The High Cost of Cheap Grace: Text: 2 Kings 18:13-16
Introduction: The Crocodile and the Blank Check
We live in an age of negotiation, an age of compromise. Our political masters believe that every conflict can be resolved if we just find the right price, offer the right concession, or sign the right treaty. The same spirit has crept into the Church like a fog. We have come to believe that we can negotiate with the world, the flesh, and the devil. We think that if we offer the world a little tribute, a little bit of our biblical integrity, a little of the gold from the temple doors, that it will be satisfied and leave us alone. We want to buy a cheap peace instead of fighting a good war.
But the world is not a reasonable negotiating partner. The world is Sennacherib. The world is a crocodile. You cannot reason with a crocodile. You cannot offer it one of your children in the hope that it will spare the others. A crocodile does not want a deal; it wants dinner. And so it is with the enemies of God. Their goal is not coexistence; their goal is conquest. Their aim is not to take some of your treasure, but to take your entire city, to level your temple, and to carry you off into exile.
The story before us is a painful but necessary lesson in the folly of appeasement. Hezekiah was a good king. The chapter begins by recounting his righteous reforms. He trusted in Yahweh, tore down the high places, smashed the sacred pillars, and even broke the bronze serpent that Moses had made because the people had turned it into an idol. He was a reformer. And because he trusted God, he rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him. This was his high point. But faith, like a muscle, must be exercised under resistance. And the resistance that came was overwhelming. Sennacherib, the pagan hammer of the nations, came up against Judah, and Hezekiah, the great reformer, blinked.
This passage is a case study in what happens when a man of God attempts to solve a spiritual crisis with a carnal solution. It is what happens when we try to pay off the devil with God's money. It is a lesson we must learn, because Sennacherib is always on the march, and he will come to the gates of every generation.
The Text
Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them.
Then Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong. Turn away from me; whatever penalty you give to me I will bear.” So the king of Assyria set a penalty on Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.
Thus Hezekiah gave him all the silver which was found in the house of Yahweh and in the treasuries of the king’s house.
At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of Yahweh and from the doorposts, which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.
(2 Kings 18:13-16 LSB)
The Inevitable Pressure (v. 13)
The story begins with the consequences of faithfulness.
"Now in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and seized them." (2 Kings 18:13)
We must connect this verse with what came before. In verse 7, we are told that Hezekiah "rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him." His reforms were not just internal house-cleaning; they had geopolitical consequences. To trust in Yahweh meant to stop trusting in, and paying tribute to, the pagan superpower of the day. Faithfulness to God is always rebellion against the idols of the age.
And what is the result of this faithfulness? Immediate, overwhelming military invasion. Sennacherib does not send a diplomatic letter. He comes with his army and begins to roll up the fortified cities of Judah one by one. This is a crucial principle. When you get serious about serving the Lord, do not expect a quiet life. Do not expect the world to applaud your newfound piety. Expect Sennacherib. The world system does not tolerate rebellion. When you decide to live by God's Word, to raise your children in the fear of the Lord, to speak the truth about sin and righteousness, you have declared war. The enemy will counter-attack. This pressure is not a sign that you have done something wrong; it is a sign that you have done something right. It is evidence that your reforms are actually working.
The Coward's Confession (v. 14)
Hezekiah's response to this pressure is a catastrophic failure of nerve.
"Then Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, 'I have done wrong. Turn away from me; whatever penalty you give to me I will bear.'" (2 Kings 18:14)
Look at this language. "I have done wrong." What was his offense? His offense was trusting God. His offense was rebellion against a pagan tyrant. From Heaven's perspective, this was his duty, his most righteous act. But under the immense pressure of the Assyrian war machine, Hezekiah re-labels his faithfulness as a fault. He adopts the enemy's dictionary and pleads guilty to the crime of loyalty to Yahweh.
This is the first move in every act of spiritual compromise. We begin to call our obedience "intolerance," our biblical convictions "bigotry," and our faithfulness "doing wrong." We apologize for the very things God commands. And then comes the blank check of appeasement: "whatever penalty you give to me I will bear." Hezekiah is trying to buy his way out of a covenantal confrontation. He thinks this is a financial problem that can be solved with money. But Sennacherib is not an accountant; he is a conqueror. Hezekiah is surrendering his authority and inviting the enemy to name the price of his submission. This is not statesmanship; it is capitulation.
Sacrilege as Foreign Policy (v. 15)
The price Sennacherib sets is steep, and Hezekiah pays it by robbing God.
"Thus Hezekiah gave him all the silver which was found in the house of Yahweh and in the treasuries of the king’s house." (2 Kings 18:15)
The logic of compromise always leads to sacrilege. Once you have decided that peace with the world is more important than faithfulness to God, it is only a matter of time before you start raiding the temple to pay for that peace. Notice the order. He empties his own treasuries, which is foolish enough, but then he moves on to the house of Yahweh. He takes what is consecrated to God and gives it as tribute to a blaspheming pagan.
This is a perfect picture of how Christians compromise today. We take the resources God has given us for His kingdom, our time, our money, our talents, and we offer them up to the secular state, to pagan ideologies, to worldly pursuits, all in the desperate hope that the beast will be placated. We defund the church to pay taxes to Caesar. We take the precious silver of God's truth and hand it over in exchange for a temporary, fragile, and utterly false security. We are trying to bribe the devil, and the devil does not bribe.
Undoing Righteousness (v. 16)
The final verse in this section is the most tragic, for it shows Hezekiah undoing his own good work.
"At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of Yahweh and from the doorposts, which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria." (2 Kings 18:16)
This is the bitter irony. This was not just any gold. This was the very gold that Hezekiah himself, in the zeal of his earlier reforms, had used to beautify the house of the Lord. In his season of faithfulness, he adorned the temple. Now, in his season of fear, he strips it bare. The very hands that once offered gold to God are now prying it off to give to God's enemy.
This is what fear does. It makes us dismantle our own past faithfulness. It causes us to tear down the very standards we once built. The convictions we once proclaimed boldly become embarrassing liabilities that must be scraped off and surrendered. The doors of the temple represent access to God's presence, the glory of His worship. Hezekiah is literally stripping the glory from the house of God to pay off the world. He is trading the glorious worship of Yahweh for a temporary ceasefire with a tyrant. And the tragedy is that it will not work. This payment will not satisfy Sennacherib. It will only confirm to him that Judah is weak, that its king is afraid, and that its God is for sale. It will only whet his appetite for more.
Conclusion: The Tribute that Fails and the One that Succeeds
Hezekiah's strategy was a complete failure. He paid the tribute, and what happened next? The story continues with Sennacherib sending his chief of staff, the Rabshakeh, to the walls of Jerusalem to mock Hezekiah, to mock his army, and to mock his God. The payment did not buy peace; it bought contempt. It emboldened the enemy.
You cannot appease an absolute enemy. Any ground you cede, any tribute you pay, is seen not as a gesture of peace but as a sign of weakness. When the world demands you scrape the gold off the temple doors, it is not because it needs the gold. It is because it wants to see the doors of your God's house stripped bare and humiliated. It is a test of loyalties, and Hezekiah failed the first test.
But praise God, the story does not end here. This failure became the occasion for Hezekiah's repentance. When confronted with the blasphemies of the Rabshakeh, Hezekiah does not send more gold. He tears his clothes, goes to the house of the Lord, and sends for the prophet Isaiah. He finally learns that you do not fight Assyria with silver and gold; you fight Assyria with prayer and faith. He learned his lesson the hard way.
And this points us to the ultimate tribute. Hezekiah tried to pay a penalty to a human king to save his people from destruction. But this is a pale shadow of the true predicament we are in. We have all "done wrong" in a far deeper sense. We have rebelled against the King of Heaven, and the penalty for our treason is not three hundred talents of silver, but eternal death. No amount of gold from our own treasuries, no amount of good works, can pay this debt.
But God, in His mercy, provided the tribute Himself. He sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, who did not strip the gold from the temple, but offered up the temple of His own body. He paid the penalty that we owed. He bore the wrath that we deserved. His blood is the only tribute that can turn away the wrath of God and defeat our ultimate enemy. Because Christ paid that ultimate price, we are now free from having to pay these pathetic, useless bribes to the lesser enemies of this world. We do not have to appease Sennacherib, because our King has already conquered him at the cross. Our task, then, is not to strip the temple, but to adorn it, to proclaim the victory of our God, and to stand firm at the gates, knowing that the battle belongs to the Lord.