Isaiah 38:1-20 Sermon - July 19th, 2020 - Grace, Benson and Vail Why pray if God already knows everything that will happen? If, for example, he knows the exact lifespan of a person, down to the day, the minute, the second, why pray about the lifespan of a person you care about? Why pray? Answer: Because God allows your prayers to matter. He extends an astonishing invitation to you to participate with him as he unfolds the events of human life and history, including the lifespans of people you care about. One way you participate with him through prayer. The story of Hezekiah is among the true stories that shows: with God things are not so fixed that our input doesn’t matter to him. God invites the prayer of faith. The best way to learn about praying is by doing it; but there is value in learning from the prayer of someone like Hezekiah, I have 7 lessons from this story to guide our time, they are listed on page 14 of the worship folder. 1. Prayer has a setting. Prayer doesn’t happen in a vacuum. What you pray about and how you pray are determined by your unique God-given life. Hezekiah had a unique life. He was king in Judah. He had led the people of Judah to worship the God of the Old Testament as he wanted to be worshipped to an extent that no other king did. He responded to a terrifying threat of the Assyrian army coming to attack him with prayer and faith, and as a result, God decided to send an angel to kill 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night. So Hezekiah had a history of prayer and faith in the face of severe challenges. Hezekiah was about 39 years old when he got sick, and he either had no son, or a 7 year old son. Not entirely sure; but for a king, having a male heir was important; and especially so for Hezekiah, he was in th family line of the promised Messiah. All the way back to Adam and Noah and Abraham and David, male children perpetuated the promise of a coming Messiah; Hezekiah it seems at age 39 did not have a male child yet. Then Hezekiah got so sick that he was near death. That’s a big deal. He heard from God through the prophet Isaiah, “you will not recover, set your house in order, you will die.” That’s very unique among all the people who have ever gotten sick and near death. Usually, sick people have to live it out and see what happens. Hezekiah was given information about the future that most do not receive. The news was troubling. That’s the setting of his prayer on this occasion. When you think about your own prayer life, you need to think of it in the context of your unique God-given life. Your age, your health level, your history of challenges you’ve faced. Your skills and abilities that you’ve accrued as you’ve carried out your God given responsibilities; all of these things play into what you might or might not pray about. Probably most helpful for any of us to understand the setting of our prayers is this: we are all humans made to be image bearers of God himself, but we’ve all fallen from that image. We cause distance between ourselves and the one who wants to help us in our troubles. That distance needs to be closed if we are to pray in any meaningful way. And we have a God has found a way to close the gap between us and him in Jesus. He now invites us to invite him more and more into our lives. This leads into number 2. Prayer is part of a larger relationship of faith in God. When Hezekiah got the terrible news that he would die, he turned his face toward the wall and prayed to the LORD. What exactly is prayer? Prayer can be thought of as communicating with God about what you are doing together. And if there’s an obstacle in the way of what you’d like to do with God, it’s natural to pray about that. When Hezekiah got sick and near death and heard that he would die; prayer wasn’t suddenly something new that he did for the occasion. He was already in the habit of communicating regularly with God about what he was doing in his day to day life. He simply brought that prayer-attitude into the bad news he had just received. Hezekiah knew how enjoyable it was to live interacting with God, and he was grieved that this illness and death would interrupt what he was doing with God. He said, “Please remember, Lord, how I have walked before you in truth and with my whole heart. I have done what is good in your eyes.” Hezekiah was
saved by grace like everyone else who is saved. But he knew the joy of God’s grace being an active force in his life. He knew the enjoyment of walking before God in truth with his whole heart. He knew the goodness of seeking to do what is right, by the mercy and grace of God. He knew what it was to find the powerful help of God to actually live the way God wanted. And now death and illness were getting in the way of what he wanted to do in this world with God. He wept bitterly. That’s not necessarily a lack of faith in God’s ability to give life after death. It’s more a lamenting of all the things Hezekiah knew that God and him could do together if he were given more time in this life. Things like, having a male child to perpetuate the line of the Savior. Things like continue to lead the nation during the threat of Assyria. Things like continuing to crush idol worship and lead people to true worship of the true God. He wanted to do those things, and he poured out his emotions to God in prayer. We can get stuck if we think of prayer only as something we do in emergency situations or for religious occasions. Prayer is meant to be for all of life. It’s meant to accompany a life in which not just the religious things I do involve God, but all of what I do involves God. God is interested in all those details of your unique life. If you feel like your prayer life is stale or stagnant, maybe ask: are you doing a lot of things with God? If not, you’re not going to have much to pray about. If you only view the emergency situations or religious things you do as your life with God, then you can only pray about those things. If you come to prayer as a drastically different activity than what you do the rest of the time; you’ll find it challenging to get much out of it. But if prayer is seen as the natural extension of an entire life which is lived before God, in which he wants to bless you as you walk before him; prayer becomes a natural expression of the larger relationship that you know God has formed with you through Jesus. You will expect that God would be interested in hearing what you’re up to. You’d expect that he will take your prayers into account as he shapes the course of human lives and history. This leads to the most challenging lesson about prayer from this story. 3. Prayer is heard by and even mysteriously shapes how God chooses to unfold events in human life and history. Did God change his plans based on the prayer of Hezekiah? I know it’s natural for us to want to say, “Well, God knew what he was going to do, he was just testing Hezekiah.” And I know why you want to say that. You want to protect the omniscience of God. If God knows all things, how could he not have known he would give Hezekiah 15 more years? Good question. The only problem I had this week as I considered this story is this: The natural way of reading the words seems to indicate that in a mysterious way, God chose to allow Hezekiah’s prayer to change his mind. Is God so powerful and smart that he can’t choose to not know something is he chooses not to? Jesus we know laid aside the full use of his divine knowledge as he lived humbly in this world. Couldn’t it be the case that God choose to do the same thing with Hezekiah? God’s omnipotence is not the prisoner of his omniscience. If he chooses not to know something, he’s big enough to do that. If he chooses to change his mind, he’s big enough to do that. He’s God. Now I know this is a mysterious challenge to our theological understanding of God, but it sure seems to read this way. The Bible teaches that God allows your prayers to shape the way he decides to unfold human lives and human history. The most basic way to say it is this: There are some good things that God will not do unless he’s asked to do it. There are some bad things that he will not choose to prevent unless he is asked. I said some; because there are plenty of God things he does without being asked, and plenty of bad he prevents without being asked. Yet he has made provision for your prayers to play a role in his ordering of the universe and human life. Again, this is challenging, but the application for you is that your prayers do matter. God is not just rubber stamping your prayers for things that he was going to do anyways. This story teaches us
that in an act of astounding grace above all the other grace he shows, God actually allows your prayers to matter. A man named Pascal explains it this way, “God instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.” 4. Prayer and faith go together. Prayer relies on faith, and provides more occasion for faith. Prayer I said is communicating with God about what you’re doing together. Faith is acting as if undone things are done; as if invisible things are true; as if what did not exist will exist. That’s faith. Faith is reliance. You have faith right now that your chair will keep you from falling. You have faith that the floor isn’t going to give out underneath you, and that the ceiling isn’t going to fall on you. That’s faith. God invites you to have faith for example; that when you get sick, he will make you better. It may take your death and resurrection to get you there, but he’s committed to doing it. Faith means that you act as if you will get better when you’re sick. It’s ok to seek medical treatment, we don’t have the power of God to heal people instantly, we have to work on it. We rely on other people who have learned about healing. But ultimately, God will make a sick person better. He’s involved in the medical part too. So when you’re sick, ask him to help. It works in other occasions as well. If you are praying about prosperity in your life, he invites you to act as if it’s all from him. He invites you to act as if even better days are coming. He invites you to approach death as if even it will only lead to more life with him. 5. Faith relies on the promises of God, and God provides signs that his promises are true. The prophet Isaiah was told to do one of the most memorable u-turns in history. Instead of, “Get ready to die, you will not recover, set your house in order,” he went back and said, “God said, you’ll get 15 more years.” That was a promise. God gave it while Hezekiah was still sick, he invited him to believe that invisible healing would come; that a sick body would recover; that God had the power to do what he had promised. God even decided to give Hezekiah a means of healing and a sign of healing. The means was the fig paste. Isn’t it interesting that God knew about the fig paste the whole time. Why didn’t he just tell Isaiah the first time, “Get the fig paste, everything will get better?” Why not? That’s a mystery. Does God know of a thousand ways to completely eliminate covid 19? Yes he does. Why hasn’t he revealed it to us? He has his reasons. He invites us to trust him even if he doesn’t tell us the cure. He invites the appropriate people to busy themselves trying to work on that problem. God seems to want to let us learn and grow and solve things. That’s good. When the time is right, according to him, he can reveal cures. The fig paste worked for Hezekiah. As a further assurance that Hezekiah would get 15 more years, God did a miracle. The sun’s shadow moved backward ten steps on the stairs. The sun moved back. It seems that the course of the sun was reversed for a few hours, all as a way for Hezekiah to have greater trust in God. His faith was there as he prayed, but in praying and God responding, his prayer was given even more to believe, more reason for confidence in God. He does the same thing with you as well. God’s given you all kinds of reasons to trust him. The primary one is described in Romans 8, “If God did not spare his only son, but graciously gave him for us all; how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” That problem I described before, how our rebellion gets in the way of our prayer; we couldn’t solve that problem on our own. We needed Jesus to do that for us, and he has. He went to the place on the cross where in effect his prayers would not be answered. Jesus prayed in the garden, “If it is possible, may this cup of suffering pass from me.” And the Father said no to that prayer. We deserve to have our prayers rejected. Instead Jesus’ prayer was rejected so that he could die in our place. Yet he also added, “Not my will but yours be done.” In that regard, his prayer was answered. Jesus is the
ultimate example of someone facing a terrible situation, being cut off from all that is good in life being consumed in a death unlike any other. Yet in the most dramatic u-turn ever, 3 days later he came alive again; and Jesus right now is completely healed. He bears the marks of suffering, but he’s not suffering anymore. He died once for sins, and he’s done with that now. He’s alive so that he can be interacting with his people in their lives of prayer and faith still today. Jesus lives to be your greatest assurance that God loves you. He is your greatest sign that God wants to bless you. The sun may not go backwards for you, but the Scriptures tell you of all kinds of signs of God’s blessing and good will toward you. He gives you all you need for daily life. Don’t worry. He hasn’t consumed you any of the millions of times you have sinned against him. He’s not mad at you He loves you. He invites you to grow more and more into a person who relies on him for everything, and busies yourself with solving problems that people face in this world; like how to cure sicknesses and overcome obstacles that would separate people from Jesus. 6. Prayer brings our thoughts and feelings before God, and our thoughts and feelings are reshaped in the interaction of prayer. Hezekiah’s poem in response to his recovery could be summed up this way: I thought I was dead, and I cried. But God answered and rescued me from death and gave me peace. So I praise him. See the difference from the start to the finish? He started with tears and he ended with praise. And the bridge between the two was prayer. The form of the prayer faith doesn’t only need to be happy faith. Hezekiah displayed a sad faith. He wept bitterly. If you’re sad, you don’t have to pretend you’re not, pray a sad prayer. And God can transform your sadness as you pray. When you’re scared, you don’t have to pretend. Pray a scared prayer. If you’re angry, don’t pretend, pray an angry prayer. Chances are God will begin to change your anger. You don’t have to act like you’re more confident than you are. Come and be honest before God and he will transform and reshape your thoughts and interactions as you pray. Bring your honest thoughts and emotions before God, and expect him to reshape how you think and feel. 7. Prayer asks for things, and receives even more than what is asked for. Hezekiah wanted more time with God. He was given 15 years. They were not perfect years. We do hear that when some people from Babylon came and asked an explanation for why the sun had gone backward, Hezekiah responded in a prideful way. He received discipline from God for that. But he also did many fruitful things with those 15 years, not least of which being father to a son named Manasseh who would bear the promise of a Savior and Messiah to come from this royal family. When you pray, God is able to give you infinitely more than you can ever ask or imagine. You might pray for a cure for a sickness; God will give you a cure from every sickness. You may pray for a loved one’s life to improve, maybe their finances or relationships need work. God has a way of giving the infinite riches of his kingdom where every relationship will be perfect harmony. You ask for an assurance that you’re wanted, that you’re desired, that you’re good for something. God responds by sending his own Son, in the form of human flesh, to die and rise again to assure you that though you are more sinful than you know, you are also more valued, accepted, and treasured by him that you ever would have dared believed. The best way to test the validity of these 7 lessons about prayer is not to just listen to a Pastor tell you about them, but try them out. Do a life experiment. Pray, and see what happens. Ask God to allow you to view more and more of your life as an interactive communication with him in which you more and more act as if the invisible promises of God are true. Ask for that, and see what happens. You have a good God. You have a powerful God. You have a God who is near you and wants to help you. I close with the words of Hezekiah “What can I say? God has spoken and he acts. I live because he gives me life. Even the bitter things I’ve experienced turn out for my benefit. And even death will not steal this life with God away from me. The LORD will save me.” And he will save you too. Amen.