Isaiah 38 – The Remarkable Relationship of God and man

A translation and sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 08 July 2007

Translation

1 In those days Hezekiah became terminally ill,

and Isaiah, son of Amoz, the prophet came to him, and said to him,

“Thus says Jehovah: Set your house in order, for you will die, you will not live.”

2 Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and he prayed to Jehovah, 3 and said,

“Please, Jehovah, please remember how I have conducted myself toward Your face in truth and with a complete heart, and I have done the good before Your eyes.”

And Hezekiah cried out with a great cry.

4 Then came a word of Jehovah to Isaiah to say,

5 "Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says Jehovah, the God of David your father:

I have heard your prayer;

I have seen your tears;

look, I will add to your days - 15 years,

6 and I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria,

and will defend this city.

7 "This shall be the sign to you from Jehovah,

that Jehovah will do this word which He has spoken:

8 Look at me - to cause to turn back the shadow of the steps –

which goes down the steps of Ahaz with the sun – backwards 10 steps.”

So the sun turned back 10 steps – steps which it had declined!

9 A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, in his sickness and living from his sickness.

10 I myself had said, “In the quiet of my days I will depart.”

Into the gates of Sheol I was visited for the remainder of my years.

11 I said, “I will not see Yah Yah in the land of the living;

I will not look on a man again with the inhabitants of the deceased.”

12 My home is picked 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 until night You brought me to completion;

13 I calmed myself until morning like a lion

otherwise it would shatter all my bones!

From day until night You brought me to completion.

14 Like a swallow or a crane I chirp;

I moan like a dove.

My eyes have become weary to the heights.

My Master, pressure is on me; bail me out!

15 What shall I say? He both speaks to me, and He Himself acted.

I will walk quietly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul.

16 My Master, upon these things they live, and in all of these is the life of my spirit.

You will restore me to health, and You must cause me to live!

17 Look, it was for my completion that I had great bitterness;

but You Yourself loved my soul away from the pit of destruction,

for You have cast all my sins behind the back.

18 For it is not Sheol (that) thanks You (or) death (that) praises You;

those who go down to the pit do not hope in Your truth.

19 The living, the living, he thanks you, like me today;

father to sons makes known Your truth.

20 Jehovah is to save me,

and we will strum my songs all the days of our lives, over at the house of Jehovah!

21 Now Isaiah had said, “Let them pick a cake of figs,”

so they smeared (it) on the boil, and he lived.

22 And Hezekiah said, “What is the sign? For I will go up to the house of Jehovah!”

INTRO: 3 questions we can ask about a historical writing:

· What Happened?,

· What Difference did it make? &

· What Can I get out of it?

I) WHAT HAPPENED?

A) Hezekiah was terminally ill (v.1)

1. Only symptom mentioned is a “boil” in v.21
According to A.R. Short’s book The Bible and Modern Medicine this could have been a carbuncle on the neck or perhaps anthrax.

2. 3 views of when this occurred:

(a) The great German commentator, Delitzsch suggests that a year elapsed between God’s promise to deliver Jerusalem from the Assyrian threat and the time that God actually decimated the Assyrian army and that Hezekiah’s sickness happened during that time.

(b) Traditional Jewish view – Concurrent with the Assyrian threat

(i) v.5-6 “I will add 15 years and I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria”

(ii) The day he was healed he received the letter from Sennacherib, then went to the temple (v.22) and that night God decimated the Assyrian army.

(i) Hezekiah had wealth to show off – hadn’t emptied the treasury for Sennacherib yet because he shows it off to the king of Chaldea in chapter 39.

(ii) His reign ceased fewer than 15 years after 701 B.C. when the Assyrians came.

B) Isaiah told him to order his house in light of impending death

1. Write up last will and testament

2. Prepare others to take over his affairs

3. This was a problem because Hezekiah had no heir.

C) Hezekiah prayed and wept bitterly (v.2-3)

1. Face to the wall – sick, so can’t go to temple

D) God replies with a message through Isaiah (v.6-7)

1. On his way home, walking through the palace, Isaiah gets it (2 Ki.20:4)

2. I have heard your prayer and seen your tears

3. I will cure you and on the 3^rd day you will go to the temple (2 Kings)

4. I will add 15 years to your life

5. I will deliver and defend from Assyria

E) Fig compress is pasted over the boil (v.21&22 fit next chronologically)

F) Hezekiah asks for a sign that he will go to the temple (v.22)

1. He loves the temple he has restored. It is the first place he went when he heard of Rabshaqah’s taunts in ch 37, and the first place he wanted to do when he got well in ch 38.

G) The sundial sign is given

1. Description of “Steps of Ahaz” (Heroditus mentions sundial in Babylon, Delitzsch describes obelisk atop 20 steps)

2. Parallel account in 2 Kings – Isaiah gives Hezekiah a choice of the shadow going forward or backward 10 degrees/gradients/steps

3. Meaning of sign: Man is finite, but God is sovereign over time – 10 hours; 15 years; eternity.

4. The first daylight savings!

H) Hezekiah writes a psalm describing the experience while he is recovering (v. 9-20)

1. v. 10 He has visited the gates of death and realized once he passes through that gate there is no return to the land of the living

2. v.11 He loves worshipping God in the temple – in his words “to see Yah in the land of the living”

3. v.13 He realized however that God could snuff out his life in an instant. Like a lion, God could crush him and hill him.

4. v.14 He realize his only hope was to look upward to God and cry out to him to deliver him from this pressure.

5. In vs. 15-17, he expresses faith that God will indeed fulfill His promises, forgive him of sin, give him life, and change him into a more godly man.

6. Then he describes in v.18-20 how he will praise God in the temple with other people by singing this song he is composing!

I) The account closes by revisiting the climax of the story v. 21-22 – how Hezekiah was healed with a miracle and returned to the house of the Lord.

II) WHAT CHANGED?

A) What didn’t change – v.3

1. Hezekiah’s heart toward God (“complete” – v.3)

2. God’s decree regarding Hezekiah’s death

(a) God only told part of the future - Hezekiah did die later.

(b) Calvin “We must suppose a condition be implied in that threatening… Hezekiah would not have altered by repentance or prayer the irreversible decree of God.”

(c) It is part of God’s plan for us to ask for things: Ezekiel 36:37 “I will yet be inquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them.”

(d) EXAMPLE: At our recent conference in Memphis, Josh told us we had overslept and it was 7am, so we got dressed and ate breakfast in record time, only to get to the meeting and realize we were an hour early!

(e) God often used the threat of death to cause people to repent:

(i) Abimelek re: violating Sarah

(ii) God revealing His intent to Abraham to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah

(iii) with Moses re the sinful children of Israel “Stand back and let me destroy them!”

3. God’s promise:

(a) Hezekiah quotes God’s promise to David in 1 Kings 2:1-4
Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die; and he charged Solomon his son, saying, 2 “I am going the way of all the earth: be strong therefore, and be a man; 3 and keep the charge of Jehovah your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His ordinances, and His testimonies, according to what is written in the law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do... 4 That Jehovah may establish His word which He spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your children take heed to their way, to walk before me in truth with all their heart… there will not be cut off from you a man from the throne of Israel.’”

(b) His mind immediately goes to the promise of God uttered from the lips of his great (8x) grandfather, David, on his deathbed, because Hezekiah has been purposefully trying to live out the terms of that promise, “walking,” as he says, “toward Jehovah with a complete heart.”

(c) Likewise, God had not forgotten that promise either. He says in 2 Kings that He will heal and deliver “for my sake and for my servant David’s sake”

(d) Hezekiah knew that when God made a promise like that it couldn’t change.
v.7 “Jehovah will do the word that He said”

B) What did change

1. Hezekiah’s urgency to obey God v.3, 10-14, 22,

(a) He realized that his time was limited and that he needed to obey God quickly – only 15 years left

(b) In v.19 – He starts praising God “today”

2. Hezekiah’s level of obedience toward God v.19-20,

(a) He pledged to praise God “all the days of [his] life” in v.20 now that he saw every day as a precious gift from God.

(b) He pledges to address his house not being in order by promising to become a father who “will make God’s truth known to his children.” in v.19

3. Hezekiah’s sober realization of finiteness

(a) “quiet/cut short” v.10 “days,” “In the middle/pause/cutting of my days I must depart.”

(b) v.15 “steps,” are cut short/quieted “He both speaks to me and He Himself acts. I will walk quietly/slowly/softly all my years because of [this]”

4. Maturity/shalom – v.3 & v. 12,13,&17

(a) He begins in v. 3 crying bitterly, and saying in v. 11-12 “I hate it that I’m going to die and miss out on all the special things going on at the temple I just refurbished. I won’t be able to see my friends if I die!”

(b) The Apostle Paul expressed in Philippians 1:23 a more mature view of dying, “And if (I am) to live in the flesh, this to me is fruitful labor, and I do not know which I prefer. 23. But I am hard pressed by the two, because I have the desire to depart and be with Christ, for (this is) much more better.” (DFZ)

(c) v. 12-13 talk about the process of a weaver making his cloth until it is complete [shalom]. This is the way God works with us, and when He has completed His purposes in us on earth, He takes us up to be with Him in heaven!

(d) He was immature, but he grew in maturity: In v.3 he says he was walking towards God with a complete [shalom] heart, but in v.17 he says the “bitterness” of the sickness and the realization on his finiteness was “for [his] completion [shalom].” Now he says, “I will walk quietly all my years because of the bitterness” of coming to the gates of death (v.15). I’m going to be a lot more humble and respectful of my God as a result!

5. Repenting of sin v.17

(a) This sin may have been his preoccupation with matters of state such that at age 39 he did not have a child yet; he may not have even been married yet!

(b) God made a covenant with David that his descendents would reign, but Hezekiah was not fulfilling his end of the deal and having descendents who could fulfill the promise!

(d) This would explain why God focused Hezekiah on his mortality and on time in this story. You’ve got 15 years left to raise a son, now get moving!

(e) The Biblical record tells us that three years later (2 Ki. 21:1), Hezekiah had a son and named him Manasseh! Hezekiah lined up with God’s purposes

(f) However, it appears he remained too busy with affairs of state to disciple that son to walk toward God with a complete heart like his daddy.

III) HOW CAN I BENEFIT?

A) Learn from Hezekiah how to have a good Relationship with God

1. Repent of Sin of putting off something important until later?

(a) Why did God create you? Are you on track toward fulfilling that purpose?

(b) Have you have gotten off track and become distracted with matters of state and neglected to fulfill God’s purposes? Are there people need to hear the Gospel from you? Are there children who need more discipling from you? Are there other steps of obedience that you have been putting off?

(c) Quote from Harry Blamires The Secularist Heresy
“Failure to accept the finitude of the finite is the highest common factor in … indifference to the religious issue…”

2. Find forgiveness through Christ

(a) Just as Hezekiah prayed in v. 14 “My Lord, the pressure is on me; bail me out!” or as other translations put it “be my surety/my pledge of safety” so we must claim Jesus as our surety – the one who puts the money down for us when we don’t have it, the one who pays the bail to get us out of our prison of sin that we have gotten ourselves into, the one who laid down His life, dying on the cross for us, in order to take on Himself the punishment for our sin.

(b) Then we can say with Hezekiah, (v.17) You yourself have loved my soul from the pit… You have cast all my sins behind your back!”

B) Grow up into Maturity

1. Ephesians 4:11-16 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (ESV)

2. God wants us to put away the childish things that waste our time and stunt our spiritual growth; He wants us to grow in our understanding of Him and our fellowship with Him.

3. He will apply pressure on us in order to bring us to maturity, like He bought about the sickness which matured Hezekiah.

(a) Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 1:8-10 “For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; 9 indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; 10 who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope…

(b) Frank Barker, the pastor under whom I grew up made this statement in a sermon he preached on Isaiah chapter 38, “God has to bring us to the end of our own resources so that He will be our resource and we will trust in Him.” He also quoted this poem by Annie Johnston Flint:
Pressed out of measure and pressed to all length;
pressed so intensely it seems beyond strength.
Pressed in the body and pressed in the soul;
Pressed in the mind till the dark surges roll.
Pressure by foes and pressure by friends;
Pressure on pressure till life nearly ends.
Pressed into loving the staff and the rod;
Pressed into knowing no helper but God.
Pressed into liberty where nothing clings;
Pressed into faith for impossible things.
Pressed into living a life in the Lord;
Pressed into living a Christ-life outpoured.

C) Love the church

1. God keeps you alive in order to get praise from you (v.18-19 – “It is not the grave that will thank you or death that will praise you… it is the living that will thank you like me today!”

2. When God does something good, do you want to tell everybody about it? Do you sell your children? Will you tell your grandchildren?
EXAMPLE: The movie Avalon is a moving portrayal of what it means to be a secular American. I recommend it to everyone. The grandfather always wants to tell his children and grandchildren of what it was like when he came from Eastern Europe to America. The problem is that the message he gives to his descendents is not a meaningful one and the movie ends with the family broken up. You have a message to tell your descendents that can give their life meaning and purpose: you can tell them about God’s plan for world history to glorify Himself by blessing every family on the earth!

3. Praise God – in writing, in song, in speech, in art, just like Hezekiah
(v.20 “we will strum my songs all the days of our lives all over the house of the Lord!”)
It is not just the personal “I” who praises but “we” will make music.

4. Look forward with eagerness to gathering in the house of the Lord (In sickness, Hezekiah is crushed that he can’t go to the temple and see the Lord in the land of the living. (v.11) and in v.22 he is so eager to get back, he asks, “What is the sign, because I will go up to the house of the Lord!” I can’t wait!

CONCLUSION: “Set your house in order,” you will die before long. Seize the day and do now what God is calling you to do to get right with Him, stop putting off what is important, grow into maturity and love for His church!

Nate Wilson’s website – Isaiah Sermon Expositions

Christ the Redeemer Church website - Sermons