The prayer of Hezekiah
Isaiah 38:1-5
Introduction-
Good morning, last week I challenged you with a simple two letter word if. What if and if only.
What if you believe God in His word for these Scriptures? How many remember them?
If my people who are called by my name will humbly pray and seek my face…then I will forgive their sin and heal their land.
If God is for us, who can be against us.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins.
If anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation, the old is pass, and the new has come.
Anyone of those scriptures can and will change your life if you believe them and live them.
Today, I will challenge you again. It is the two prayers of Hezekiah.
I want you to pay close attention, I do not claim to have a formula on God’s hand of who He is going to heal and who He does not.
I want to show you in scripture some truths that will cause you to put your trust in Him instead of trust only in yourself.
Amen!
How many have thought about dying?
How many wonder why bad things happen to good people?
How many have had an argument with God over something that happened or is happening in your life?
You seem to be stuck between what He says is right and how you are feeling.
You are not alone in that- God’s Word has something to say about it.
Isaiah 38:1-38:5- Read from Bible
We have all gotten bad news
We have all had unexpected things that we are forced immediately to think about and to act upon.
We have all been disappointed that God has seemed to have a deaf ear when we needed Him.
Becky’s mom, my mother in law is 93 year old. When we go and see her, there is always a time of prayer. She tells me every time… do not pray that I would be healed, pray that the Lord takes me home. I want to go home.
See, I do not understand some of God’s thoughts because she wants to go home and then I read about a stray bullet hitting a woman in Harrisburg and killing her in her prime.
I get angered at abortion, angered about abuse of innocent people, unexpected accidents, diseases that kill.
Mom wants to go to heaven, she stays here living, innocent people wanting to live taken by ways unavoidable to them.
God has a plan and He sees the big picture. It is the only way I even have a chance to understand. We see things limited and God sees all and knows what is best for the plan of God to be accomplished.
Hezekiah’s prayer in Isaiah is made up of several things
It began in Isaiah 37 as a godly King is crying out to God about their enemies ready to invade and nations coming against the living God of Israel.
Isaiah 37:14-20 Read clearly
Unless you read chapter 37 of the king crying out to God, you cannot appreciate the amazing God who listened and answered prayer for the crying servant of God and ended 38:5 by saying “I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city.”
Hezekiah’s illness
Hezekiah’s healing
God’s promise
It is also recorded in 2 Kings Chapter 19. One is from the prospective of the King and one from the perspective of the Prophet coming to the King. There is a lot we can learn from these verses. Do you think God wants us to grab these truths?
We do not know the illness that Hezekiah had, but we know that it is life threatening. It was so bad that the prophet Isaiah came to the king and told him to get his house in order that he was not going to recover but will surely die.
We do not always get a warning in advance of what is going to happen to us. That is why the Lord tells us that we must be ready and we must not put off things that are important because we are not promised tomorrow.
Hezekiah at that point had a decision to make- he could be bitter and fight God or he could cry out to God. He chose to turn his face toward God and pray. That always is your best choice and should be our first choice.
We do not always get our prayers answered, but it puts us in the right attitude toward God and toward the situation that we are going through.
He was told to get his house in order- God tells each one of us in His word to do that- We cannot be mad at God for the things that happen when He tells us that spiritually and physically we need to make necessary arrangements and not let things just happen.
We look at the text and we acknowledge that all of us will face death one day, unless we go in the rapture of the church. Even then, we have to be ready and be right with God. Scripture says "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.”
You only get one shot at this life, and you have no certainty how long you will live. I am sure we all know this, but not sure all are living it.
Hezekiah when faced with this news, chose to turn toward God and pray. Reminding God how he had lived his life for him. There are some evangelist that are saying that God did not hear his prayer of pain, but only when he began praising God did he get God’s attention.
I think that is a half truth.
In the midst of our heartache, I think that God hears and sees our pain.
He is a compassionate God.
• He is a God that I believe is broken by the things that His children have to go through, some we do to ourselves and some is unavoidable because of sin of mankind we hurt each other.
Let’s stop a minute here- this could of went two ways- he gets healed or he dies just like the prophet told him. God in his mercy give him 15 years extended in his life. (God did not owe him anything! He does not owe us anything!)
We struggle with death and we in our own way find peace if the person dying is in their 80,s 90,s or living to 100 now.
(We all want to be on the Smuckers jelly jar)
When they die before that time, we feel like their life was somehow cheated and we are confused and frustrated.
Somehow man has set the time frame even though God himself tells us to be ready to make peace with God because we do not know how long we have.
Anything short, we are mad at God.
Death by any way short of old age is looked upon as God turning his back on us.
I have seen medical advancement do some amazing things!
People getting around and having a better quality of life because they have new knees, hips and vital organs given. At the loss of life some new life is preserved.
I also have seen some people live and the quality of life is anything but good. Bringing people back and living on machines or unresponsive.
God Is the giver of life and we have to be careful that we do not play God and pretend that we have a say in these things.
We have to be careful that we are not saving a life for our own selfish ways and God is blamed for not doing what we believe is right.
I am not sure what the age of accountability is but infants I believe from Scripture return to heaven because of God’s mercy and grace.
I believe the mentally incapable are judged by a merciful and compassionate God.
We just have this idea that God owes us something- He owes us nothing but gives us more that we deserve in salvation and not what we deserved in our sins against him as believers in the cross and life of Christ.
He chose to give Hezekiah extended life. He does not always do that in every case. It does not mean that he loves one more than the other. It is God’s eternal plan and purpose that some will be healed and some will not.
Billy Joel may believe that only the good die young but that is not biblical.
Appointed time is going to be different for each one of us. Being ready for the judgment is the word that we need to hear and live out in our lives.
Question- Why do the good die young and the wicked seem to live to an old age?
First of all, both the young and the old are tying, we notice and rebel more when it is a young person.
God’s word says that his blessings fall on the just and the unjust- meaning that God blesses both the saved and the unsaved.
He also allows things to happen to good people and their does not have to be sin in their life. It just may be they need to go through it and God get honor and glory by the way that they live out their lives in the trial of life.
If only the good die young, I will live a good long time because there is no good in me except for what God has done for me and the Holy Spirit that lives in me. Other than that, I have no good in me!
We see death as a punishment.
For the believer, it I life!
We see it as something to be feared and for a believer it is a reward for His children.
Apostle Paul called death gain and was caught between serving God here and being with God.
This confused world does not know what it wants.
One prays for rain and one wants a picnic.
One prays for one team and one prays for another.
One wants heaven and the family is praying for a healing.
One prays one way and God answered and they want to change their minds a while later.
Their mad at God when it doesn’t go their way!
He has a universe to run and you are not the only one in it.
Everything has to go past the will of God and the purpose of God.
Sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you do not.
Only until we get to heaven will we see how our prayers affected eternity.
We will also see our lack of prayer and how that affected eternity.
We may see how much we were spared because God did not answer the prayer that we were mad at Him for not answering.
Hezekiah was given 15 more years. Why? I am not sure, maybe because of his persistence in petitioning God in prayer. Again, I have to believe God sees the big picture and we are so limited in knowledge and ability.
Hezekiah was given 15 more years.
Hezekiah’s dad King Ahaz was an evil king, Hezekiah was a godly king.
Hezekiah by being given 15 more years had a son Manasseh, who again was became an evil king and took the nation of Israel away from God.
If God had not given Hezekiah 15 more years, he would not have had the son that turned Israel away from God.
Think about that
Let me bring this to some final thoughts-
We do not know what God is doing in the background of our situation.
What we see is only a small part of what He is doing and what we see may not be as we think we see it.
We serve a great big God that cares and wants to be a part of our lives.
He owes us nothing because He has freely given us everything if we accept it.
Listen to me, there will be things that you will not understand about God and what He does- He is God. His ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are looking at a big picture with his purpose and plan in mind. A lot of times the two will not come together- that is when we have to trust God and His purpose.
There is a time that you will have to leave all that is familiar and comfortable into the unknown with God. (repeat)
Louie Giglio
“The opposite of fear is not being bold and courageous. The opposite of fear is faith.”
I do not know what you are up against, but I know God is bigger! Faith is having confidence in God and knowing that He defeats the giants in our lives.
Because of the first prayer of Hezekiah that began in praise in chapter 37, was he able in chapter 38 to deal with whatever God decided best for him in the second prayer.
Amen.
