Hezekiah: Prayer for Protection
2 Kings 20:1-7
As I have said each week, these are very obscure prayers. Sometimes hidden in the midst of a story or an unusual event in the Bible we find these people of God crying out to Him in prayer and we see through these prayers the mighty power of God. Through these people we have seen that Prayer truly does make a difference. Church, these prayers are reminders to you and me that God is still a powerful God and He is still a God who answers prayer and if we really want God’s power to move in our lives and in our church then we must get down on our knees in prayer and pray to a great and awesome God. Pray that He will do great and mighty things with and in our lives as well as in our church. Tonight we look at another example of a prayer that made a difference. Tonight we will take a look at King Hezekiah.
Hezekiah was king of Judah for 29 years 716-687 BC. More space is devoted to Hezekiah in Scripture than to almost any other king since the time of Solomon. The parallel accounts in 2 Chronicles29-32 & Isaiah 36-39 should also be read to better understand the spiritual & political victories that this king gained through his faith in God.
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.”
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.
So Hezekiah was a great King. So when you read about his life you realize that King Hezekiah faced four “Crises” in his reign. 1. He faced the crises of choice. Early in his kingship he chose to forsake the idols of his fathers. He tore down the idols & rebuilt the city of God. 2. He faced the crisis of invasion. The Assyrians came right to the walls of Jerusalem & threatened to enter the city & destroy it. Had it not been for the power of prayer it might have been conquered. 3. He faced the crisis of prosperity. Foolishly, he displayed all his personal wealth & treasures of the kingdom. 4. Finally, at the very height of his power, when he was only thirty-nine years old, when his nation was surrounded by the armies of Assyria, a time when they needed his leadership the most he is sick in bed with a severely infected boil. Tonight we see that God sent the Prophet Isaiah to Hezekiah with a message, Isaiah was fixing to be the bearer of bad news. This news that Isaiah brought him was the news of his impending death and so tonight we see Hezekiah is faced with the most personal crisis of all: the crisis of death.
WHAT MESSAGE OF ENCOURAGEMENT CAN WE FIND FROM THE WAY HE FACED DEATH??? (2 Kings 20:1-7)
I. The Message of the Prophet (v. 1)
Hezekiah has become ill and was at the point of death. Up to this time that had been treating him and taking care of him and Isaiah the prophet comes to him and tells him “This is what the Lord says…” In others words Isaiah was telling Hezekiah you don’t need a second opinion because God said. Note the harshness of the announcement. Isaiah was giving him a message that had no hope, no comfort. There seemed to be no way out because this was God’s Will. Then the second part of the message comes “Set your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.” In other words, you’re going to die so get ready, take care of anything you need to take care of. So when Isaiah told him to set his house in order it literally meant to pick out a man to succeed you to the throne before you die.
Not many of us get this kind of notice when it comes to our death. The reality is that spiritually speaking setting your house in order should be taken care now and not right before your death because we don’t know when we are going to die. If everybody got a notice of when they were going to die they would wait to get their lives in order after they received the notice. The bible tells us “it is appointed unto man once to die & after that the judgment.” Make sure that your life is in order now by receiving the salvation of Jesus Christ, don’t wait.
Now let’s look at the…
II. The Motive of the Prayer (vv. 2-3)
Notice the words, “he turned his face to the wall and prayed.” Some commentaries say he was tuning toward the temple making the statement that if he could have gotten out of bed he would have made his way to the temple to pray this prayer. Others suggest that because he could not retreat to his normal place of prayer, to get alone with God he did the next best thing which was to turn toward the wall and away from the people who were in the room with him so that he could communicate with God one on one. Either way in time of trouble Hezekiah turned to the One that he needed to turn to, which was God. What a great example for us, Amen? So many of us in times of trouble, we turn to other people or things. Many times we blame God for our trouble, but the very thing we need to do is turn to God in our times of trouble just as Hezekiah did.
Look at his prayer in verse 3. The motive behind Hezekiah’s prayers was that he wanted to live. There are a number of reasons he might have wanted to live so badly. His family, he had no son to inherit the throne, his riches, and it might have been because he was only 39 years old at the time. But Hezekiah didn’t use any of these reasons all of those are speculations. Instead Hezekiah said “I’m too good to die. I have walked in truth & have done what is good in your sight.” Some say he said this because he did not have assurance of eternal life I personally disagree with that. By reading about his life and the things he did he was a believer. Whatever the reason his prayer was answered and he lived to bear a son who would become the most evil ruler in Judah’s history, which leads to a little debate.
Bible students have debated for years whether Hezekiah should have prayed for healing and whether his recovery was God’s perfect will or His permissive will. Sometimes God does answer prayer when the answer is not the best thing for us (see Ps 106:15). Those who feel Hezekiah was wrong, point out that the king’s final fifteen years involved his sinful alliance with the Babylonians (20:12-21) and also the birth of Manasseh, who turned out to be Judah’s most wicked king (chap. 21). Had Hezekiah died, Judah would have been spared the Babylonian compromise and the evil reign of Manasseh. However, Manasseh did repent and serve the Lord (2 Chron 33:11-19).
On the other hand, others point out that Hezekiah had no heir to the throne when Isaiah gave the message of doom, so that his prayer was not for himself alone but for the nation. "Set your house in order" in 20:1 (NKJV) literally means, "Pick out a man to succeed you to the throne." God had promised that Judah would always have a descendant of David on the throne, and Hezekiah was holding God to His promise. All of his sons were born in the closing fifteen years. It is true that Manasseh was a godless king (which is not to Hezekiah’s honor as a father), but then we must admit that his great grandson Josiah was a great man of God. Had Hezekiah died, there would have been no Josiah. Furthermore, we have indications in the Bible that during Hezekiah’s last fifteen years of rule, he was busy with the "men of Hezekiah" (a group of scribes, Prov 25:1) copying out the OT Scriptures and putting them in order for the people. As for Manasseh, to say that a man should die rather than bring about a wicked son is to claim too much. David’s sons were wicked, including Solomon; why did God allow David to live? Does God slay a man because of the future sins of a child not yet conceived? Furthermore, the healing of the king and the deliverance of Jerusalem occurred at the same time (20:5-6). Would it have been to the glory of God to rescue the city and then slay their king?
Now let’s see the…
III. The Miracle of the Poultice (vv. 4-7)
This prayer of the godly king was answered immediately. Isaiah had not gone out of the midst of the city, when the word of the Lord came to him to return to the king, and tell him that the Lord would cure him in three days and add fifteen years to his life, and that He would also deliver him from the power of the Assyrians and defend Jerusalem. Hezekiah based his plea on his past goodness; God based his answer on Hezekiah’s prayer & tears.
The phrase “Prepare a poultice of figs…” means a lump of figs and so Isaiah ordered a lump of figs to be laid upon the boil and Hezekiah recovered. He applied a well-known and useful remedy to the severely infected boil. The thing we must understand is that the healing power did not come from the lump of figs but rather the miracle & healing of Hezekiah was the work of God. And with the healing came the assurance that, even as God was with Moses, He was going to be with Hezekiah.
IV. The Meaning of the Postponement (v.6)
A person who has been confronted with death often has a greater understanding of life. They realize how precious life is and how quickly it can be taken from you. God chose to give Hezekiah 15 more years. God changed his mind, which He has a right to do because He is God. The question is why and I believe the reason why God changed His mind is the same reason God does anything. FOR HIS GLORY!!!
Church by now we should realize that nothing is too hard, too big, or impossible for God. The question is do we believe that??? We must remember that God is “Elohim” which means He is a mighty God. He is “Yahweh” which means He is the one who was, who is, and who will be. With God all things are possible. When we pray God sees our hearts, He hears our prayers and He acts according to His Will.
In closing, why did God spare Hezekiah’s life? Why did he give him 15 more years to live? To me the answer is easy. Point blank, plain and simple God was not done with Hezekiah yet and guess what God is not done with you yet! God’s not done with this church yet. This morning we looked at surrendering our time to God. Church listen to me you have not done your time until God takes you home. Until God decides to take you home SET THE EXAMPLE! SURRENDER YOUR TIME! LIVE THE LIFE! BE THE LIGHT!
Two others things I believe we can take from this story. The first one is that Hezekiah in a sense prayed for God to protect him from dying at that moment and God answered that prayer by adding 15 years to his life. Tonight I’m not saying we need to pray to God for protection from death because I believe that when it’s our time it’s our time. However, we can learn from Hezekiah when it comes to praying for protection for our life and this church and we need to pray for protection from temptation, from sin, and more importantly from the evil schemes of Satan.
The second thing we can learn is that we need to have our house (life) in order now. Take care of business now by making Jesus the Savior of your life. Let your heart become Jesus’ home. Someone once said that the wise man prepares for the inevitable, Death is the inevitable!!!!!! Prepare now! Jesus is the right preparation.
