Ex 9:16, But, indeed, for this cause I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power, and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth. 
This week we continue our consideration of this passage in terms of the fact that God rules and overrules even through the means of those who do not acknowledge Who He is and What He has done. This is a reality in which we, who do know God and love Him, can take tremendous comfort and assurance. He is not limited in the working power of His might by anything or anyone! He is the Sovereign and Supreme Lord of heaven and earth by Whom everything that exists has come into being! 
We pick up the truth of this fact in our reading of the cry of King Hezekiah as Sennacherib, king of Assyria was besieging Jerusalem. The king’s emissary relayed a severe message of disdain for the Lord God Almighty in trying to discourage the besieged inhabitants of the city. 
Please open your Bibles to 2 Kings 18:29-35. 2 Kings 18:29-35, Thus says the king, 'Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you from my hand; nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, "The Lord will surely deliver us, and this city shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria." 'Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria, "Make your peace with me and come out to me, and eat each of his vine and each of his fig tree and drink each of the waters of his own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live and not die. "But do not listen to Hezekiah, when he misleads you, saying," The Lord will deliver us." 'Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? 'Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria from my hand? 'Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their land from my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?'" 
	As Hezekiah heard this blasphemy spoken from the mouth of the emboldened ambassador, he was struck with the sense of seeking the Lord to vindicate Himself against the utter folly of the words being voiced against the Almighty. We read this cry unto God in 2 Kings 19, verses15-19. 2 Kings 19:15-19, And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said, "O Lord, the God of Israel, who art enthroned above the cherubim, Thou art the God, Thou alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. Thou hast made heaven and earth. Incline Thine ear, O Lord, and hear; open Thine eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have devastated the nations and their lands and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. So they have destroyed them. And now, O Lord our God, I pray, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that Thou alone, O Lord, art God." 
King Hezekiah kept the focus of his prayer upon that which would show to the rest of the world that God was exactly who God said He was. The deliverance of this small city against the vast army of Assyria which had so devastated all the known lands to the north and to the east would show that the God of Israel was the One true and Living God. It would be the Lord’s name that would be proclaimed as Jerusalem could not defend itself against the vast host encamped against it. It would be the Lord and the Lord Alone by Whom His people would survive this assault. 
We have the Lord’s answer to Hezekiah’s prayer, through the message given to Isaiah, concerning not only the salvation of His people but the response to the disdain of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, toward the true Lord of heaven and earth. Please read with me beginning in 2 Kings 19, verses 32-37. 'Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, "He shall not come to this city or shoot an arrow there; neither shall he come before it with a shield, nor throw up a mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come to this city,"' declares the Lord. 'For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David's sake.'" Then it happened that night that the angel of the Lord went out, and struck 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men rose early in the morning, behold, all of them were dead. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and returned home, and lived at Nineveh. And it came about as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer killed him with the sword; and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son became king in his place. 
Not only was the city spared by the mighty hand of God, but the threat against it and the self-exalted king of Assyria, who defiled the Name of God, was removed from power through intrigue and assassination, so that there would not be another besieging of Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s day. All the glory and the shockwave of rejoicing that swept through the land was pointedly attributed, not to the power of men, but to the grace and the mercy and the power of God to rule and to overrule for His Name’s sake. 'For I will defend this city to save it for My own sake and for My servant David's sake.' 
	This was an example of Divine deliverance by which mankind would continually see that the Lord is exactly Who He tells us He is. His Name will be broadcast and exalted through all the ways in which God will deal with those who refuse to even acknowledge that He is, as declared by the Psalmist in Ps 64. Please turn to it with me. 
Ps 64. Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint; Preserve my life from dread of the enemy. Hide me from the secret counsel of evildoers, From the tumult of those who do iniquity, Who have sharpened their tongue like a sword. They aimed bitter speech as their arrow, To shoot from concealment at the blameless; Suddenly they shoot at him, and do not fear. They hold fast to themselves an evil purpose; They talk of laying snares secretly; They say, "Who can see them?" They devise injustices, saying, "We are ready with a well-conceived plot"; For the inward thought and the heart of a man are deep. But God will shoot at them with an arrow; Suddenly they will be wounded. So they will make him stumble; Their own tongue is against them; All who see them will shake the head. Then all men will fear, And will declare the work of God, And will consider what He has done. The righteous man will be glad in the Lord, and will take refuge in Him; And all the upright in heart will glory. 
	Just as with all the scheming and the evil intention of Sennacherib to defame the name of the Lord and to overthrow Jerusalem as but another city of a people who served a useless man-made deity, so are the schemes and the plotting of the wicked upon the heads of those who hold to the Lord. There is manifested the hatred and the animosity and the foul intent to discredit the Name of God through the conceived abuse and the annihilation of His people. 
Yet, as we saw with Sennacherib, and as declared in this psalm, But God will shoot at them with an arrow; Suddenly they will be wounded. So they will make him stumble; Their own tongue is against them; All who see them will shake the head. Then all men will fear, And will declare the work of God, And will consider what He has done. The righteous man will be glad in the Lord, and will take refuge in Him; And all the upright in heart will glory. 
It is the Lord Who will defend His name and His glory. It is the Lord Who will bring forth His salvation and His vengeance and His uprightness. He makes all the plans of man to be as nothing! It is the Lord in Whom the righteous will rejoice and take refuge and find joy in declaring the glory of God Alone. 
Truly, it may be that we are slaughtered as lambs in our physical lives, as attested to by the deaths of many of the prophets of old and all the Christian martyrs throughout the ages of humanity. Yet, knowing that they are with the Lord in the full presence of His glory, they gained far more as a result of their earthly treatment and demise than they lost. The refuge of the Lord is eternal and sure and filled with all the refreshment and the joy and the peace and the comfort of the immediate presence of God, Himself. They all rest fully in the Name of the Lord by Whom they receive their constant and awesome recompense of grace and mercy and love. (Dear brother in the hospital – what can they threaten me with, an eternity with Jesus?)
For those who persist on the course of trying to discredit and to annihilate the Name of the Lord from the earth through the devastation of God’s chosen people, the Psalmist again brings forth the cry unto the Lord to do what He will with them to preserve and to magnify the Lord’s Name above the every intent of this wicked humanity. Please turn to Ps 83 as we will read it together. 
	Ps 83, O God, do not remain quiet; Do not be silent and, O God, do not be still. For, behold, Thine enemies make an uproar; And those who hate Thee have exalted themselves. They make shrewd plans against Thy people, And conspire together against Thy treasured ones. They have said, "Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation, That the name of Israel be remembered no more." For they have conspired together with one mind; Against Thee do they make a covenant: The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab, and the Hagrites; Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assyria also has joined with them; They have become a help to the children of Lot. Selah. Deal with them as with Midian, As with Sisera and Jabin, at the torrent of Kishon, Who were destroyed at En-dor, Who became as dung for the ground. Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, And all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna, Who said, "Let us possess for ourselves The pastures of God." O my God, make them like the whirling dust; Like chaff before the wind. Like fire that burns the forest, And like a flame that sets the mountains on fire, So pursue them with Thy tempest, And terrify them with Thy storm. Fill their faces with dishonor, That they may seek Thy name, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever; And let them be humiliated and perish, That they may know that Thou alone, whose name is the Lord, Art the Most High over all the earth. 
	Please note that even in the midst of this prayer that the Lord would effectively put an end to the plots and the schemes of those who sought to eliminate His Name and His people from the earth, there was that note of recognition that what the Lord would do, and how He would do it, would make His Name known to these vicious conspirators. Fill their faces with dishonor, That they may seek Thy name, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever; And let them be humiliated and perish, That they may know that Thou alone, whose name is the Lord, Art the Most High over all the earth. Amen!
	Despite their every evil intent, the Psalmist recognized that the Lord would and does work in such manners and ways as to reveal, even to those who do deny Him, the reality of Who He is. It is often the case that those who fight so viciously and vehemently against the Name of God are those to whom the Lord reveals Himself in such power and might that they are knocked off their feet and caused to seek Him for their very salvation. The Apostle Paul is but one example of a persecutor of those who believed upon Jesus Christ and then, when face-to-face with Christ on that road to Damascus, came under this very prayer as recorded in Psalms. Fill their faces with dishonor, That they may seek Thy name, O Lord. Let them be ashamed and dismayed forever; And let them be humiliated and perish, That they may know that Thou alone, whose name is the Lord, Art the Most High over all the earth. 
	As a direct result of his encounter with Christ, Saul, later to become Paul, came to know the Name of the Lord in such a living reality that his heart was turned even unto sharing the Gospel message with the Gentile nations, whom he had considered as nothing but fuel for the fires of Shoal. Saul had been strictly taught that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was only interested in the Children of Israel and was not at all concerned with those who were not of the Chosen tribes of Israel’s sons. However, through the power of the Holy Spirit’s teaching and guidance, Paul, and eventually the rest of the Jewish Christians, were shown that the Name of God was as meaningful and valuable to those who were not of the circumcision as He was to the Jews. God’s name and glory is to be seen in all the realm of His creation through the perfect work of Christ Jesus, the Only Begotten of the Father. 
As the Apostle wrote to the Church in Galatia, Gal 3:26-29, For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. 
In Christ, The Lord’s name would be honored and would abound to all those nations who had previously tried to eliminate the people whom God had rescued from the slavery of Egypt. God’s name and glory would, as was told to Pharaoh, be proclaimed throughout all the earth in the power of the death and resurrection of the Perfect Passover Lamb of God. So be it!
	But, indeed, for this cause I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power, and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction is Ps 103:21+22. Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, You who serve Him, doing His will. Bless the Lord, all you works of His, In all places of His dominion; Bless the Lord, O my soul! Amen.