Today is the first day of July. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is

wonderful to be here with you today as we walk into the seventh month of the year together.

Today is the 180 second day of the year and we reached the halfway point. Yesterday as we

ended the month of June and so here we are launching ourselves into the second half.

The second half of the scriptures, the second half of the year as the adventure continues.

We concluded our first half of the year with a couple of kind of sombre and more sobering stories

in the Old Testament. The Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and carried all of its

people into exile. Thereby bringing an end to the northern king of Israel and so as we move forward

now, there is no northern king of Israel. Then in the book of Acts, we saw Paul sailing back

through near Ephesus and the leaders of the church at Ephesus coming to see him as he

continues his journey back towards Jerusalem and he lets them know that they will never be able

to see each other again in that life, in this life, in person. The Holy Spirit has given Paul some

advance words about what he will face as he continues his journey to Jerusalem and we'll all

get to experience that as we continue in the days ahead. But that's how we kind of landed our first

half of the year. Let's step forward into the second half and that obviously leads us right where

we left off and that happens to be the book of 2 Kings and today we'll read chapters 18 verse 13

through 19 verse 37.

In the 14th year of King Hezekiah's reign, King Sinacarib of the Syria marched up against all the

fortified cities of Judah and captured them. King Hezekiah of Judah sent this message to the King

of Assyria who was at Lakish. I have violated our treaty. If you leave, I will do whatever you demand.

So the King of Assyria demanded that King Hezekiah of Judah pay 300 talents of silver and 30

talents of gold. Hezekiah gave him all this silver in the Lord's temple and in the treasuries of

...