The Lord’s Day Morning
June 25, 2006
2 Chronicles 32:24
When Healing May Not Necessarily Be The Best Thing
Dr. Derek W. H. Thomas
Now turn with me, if you would, not to I Kings 17, as the bulletin suggests (that’s next week’s sermon), but turn with me to II Chronicles 32; and we’ll be beginning to read at verse 24, and we’ll be reading through to the end of the chapter.
This is the story of Hezekiah. It’s also repeated in II Kings 20, and also in Isaiah 38-39. Before we read the passage together, let’s pray.
Father, we thank You now for this Your word. We ask Your rich blessing. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
II Chronicles 32, at verse 24:
“In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill, and he prayed to the Lord, and the Lord spoke to him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah gave no return for the benefit he received, because his heart was proud; therefore wrath came on him and on Judah and Jerusalem. However, Hezekiah humbled the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come on them in the days of Hezekiah.
“Now Hezekiah had immense riches and honor, and he made for himself treasuries for silver, gold, precious stones, spices, shields and all kinds of valuable articles, storehouses also for the produce of grain, wine and oil, pens for all kinds of cattle and sheepfolds for the flocks. He made cities for himself, and acquired flocks and herds in abundance; for God had given him very great wealth. It was Hezekiah who stopped the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon and directed them to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all that he did.
Even in the matter of the envoys of the rulers of Babylon, who sent to him to inquire of the wonder that had happened in the land, God left him alone only to test him, that He might know all that was in his heart.
“Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and his deeds of devotion, behold, they are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, in the Book of the Kings of Judah and Israel. So Hezekiah slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the upper section of the tombs of the sons of David; and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem honored him at his death. And his son Manasseh became king in his place.”
Amen. May God bless to us the reading of His holy and inerrant word.
There’s a story (I’m not sure as to its veracity...it sounds plausible enough) about the famous (or infamous) boxer, Mohammed Ali. (I remember when he was still called Cassius Clay.) And he was on board a flight heading to London to one of his boxing matches, and the captain came on the intercom and told the passengers that they were heading towards “moderate turbulence.” Now, all you travelers will know that when the captain speaks of “moderate turbulence” that means if you have any religious feelings whatsoever, you should now put them into action! And he announced that they should fasten their seatbelts. Everyone did so, except for Mohammed Ali, and the stewardess (or the flight attendant...she was probably called a stewardess then) came up and urged him to put on his seatbelt. And he said to her, “Ma’am, Superman needs no seatbelt!” and she replied equally, “And Superman needs no airplane!”
Those of you who remember Mohammed Ali will remember he was a man of enormous ego and pride. This is a story about pride in the life of King Hezekiah.
Hezekiah was perhaps the greatest king since David and Solomon. The son of King Ahaz, and his mother, Abijah. He became king when he was 25 years old, and his reign was to last for 29 years. He ruled in a critical period in the life of Judah and Jerusalem. The Assyrians, under especially Shalmaneser V, and later Sennacherib, had already captured the northern kingdom of Elam, and were now beginning to threaten Samaria, and soon would march their troops down into the valleys of the coastlands of the Mediterranean and would threaten Israel, and eventually Jerusalem.
Encouraged by the prophet Isaiah, King Hezekiah urged a period of reformation in the land. Idolatry was removed from Jerusalem and from the temple. The Levitical priests were restored to their proper function. He sent out letters urging the men and women of Judah, and of Israel, to the north, to come and celebrate Passover once again in Jerusalem. He strengthened the borders, enlarged the borders of Judah; made people tithe their crops; built an aqueduct, referred to here in our reading in verse 30: “...stopped up the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon” – the Springs of Gihon.
Water, of course, was a precious commodity. One of the ways the Assyrians thought they would capture Jerusalem was to surround the city and cut off the water supply. Hezekiah did what his predecessors had failed to do, and that is he stopped up the water supply at the Springs of Gihon, and brought the water underground to a tunnel to the Pools of Siloam. It was a piece of engineering of immense significance in the pre-Classical period. It was a tunnel that stretched in an “s” formation for 1700 feet – about 500 meters. You can still visit. You can walk if you like, if you’re prepared to get your feet wet, and maybe your knees wet. You can walk through the tunnel and emerge at the Pool of Siloam even until this day.
Now this story of Hezekiah is first of all a story about sickness and prayer, and the mercy of God; in the second place, it’s also a story about discipleship and frailty – especially pride; and, thirdly, it’s also a story about death and honor that’s given to the king. I want to focus on the first two of those issues.
I. In the first place, it’s a story about sickness.
We’re told in verse 24: “In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill.” You have to read the parallel accounts. I have absolutely no time to tell you to go and read them now, but in II Kings 20, and in Isaiah 38-39, we have the parallel account. This story is told three times in the Bible. That says, perhaps, something of the significance of the story.
We’re told in the parallel accounts that Hezekiah had “a boil.” Now, a boil isn’t life-threatening, usually, so maybe the translation is somewhat euphemistic. It was a mortal disease. He became mortally ill. In fact, Hezekiah was told by Isaiah the prophet, “Prepare your house, because you’re going to die.” Now, when a prophet like Isaiah tells you that, you realize that you have to mean business.
Sorting out the chronology here can be a little difficult. Scholars and commentators tend to think that what we read in this passage actually occurred before what we have in the very preceding verses. In other words, this sickness did not come at that time when the Assyrians came at the time of Sennacherib, and Sennacherib sent those threatening letters to Hezekiah, you remember, and Hezekiah went into the temple and spread them out before the Lord. There’s no indication in the text here that this sickness came as a result of the judgment of God because of Hezekiah’s pride; actually, it occurred a long time before that. It occurred, according to II Kings 20, in his fourteenth year, when he would have been 39 years old.
The Assyrians came down on two occasions. They came down and threatened Jerusalem in his thirty-ninth year, the fourteenth year of his reign. It was apparently something to do with some rebellion in Egypt, and Assyria saw its opportunity, perhaps, to advance its borders into North Africa, and in doing so camped its soldiers on the Mediterranean plains west of Jerusalem.
And Hezekiah falls sick with a mortal disease. And what does he do? He prays. He takes it to the Lord. And we’re told he prayed to the Lord, and the Lord spoke to him and gave him a sign. You remember, perhaps, from the parallel accounts what exactly happened. He was to make some kind of poultice, and within three days he was to be cured. But Hezekiah asked for a sign, and you remember what the sign was. It was that the shadow of the sundial – or some kind of time measuring device in Jerusalem – that the shadow on that timepiece would go back by ten divisions or increments. And God healed him.
We live in a fallen world. We live in a world ravaged by the consequences of the fall in the Garden of Eden. Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one which is to come, whose builder and maker is God. And Hezekiah falls sick. We’re not told that it was a judgment of God; we’re not told the reason for it. It was evidently to teach him something. You remember the psalmist said, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word.” A period of sickness can teach us many things, but it can teach us our frailty. It can teach us our mortality, to “number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Sickness can remind us that we oughtn’t to live for the things of this world, but that there is coming a day when we shall die, and our souls will separate from our mortal bodies, and we shall be brought into the very presence of God; that there is coming a Day of Judgment.
Sickness can be humbling. Sickness can teach us to pray, as perhaps nothing else can. When we find ourselves at the very end, with nowhere else to turn, with no one else to look to, in the weakness and frailty of our condition God can bring us into a place where all that is left for us to do is to pray. And God heard him, and God answered his prayer.
Now, be careful what you pray for. God gave to Hezekiah fifteen extra years. But, you know, one of the lessons of the life of Hezekiah seems to be that it may well have been better if Hezekiah had not prayed that prayer, because of what happens—because we read in verse 25 that Hezekiah “gave no return for the benefits he received, because his heart was proud.”
II. A lesson about discipleship and frailty
This is a lesson about sickness and prayer, and God answering prayer. But be careful what you pray for, because this is also a story about discipleship and frailty; because Hezekiah forgot who he was and he forgot the mercy of God, and he forgot what it means to live a life in total dependence upon God day by day, and hour by hour, and minute by minute. He did an extraordinarily foolish thing.
You see, I think Hezekiah began to think that, as a consequence of his healing, he was someone special. He began to think that he was invincible. We’re told in verse 31...and Chronicles glosses over some of the details, even in the matter of the envoys of the rulers of Babylon. Assyria had conquered Babylon and sent its ruler, Merodach-Beladan, into exile. As far as the Assyrians were concerned, he was a terrorist. And now that Assyria is threatening Israel once again, Merodach-Beladan comes to Jerusalem and offers to make some kind of treaty with King Hezekiah: that perhaps together Judah, Jerusalem, and Babylon might together in a treaty, in a coalition, fight the mighty Assyrian Empire.
Isaiah had warned Hezekiah not to enter into foreign alliances. Not only did Hezekiah invite Merodach-Beladan and his envoys into the city of Jerusalem, he showed him all the treasures. Isaiah at one point asks him “What did you not show him?” and Hezekiah says “Nothing.” He’d showed him everything! It would be like inviting Al-Qaeda into the Pentagon and giving them the blueprints, and saying, ‘Here, for good measure, are the hard drives, and you can take them home and study them!’ It was an incredibly foolish thing, and he would pay the consequence – not in his lifetime, but he would ultimately pay the consequence, because the threat would not come from Assyria, it would come from Babylon. You know your Old Testament history: they will end up in exile in Babylon because of this folly.
Be careful what you ask for. Be careful what you pray for. Be careful when you pray for healing, because it may not necessarily be the best thing. That’s a strange lesson, isn’t it? Hezekiah found himself in a hard place, and God granted him his request, but tested him; and in the test he was found wanting. He was filled with pride. He thought he was invincible. He thought he could do the most incredible thing and get away with it.
J.I. Packer says, “The focus of health in the soul is humility, while the root of inward corruption is pride.” In the spiritual life, nothing stands still. If we’re not constantly growing downward to humility, we shall be steadily swelling up and running to seed under the influence of pride. God left him to test his heart. And do you remember what Robert Murray M’Cheyne said? You know Robert Murray M’Cheyne only lived until he was 29 years old. He was only in the ministry for six years, and yet we remember him with great affection. He said, “The seeds of every known sin lie within each one of our hearts.” And God left Hezekiah in order to test him, and to show him his frailty.
You know, we can live too long. We can live too long. That’s why Paul says, “...to be with Christ, which is far better.” To have an eye to the eternal city, whose builder and maker is God, because while we are in this world we are always, you and I, subject to the test of pride.
There are five things to do to fight the sin of pride.
First of all, to remember that we are sinners, and that the root and seed of every known sin lies within each one of our hearts – to remember that.
Secondly, to ponder that this condition of mine is so desperate that it took the death of God’s only begotten Son on the cross to atone for that sin. That’s how desperate our condition is.
And, thirdly, to meditate on the Scripture that says “Clothe yourselves with humility, because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
And, fourthly, to pray that our eyes and the eyes of our hearts would see these biblical truths for what they really are.
And, fifthly, not only to see them for what they really are, but to feel them for what they really are...that God would bring us to meekness and lowliness, and brokenness before Him.
In the golf Masters of 1961, Arnold Palmer was on the eighteenth hole. He was a shot ahead, and by all accounts it was a marvelous tee shot. And as he walked up the fairway to the warm applause of his home audience, he spied a friend who put out his hand toward him and said to him, “Well done, champion!” And Arnold Palmer took his hand and shook it, and said, “Thank you.” But it was a big mistake, because he lost his focus on the game, and his next shot went into the sand, and getting out of the sand trap he missed the green, and missed the putt, and lost the Masters. It was pride. Arnold Palmer wrote: “You don’t forget a mistake like that. You just learn from it and become determined that you will never do it again.”
Be careful, my friends, what you ask for, because in the granting of the answer you may well be tested like Hezekiah was tested and found to be wanting.
Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank You for this Your word. Write it now upon our hearts, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Let’s sing together from No. 108, Whate’er My God Ordains is Right, and we’ll sing just the first verse, standing to sing.