Annual Sermons Volume 1 (Part 1)
Copyright 1987
By
Bob Marcaurelle
Sermon 1
WHO WANTS TO DIE AT 39?
(2 Kings 20:1-11)
Most New Years cards wish us all sunshine and joy.” Secretly, we wish the same. Nervously we wonder if bad things might happen. But I remind you on this first Sunday of the New Year that “all sunshine will make a desert” and our dark pages can turn out to be the best pages. Luther once said, “Tears have been my best teachers”. Henry Ward Beecher said, “Tears are telescopes by which we see into heaven”. T. DeWitt Talmedge said, “I never had a set-back but it turned out to be a set forward.” We see this in the life of one of God’s greatest servants- Hezekiah, the King of Judah during the latter part of the Eighth and the early part of the Seventh Century before Christ. And the Bible says that of all the Kings who descended from David, he was the greatest. We read in II Kings 18: 5-7a, “He trusted in the Lord God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him. For he stayed with the Lord and departed not from following him. He kept the commandments, which the Lord commanded to Moses. And the Lord was with him; and he prospered wherever he went.”
1. The Amazing Person. Hezekiah was great in many respects. He was a great political leader who delivered Judah from the chaos of the reign of his father Ahaz. He was a great builder and his aqueduct which brought water to Jerusalem can be seen today. He was a great man of letters, having gathered together much of the sacred writings in Books like Psalms and Proverbs. But most of all he was a great religious reformer, a mighty man of God. He had the courage to destroy the serpent Moses made because the people made an idol of it. He opened the doors of the House of God, closed by his wicked father. He reinstituted the long neglected feast of Passover. He destroyed the high places where pagan idols were worshiped.
2. The Awful Plight. At the very height of his power, when he was only thirty-nine years old, when his nation, surrounded by the armies of Assyria, needed his leadership the most, God sent him the he was lying on a sickbed with a severely infected boil. 3. The Anguished Praying and Awful Prediction. Knowing human nature, we know Hezekiah and his people, especially at this dangerous time, were praying for his recovery. But God sent his Pastor to him with bad news. We read, “In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him and said, ‘This is what the Lord says,’ Set your house in order; you are going to die, you will not recover.’” (Is. 38:1)
4. The Alarming Protest. Hezekiah did not fold his hands and say, “Thy will be done!” as we Christians are taught to pray (2 Cor. 12, Matt. 6). He turned his face to the wall and said, “Lord, remember how I have served you faithfully and wholeheartedly and have done what is right in your eyes.” And then, the Bible says, “Hezekiah wept bitterly.” (2 Kings 20:2)5.
5. The Amazing Promise. We can easily expect an angry response from God to such a proud man who dares tell God how good he is. What we have is God’s amazing promise, ““Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, ‘Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father (ancestor): I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and defend this city.” (38:4-6) There are some deep theological mysteries here. We could discuss for weeks the question, “Can prayer change God’s will?” There are some thorny problems of chronology and the sequence of events in the reign of Hezekiah, but let’s learn some practical lessons for you and me.
A. THE PERPLEXITY PRODUCED BY SUFFERING
1) The inevitable questioning in suffering. We know God has not promised to shelter His people from the ordinary hurts of life, so these are not punishments when they come. It is irrational to ask why. We get old, we get cancer and we get fired for no reason. If things like this did not happen to Christians, we could not build enough churches to hold the people. We pay lip service to this, but even the best of Christians deny it. When our children are well, our bodies are healthy, our business is good and our lives are problem free; we praise God for His goodness. But let our loved ones lie on sick beds, let our bodies or emotions be racked with pain, let us have reversals in business and have problems pile up like leaves; and we cry like Hezekiah, Lord, why are You doing this to us? To find some logical reason we even blame ourselves and say, “I guess we deserve this. God wouldn’t be punishing me unless I had done something wrong.” The Bible lets us know this was not the case with Hezekiah. He was not being punished. It was after listing his outstanding virtues that the Bible adds, “After these things and these acts of faithfulness, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah.” (2 Ch. 32:1) Alexander Maclaren’s sermon on this text was “A Strange Reward for Faithfulness.”
2) The Understandable Anger in Suffering. Some people do more than question, they get mad at God. There was probably a little anger and a whole lot of pouting and self pity in Hezekiah’s tears. That’s OK, God still loves us when we pout. Illustration: One of my best friends in this church told me of the time, when as a young father and husband, the doctor told him he had a tumor. He turned his face to the hospital wall and said, “God, I have tried to serve you all my life and THIS if the thanks I get.” Some would call that prayer blasphemy; I call it honesty. Now, if he didn’t work through it and in the end, submit to God’s will, which he did, it would have been wrong. Almost all of us, if we are honest, feel this way for a while when life hands us a dark page. But God is still our Father, He still loves us and wants what is best for us, which may or may not be healing or deliverance. The key is to go to God in prayer and be honest. The Bible tells us “Let your requests be made known to God…”(Phil.4:6) and Hezekiah did just that. And what he requested was to get well. His dark day became a bright day because he took his problem to God. Now what can we learn from all this?
B. THE UNCERTAINTY PORTRAYED IN SUFFERING.
Hezekiah came face to face, first with sickness, and then with a death sentence from God. You and I both know I will probably bury several of you this year or perhaps you will bury me. We might turn over our final page. And God alone knows who will be taken. The old and sickly may well survive and the strongest among us may fall. At the height of power and influence, at thirty-nine years of age (the age of your pastor I might add), in the prime of life, Hezekiah was stricken. As we all face the uncertainty of each tomorrow, this year, let us live each day as though it could be our last, for it could be. Illustration: We ought to live like Jesus came yesterday, the Holy Spirit came today, and Jesus will come back tomorrow.
C. THE ANXIETY PRODUCING SUFFERING. Hezekiah’s physical suffering may not have had a physical cause. It could well be that his serious illness, coming at the time of Assyria’s invasion, was more than a coincidence. 1) The Danger of Worry. Sickness and death, can result not just from physical, organic causes, but from inner turmoil, from worry. The invasion could have caused the illness. Illustration: During World War II, three times as many Americans died of heart disease than died in combat. As John Haggai put it, “Worry won’t send a Christian to hell, but it will send him to heaven early.” Did Hezekiah worry himself to the poor of death? Thousands of years ago Plato said, “The greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind; yet the mind and the body are one and should not be treated separately.” And in our day the famous Mayo brothers of the Mayo Clinic said that more than half of our hospital beds are occupied with people whose real problem is nerves. Illustration: In the thick fighting of the Civil War, General Grant, in hot pursuit of General Lee’s troops, was half blinded with a sick headache. He stopped at a farmhouse and wrote in his memoirs, “I spend the night in bathing my feet in hot water and mustard and putting mustard plasters on my wrist and the back part of my neck, hoping to be cured by morning.” When morning came, he was still sick. But suddenly an officer appeared with the message that General Lee had surrendered. And Grant wrote these words, “I was still suffering with the sick headache, but the instant I saw the contents of the note, I was cured.”
2. The Danger of Work. It is also possible that Hezekiah worked himself into that sick bed. To do all the superhuman things he did, he had to work constantly. While sensible commitment to work is a cure for worry, neurotic addiction to work is as bad as worry. Hezekiah was one of God’s great workmen. God needed him and God used him. But, as John Wesley put it, “God buries His workers and carries on His work!” We ask, “How could God remove so useful a man, so good a man?” And in the asking we reveal our pride. We reveal the exaggerated opinion we have of our importance. Preachers tell us to “put ourselves down.” Psychologists tell us to “put ourselves up.” The Bible says, “Be honest in your estimate of yourselves.” (Rom. 12:3, LB) You are neither a worm nor are you super-mom or super-dad. You and I are ordinary human beings who need to have the good sense to take care of ourselves. Illustration: The preacher I know who accomplished the most was W. A. Criswell. He worked hard into his eighties with a strong mind and body. And he religiously went daily to the YMCA to work out. A staff member said he would jokingly sing as he went, “I may not study/ I may not pray/ But I will go/ To the YMCA.” He did all three and more.
Conclusion: An honest estimate of ourselves would remove much of the stress and strain from our lives, because most of us try to bear weight of responsibility far beyond our strength. We all have the “superhuman urge” and it is driving us to early graves and robbing our lives of peace and joy. You wives have demanding jobs, you keep your house, care for your families and take on outside responsibilities as though you had the time and strength of ten women. You business men are married to your work and push and push at a hectic pace, certain that without you, the business would fall apart. And men and women, sooner or later, your tired body, like a Missouri mule, is going to quit. And the escape it often uses is sickness. A sick bed is often a warning sign, sent from God, to those who are rushing through life at breakneck speed, saying, Slow down and live! Speed Kills! I am convinced that the dark page of sickness, which is often the result of too much worry or work, does not come upon us as a punishment but as a friend. It is God’s way of slowing us down, of getting us to take stock of our lives and getting our priorities straight. Mother, which is more important; having a spotless house or having heart- to- heart talks with your children and husband? Dad, which is more important, making salesman of the month or taking time for your family? When we are thrown upon sickbeds and perhaps have a close brush with death, God often shows us the things that matter the most.
C. THE PERSONAL GOD SUFFERING PORTRAYS.
Turning to the wall, Hezekiah saw more than a wall, and talked to more than a wall. He saw and talked to God. How do we know? His prayers were answered. The sun halted in the sky. He was healed. One hundred eighty thousand Assyrians died. Every day this year, remember, God is only a prayer away. We don’t find God at the end of logic, we find Him at the end of a need. Most of our prayers are little religious acts, where out attention span is only a few minutes long. But when troubles drive us to face the uncertainty of life, the fragile nature of our life and health, and troubles too great to bear, we beat on heaven’s door with bleeding fists, until God opens the door and we know we are being heard. To know that God is there when we need Him, to see the invisible God with us, is the faith that will see us through. As the old New Year’s prayer puts it: “ I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year. Give me a Light that I may tread safely into the unknown! And he replied: Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
