Always Hearing, Part 2 Series

The Always God

Week 4. Always Hearing*, part 2

Introduction

Good morning! Please open your Bibles to 2 Kings 18. This is actually part 2 of a sermon I began last week. We began last week talking about how God is able to hear our prayers, and that He invites us to call on Him.

But then we spent a lot of time on what the Bible says about when God doesn’t hear our prayers. It isn’t because He isn’t listening, or is unable to respond. Rather, it’s because there is something about the condition of our heart that is causing God not to hear our prayers. It could be a sin that we are cherishing. Or a grudge against someone else that we are nursing. If you’re a man, it could be a persistent pattern of disrespecting your wife. 1 Peter 3:7 warns us to show honor to our wives so that our prayers will not be hindered.

There are other reasons that God doesn’t answer prayer. If we doubt that God has the ability to respond to our prayers. If we pray with selfish motives. Or if we are asking for something that is not in God’s will. God will either not respond to our prayers, or He will respond with a no.

So we dealt with some heavy subject matter last week.

And even though I tried, like I always do, to speak the truth with grace and compassion and tenderness, I hope you didn’t miss that there are consequences to continuing with patterns and behaviors that cause God to not answer our prayers. We are missing the joy that comes from closeness with our heavenly father, whom Scripture says delights to give good gifts to His children (Matthew 7:11). We are missing the counsel and direction of the Holy Spirit.

And most crucially, if we persist in destructive sin, or refuse to extend forgiveness, or insist on praying “My will be done” instead of “Thy will be done” in every situation, then that may be evidence that you do not have a saving relationship with Jesus in the first place.

So don’t let the lightness or the winsomeness of my tone keep you from considering the deadly serious implications of what we are sharing in this series. I sincerely hope that this week, you spent some time in repentance and confession in some of the areas we talked about.

And I’m so glad you came back! I read a testimony from a recovering alcoholic this week who pointed out that a difference between church and an AA meeting. He said, “If you come in late to church, or miss a couple of weeks, people get annoyed, or look down their noses at you. But if you come late to an AA meeting, everybody jumps up and hugs you and pats you on the back, because they rejoice that you made it at all. They know all about the demons and pressure and shame that are working to keep you away.

And that’s the church I want us to be. I praise God that you are here this morning to learn more about the Always God. God has not changed over time. He spoke in the past and he still speaks today. He worked in the past, and He is still working today. He is always speaking. Always working. He hasn’t changed!

This morning, we are going to look at the story of a man in Scripture whose prayers God did respond to. We are going to look at who he was, how he lived his life, and what it was about his prayer that caused God to incline His ear to him.

His name was Hezekiah, and his story is told in 2 Kings 18-20. Let me pray for us, and then we will dive in.

[Pray]

Let’s start off with the way Hezekiah is introduced in 1 Kings 18. Hezekiah was the King of Judah from about 715 BC to around 686 BC—29 years. He was 25 years old when he was crowned king. And he was one of the few kings that had a heart bent toward the Lord. After the death of Solomon in 931 BC, the kingdom of Israel split into the northern kingdom, which kept the name Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah. Every one of Israel’s kings, and most of Judah’s kings were evil and outdoing one another in their sin against God, but Hezekiah was different.

Listen to how he is described in 2 Kings 18:5-6

“He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. 6 For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses.”