and love for his people. He spoke to them of Jesus Christ, God with us, to help us and to fight our battles. And in that word they rested. They believed. God was with them. God was for them. Who could be against them?

And outside the walls of Jerusalem?

Will Jehovah hear the words of Rabshakeh—whom his master, the king of Assyria, had sent to reproach the living God—and reprove the words that the Lord God heard? Will the Lord see all the evil words that Rabshakeh wrote to reproach Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, who dwells between the cherubim, who is God alone of all the kingdoms of the earth, and who made the heaven and the earth?

Thus saith the Lord to the king of Assyria: “Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel…

“I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me…I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way which thou camest…

“The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem hath shaken her head at thee…

“I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake…

“He [the king of Assyria] shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it…

“Out of Jerusalem shall go forth a remnant, and they that escape out of mount Zion: the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this…”

And it came to pass that night that the Angel of Jehovah went out and smote in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred eighty-five thousand! And when the Assyrians arose in the morning, they were all dead corpses.

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.