It is the standing puzzle of the Old Testament, how good men come to
be troubled, and how bad men come to be prosperous. And although we
Christian men and women are a great deal too apt to suppose that we
have outlived that rudimentary puzzle of the religious mind, yet I do
not think by any means that we have. For we hear men, when the rod
falls upon themselves, saying, 'What have I done that I should be
smitten thus?' or when their friends suffer, saying, 'What a
marvellous thing it is that such a good man as A, B, or C should have
so much trouble!' or, when widespread calamities strike a community,
standing aghast at the broad and dark shadows that fall upon a nation
or a continent, and wondering what the meaning of all this heaped
misery is, and why the world is thus allowed to run along its course
surrounded by an atmosphere made up of the breath of sighs, and
swathed in clouds which are moist with tears.
My text gives us an illustration in the sharpest form of the mystery.
'After these things and this faithfulness, Sennacherib came'--and he
always comes in one shape or another. For, to begin with, a good man's
goodness does not lift him out of the ordinary associations and
contingencies and laws of life. If he has inherited a diseased
constitution, his devotion will not make him a healthy man. If he has
little common sense, his godliness will not make him prosper in
worldly affairs. If he is tied to unfortunate connections, he will
have to suffer. If he happens to be in a decaying branch of business,
his prayers will not make him prosperous. If he falls in the way of
poisonous gas from a sewer, his godliness will not exempt him from an
attack of fever. So all round the horizon we see this: that the godly
man is involved like any other man in the ordinary contingencies and
possible evils of life. Then, have we to say that God has nothing to
do with these?
Again, Hezekiah's story teaches us how second causes are God's
instruments, and He is at the back of everything. There are two
sources of our knowledge of the history of Judah in the time with
which we are concerned. One is the Bible, the other is the Assyrian
monuments; and it is a most curious contrast to read the two
narratives of the same events, agreeing about the facts, but
disagreeing utterly in the spirit. Why? Because the one tells the
story from the world's point of view, and the other tells it from
God's point of view. So when you take the one narrative, it is simply
this: 'There was a conspiracy down in the south against the political
supremacy of Assyria, and a lot of little confederate kinglets
gathered themselves; and Hezekiah, of Judah, was one, along with
So-and-So of such-and-such a petty land, and they leaned upon Egypt;
and I, Sennacherib, came down among them, and they tumbled to pieces,
and that is all.' Then the Bible comes in, and it says that God
ordered all those political complications, and that they were all the
working out of His purposes, and that 'the axe in His hand' as Isaiah
has it so picturesquely, was this proud king of Assyria, with his
boastful mouth and vainglorious words.
Now, that is the principle by which we have to estimate all the events
that befall us. There are two ways of looking at them. You may look at
them from the under side or from the top side. You may see them as
they appear to men who cannot look beyond their noses and only have
concern with the visible cranks and shafting, or you may look at them
from the engine-room and take account of the invisible power that
drives them all. In the one case you will regard it as a mystery that
good men should have to suffer so; in the other case, you will say,
'It is the Lord, let Him do'--even when He does it through Sennacherib
and his like, 'let Him do what seemeth Him good.'
Then there is another thing to be taken into account--that is, that
the better a man is, the more faithful he is and the more closely he
cleaves to God, and seeks, like this king, to do, with all his heart,
all his work in the service of the House of God and to seek his God,
the more sure is he to bring down upon himself certain forms of
trouble and trial. The rebellion which, from the Assyrian side of the
river, seemed to be a mere political revolt, from the Jordan side of
the river seemed to be closely connected with the religious
reformation. And it was just because Hezekiah and his people came back
to God that they rebelled against the King of Assyria and served him
not. If you provoke Sennacherib, Sennacherib will be down upon you
very quickly. That is to say, being translated, if you will live like
Christian men and women and fling down the gage of battle to the world
and to the evil that lies in every one of us, and say, 'No, I have
nothing to do with you. My law is not your law, and, God helping me,
my practice shall not be your practice,' then you will find out that
the power that you have defied has a very long arm and a very tight
grasp, and you will have to make up your minds that, in some shape or
other, the old law will be fulfilled about you. Through much
tribulation we must enter the Kingdom.
II. Now, secondly, my text and its context solve the mystery which it
raises.
The chronicler, as I said, wishes us to notice the sequence, strange
as it is, and to wonder at it for a moment, in order that we may be
prepared the better to take in the grand explanation that follows. And
the explanation lies in the facts that ensue.
Did Sennacherib come to destroy? By no means! Here were the results:
first, a stirring to wholesome energy and activity. If annoyances and
troubles and sorrows, great or small, do nothing else for us, they
would be clear and simple gain if they woke us up, for the half of men
pass half of their lives half-asleep. And anybody that has ever come
through a great sorrow and can remember what deep fountains were
opened in his heart that he knew nothing about before, and how powers
that were all unsuspected by himself suddenly came to him, and how
life, instead of being a trivial succession of nothings, all at once
became significant and solemn--any man who can remember that, will
feel that if there were nothing else that his troubles did for him
than to shake him out of torpor and rouse him to a tension of
wholesome activity, so that he cried out:
'Call forth thy powers, my soul! and dare
The conflict of unequal war,'
he would have occasion to bless God for the roughest handling. The
tropics are very pleasant for lazy people, but they sap the
constitution and make work impossible; and after a man has lived for a
while in their perpetual summer, he begins to long for damp and mist
and frost and east winds which bring bracing to the system and make
him fit to work. God takes us often into very ungenial climates, and
the vindication of it is that we may be set to active service. That
was the first good thing that Sennacherib's coming did.
The next was that his invasion increased dependence upon God. You will
remember the story of the insolent taunts and vulgar vaunting by him
and his servants, and the one answer that was given: 'Hezekiah, the
king, and Isaiah the son of Amoz the prophet, prayed and cried to
God.' Ah! dear brethren, any thing that drives us to His breast is
blessing. We may call it evil when we speak from the point of view of
the foolish senses and the quivering heart, but if it blows us into
His arms, any wind, the roughest and the fiercest, is to be welcomed
more than lazy calms or gentle zephyrs. If, realising our own weakness
and impotence, we are made to hang more completely upon Him, then let
us be thankful for whatever has been the means of such a blessed
issue. That was the second good thing that Sennacherib did.
The third good thing that he--not exactly did--but that was done
through him, was that experience of God's delivering power was
enriched. You remember the miracle of the destruction of the army. I
need not dilate upon it. A man who can look back and say, 'Thou hast
been with me in six troubles,' need never be afraid of the seventh;
and he who has hung upon that strong rope when he has been swinging
away down in the darkness and asphyxiating atmosphere of the pit, and
has been drawn up into the sunshine again, will trust it for all
coming time. If there were no other explanation, the enlarged and
deepened experience of the realities of God's Gospel and of God's
grace, which are bought only by sorrow, would be a sufficient
explanation of any sorrow that any of us have ever had to carry.
'Well roars the storm to him who hears
A deeper voice across the storm.'
There are large tracts of Scripture which have no meaning, no
blessedness to us until they have been interpreted to us by losses and
sorrows. We never know the worth of the lighthouse until the November
darkness and the howling winds come down upon us, and then we
appreciate its preciousness.
So, dear friends! the upshot of the whole is just that old teaching,
that if we realised what life is for, we should wonder less at the
sorrows that are in it. For life is meant to make us partakers of His
holiness, not to make us happy. Our happiness is a secondary purpose,
not out of view of the Divine love, but it is not the primary one. And
the direct intention and mission of sorrow, like the direct intention
and mission of joy, are to further that great purpose, that we 'should
be partakers of His holiness.' 'Every branch in Me that beareth fruit,
He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.'
III. Lastly, my text suggests a warning against letting prosperity
undo adversity's work.
Hezekiah came bravely through his trials. They did exactly what God
wanted them to do; they drove him to God, they forced him down upon
his knees. When Sennacherib's letter came, he took it to the Temple
and spread it before God, and said, 'O Lord! it is Thy business. It is
addressed to me, but it is meant for Thee; do Thou answer it.' And so
he received the help that he wanted. But he broke down after that. He
was 'exalted'; and the allies, his neighbours, that had not lifted a
finger to help him when he needed their help, sent him presents which
would have been a great deal more seasonable when he was struggling
for his life with Sennacherib. What 'came after (God's) faithfulness'?
This--'his heart was lifted up, and he rendered not according to the
benefit rendered to him.' Therefore the blow had to come down again. A
great many people take refuge in archways when it rains, and run out
as soon as it holds up, and a great many people take religion as an
umbrella, to put down when the sunshine comes. We cross the bridge and
forget it, and when the leprosy is out of us we do not care to go back
and give thanks. Sometimes too, we begin to think, 'After all, it was
we that killed Sennacherib's army, and not the angel.' And so, like
dull scholars, we need the lesson repeated once, twice, thrice, 'here
a little and there a little, precept upon precept, line upon line.'
There is none of us that has so laid to heart our past difficulties
and trials that it is safe for God to burn the rod as long as we are
in this life.
Dear friends! do not let it be said of us, 'In vain have I smitten thy
children. They have received no correction'; but rather let us keep
close to Him, and seek to learn the sweet and loving meaning of His
sharpest strokes. Then the little book, 'written within and without
with lamentation and woe,' which we all in our turn have to absorb and
make our own, may be 'bitter in the mouth,' but will be 'sweet as
honey' thereafter.