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.”
The first thing we learn from Hezekiah is that proximity matters. In other words, the closer someone is to a power source, the stronger that source of power will be. Chuck up in the sound booth will tell you that if you are trying to run a signal through a really long cable, the signal will lose some of its clarity over distance. So proximity matters.
And the word says that Hezekiah held fast to the Lord. KJV says he “clave” which I’m not even sure is actually a word. But it’s a word that means to cling, to stick, to stay close, to stick with, join to, follow closely. The last part of the verse says that He “did not depart from following God, but kept all the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses.”
So he held fast to God. Proximity matters if we desire God to hear our prayers.
• Psalm 91:14-16--“Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him;
• John 15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
Question for you: How would you evaluate your proximity to God?
Maybe you’ve heard the story about the old married couple that are still driving their old Buick from about the mid Seventies. You know—one of those huge sedans with the bench seat where the driver’s side is in a different ZIP code from the passenger side?
This old couple is heading down the road, and the wife looks at her husband behind the wheel and says, “Honey, do you remember when we first got this car, how close I would sit to you on this bench seat? You would put your arm around me, and we would just snuggle up so close. How come we don’t do that anymore? And the old man says, “I don’t know. I never moved.”
Picture yourself on that Buick bench seat. God’s driving. Are you scrunched up next to him, or are you up against the window? Let’s look at your every day routine. How much are you in God’s Word? Do you only pick up your Bible when you’re on the way to church—if even then? If your Sunday School book didn’t have the Scripture printed, would you have any idea how to find the passage you’re talking about?
I’ve noticed that the new operating system on my iPhone will uninstall apps that haven’t been used lately. So be honest. If you tapped the Bible app on your phone, would it take some time for it to reinstall?
That may sound legalistic. But how else are you going to measure the degree to which you are abiding in Christ if it isn’t by abiding in His Word?
Hezekiah’s proximity to God, his holding fast to God and refusing to let go, is going to be what helps Hezekiah face a huge national crisis. Hezekiah became king around 715 BC, when he was 25 years old. Just seven years before that, Assyria had wiped the northern kingdom of Israel off the map.
So fourteen years into Hezekiah’s reign, according to 2 Kings 18:19, Assyria attacked Judah. All the fortified cities of Judah—imagine all the cities where there were military bases, like Maxwell—all these cities were taken.
And now King Sennacherib of Assyria is threatening the capital city of Jerusalem.
In 2 Kings 19, Sennacherib sends a trash-talking letter to Hezekiah. It was harsh. Look at the text of the letter in verse 11:
11 Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? 12 Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’”
So when Hezekiah gets this letter, what does he do? Look at chapter 19:14:
14 Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord.
Again, proximity matters—he went up to the house of the Lord. Where do you go when the enemy is beating down your door?
But something else happens here that I want you to see. Hezekiah takes this foul letter from Sennacherib, and he spreads it before the Lord. [Act this out]
Let’s just pause there. Get the picture in your mind of this young, strong king, laying the pages of this letter on the floor of the temple, and kneeling before the Lord. Or maybe even flat on his face in front of God. What a picture of literally laying your problems before God!
I want to invite you to literally do that this week. What’s problem or crisis is troubling you the most right now? Is it a doctor’s report? A credit card bill? Divorce papers? A subpoena? If you’re a student, maybe it’s the syllabus for the class you are failing. Maybe its an ultrasound. Whatever is most on your mind, find something tangible—physical—that represents that. And literally lay it before the Lord.
Because not only does proximity matter, but posture also matters.
There are at least five different postures for prayer modeled in the Bible: sitting, kneeling, standing, lying prostrate with our face toward the ground, or praying with hands lifted up.
And while I don’t want you guys to think that this is some magic formula where if you just get the mechanics correct, God will answer your prayer (kneel for a certain amount of time, face a certain direction, etc), I do think that your posture ought to match what you are praying about. Are you repenting? Then kneel. Are you praising God? Then stand. Are you releasing a burden to Him? Then lift up your hands.
Mark Batterson says that “Posture is to prayer as tone is to communication. If words are what you say, then posture is how you say it.
When King Hezekiah saw his nation threatened by an existential crisis, what was his posture? Kneeling. Face to the ground. With the problems that were consuming him literally spread out before God.
So proximity matters. Posture matters.
And number 3, perspective matters. Let’s look at the prayer Hezekiah prayed when Assyria was on the verge of attacking Jerusalem. This won’t be up on the screen. I need you in your copy of God’s word for this one. Go to verse 15:
15 And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said: “O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. 16 Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. 17 Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands 18 and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. 19 So now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.”
Notice verse 19 doesn’t say “Save us, because we deserve it.”
He doesn’t say, “Save us, so that all the kingdoms of the earth will know that you like us best.” He says, save us so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.
And he doesn’t say, “Give our fighters strength and endurance. Help our arrows fly straight.” Hezekiah leaves the details up to God.
And here’s the result: in verse 20, The prophet Isaiah comes to Hezekiah and says,
“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard.”
Skip down to verse 35, That night, An angel goes through the camp of the Assyrians and kills 185,000 soldiers. The armies of Judah never even fired a shot. What a picture of grace!
We won’t go into it this morning for the sake of time, but I hope you’ll spend some time this week in 2 Kings 20, because you’ll see this played out not just when Hezekiah is dealing with a national security crisis, but also with a personal health crisis. When Hezekiah was just 39 years old, Isaiah came to him and said,
‘Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’” 2 Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord,
I think he did this to shut off every other distraction.
Again, Hezekiah’s posture was one of humility and brokenness. Verse 3 says he wept bitterly. And God is attracted to those who are humble and broken (Psalm 34:17-18). It is a spiritual law. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5).
Hezekiah prays
3 “Now, O Lord, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
In his prayer, he acknowledged the sovereign rule and reign of God and he trusted the Lord to answer his prayer…and this is key – HOWEVER the Lord saw fit.
Again, Hezekiah doesn’t try to instruct God in how He wants God to answer his prayer. He just says, “remember me.”
And God gives him 15 more years. That’s great, but if I’m Hezekiah, I’m thinking, “That’s just 54-55 years of age…can’t you do more God?!” With Hezekiah, we don’t get any inclination of him doubting, debating or being discouraged by the answer God gives.
Because of a deep-seated trust in God the Father, he could pray with an honest heart, “Not my will, but yours be done.”
Do you have this deep-seated trust in God? What if His response is “No?” Do you have a healthy perspective that God is sovereign, in control and knows better?
He’s all-together different from us…working his plan. And Healthy prayer includes a healthy posture and a healthy perspective, which comes from our proximity to the Holy God.
Conclusion/Application
I’m going to ask you to bow your heads right now, and let’s enter into a time of personal prayer.
This is confession time. This is where we search our hearts for sin against God and we reflect on our sin and his forgiveness.
1 John 1:9 – “ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Again, this is so good for us to go through because when we reflect on our life, decisions we have made, the motives in our heart, the sinful paths we have taken, we see we have not arrived and at the same time meet the incredible grace, love and mercy of God.
In Hezekiah’s prayer for his health, if you noticed, we don’t have the specifics behind what he prayed for. I believe he was so broken…he didn’t even know what to pray for. The Bible says he turned and wept bitterly – and I believe because God knew what was in his heart, he answered the prayer of his heart. That’s how good our God is.
Sometimes, we are so broken by our circumstances, we don’t even know what to pray…and do you know what the Bible says?
Rom. 8:26-27 – “ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
Ask God…ask God for what’s on your heart. Ask him to move in whatever situation you are facing. Ask him to meet the needs of your loved ones. ASK!
Let’s pray together.
(Invitation and call to prayer)
