Pleading with God in Prayer

Please turn with me in your Bibles this morning to Isaiah 38.  If you’re visiting with us today, we have been in a, I think it is a four-week now, we have one more week to go, a series on the life of Hezekiah from Isaiah 36 and we’ll conclude next Sunday in Isaiah 39.

This morning we take a look at Isaiah 38 and a personal crisis that King Hezekiah went through and how the Lord met him in that crisis.  So before we read these words, let’s pray and ask for the Lord’s illumination and help. 

Father, we do turn to You now that You would illumine us by Your Word, that Your Word would be a light to us, that we’d be able to understand what is being taught here, but even more than that, we pray that in understanding Your Word we would be encouraged by Your Word, that we would be strengthened by it, that we would be pointed ultimately to Christ.  So we pray for these things in the power of Your Holy Spirit to come.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.   

Isaiah 38.  Hear now God’s Word.

“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 to him, “Thus says the Lord:  Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.”  Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, and said, “Please, O Lord, 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.”

“Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah:  “Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father:  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 will defend this city.  This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he has promised:  Behold, I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of Ahaz turn back ten steps.”  So the sun turned back on the dial the ten steps by which it had declined.”

“A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:  I said, In the middle of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years.  I said, I shall not see the Lord, the Lord in the land of the living; I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world.  My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent; like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom; from day to night you bring me to an end; I calmed myself until morning; like a lion he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end.”

“Like a swallow or a crane I chirp;  I moan like a dove.  My eyes are weary with looking upward.  O Lord, I am oppressed; be my pledge of safety!  What shall I say? For He has spoken to me, and He himself has done it.  I walk slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul.”

“O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these is the life of my spirit.  Oh restore me to health and make me live!  Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love You have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for You have cast all my sins behind your back.  For Sheol does not thank You; death does not praise You; those who go down to the pit do not hope for Your faithfulness.  The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day; the father makes known to his children your faithfulness.

“The Lord will save me, and we will play my music on stringed instruments all the days of our lives, at the house of the Lord.”  Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover.”  Hezekiah also had said, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?””

Well, dear people of God, we continue as I mentioned our series today in the life of Hezekiah and I hope that you are able to see how this series on the life of Hezekiah pairs well with the series that we’re doing on Sunday evenings over the last couple of weeks and we’ll do it again tonight and return one more time next week.  That series in the evenings on the heroes of faith.

We’ve been thinking of heroes such as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham.  I think we come to Moses tonight. 

But when you think about Hezekiah, I think we could say we’re thinking about another hero of faith.  Hezekiah could very easily have been included in Hebrews 11 as a hero, trusting in God.  You remember he was a godly king, tore down the high places, opened the doors of the temple, reformed worship, reconsecrated the priesthood.  He was also a gifted king.  He was a great military strategist.  He was an inspirational leader to the people of Israel.

But in our passage today, we see him as a hero of faith in another way.  Hezekiah was also a committed godly pray-er.  He prayed to God.  He sought God in prayer.  What we have here in Isaiah 38 is the second recorded prayer from Hezekiah in the book of Isaiah.  We saw another one of his prayers earlier on, chapter 37.

But the prayer that we have here in Isaiah 38 is, while it comes second in order in the book of Isaiah, it think it was actually the very first prayer that Hezekiah prayed.  In other words, what we have in chapter 38 actually came in time before chapter 37.  So Isaiah flips these around as he writes his prophecy, but in time chapter 38 comes before chapter 37.  Why do I say that?  Well, chapter 37, remember from last week, ended with the miraculous deliverance of Israel when 185,000 Assyrian soldiers died at the hand of God and Sennacherib leaves Jerusalem and goes back to Assyria.

Well, in chapter 38, especially verse 6, you can see it in your Bibles there, we have the promise of God to deliver Jerusalem.  God says, “I will deliver you and the city out of the hand of the king of Assyria.”  So that, of course, comes before the actual deliverance that we find in chapter 37.

So if we think about the first recorded prayer, the one that’s in chapter 37, that was a prayer for Israel to be delivered.  The prayer that we come to this morning in chapter 38 is a prayer of Hezekiah himself for himself to be delivered.  Not for the nation to be delivered, that’s going to come, but this is a prayer that Hezekiah prays for himself to be delivered.  It is a personal prayer.  As such, it serves as an example to us of how we are to pray to God in times of trial.   

So first of all, what is it that prompted the prayer?  It’s very clear it was an illness.  It was a sickness that Hezekiah was going through, a personal crisis.  The chapter begins, “In those days, Hezekiah became sick.”  “In those days” refers to, of course, the larger picture of the perilous times that Israel was in as the king of Assyria is bearing down upon Jerusalem.  The Assyrians are ready to attack.

Well, in the midst of that national crisis, Hezekiah found himself in a personal crisis.  He is sick.  This was a terminal illness.  Maybe you recall or just seeing here at the end of the chapter, verse 21, that Isaiah talks about applying a cape of figs to a boil, so it might be some kind of a sore that Isaiah had.  Other translations will talk about it as an inflammation, so perhaps this was a sore that created some kind of deadly infection that Hezekiah was experiencing.

Along with his physical infirmity came Isaiah’s prophetic word from God.  Isaiah says to King Hezekiah, “You need to set your house in order. This is what the Lord says.  You need to set your house in order.  You are going to die.  You are not going to recover.  This is a terminal sickness that you have.”

You maybe saw as we were reading through this chapter that the last half of the chapter is a writing that King Hezekiah puts down after his sickness and recovery.  It’s kind of a journal entry that Hezekiah puts down reflecting upon this experience of being terminally ill and then ultimately getting better.  But as such it provides us wonderful insight as to kind of the personal crisis that Hezekiah was going through.  You look at some of these verses from that journal entry.

Verse 10.  We learn that this sickness came on in the middle of his days.  As Hezekiah says, “in the middle of my days I must depart.”  Hezekiah began his reign at 25 years old.  Back in chapter 36 we learned that all these events that are happening in these chapters occurred in the 14th year of his reign, so he begins at 25, he’s 14 years into his reign, this puts Hezekiah around 39 years old.  So he’s experiencing this terminal disease in the prime of life.  He’s not an old man; he’s living life to its fullness, when this disease comes upon him.   

You see in verses 10 and 11 that death became the theme of his life.  It’s all he could think about.  He says there, “I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years.”  He knows that this is going to bring an end to things and it consumes him.

Maybe you’ve had this experience before, but when I’ve talked to people who are dying, they may have cancer, maybe they have some kind of other illness or disease, every once in a while a person like that will say to me, “I wish I could have a conversation about something other than my illness.”  Right?  Like when people visit me, we talk about my cancer, we talk about my disease.  I wish there was something else we could talk about. 

I wonder if Hezekiah felt that way.  “I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years,” he says.  He talks about the fragility of life in verse 12, that it’s like a shepherd’s tent.  You put it up at night, you take it down in the morning.  It’s like a weaver’s loom, so you have the fabric on the loom and you take it off, put it on, take it off.  That’s how short and temporary life is.

He experienced physical suffering, verse 13 – The Lord breaks all my bones.  There was spiritual anguish that came along with this in verse 14 – O Lord, I am oppressed, he says.  Then to add to all of this, there was bitter grief.  So at the end of verse 3 we read that Hezekiah wept bitterly.  He talks about bitterness in verse 15, verse 17.

I don’t think, people of God, that what he means here is that he was bitter against the Lord.  He was not shaking his fist against God, but rather this was a concern about the promises of God being fulfilled.  Hezekiah had no heir at this point in his life when this disease came upon him.  He’s going to be granted 15 more years of life.  His son Manasseh, who reigned after him, was 12 years old when he began to reign.  So you take this, 15 years of life to be lived yet.  Manasseh is 12, so he lives 12 years before Hezekiah ultimately does and he begins to reign.  There’s a three-year gap in here.  In other words, there’s no son at this point to succeed Hezekiah.

I think his bitterness is over the possibility that God’s promise of a son of David, who will reign forever, may be left unfulfilled.  “Lord, if I die now, who’s going to reign?  If I die now, who’s going to come to the throne?  What about Your messianic promise of a son of David who is going to have an eternal throne?  The line of David is going to come to an end unless the Lord does something.” 

How do we know that this was what he was thinking?  Or why would we say that this may be what was in Hezekiah’s mind?  Well, I think the answer is in verse 5 when Isaiah comes back to Hezekiah, tells him he’s going to get better, and he says, “Thus says the Lord,” notice this, “The God of David your father.”  In other words, this sickness, this terminal illness, is in the context of God’s covenant promise to establish a king forever.

So friends, here is a godly king who is sick, who is dying.  This ought to be a very simple reminder to us that believers, people who walk with the Lord, who are faithful to God, who strive to live for God, they get sick, too.  Ought not to think that if we only lived better, if we only had more faith, then we wouldn’t struggle with the same kind of things that other people struggle with.  That’s not true.  Christians get sick.  We face death.  God doesn’t keep us from those things.

Well, Hezekiah, how does he respond?  He prays.  In the middle of all this sickness and illness, he turns to God in prayer.

I want to notice just five things, five brief things about this prayer that serve as a model prayer for us, both in terms of practical things and also spiritual things. 

I want you to notice first of all is prayer was immediate.  So the Lord says to him, “You need to set your house in order for you shall die.  You will not recover.”  Verse 2 – then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall.  Immediately upon hearing from Isaiah, Hezekiah prayed.  He didn’t despair.  He didn’t turn to a hundred other things first.  But he immediately petitions the Lord.  He turns his face to God and says, “What do I have to do?  I need to pray.”  And in his prayer is a remarkable sign of faith, of where his trust is, of where his hope is.  He turns to the Lord.

Speaking to one of our interns in the last couple of weeks and we were speaking about a difficult situation that somebody else was going through.  We’re talking about the details of that and he said to me, he said, “Let’s pray.”  Now I wish I had been the one to say that.  Right?  I’m the pastor, he’s the intern.  I should be saying that, “Let’s pray,” but he said it to me.  Let’s pray.  I was thinking, that’s right.

What do we do in times of hardship and trouble and trial?  Rather than coming to prayer last after we tried a hundred other things, turn to God.  Let’s just pray, right now.  This needs prayer.

His prayer was immediate.  His prayer was also focused.  You it in verse 2 as Hezekiah turns his face to the wall, simply another way of saying that he focused his attention on God.  He gave himself fully to the Lord, Lord, with a direction and an aim and a focus. 

You might do this same kind of thing.  You may not turn your face to the wall, but I imagine most of you, maybe all of us, we close our eyes when we’re praying.  Now there’s no biblical command you have to do that.  You can pray with your eyes wide open.  That’s fine.  But we close our eyes because we want to focus.  Right?  We want all of our attention to be upon God.  It’s a way to just keep us from being distracted.

That’s what Hezekiah did.  He turned his face to the wall, presumably Isaiah still with him.  He just brought the message.  But he turns his face to the wall, “Lord, I’m seeking You.”

What is it that you maybe need to clear out of the clutter when you’re praying?  You know, put that phone in the other room.  Maybe prayer at the most trafficked part of your home isn’t the best place to be praying.  We want to focus, seek focus upon the Lord.

Third.  His prayer was believing, a believing prayer.  He says in verse, “Please, O Lord, remember how I have walked before You in faithfulness and with a whole heart and have done what is good in Your sight.” 

When you first read that, you can almost kind of take away from this, like this is some sort of self-righteous prayer.  It’s Hezekiah boasting in his goodness, in his faithfulness to the Lord.  Well, we only have to look ahead in this prayer back to that journal that Hezekiah wrote to understand that Hezekiah saw himself as a sinner who was saved by the mercy of God.  He was not bragging or boasting in how good he is.

In verse 17 he talks about the Lord casting all of his sins behind his back, the Lord puts them behind his back.  Friends, this instead is the pleading of a man who wants God’s kingdom to come and His promises to come to pass and even more than that, I think this is the prayer of a man whose mind was filled with Scripture.  This was a man who understood his Bible, who knew the Scriptures, and he prayed the Scriptures to God, because what Hezekiah prays here in verse 3 I think is very similar to what we read earlier in our service.  You have the words actually in the bulletin, many of the words, from Psalm 34.

This poor man, the psalmist said, this poor man cried and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles.  What man is there who desires life and loves many days that he may see good?  Keep your tongue from evil, your lips from speaking deceit, turn from evil, do good, seek peace, pursue it.  Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers them out of them all.

Do you see what Hezekiah was doing, I think, here?  What Hezekiah’s doing was he was simply praying and believing God’s Word.  Maybe Psalm 34 was on his mind.  But he’s praying in line with Psalm 34 at least.  This psalm in Hezekiah’s life, we ought not to misunderstand here what’s going on and not a promise that God always does for us what we ask as He’s going to do for Hezekiah.

All we have to do is look at the example of Jesus.  He’s praying in Gethsemane, may this cup pass from Me yet not as I will but as You will, Lord.  And the cup does not pass.  Or the Apostle Paul.  He’s praying in 2 Corinthians 12 for the thorn in the flesh to be removed and no, Paul, there’s something else for you than that. 

But here is a lesson to pray trusting in God’s Word as Hezekiah prayed.  He’s praying the Scriptures back to God, trusting in the promises of God, believing what God’s Word says, a believing prayer.

This is also a humble prayer.  So verse 17, back to that journal.  Hezekiah speaks about how the Lord was shaping him during his trial.  He says in verse 17, “it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness, but in love You have delivered my life.” 

That’s Hezekiah saying, “Lord, You were teaching me something.  This bitterness was for my welfare.  It was for my good.  Lord, You’re shaping me through this somehow.  I needed to learn.”

Friends, what a great prayer to pray to the Lord.  When you’re going through trials, you’re going through afflictions, you’re going through trouble, “Lord, yes, please, take this away.  Save me.  Renew my life.  But Lord, what would You teach me?  Lord, here I am before Your throne, before Your feet.  How would You shape me?  How would You mold me?  How would You sanctify me?  Lord, what would You have me learn?  How for my welfare would You use this for Your glory and my good?”

Then finally this is a thankful prayer.  Hezekiah gives thanks to God.  You see this in verses 19 to 20 at the end of that journal entry, “the living, the living, he thanks You as I do this day.  The Lord will save me, we will play my music on stringed instruments.”  The Lord had said to Hezekiah, we see it in 2 Kings 20, which is a parallel passage to what we have here in Isaiah’s prophecy, the Lord has said to Hezekiah, “I’ll heal you and on the third day you will go to the house of the Lord.”  So you’re going to go worship God.

I think that’s what we have here in verses 19 and 20, his reflection upon that.  It’s interesting, isn’t it?  The Lord will save me and we will play my music on stringed instruments.  You kind of wonder if Hezekiah not only sat down and began to journal this experience out of his sickness and the Lord’s healing, but it almost seems here as if he sat down and wrote some music as well.  Right?  Something to praise God with.  Something to magnify the Lord for the great things that He had done in his life.

People of God, when we pray, we must not forget to give thanks to God in prayer.  In other words, let’s not let our prayers only be asking God to do things, but thanking God when He responds and answers the prayers that we pray.  Many people find that if you keep your prayers written down somewhere, just to note praying this and praying this and praying this, that you can track your prayers.  Right?  You can, “Hey, this prayer that I’ve been praying, the Lord’s done this.”  Put a check next to it or “glory to God” next to it or whatever you do.  But a way for you to thank God as well as to ask God.

In the Heidelberg Catechism is a great question.  So many of them, of course, but this one I love.  It’s question 117.  It says, “How does God want us to pray so that He will listen to us?”  How should we pray?  And the answer first, “We must pray from the heart to no other than the one true God who has revealed Himself in His Word, asking for everything He has commanded us to ask for.”

Second.  We must acknowledge or need and misery, hiding nothing, and humble ourselves in His majestic presence.  Then finally, we must rest on this unshakeable foundation, that even though we do not deserve it, God will surely listen to our prayer because of Christ our Lord, and that is what He has promised us in His Word.

The Catechism teaches us how to pray.  Hezekiah’s life gives us examples of how we ought to go about praying.

Finally, people of God, we have the Lord’s answer here.  Don’t we?  Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, turned his face to God, and the Lord heard his prayer.  The Lord answered, the Lord answered him by healing him.  So in answer to prayer, the Lord added 15 years to Hezekiah’s life.  God also promised that Hezekiah and Jerusalem would be spared from the hand of Sennacherib and of course, when you turn back to chapter 37, that’s exactly what happened.  Hezekiah [sic] and his armies, they run away and go back to Assyria.  Two great deliverances, both on the one hand for Hezekiah and the other hand for the city of God’s people.

It reminds us, doesn’t it, that there’s great power in prayer.  Prayer’s powerful.  In a sense, it’s one of the simplest things we do.  Sometimes we’ll say, well, I don’t know what else to do, I guess I can pray.  Sort of like, “We’ve tried everything else.  We’ll pray.”  But really to pray is the most power thing we can do.  It’s the greatest thing we can do.

God said, “Hezekiah, you’re not going to recover.”  But then God added 15 years to his life.  It maybe raises a question in our mind – does prayer change God’s mind?  God has said you’re not going to recover and then God gives him 15 more years.  Did Hezekiah’s prayer change the mind of God?  I think our answer to that is no.  God’s purposes are unchanging.

Numbers 23.  God is not a man that He should lie or a Son of Man that He should change His mind.

Isaiah 46.  God says I will accomplish My purposes.

Prayer doesn’t change the mind of God but prayer, make no mistake about it, prayer does change things.  Prayer changes history.  God acts according to His sovereign purposed will in response to prayer.  Prayer makes a difference.

What Hezekiah had to learn is how fully his life was in the hand of God.  There was no hope for recovery unless God moved, unless God did something.  That’s why he turned to God – God, heal me; God, save me; God, revive me.  He knew that he couldn’t go anywhere else.  But he goes to the Lord.  He prayed. 

Friends, we must pray.  Yes, you see it here in our text, God uses means.  Used a cake of figs, applied it to that sore, that boil, whatever it was and he recovers.  God’s sovereignty is not opposed to prayer.  God’s sovereignty is not opposed to a cake of figs.  Or chemotherapy, or whatever else we seek out.

But God uses those things according to His sovereign will.

What about this sign?  Hezekiah asked for a sign that the Lord would heal him.  You see that at the end of the chapter.  The last two verses of chapter 38 are kind of like a commentary that really kind of happened earlier in the story.  Hezekiah says, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?” and Isaiah comes to Hezekiah and he says, “Do you want to shadow to go forward 10 steps or do you want a shadow to go back 10 steps?”  Again, it’s not recorded here in Isaiah 38, but it is in 2 Kings 20.  “You want the sign to be a shadow that goes forward or do you want the sign to be a shadow that goes back 10 steps?”  Isaiah says, “Well, going forward is easy.  I mean, that’s when the sun moves and the shadows fall.  That’s how shadows go.  There goes my shadow.” 

So that’s easy.  Make it go back 10 steps.  Let’s have it go back 10 steps.  And, of course, that’s indeed what happened.  The shadow fell back 10 steps.  A miracle from God.

That maybe raises a question for us.  Should we look for signs?  Hezekiah had a sign.  Isaiah 9, Ahaz actually was told to ask for a sign, Hezekiah’s father.  He didn’t and the Lord gave him one anyway.  Should we ask for signs?

Well, friends in life we, of course, all lean on God’s providential displays.  We pray for healing and we look up the tests that the doctor took.  Right?  But that’s not a sign as we’re thinking about it here.  If we’re talking about extraordinary miraculous signs from God to bolster our faith, the reality is we really don’t need them.  We ought not to be asking God for them.

Why?  Because we have the fullness of God’s revealed will in His Word.  We have all that we need in the Scriptures.  Think about this.  We have the promises of God.  Unless you think God’s promises aren’t true, we have His promises.  We have His truth.  We also have God’s instructions for how to go about praying.  God doesn’t just leave it open-ended and say, well, just pray however you want.  No, I want to teach you how to pray.

Remember the disciples asked that of Jesus – teach us to pray.  He gives them the Lord’s Prayer as a model prayer for how we ought to go about praying.

We have all that we need from the Lord. 

Then think about this.  We also have Christ.  We have the Lord Jesus through whom God hears our prayers.

Friends, you see the Lord’s answer to Hezekiah’s prayer then is not just healing him physically, that was incredible, but it is also giving him a heritage.  When Hezekiah prayed this prayer, again he has no son.  But in answering his prayer, God extended his life, a son was born, God’s promise of a king who would forever sit on the throne was secured, and a few centuries later Jesus was born from Hezekiah’s line.

Hezekiah was a godly, gifted king but we’re reminded in this chapter he was a mortal man.  Jesus is our greater eternal king.  Jesus lived a perfect, good, righteous life.  It was said of Hezekiah that there was no king like him before or after him in all of Israel.  Well, it’s true, until Christ came.  There is no other king.  Right?  There is no other king.  There is not one.  There never will be one before or after King Jesus that was like Him for He didn’t just face death, and then had His life extended for 15 years.  The cup of wrath, cup of God’s wrath did not pass from Him but He laid down His life for us.  Because of Him, as Hezekiah could write, all of our sins our cast behind the back of God and through Him and in His name we are able to approach God in prayer and we are able to know that He will hear us for the sake of Christ.

Doug Kelly in his book on prayer, as we wrap up, says it like this.  He says when a believer faithfully uses the name of Jesus in prayer, the Father can let that prayer walk through the throne room of heaven and up to His very heart for He hears the voice of His betrothed Son in its tones.

When I come in Jesus’ name, it is as though Christ takes my hand and we walk up to the Father’s throne together and the Father can accept me because I am related to Him.  The basis for this acceptance is the death of Christ for us.

What great news.  We, too, can plead with God in prayer as Hezekiah did and for the sake of Christ He will hear us and He will listen.

People of God, all for the sake of Christ, for the death of Christ, that’s what we’re going to come to here in just a moment as we celebrate the supper together.  

Let’s pray before we do that.  Father in heaven, we thank You, Lord, for Your Word today, this teaching on prayer.  Because a prayer people, and we pray right now, we pray right now, Lord, that You would help us to see Christ, that You would feed us with Christ, as we come to this table, this means of grace, that You have given for the strengthening of our faith.  So Lord, as we come, as weak, need people, we pray meet us here and strengthen us to believe.  We pray these things in Christ’s name.  Amen.