When believers are falsely accused by the enemy, our Advocate steps forward to speak for us.
When Hezekiah heard the news, “he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the Lord” (2 Ki 19:1). Blessed is the nation whose rulers respond to national grief and sorrow by hurrying into the presence of God. But he did more; he marshalled help to storm the ramparts—not of Lachish but of heaven. Sending word to his contemporary, Isaiah the prophet, he pleaded, “lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left” (v 4). But Hezekiah also believed God heard what we might call anti-prayers. “It may be that the Lord your God will hear all the words of the Rabshakeh…sent to reproach the living God” (v 4). The Lord not only hears our cries, but also the unfair criticisms, false accusations, and verbal attacks against us. In this case, the answer came by return male! “The servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah. And Isaiah said to them,…‘Thus says the Lord: “Do not be afraid of the words which you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed Me. Surely…he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land”’” (vv 5-6). But before that, the Rabshakeh made one more frontal attack, sending a second letter to Hezekiah, this time listing not the gods of the nations defeated, as he had before, but the kings that Assyria had vanquished. This time there was no sackcloth. Instead the king went right to prayer. Two things he knew for sure. First, the Assyrians had destroyed the other nations and their gods. But second, the Assyrians had never come up against a God like his! “Now therefore, O Lord our God, I pray, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You are the Lord God, You alone” (v 19).