This afternoon I continue our study into the life of Hezekiah, king of Judah. And I would have you turn to Isaiah, and we’re going to be looking at Isaiah chapter 38 this afternoon. Oftentimes difficulties come into our life and we don’t know why.
Sometimes God allows them and we don’t understand. In the life of Hezekiah. Hezekiah, as I mentioned, was one of the most godly kings of the southern kingdom of Judah that has reigned. He had really encouraged the people to turn back to the Lord, encouraging the priests and the Levites to sanctify themselves before the Lord, to sanctify the temple, for proper worship to be done, to clean the land of false teachers and false worship centers and idols.
He had encouraged the people to sanctify themselves and to repent of their sins and to turn back and call upon the Lord. Hezekiah had done all of that. We also saw that Hezekiah, in his time of trouble, was different from many of the other kings of Judah.
The first place he went to was the temple and to cry out to God in prayer. When challenged by Necharib’s Maltese, Rabshakeh, Hezekiah went to the temple and put the letter that Rabshakeh said, challenging the Lord and challenging Hezekiah, and laid that letter before the Lord and cried out to God to deal with the situation. And God dealt with it.
He heard and answered Hezekiah’s prayer. And remember that Rabshakeh made one more threat and then was called to leave. Necharib went back to Assyria where he was murdered by his own sons, just like the Lord said would happen.
And the army of Necharib was miraculously defeated and the 184,000 soldiers were killed by the angel of the Lord, which I believe was the Lord himself. And we see that all of this happened because of Hezekiah’s faithfulness. So Hezekiah’s coming to a point in his life where there was a real challenge before him.
And that’s what we’re going to be looking at today in chapter 38. Sometimes we’re walking good with God, we’re seeing God work in our lives, we’re seeing miracles being performed, and yet at that moment a great challenge can come. If you look back in the book of Job, that was a constant thing that happened in Job’s life for a period of time, where he had done everything right, and yet God really showed Satan that Job’s faith wasn’t in the things God allowed Job to have, but Job’s faith was in the Lord, and that Job trusted in the Lord.
And so He allowed some of these things to happen to Job. Hezekiah is going to have his challenge. Every one of us will have challenges in our life.
Every one of us is going to come to a time in our lives where we will have to face death. And this is what Hezekiah, what we’re going to examine today, is Hezekiah comes and he’s told by Isaiah he’s going to face death. And the Lord is going to allow him to die.
So let’s take a look at chapter 38 of Isaiah.
In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.
2 Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the Lord,
3 And said, Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.
4 Then came the word of the Lord to Isaiah, saying,
5 Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years.
6 And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city.
7 And this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he hath spoken;
8 Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down.
9 The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness:
10 I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years.
11 I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.
12 Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd’s tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.
13 I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.
14 Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me.
15 What shall I say? he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it: I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.
16 O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live.
17 Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.
18 For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.
19 The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth.
20 The Lord was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord.
21 For Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaister upon the boil, and he shall recover.
22 Hezekiah also had said, What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?
Lord, help us to see that. And may you use us to be witnesses of your grace and mercy as you use Hezekiah. This we ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen. The next one is that all of us will have to face death one day. And Hezekiah said here, One of the problems you have when you die, your voice is silent.
When you die, you can no longer sing praises to the Lord from this body. When you die, you have no more opportunity to be a witness to God on this earth. And Hezekiah mentioned this all to God in his prayer that we just read.
And how that from the grave, you can’t do those things. This is something that each one of us should take into account. We were looking this morning about the importance of walking with the Lord and keeping our eyes upward.
Part of our thing that we need to remember is our time on earth is short. And Hezekiah’s time appeared to be even shorter than he thought it would be. And consequently, he had become very ill.
And Isaiah came and told him, you’re going to die. And when Hezekiah heard this, he leapt to the Lord. And part of the reason he did is because he trusted the Lord, he had faith in the Lord.
But he also understood that he no longer could lead the praises of Israel from his body and with his voice, because he was going to the grave. Now, one of the things that we have advantage over Hezekiah even, if God made a man as Hezekiah was, is that you and I are looking back to the cross of Jesus. You understood that Jesus has gained that victory for us over death.
He gained the victory for us over sin. He enables us even, as Paul says, He has us in the body to be present with the Lord and there’s great joy in being in the presence of God. We have some of the hymns, we didn’t sing any of those this afternoon, but there’s face to face with my Lord and Savior.
There are things, what a day that would be when my Lord I shall see. Different hymns that speak about the time when death comes and the joy that we can have coming into the presence of God. So, as I mentioned earlier, Job was tried and tested.
And Job even had a clearer vision than Hezekiah about death, because he said, the Lord give us, the Lord take us, blessed be the name of the Lord. And that everything was done according to God’s will and God’s purpose and God’s time are trusted to be in God. And he also, Job had said that he was going to look upon the face of his Redeemer.
He understood that life didn’t end with this physical life, but he would have eternal life and be with God eternally. Hezekiah, although I believe he understood this, didn’t have the same depth of understanding as Job expressed. And that he was weeping greatly over the fact that he was going to die.
And he cried out to the Lord and laid before the Lord everything that he’d done and how that he tried to do all that God had called him to do and had done. And he lived his life righteously. He lived his life to honor and glorify the Lord.
And now that he was going to die, who would be saying these things? And who would be leading these songs of worship and praise? And God heard him and responded to that prayer. And he gave Hezekiah 15 more years. This was a bit of a double-edged sword for Hezekiah, because he got 15 more years of life.
And he used much of it to honor and glorify the Lord, but he also did some things that were foolish. And God also allowed something to happen during those 15 years that would really be detrimental to the nation of Israel. We’re going to be studying on Wednesday night one of the very foolish things that Hezekiah did after God extended his life.
And that was open up all the treasuries of Israel to the Babylonians. And we’ll see why that was so wrong. But not only that, if you look at the next king of Israel, the next king of Israel is going to be Manasseh.
Manasseh was the son of Hezekiah. And if you read in Kings and Chronicles, Manasseh was 12 years of age when he came to the throne. How many years did God extend Hezekiah’s life? 15.
So Manasseh was born during that extended period of time of Hezekiah’s life. Hezekiah couldn’t make the choices for his son. But his son Manasseh became one of the most ungodly kings of Israel and undid everything that his father had done in destroying the high places and removing the false teachers and reestablishing the worship of the Lord.
Manasseh did the exact opposite. So simply sometimes by having a longer life and God extending our life, we have to be very careful about how we use that extended time when God gives it to us. And also we as Christians should not fear death.
We should understand that this life has been given to us for a period of time. God knows when we’re born. God knows when we die.
And God, when we’re called by the Lord into a relationship with Him, gives us this time between birth and death to grow in our understanding of Him, to walk with Him, to love Him, and to be used by Him when we accept Him as our Lord and Savior. And we need to have that attitude. Now, one of the things that we see here as we look at these verses is that God promised Hezekiah that He would fulfill the promise that He gave him of giving him extended life.
And we see in verse number 6, the extension, He says, And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city. And this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord. The Lord’s going to give Hezekiah a sign that He’s going to take care of Israel.
He’s going to deliver Israel from the Assyrians. They will not be a problem. The Assyrians were never a problem even during the time of Manasseh and Josiah and Josiah’s son, the Assyrians.
And this was the end of the Assyrian troubling Israel. Just as God said it was. God’s hand of protection would come in answer to Hezekiah’s prayer.
But not only that, God had promised Him that He would extend your life. Well, I’m going to give you a sign, He said. Now, what’s the sign? The sign is found in verse 8. Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which had gone down in the sundial of Ahab ten degrees backward.
So the sun turned ten degrees by which the degrees had gone down. Now, the sundial of Ahab was really the steps going up toward which the sun would hit. And as the sun began to set, the shadow would go down these steps.
And these were steps that would lead up into the temple. And it would act like a sundial revealing what the hour of the day was. As the shadow went down the steps further and further, the sun was setting and the day was growing shorter.
The Lord says, what I’m going to do for you, Hezekiah, is I’m going to turn this backwards. And each step was considered a degree of movement of the sundial. He said, I’m going to move this backwards ten degrees.
In other words, the sun is going to have gone down ten steps, but I’m going to cause the sun to go back up ten steps. This could not be done by any other thing except God. The power to control His creation and to control how the sun moved.
We also know that this similar thing happened when Joshua was bringing people into the land of Israel and they were fighting. And the Lord told Moses to raise his arms up and put them down and raise them up. And as long as Moses had his arms up, Israel would win.
And then we also see that God caused the sun to remain longer than it should have in a battle. So that Israel would win the battle and the sun remained longer than it normally would remain. God can do those things.
There is no explanation scientifically how this would happen other than a miracle from God. And that’s what we see here. This is a miracle from God showing Hezekiah, what I have promised you will happen.
And so I’m going to cause the sun to go up the steps instead of down the steps. So it’s going to have gone down but it will go back up as a sign unto you. And this will reveal, this is my power and I have the ability to do this and it’s going to fulfill my word.
And so the sun returned ten degrees by which degrees it had gone down. The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah when he had been sick and was recovered of his sickness. And so Hezekiah is talking now and he’s revealing to us some interesting things that we need to contemplate.
First of all he said, I said in the cutting off of my days I shall go to the gates of the grave and I am deprived of the rest of my years. Well King David had said that our life span is seven years and by the grace of God it will be eighty. Hezekiah wasn’t that old yet.
And he’s saying I’m being cut off before my time and I’m going to not have the opportunity that I want to have to praise the Lord. And what did he say about that? He said, I said I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living. I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of this world.
In other words, I’m not going to be able to go to the temple and worship the Lord. I’m not going to be able to honor the Lord with men of this world anymore. Why? Because he was going to be taken into the presence of the Lord.
And he was going to be taken at this time to where the Lord would hold the people until Jesus came and then they would be ushered into heaven. He says, my age has departed and is removed from me as a shepherd’s hen. I have cut off like a weaver my life.
He will cut me off with the pining sickness from day even to night. And so he understands that who holds his life in his hands? It’s God. We can think that we hold our life in our hands.
We have a lot of people who think that if they just do enough exercises, take enough vitamins. It’s not to say that you shouldn’t actually take vitamins. But if you think that somehow we can extend our lives beyond what God has determined is the end of our life, we’re being foolish.
Now, the Bible tells us that we should take care of our temple and so we should do those things. But we shouldn’t think that somehow we can extend our life. And Hezekiah is saying, you know, I can’t extend my life.
God has chosen that this is the time I should die. I can’t make myself live any longer. I remember there was this one guy and he was a triathlete.
There are some of the most in shape people in the world. They have to bike and run and swim and do all these things. And they’re constantly exercising and taking all these vitamins and proteins for their bodies.
And their bodies are in really great shape. But one time he was running a marathon and he dropped dead of a heart attack. And you’re going, well, if anybody shouldn’t have had a heart attack, it should have been him.
He’s doing all these things to make his heart strong. But he dropped dead of a heart attack. Why? It was his time.
And there was nothing he could do about it. He thought he was doing everything for his health. But he in essence died and he was fairly young when he died.
I reckon till morning that as a lion, so will he break all my bones. From day even to night wilt thou make men of me. So he’s saying that the Lord is the one who caused death to come upon him.
And there’s not a thing he can do about it, even as a lion, who would take hold of a man and break his bones. If you’re in the mouth of a lion, you’re not going to be doing much unless you happen to be a sample and have supernatural ability given by the Lord. The lion will break your bones.
What shall I say? He has both spoken unto me and himself hath done it. I shall so go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul. And so he’s saying I’m going to acknowledge the will of God, that God has spoken and told me, and then allow it to happen.
And I’m going to accept this, but it’s in the bitterness of my soul. It’s not going to be, and he tells us why. O Lord, by these things men live.
And in all these things in the life of my spirit, so wilt thou recover me and make me to live. Why did you want to live? He tells us. Behold, for peace I had a great bitterness, but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption, for thou hast cast all my sins behind my back.
So the first thing is he acknowledges that God has forgiven his sins and is worthy of his praise. And he had all this bitterness, but God heard and answered his prayer in spite of the bitterness he had possessed. And one of the things that he’s acknowledging is the bitterness that he had towards God because he was dying.
And instead of accepting what God had done, he did harbor bitterness. He cried out to the Lord with great tears and weeping and cried out and prayed to the Lord that he would extend his life. And now he’s acknowledging that God has forgiven his attitude, which really had not been an attitude of gratefulness and praise at that particular time.
But he’s acknowledging his sin and said God has cast the sin away. For the grave cannot praise thee. And this is the first thing I want you to understand.
Once you’re dead, you’re not praising God with these lips anymore. You’re praising God with your spirit and soul, with your presence and ultimately with your resurrected body. But you’re not praising God in this life.
And so we need to take advantage to praise the Lord while we have life on earth. And we need to take advantage to come before the Lord when we have life on earth. And so he acknowledges this.
For the grave cannot praise thee. Death cannot celebrate thee. When we’re dead, we’re not leading people in celebrating and saying, look at what God has done in my life.
Look what God will do for you. Look at what God’s promises are. We can’t do that anymore.
There’s a grave and there’s silence. Our lips. They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.
In other words, our chances are done for choosing rightly in this life the truth of God. And people who are nonbelievers need to hear this. They need to understand.
It’s only in this life that you can do these things. In the life to come, yes, we’ll be before the Lord and we’ll be praising and singing his praises in heaven. And when we’re with him, we’ll come back to rule and reign with him.
But it’s going to be totally different than it is today. And today we have opportunity to choose and experience and to be used with God to do these things with these lips, with this body, in this moment of history. He says, for the grave cannot praise thee.
Death cannot celebrate thee. They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living.
He shall praise thee. And so, is this your attitude? You’re alive. I think you’re all alive.
I see you’re all breathing. Do you have an attitude to praise God for the things that he’s doing in your life and that he’s done in your life? Is praise an attitude to possess as one who believes in God? Because this life gives us the opportunity to do that. And once this body’s dead, this body can’t do it anymore.
As I do this day, the Father to the children shall make known thy truth. And he says, the time to teach and instruct is now. It’s not when you’re dead.
Guess what? My dad gave me the lessons that I learned. My dad died in 1992. Guess what? I have not heard from my father since he died.
He hasn’t instructed me with any other lessons. Everything that he instructed me on how to live, what to do, what was right, what was wrong, what to believe, what not to believe, all happened before 1992, because that’s when his lips became silent. I want you to stop and think.
You are only given so many days. One of the things that we’re called to do is to instruct our children. One of the things that evidently Hezekiah did not do well was listen to his own counsel here when God extended his life.
Because he did not evidently instruct Manasseh the way he should have in the way of the Lord. Either that or Manasseh just totally was the absolute rebellious child, which he probably could have been because he was that way towards God until the very end of his life. But the thing is, what we see here is that he says, one of the things we can do when we’re alive is instruct those that God has placed under us to instruct.
So you’ve got children, you’ve got grandchildren, you’ve got friends that want to learn, and you have the opportunity to teach. There’s going to come a day where you won’t have that opportunity. And we need to understand that it only comes to each one of us once in a lifetime, and that is between birth and death, where we have these opportunities.
And once that opportunity is gone, it’s gone. And so the sad thing is, if you look at these verses, it doesn’t say anything about being able to communicate with your dead father or your dead mother or your dead children. As a matter of fact, in other portions of Scripture, it says that if you do that, it’s an abomination to the Lord.
We’re not to speak with those that are dead or attempt to. It’s called necromancy of Satan and of the occult. Satan can totally deceive people with demons, and that’s what it is.
And so he’s saying, the time for instruction is now, not when you’re dead. And so we are to instruct, we’re to worship.