Season two of Love in Context podcast welcomes you.
Get ready for engaging unscripted conversations with your host, Ben and Spencer.
Our mission remains unchanged to explore the Bible through the powerful lens of love.
In this new season, we'll embark on a journey together, unearthing fresh insights and gaining
deeper understanding of how we can love God and live out our faith in practical ways.
So let's dive into this season of Love in Context, where love in the context of the
Bible intersect to transform our lives.
All right, everyone.
Welcome back to the podcast.
Exactly.
We are starting a new series today.
Actually we started it last week.
We're starting a new series today.
Now we actually started a new series last week.
Sorry.
These episodes sometimes just blend together for me a little bit and it's like, OK.
You know, the problem is what ends up happening is you and I talk about these and then we
order these and then we start recording them.
But then we're talking about what's coming up.
And so it's hard to be like, what did we talk about and what are we about to talk about?
Yeah.
So we are talking about kings and kingdoms and non-Jewish kings in the Bible.
So buckle up.
Some of you are going to be like, wait a second.
I thought the Bible was all about the Jewish tradition, faith, the introduction of Christianity.
Yes, all of that stuff.
All of those things.
However, there are people in the Bible who are mentioned who are not Jewish.
Right.
By tradition.
So last week there was that guy by the name of Mckisdek, who is just an intriguing character.
And we basically ascertained a few things.
He was a real person and we don't completely understand what his role was.
Yep.
Except that he's used later as this idea of like a stand in for Jesus.
That Jesus is a priest in the line of Mckisdek.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
So go listen to that episode.
Today we're going to be talking about Sennacherib.
Yeah, it was not a stutter.
That's a real name.
If you are expecting child.
Little Sennacherib.
Yeah.
Sennacherib.
There you go.
Or if you want to have two children, you can name one Sennacherib, one Kareb.
Yeah.
I mean, however you want to do that.
That is up to you.
So we're just going to kind of start with some background.
How many, I mean, show of hands, people who are listening.
I really do want you to raise your hands.
How many of you.
We will know.
Yeah.
How many of you know who Sennacherib is?
Oh, Ben does.
Yeah.
Right.
It's not a, at least, you know, I've studied the Bible my whole life and this is not a
name that pops up a lot.
Well, it doesn't show up a ton.
No, it shows up a couple of times.
Sennacherib was king of Assyria from about 705 BCE to 681 BCE.
He is known for his military campaigns and expansion of the Assyrian empire.
So Assyria, little context there, they were not a nice nation.
No.
Like they actually, we're not going to dive into it on this podcast, but you can go research
some of the horrific practices they did to nations that they conquered.
Yeah, let's just say it involved a lot of like heads on polls and different things like
that.
And that was like the starting point.
Yes.
The one I will share with you is they did have a game that they would play to see who
could skin a victim alive and keep them alive the longest.
Yeah.
Not good people.
Yeah.
So that would give you kind of idea of who they are.
Yeah.
So just just brutal invasions.
Yeah.
So when we're talking about Assyrians, we're not like a lot of times we're like, oh yeah,
the Assyrians conquered this nation.
It's more like the Assyrians came in and completely devastated this nation to where there was
like little to nothing left of them.
Correct.
And what was left, they typically cart off into slavery.
Yeah.
Yep.
So there are two different accounts of where you can actually find Sennacherib mentioned.
First one is Second Kings 18 and 19.
Yeah.
And so we're actually just going to read that because I don't know how many of you actually
read in Second Kings 18 and 19 recently.
It's probably at the top of all your lists.
Actually just read through first and second.
Oh, there you go.
So overachiever.
Yeah.
All right.
So starting verse one, it says in the third year of Hosea, son of Elah, king of Israel
has a kiosk and has King of Judah became began to reign.
He was 25 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem for 29 years.
His mother name was Abba Jah, daughter of Zechariah.
He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father, David, had done.
By the way, if you read Kings, you know that is not the normal refrain that you get.
It's usually he does not do do good.
Yep.
So what did he do?
He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles.
He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made for at that time.
The Israelites had been burning incense to it.
It was called Nahashitan.
By the way, we did the Torah series and we talked about the bronze tank and the whole
thing about this bronze snake.
You're supposed to look to to God for salvation.
Yeah.
And now this very thing that was supposed to like lead them back to God, they're now
worshiping as an idol.
Yeah.
Not great.
No.
So Hazzakai had trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, and there was no one like him among
all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.
He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following him.
He kept the commands the Lord had given Moses and the Lord was with him.
He was successful in whatever he undertook.
He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him from Watchtower to Fort
of Ith City, he defeated the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory.
In King Hazzakai's fourth year, which was the seventh year of Hosea, son of Elah, king
of Israel.
Wow, that is a great name.
Shalman Nasser, king of Syria, marched against Samaria and laid sea-stread.
At the end of three years, the Assyrians took it.
So Samaria was captured and Hazzakai is six year.
The king of Assyria deported Israel to Assyria and settled in the Hala in Gozin in the Haber
River and in the towns of Meads.
You really need Nick here to read all this.
This is so good for him.
This happened because they had not obeyed the Lord their God and they had violated his
commandments.
All that Moses the servant had commanded him.
In the fourteenth year of King Hazzakai's reign, Sennacherib, that's the guy we're talking
about, king of Assyria, attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them.
So Hazzakai of Judah sent this message to the king of Assyria at Lachish.
I have done nothing wrong, withdraw from me and I will pay whatever you demand of me.
The king of Assyria exacted from Hazzakai, king of Judah, three hundred talents of silver
and thirty talents of gold.
So Hazzakai gave him all the gold that was found in the temple of the Lord and in the
treasuries of the royal palace.
At this time, Hazzakai, king of Judah, shipped off the gold which he had covered the doors
and doorposts of the temple of the Lord and gave it to the king of Assyria.
But the king of Assyria sent his supreme commander, his chief officer and his field commander in
a large army from Lachish to king of Assyria at Jerusalem.
They came up to Jerusalem and stopped at the aqueduct of the upper pool on the road to
the waterman's field.
They called it for the king and Elikim son of Hilkiah, the palace administrator.
You're right.
I really well loves here.
Pastor Nick, read this.
Yeah.
Shepna, the secretary and Joah, son of Asva, the recorder, went out to them.
The field commander said this to them.
Tell Hazzakai.
All right, by the way, this is about what's going to get Sennacherib in trouble.
Because God was using them to go and bring correction to his kids.
But he's about to overstep his bounds here.
This is what the great king, the king of Assyria says, on what are you basing this confidence
of yours?
You say you have the council and might for war, but you speak only empty words.
On whom are you depending that you rebel against me?
Look, I know you're depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff which pierces the
hand of anyone who leans on it.
Such a Pharaoh king, such is Pharaoh, king of Egypt to all who depend on him.
But if you say to me, we are depending on the Lord, our God, isn't he the one whose
high places and altars has a car removed?
Saying to Judah, the dish in Jerusalem, you must worship before this altar in Jerusalem.
Come now, make a bargain with your master, the king of Assyria.
I will give you 2000 horses.
If you can put riders on them, how can you repulse one officer of the least of my master's
official, even though you are demanding depending on Egypt for chariots and horsemen?
Furthermore, have I come to attack and destroy this place without word from the Lord?
The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it.
OK, so not a great move on his part.
So I'm going to not interbreed in the rest of this, but they they go out and then they
say, don't listen, has a guy.
Don't listen, has a guy.
Don't listen to has a guy.
And then has a guy of praise.
And I say I then prophesies Seneca Rebs fall.
By the way, you should recognize Isaiah from the book of Isaiah.
And he prophesies this in Chapter 19, starting in verse 21.
Virgin daughter Zion despises you and mocks you.
Daughter Jerusalem tosses her head as you flee.
Who is it that you have ridiculed and blasphemed against?
Who have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes in pride against the Holy One of
Israel?
By the way, that's not a good idea.
By your messengers, you have ridiculed the Lord and you have said, with my many chariots,
I have ascended to the heights of the mountain, the utmost heights of Lebanon.
I will cut down its tallest cedars, the choices of its junipers.
I will reach its remotest areas, our most parts, the finest of its forests.
I have dug wells in foreign lands and drunk the water there with the soles of my feet.
I have dried up all the streams of Egypt.
Have you not heard long ago?
I ordained it in the days of old.
I planned it.
Now I have brought it to pass that you have turned fortified cities into piles of stone.
Their people drained of power and dismayed and put to shame.
They're like plants in the field, like tender green shoots and grass sprouting on the roof,
scorched before it grows up.
But I know where you are and when you come and go and how you rage against me because
you rage against me and because your insolence has reached my ears.
I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth and I will make you return by
the way you came.
This will be a sign for you, Hezekiah.
This year you will eat what grows by itself and the second year what springs from that.
But in the third year, sow and reap, plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
Even more, a remnant of the kingdom of Judah will not take root below and bear fruit above.
For out of Jerusalem will come a remnant, not of Mount Zion, a band of survivors.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
Therefore this is what the Lord says concerning the king of Assyria.
He will not enter this city or shoot an arrow here.
He will not come before with shield or build a siege ramp against it.
By the way that he came, he will return.
He will not enter this city, declares the Lord.
I will defend this city and save it for my sake and for the sake of David my servant.
Then it says that that night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death 185,000
in the Assyrian camp.
When the people woke up the next morning, there were all the dead bodies.
So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew.
He returned to Nineveh and he stayed there.
And then one day while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrach, his sons Adram
Melek, wow, he's great in naming his kids too, and Shirazer killed him with a sword
and they escaped to the land of Ararat.
And his son Erashadon succeeded him as king.
That's Sennacherib story.
Right?
Like that's who he is.
He was, like the thing is, in his life he's actually is being called by God to come and
bring correction.
Because the kings are continually doing evil on the side of the Lord, doing evil on the
side of the Lord, doing evil on the side of the Lord.
And eventually God's like, listen, you got to tell the right story and I'm going to bring
a remnant out of you.
But Sennacherib, unfortunately, gets a little too big for his britches.
Yep.
He does.
And guess what happens to him?
He loses.
Like, and it's like such a dramatic loss because he's like, you say that God's going to protect
you, but God sent me here.
So I'm going to come and I'm going to do all this things.
It's not by his hand.
I'm super strong.
Because like, hmm, yeah, let's have a conversation about that.
Right.
So one of the other spots where he sees Sennacherib mentioned is Isaiah 36 and 37.
So on the 14th year of King Hezekiah's reign, Sennacherib, king of Assyria attacked all
the fortified cities and captured them.
We just read this, right?
And then the king of Assyria sent his field commander with a large army to Leshan, to
King Hezekiah at Jerusalem, where the commander stopped at the aqueduct of the upper pool
of the road, the road of the lavender field, Elikim son of Helikai.
Maybe it's good to have you read these names.
Yeah.
The palace administrator, Shereb the secretary and Joah son of Ashif the recorder went with
them and the commander said to them, tell Hezekiah.
And then you remember that we actually just went through that.
Yep.
So in Isaiah, you have a little bit of a different telling of this story.
Right.
So if you want another another part of the story, you can look at that.
And it's actually told one more time in the story is there's second Chronicles chapter
32.
One of the things we've talked about in the past with first and second Kings, first Samuel
and versus Chronicles is that first Samuel first and Kings are kind of written like as
it's happening.
Right.
Yeah.
Now in Isaiah, they're going to be writing the story in the in terms of like the prophetic
focus of the time.
Right.
But in the book of Chronicles, it's going to it's actually one of the last books written
in the Bible and it's written in retrospect.
And so one of the things that they highlight in chapter 32 of second Chronicles is Hezekiah's
preparations and also his conversations with the people about trusting God.
Yeah.
And like they're they're looking back and they're like, well, what was it that really
like stood out about Hezekiah's leadership?
Right.
When when you're looking at retrospect, what was it that really stood out?
And when they looked back, they said, you know, Hezekiah encouraged his people to trust
the Lord.
Mm hmm.
Like that was the significant thing.
It wasn't just that he prayed, but he was all about the people trusting God in that
situation.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
So interesting thing here is when you talk about some of these figures in the Bible,
archaeology has been like it's a fantastic study and they've learned so much.
But some of these kings and kingdoms and different places, you're like, OK, but did they really
exist because there's, you know, there's not a not a physical record of some of these places.
Yeah.
So regarding Sennacherib, there is actually a number of different places you can find
information on him.
One of them is actually in the Assyrian records.
So there's a thing called Sennacherib's prison, Prism Prism.
And it's it's a cuneiform inscription that details Sennacherib's military campaigns,
including his invasion of Judah.
And it mentions the siege of Jerusalem and claims he trapped Hezekiah like a bird in
a cage, though it does not mention capturing the city.
Right.
Not surprising when you're writing your own history.
Typically you're going to write to make yourself look a little better.
Right.
In in Lachish, they actually have found wall panels of Sennacherib's palace in Nineveh
depicting the siege and captors of Lachish, a major city in Judah.
In Babylonian chronicles, they found some internal affairs in context of Sennacherib's
reign.
And then there's a Greek historian by the name of Herodotus, who the men does a similar
event involving Sennacherib.
Except I think this is interesting.
It says that his account attributes a Syrian retreat to the plague of mice, which some
interpret as a possible misinterpretation of a biblical plague.
Right.
Or that's how God did it.
I mean, we don't know.
We don't know.
But it is.
So one of the things with all these different sources is that there's there's a pretty broad
consensus across historians that Sennacherib was indeed a legitimate person.
Yes.
And that this this event happened in some capacity.
Yeah.
So Sennacherib did a few things while he was king.
He built palaces.
Right.
He he actually advanced a lot of architecture for the day.
So Assyria and Babylon, they were known for not just their military might, but their technology
technological achievements at the time, too.
So he did do that.
He did have great military might.
Right.
Like he was known for strong military.
His campaigns.
He had this desire.
If you look at historical context from from I haven't read a ton on him.
But from what I have read, he had this desire to essentially have an empire similar to what
like Rome had.
Right.
Like just this massive empire ruling pretty much over the whole known world.
Right.
So he was power hungry, power thirsty and wanted to take over everything.
So Sennacherib is king of Assyria, but he's actually his kingdom or his is I'm going to
say his capital city.
That's probably not the right way to say it.
But his main city is a city that a lot of us have heard before.
It's Nineveh, Nineveh.
And if you're like, wow, that that city sounds familiar.
It's it should.
It's from the Book of Jonah.
Now, one of the reasons I always find this interesting to learn about Sennacherib and
the way that he attacked Judah and came through and was just like laying waste to the to the
people.
Right.
Is that then when you step into the Book of Jonah, God comes to his prophet and you remember
we said the Syrians are not good people.
No, they're not good people.
Like they are they're doing all sorts of torture.
They're carting people off into captivity.
There's a lot of murder and all sorts of things that are happening.
And God comes to Jonah and he says, hey, I want you to go and talk to the Assyrians at
Nineveh because they're not like they're doing bad things, but their evil hasn't reached
its full measure and I don't want to pour my wrath on them.
Yeah.
That's a big lift.
Like I think sometimes when we encounter that story in Jonah, we're like, why does Jonah
run?
Mm hmm.
I mean, he's being told to go to the people who probably literally killed friends of his.
Well, he's being told to go to the worst of the worst.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, to put a modern day like World War Two equivalent in it'd be it would be
like if someone was told like, hey, I want you to go to Hitler and proclaim forgiveness
and redemption so he has a chance to repent.
Right.
Uh, there would be people, there'd be people who'd be like, say what?
Yeah.
And so like there's, uh, this is kind of what's going on.
Uh, Assyria is known like we kind of have to talk about the brutal tactics a little
bit.
Yeah.
Like this is, uh, this is probably a, if you don't want to hear about these things, skip
five minutes ahead.
Yeah.
So, uh, Assyria, just a couple of brutal tactics, just to kind of give you an idea.
We hinted at them earlier, but when they went into a city, one of the things they did is
they decapitated people, put their heads on stakes and put that all around the city so
that people could see their loved ones destroyed and see their city in waste.
Right.
That was one of the things they did.
They were brutal slave owners.
Um, like they worked slaves to death.
They saw them as lesser people and they actually would work them little to no food and water
to the point where starvation, malnutrition, all that would take over while still driving
them to work day in and day out with little to no rest.
Right.
Yeah.
And so one of the things about them too is they're, they were, um, masters of siege warfare,
right?
Cause a lot of cities, the way that you protect cities, you have halls, right?
But they both had, uh, they were masters of like battering rams and as well as siege towers
in order.
And they would, a lot of times starve these people out.
And then when they finally get in there and take over the area, they would, there would
be significant reprisals for the cities and not, not a good way.
Yeah.
Uh, rape was common as well, uh, amongst the Assyrians.
Uh, they also, what they would do with captives too is they would, uh, they would tie captives
to a stake and then they would play a game and they would, uh, skin them while they were
alive.
And the whole goal of the game was to see who could keep their captive alive the longest.
Yeah.
Like, so some of the practices that Assyrians did, like you, uh, child sacrifice was in
there too.
There's a few other things, but, uh, some of the practices that they did were just horrific
by nature.
Like some of the most horrific things that have actually been seen in history.
Right.
So, so that's the group of people we're talking about.
Yeah.
We're not, we're not, it's not a, you got to remember the biblical times.
It was a, it's a brutal time to be alive.
Right.
Um, I feel like sometimes in the 20th century American idiom, um, not idiom, that's not
even the word I'm looking for, uh, context.
We don't really have a concept of like brutal people because we haven't had brutal fights
like this in, in hundreds of years.
Right.
Um, well we do it all from a click of a button.
Correct.
Yeah.
So, and, uh, and so like, it's just, you know, is a lot of it, I was, I was, uh, I was, I
was even researching and getting into Assyrian warfare.
It's a lot of it was psychological that they would try to inflict terror through the areas.
Um, the mass deportation served for destabilizing like trade routes and everything across the
entire country made a lot easier to invade.
And that's who the Assyrians are.
Right.
And this is who's the neck rep, uh, is the king of, right.
And uh, and, and so then Jonah, poor little Jonah.
Well, not poor little Jonah.
Well and here's the deal.
Jonah's an outsider going to the city.
Yeah.
So as soon as he walks in, he has every right in his mind to think, he knows some of these
practices that they're doing and he has every right in his mind to think, Hey, this might
happen to me if I go there.
The, uh, the hard thing, the interesting thing about the book of Jonah is nobody behaves
like you expect them to.
Right.
Um, because the king of Nineveh is not actually named in the book of Jonah, but I would argue
that you could actually put Seneca Rebbe in there as the picture.
Right.
Um, Jonah is the prophet of God and he runs away.
Right.
Uh, the sailors that are boating him out, like they do everything they can to try to
spare his life.
Yeah.
Right.
So Jonah walks in and he walks in like barely.
So it's one of my favorite things about Nineveh, by the way, it says, it takes, I think it
says it takes three days to walk through.
It says Jonah walks in one day's walk, walk in.
So like he doesn't even go halfway through the city.
He preaches a five word sermon and he walks on the, waits on the held for them to get
destroyed.
Right.
So J, Jonah goes in, doesn't even go through halfway through the city, preaches a short
message that lacks a lot of context.
Yeah.
Um, actually I want to read this to you real quick here because I think this is, this is
we've done Jonah, but I really want to read this to you real quick.
All right.
Let me find it here.
Right.
So Jonah actually goes in and he preaches this message and it's five words in Hebrew,
but Spencer, can you tell me what's missing in this message?
So you're you've preached before, right?
Okay.
Do you're preaching to somebody about repentance because something coming against them in their
life.
Tell me what's missing from this sermon.
40 more days and Nineveh will be overturned.
Repentance.
Overturned by who?
For what?
Why?
Yeah.
You know, like there's a, like if you, who, okay.
So the who, I get that, but, but who's going to overturn how, why, and I guess you have
the when, right?
But like 40 more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.
So lots of questions here.
Mic drop.
I'm going to go sit on a hill and wait for your distractions.
So lots of questions.
Like you said, who, why?
Yeah.
All of that repentance isn't mentioned.
Right.
Like it's just like, Hey, you guys are going to be overturned in 40 days.
It sounds more like a declaration.
Yeah.
And so like, as far as Jonah doing what God has called him to do, Jonah came, Jonah walked
and did the bare minimum.
Yeah.
And he's like, all right, uh, 40 days and y'all are done and walks out.
Right.
And it's like, okay.
Now as Assyrians, like put it, put it in their context.
They're the powerhouse of the day.
Their city takes three days to get through.
Like Nineveh is a massive city, big city.
Big city.
All right.
And they're like, there's probably a lot of people in town at first who are like, okay,
who are you talking about?
And like, seriously, who do you think is going to overturn us?
Well, and there's also no implication that he said that message more than once.
Yeah.
Like, and I would argue that he probably didn't because, but somehow these people, these powerhouse
people, these people who are known for their evil, somehow they hear it and it gets all
the way to the king and he goes, everybody repent, put on sackcloth and ashes and cry
out to God that he'll forgive us.
In fact, you know what?
Get the cows and the pigs and put them in sackcloth and ashes too.
Right?
And so everybody has like, has this huge turnaround.
And so you take like these super proud people and like, this is one of the reasons why when
you read the book of Jonah, you need to understand that it's satire.
It may be a legitimate real event, but it's meant to point out something deeper, a deeper
truth because if you see Sennacherib as the king of Nineveh, he's not the kind of guy
who picks up subtlety.
Right?
And yet Jonah is mad because God has compassion.
And like, so these are the places, like these are the places that Nineveh, Sennacherib and
all these places are mentioned.
You know, the real tie in from the book of Jonah is that God has compassion for everyone.
And that, well, we're called to be involved within his message.
Yeah.
I mean, you can, you can think of it in a way of like, who's someone who's hurt you
really bad.
Right.
And then seeing them come to faith in Jesus.
Right.
At least I've had that happen a few times in my life.
And there's a small part of me that's like, why them?
Right.
And that's who the Assyrians are to Jonah.
Like the Assyrians have done horrific things to the Israelites.
Well, and it's, it's actually interesting.
Like the whole thing about the Assyrians and Nineveh specifically is if you actually look
at Nineveh being used in the Bible, first place that shows up is in Genesis 10.
There's a guy by the name of Nimrod, which is just great name, by the way, if you're
thinking about naming a kid, some great names, we have some great baby names here, by the
way.
We're going to start, we're going to write a biblical baby name.
Yeah.
So there's a guy by the name of Nimrod.
He's described as a mighty hunter before the Lord.
Right.
Then he's founding these cities, several cities, including Babel and Nineveh, talking about
the separate spread of civilization and power.
But these cities are often associated with human ambition and defiance to God.
Yeah.
So now in the book of Jonah, you hear about Nineveh and now if you have Genesis and you
have Nimrod and a rebellion and you have Sennachera being the king of Nineveh and you have the
Assyrians and all these things and God, and now Jonah writes, or God writes this book
about Jonah and he says, you need to go to Nineveh.
You're like, why them?
Why them?
Yeah.
And I think the very simple thing is that no matter how much we feel about it, God is
for everyone.
Yep.
Not just us.
I remember a few years ago, I had this conversation and a guy was talking to me.
He said, sometimes I think that people are just bad and we should just toss them in the
fire.
And I was like, I think you've read the gospel.
Well, he wasn't a Christian.
To be fair, and he was talking about, you got your Mussolini's, your Hitlers and stuff.
And I said, and he's like, well, how do you square that with like, they're evil?
And I said, as much as evil increases, so should my capacity to be able to forgive and
restore.
I said, now life has consequences.
If you're a mass murderer, you're probably going to die.
Right?
I was like, but I'm concerned about people's eternity, not about their temporary.
And the hard thing for a Christian is that when we see these terrible, terrible things,
we have to stand in absolute justice against it.
Yeah.
Right.
Think about has a Kaia standing against the Neckerab wanting to come and lay waste to
their, to these places.
Right?
He prays out to God, but then he says, trust in God and he stands against injustice.
But then like Jonah, we also have to go into the very lion's den.
I know that's Daniel, but you know what I mean?
Right.
You get some mixed metaphors here, man.
I get some metaphors.
We have to actually literally go into a terrorist trap.
Yeah.
Right.
To give them on an equivalent that when God says I'm for everyone, he means it.
And I think one of the biggest things that King like Seneca can teach us about following
Jesus is that those people that are on the outside, those people we think don't matter.
Those people we think are just too violent, too hard, too difficult, too awful.
God's like, still mine.
And I still want them.
Yeah.
And that's hard.
It is.
There's this missionary story.
This happened years and years ago, but as this missionary, they were kidnapped by this
tribe held for ransom.
People paid a ransom, freed them and they're like, all right, you're free.
Great.
What are you going to do?
And she was like, I'm going to go back to that tribe and proclaim Jesus.
And that's what she did.
So great.
Right?
And she's like, the people who kidnapped you, who like threatened to kill you if money wasn't
paid to them.
She's like, I'm going to go back to them and tell them about Jesus.
But that's like, yeah, that's like, that's like what it is to walk back into the lion's
den.
Yeah.
To be like, these are people who were causing me harm, but I'm going to go back to them
and share who Jesus is with them so they have a chance to experience him like I do.
So St. Patrick, right?
So you guys have never read any stories of St. Patrick.
Like some of it's folklore and some of it's legend.
But there's enough truth in there that I think the stories are worth reading.
Yeah.
Right?
Is captured in his childhood and taken to Ireland.
And then he's put into slavery, eventually escapes and gets back.
But he's called by God when he's in Ireland to be a Christian, right?
Meets God, becomes a Christian, becomes a follower, comes back, dedicates his life to
following him.
God says, you got to go back.
And his family is like, you just got out of slavery there.
And he goes back to the very places that enslaved him.
And he goes town by town by town and he approaches their evil and stands against it.
And it's that they eventually came out with that, you know, whole thing that he drove
the snakes out of Ireland.
Well, the snakes were used in worship and he just walked into their dark places of worship
and proclaim Christ.
And he didn't have to go back.
He had a passion to go back to the very people that oppressed him.
Yeah.
Right.
I was struggling a few years ago in my life, working through forgiveness.
And with, you know, I mean, I can't imagine anybody listening doesn't understand people
hurting you and not wanting to forgive them.
Right.
And I was actually sleeping one night and God spoke to me in a dream.
And he specifically gave me the name Snekareb.
Right.
And I was like, man, I've heard that name before.
Right.
So I went and I started reading about Snekareb and then I started getting in a Ninevon.
I started understanding like why Jonah didn't want to go.
And God's like, hey, you know those people you won't forgive.
I want them to.
And I said, oh, you're crafty because I went and got into it for like three or four hours
of study.
And then God just comes and gives me the message that he had the whole time.
Right.
And it broke me in good ways.
It broke me in good ways and helped me recognize that forgiveness is not about me.
It's about God's mercy and glory moving through the world.
Yeah.
Right.
I was bought with a price.
Now it's time for me to pay that price forward.
Right.
Yep.
Well, that's what we got for you today, folks.
Until next week, if you're watching, we're going to look a lot the same because we're
going to be recording that in about five minutes from now.
So next week, we're actually going to be talking about a king that I bet you didn't even know
was in the Bible.
They're like, we didn't know Sennacherib or Mekitha next.
This one's literally got, the next week's literally, he literally has two verses, I
believe, written about him.
So we'll be diving into some cultural context a little bit more.
But until next time.
And that's a wrap for today's episode of Love and Context.
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