Well this morning, as has been said, we are facing some unusual circumstances as our community responds to the COVID-19 pandemic as you heard from Cory earlier, the elders here at First Church have responded quickly and decisively and well in their resolve to protect you and to do what we can to slow the spread of this disease and to begin to put measures in place that will position us for faithful ministry, both in the congregation and in the city of Jackson more broadly. We are resolved as a church to love our neighbors in Jesus’ name. And that means that we want to do more than simply cancel services or give information on self-quarantine procedures. We want to do more than adopt a merely defensive posture.
We recognize that there are vulnerable members of our city for whom a health crisis like this poses a real threat. There are some who cannot afford to stock up on a few weeks’ extra supplies, who live week to week or even day to day who need the kind of basic provisions others of us take for granted. There are tired and anxious working parents in our communities whose children must now stay home from school and those parents are wondering how they are going to provide adequate child care and protect their family’s health and still bring home an income. And there are healthcare professionals and administrators and government agency workers who will be called upon to invest unusual energy and devotion in the hard work of protecting our neighbors, and they need our prayers and our support.
Now I’m yet to meet anyone who is panicking. No one is out of control, at least none that I’ve met, but let’s admit that we are at least concerned. We don’t know what’s coming. We watch in dismay as this disease spreads around the world and we have no way to know how long the pandemic will last or what it’s impact will be. But as Christians, given the range of physical and spiritual needs surrounding us, we have to find a way to face our fears in faith and to go out to our neighbors with the good news about Jesus and with a listening ear and a helping hand wherever it’s needed. Now the best way to do that, to face our fears in faith, the best way to do that, the way that God has ordained for us to do that, is to take up our Bibles and to hear His voice speaking truth to our hearts.
So do please take a Bible in hand if you would and turn with me in your copies of God’s Word not to the next passage in our on-going studies in 1 Peter. God willing, we’ll come to that next time, but instead if you would turn with me please to 2 Kings chapter 20; 2 Kings chapter 20, verses 1 through 11. We’re turning there because it is, in my judgment, one place where the Word of God speaks to sickness and how to respond to it. It speaks to the sovereignty and the goodness of God in the midst of trials. And above everything else, ultimately this passage points us to the one person in whom lasting hope in difficult days can be found. It points us, as I hope we’ll see, to the Lord Jesus Christ.
We could sum up the themes of our passage this way then. We could say it is first of all about responding to suffering. Responding to suffering. Then secondly, it’s about remembering sovereignty. Responding to suffering. Remembering sovereignty; the sovereignty of God amidst our trials. And thirdly, it’s about resting on the Savior. Responding to suffering. Remembering sovereignty. Resting on the Savior. Actually, I would argue those three themes together provide us a kind of tool kit to face down these dark days with bright hope and a resolve to love others well with the Gospel. Responding to suffering. Remembering sovereignty. Resting on the Savior.
Now before we read the passage, let’s briefly pause and pray once again and ask for God to help us. Let’s pray.
O Lord, give us ears to hear now, we pray, what Your Spirit says to the church. Give light, O Lord, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Second Kings chapter 20 at the first verse. This is the Word of God:
“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, saying, ‘Now, O Lord, please 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. And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: ‘Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord, and 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 I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David's sake.’ And Isaiah said, ‘Bring a cake of figs. And let them take and lay it on the boil, that he may recover.’
And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘What shall be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord on the third day?’ And Isaiah said, ‘This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that he has promised: shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?’ And Hezekiah answered, ‘It is an easy thing for the shadow to lengthen ten steps. Rather let the shadow go back ten steps.’ And Isaiah the prophet called to the Lord, and he brought the shadow back ten steps, by which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy, inerrant Word.
While given the pandemic and my own fearful heart, here’s my question as we consider the text before us this morning. “Where can we find courage and faith and the grace to serve others when the temptation is to hunker down and just look out for number one?” Or how about this, “Where do I find confidence and hope when we don’t know what’s coming and we can feel real fear nosing around in the shadows of our hearts like a wolf just on the edges of the campfire, just out of sight? You know he’s there, enough to give us a sense of it but not yet overtaking us; still in the shadows, just out of sight.” It wouldn’t take much, I don’t think, to nudge us into panic mode. I was in Kroger the other day and the shelves were empty. It was extraordinary. So how do we keep the wolves of panic and fear and unbelief at bay? Those are my questions as I come to 2 Kings 20. Maybe they are yours too. Needless to say, I think there are some answers for us here, so let’s take a look at the text together, shall we.
Responding to Suffering
And notice what we learn first of all about responding to suffering. Responding to suffering. That really is, I think, going to be a key question for us to get right in the weeks ahead – “How shall we respond to suffering?” Before we hear the answer of the Scriptures, let me give you a little bit of historical background and some context that might help make sense of what is happening in our passage. You will remember that after King Solomon, the nation of Israel divided into two. At the point we join the story, the northern kingdom called Israel had been overrun by the Assyrian empire and its people taken captive. The southern kingdom where the action takes place in our story, called the kingdom of Judah, not unlike their northern compatriots had endured a series of compromised, syncretistic monarchs until, under King Ahaz, Judah too became a vassal state paying tribute to the Assyrian king.
But when Hezekiah, Ahaz’s son, ascended to the throne at the ripe old age of twenty-five years old, things began to change in the kingdom of Judah. Hezekiah was a godly man. He removed the pagan shrines that had sprung up under his predecessors. Second Kings 18:5 and following says this about him. He “trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him, for he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses and the Lord was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him.” And so, since Judah under Hezekiah rebelled against Assyria, Assyria has come and besieged the capital city, the city of Jerusalem. And you can read the story in chapters 18 and 19 of 2 Kings. They frankly portray Hezekiah in a pretty great light. He’s a remarkable king. He prays. In chapter 19 he trusts the Lord in the midst of this dreadful siege and the Lord fights for Judah. And eventually the Lord destroys 185,000 of the enemy, enduring that the siege is lifted.
And then we come to our passage in chapter 20 and the bubble rather bursts. We’re shown Hezekiah’s weakness and his sin in the two incidents that take place in chapter 20. We’re only reflecting on the first of the two and it’s important to understand the action that takes place in chapter 20 is not happening in its chronological sequence. These are put together here at the end of Hezekiah’s story, partly because the writer wants to remind us, having shown us how great Hezekiah was, that the best of men are men at best. And as great as he was, he’s not yet the son of David that God had promised, the great Messiah-King who would redeem Israel. He’s a flawed hero. And also by putting Hezekiah’s flaws here at the end of the story we have a great segue to the next king who will ascend to the throne after him, Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, who is a dreadful monarch who systematically undoes all the good that Hezekiah his father has done and restores the pagan shrines and altars to Baal and so on.
Now if you look at chapter 20 verse 6, we learn that the events that take place in these opening eleven verses of the chapter occurred fifteen years before the end of Hezekiah’s reign. That puts the events of verses 1 through 11 in the same year that the Assyrians invaded Judah and besieged the city of Jerusalem. And so you can imagine the scene. Outside the city walls, the vast armies of Assyria are gathered. Nothing now gets in or out of the city. The city is in lockdown. And inside the walls the people quake in fear. And meanwhile, up at the palace their king lies dying. And it’s just then that the prophet Isaiah comes to visit the king with a word from the Lord. Sadly, it’s not a particularly uplifting message, is it? Verse 1, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Set your house in order for you shall die. You shall not recover.’” It’s a little brutal to be sure. It must have seen awfully cruel, even to poor Hezekiah. It’s actually an unusual mercy that is being afforded to the king. To know when one’s end is coming is not something many of us will ever experience, but if you knew it was coming soon, I wonder what you would do. Isaiah’s advice to Hezekiah is to put his house in order.
This is not super spiritual, abstract counsel from a preacher with his head in the clouds. This is concrete, practical wisdom, because that’s what God is like, you know. The same God who sent Isaiah the prophet to predict the coming of Messiah, “For unto us a child is born. Unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” The same prophet now shows up at the palace to tell Hezekiah to make a will, to put his house in order, and to make practical provision. God is the God of piety and practicality and we ought not to forget that in these difficult days.
But do look at how Hezekiah responds. That’s what I really want us to focus on here. In verse 2, “Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord.” Now what do you make of that, “Hezekiah turned his face to the wall”? It’s an odd little detail, isn’t it? What does it mean? Listen to how one commentator deals with it. I find this to be quite helpful. “The face has great symbolic significance in the ancient world and gestures to do with the face are extremely important, hence lifting the face is a synonym for showing respect and indicates that a person is thus treated as an equal. Turning the face either toward or away is either to pay attention or to disregard something or somebody. In spite of his piety and faithfulness thus far, the news of his impending death sent Hezekiah into a sulk.” That’s what he’s doing. He’s sulking. That gives us a sense of what’s really going on here. Hezekiah is sulking.
Back in chapter 18 when we first are introduced to Hezekiah, he’s spoken of almost as an ideal king, not unlike his ancestor King David, Israel’s greatest king. But here in this moment of sulking and self-pity, it’s not King David that he most resembles. It’s actually the wicked King Ahab, king of Israel, who caused so much trouble for Elijah. Do you remember King Ahab? Back in 1 Kings 21, there’s an interesting incident in which the same language that’s used here is used of King Ahab. A man called Naboth refuses to sell Ahab his vineyard, so the evil king “went into his house vexed and sullen, lay down on his bed and turned his face away.” That’s what Hezekiah is doing. He doesn’t look like David here; he looks like the wicked, entitled, sulking Ahab. That’s quite an indictment.
And notice Hezekiah’s prayer. To what does the king point as he seeks mercy and deliverance from God? Why does Hezekiah want God to rescue him? Notice he points to himself, doesn’t he? In the previous chapter, chapter 19, we have an amazing prayer from Hezekiah that dwells on the greatness of God and the sovereignty of God in all things. “O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God. You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made the heavens and the earth. Incline Your ear,” and so on. He’s concerned in that prayer for the glory of God and the honor of His name. All of that is lost on him here. Here, he pleads his own goodness. Here, he is concerned only with himself. “I walked in faithfulness with my whole heart and have done what is good in Your sight. You owe me! Is this really what I deserve, Lord? Have You forgotten what I’ve done for You?” That’s how he’s praying.
Now I have to say to you honestly, that was a real rebuke to me when I read these words. I find it easy – I wonder if you can relate to this – I find it easy to become entitled, to feel like ultimately deep down, underneath all my better theology somehow the universe still really works on a quid pro quo kind of basis. If I’m good I get good things; if I’m bad, bad things happen. That’s the trap Hezekiah is falling into, isn’t it? He thinks he deserves better. But what happens when you start to think that way, when inexplicable suffering comes, not as a result of misbehavior but as a mysterious part of God’s hard providence? What happens when you think you’re owed like this? What happens? When inexplicable suffering comes, you fall apart. Your world stops making sense. “I thought this was a quid pro quo deal, Lord. What’s going on? This isn’t the rules of the game.” That’s certainly what seems to be happening to Hezekiah. He’s falling apart.
Now look, I’m not unsympathetic to poor Hezekiah here. He’s thirty-nine years of age and he’s been told he’s going to die. That’s really tough, for sure, but part of the message here is that trials, even severe trials, have a way of exposing the deep idols of our hearts. As king, Hezekiah had been out smashing the idols of Judah – he’d torn down the altars to Baal and smashed the shrines to Asherah – he’d been fighting with the idols of the nation and he has overlooked some of the idols festering in his own heart. And this is what it’s taking to expose them to view. So I can’t help but wonder if, as we examine ourselves in light of our text this morning, part of what God intends as we deal with suffering is to expose the remaining idols of our hearts. Where are we clinging to a sense of entitlement? Do we find ourselves saying in the quiet of our own conscience, “I deserve better than this”? Remember that these events in chapter 20 took place chronologically before chapter 19, in the year that Assyria first invaded. In other words, Hezekiah had to have his heart idols exposed like this here before he could really grasp the remarkable vision of God’s glory that fills his prayers in chapter 19.
You see what God is doing? He’s doing open-heart surgery on Hezekiah in chapter 20:1-11. He’s working to make him into the kind of man who could weather the storm of Assyrian oppression that was to come. And it may be, it may be that God is doing something similar in us, in you and in me, in these days. Suffering has a way of exposing our hearts to view. Perhaps we’re being called to smash idols of entitlement and self-righteousness that are still festering away deep down. Responding to suffering.
Remembering God’s Sovereignty
The second thing we learn here that can help us as we process how to respond in these difficult days has to do, secondly, with remembering sovereignty. So responding to suffering; now remembering God’s sovereignty. While Hezekiah is weeping bitterly, he’s wallowing really in self-pity, in verse 4 we’re told that Isaiah the prophet has turned for home. He only makes it as far as the middle court of the palace, however, before the Lord stops him in his tracks and sends him back to the king with a second message, a new message in verses 5 and 6. Would you look there with me please, verses 5 and 6? Wonderfully, God promises to heal the king. He’s going to live fifteen more years. But did you see why God will heal him? We saw while Hezekiah wants God to heal him – “I’m a good guy and You owe me!” That’s Hezekiah’s expectation. But now that God says He will heal him, what is it that motivates His heart?
Notice the references to David that bracket the promise of healing. You see them in verse 5? “Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father.” Verse 6, “I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.” God had made a covenant with David to raise up from his descendants a king who would redeem His people. God heals Hezekiah because He made a covenant with David. And God will keep that covenant. God’s integrity is on the line – “For my own sake and for the sake of David.” He will be faithful to keep His word. The covenant, ultimately, is Hezekiah’s refuge. That’s the lesson here. The promise is his hiding place. God has mercy because He is David’s God. He is Hezekiah’s Savior because He is David’s God.
So listen, the reason you or I can have hope amidst suffering and pandemics and national fears, the reason we can say with the psalmist, “Who have I in heaven but You? There is none on earth I desire beside You. My heart and my flesh may fail, but You are the strength of my heart and my portion forever,” the reason you can say those words with confidence is not, “I was good enough and I deserve it,” but it is, “God has promised to save a people by means of David’s Son. God has made a covenant, and in that covenant there is salvation for all who trust in David’s heir, the Lord Jesus Christ.” There are comforts to be found, to be sure, in government briefings and in medical interventions and in wise measures to prevent community infection. But to paraphrase the apostle Paul, “if only in these things we have hope, we are of all men most to be pitied.” Temporal hope for earthly mercy isn’t nothing, but it’s not enough, not nearly enough to be your only comfort in life and in death. “Your only comfort in life and in death must be that you are not your own but belong in body and soul to your faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully paid for all your sins and set you free from all the power of the devil, and so He also preserves you in such a way that without the will of your Heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from your head, and indeed all things must work together for your salvation.” Is that your hope in these times of trouble? All other hopes are fleeting and temporary. All other ground is sinking sand.
And then look at verse 7 with me please. Verse 7, the prophet applies a poultice of sorts made from a cake of figs. Scholars tell us it was not an uncommon method of treating skin diseases. Likely it had been tried before now in the case of King Hezekiah to no effect. But now, God is going to make what had been ineffective, effective. We must always make use of earthly means available to us, but we must also confess that the human means without divine power will always be useless. So our confidence must not be simply in earthly solutions but in God’s sovereignty. God is going to take what had been ineffective and make it effective. But not unlike Gideon with his fleece – remember Gideon – or the Pharisees who demand from Jesus a sign to prove that He is sent from God, Hezekiah needs more to garrison his faith in the face of the tragedy that is afflicting him. He wants something miraculous.
So verses 9 to 11 we have the bizarre little account of the Lord making the shadows on the staircase of Ahaz move backwards ten steps. And scholars blow a gasket really trying to figure out what’s going on in this little miraculous moment. But really the message is very simple. He’s being reminded that God is on the throne. He controls light and shadow, sun and moon, day and night. Our times are in His hands. He can give Hezekiah fifteen more years, you see. He can turn the clock back, as it were. To Him belong the great issues of life and death, heaven and hell, mercy and judgment. So here’s the point. Though we repeat it often, I at least need to grasp it more firmly now than ever; it’s worth saying again, isn’t it? “God works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”
Do you believe that? Do you believe that right now – that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him? I think we need to take hold of that fact as firmly as ever. Don’t you? “Deep in unfathomable mines of never failing skill. He treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense but trust Him for His grace. Behind a frowning providence” – what – “He hides a smiling face.” God is good and He reigns and we must rest in that. So where do we find courage and faith in the face of the present crisis? Well first, we respond to suffering by shattering heart idols and clinging to Jesus Christ. Secondly, we remember that God is sovereign and we really can trust His covenant promises. We are small. He is big. We are sinners. He is good. We are pretty dumb sometimes. He is all wise. We are weak. He is the sovereign Lord. You really can trust Him. You really can.
Resting On the Savior
Respond to suffering. Remember sovereignty. Finally, very quickly, the last thing this passage teaches us to do is rest on our Savior. I think it’s hugely significant that just as the Assyrians invade and begin to afflict Jerusalem, King Hezekiah is stricken with a skin disease that will take his life. You see, among God’s people in the Old Testament the king represents the people. The fate of the king and the fate of the people are bound together. As goes the king, so goes the people. So when God says to Hezekiah, “I’m going to give you fifteen more years and on the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord,” He’s promising more than simply a reprieve for the king. He’s promising salvation for the people. The king’s deliverance from death on the third day will spell deliverance from Assyrian destruction for the whole community.
Now in the New Testament, you will have come across this phrase in one form or another often enough, referring to the resurrection of Jesus, that “on the third day He rose from the dead, according to the Scriptures.” But here’s the thing that’s always perplexed me. Nowhere is there a prophetic prediction that specifies the third day as the day of resurrection expressly. So what does it mean that He was raised on the third day “in accordance with the Scriptures”? There are no explicit third day predictions, but there are a number of places throughout the Old Testament scriptures where God raises or delivers or rescues His king or His people on the third day. It’s a pattern, you see. Remember Jonah, delivered on the third day from the belly of the great fish. In Hosea 6:2, the people of Judah suffering under the Assyrians say, “Come, let us return to the Lord for He has torn us that He may heal us. He has struck us down, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us. On the third day, He will raise us up that we may live before Him.” And here, Hezekiah, the Davidic king, the representative of the people is delivered on the third day leading to the deliverance of Jerusalem.
That’s the pattern according to which God worked when He raised His Son, David’s true and final heir, the Lord Jesus Christ, from the dead. And in His deliverance, in the deliverance of God’s great King, our deliverance is secured. All who trust in Him have hope of pardon and peace in life and in death that no suffering, no sorrow, and no sickness can ever thwart.
And so before we close, let me just highlight for you what kind of reception you are likely to meet if in response to the Word of God this morning you resolve to turn to Jesus Christ. Look at verse 5 very quickly. God tells sulking Hezekiah – this is beautiful – “I have heard your prayers; I have seen your tears,” and He heals him. He tells entitled, self-righteous Hezekiah who doesn’t deserve to be heard, “I’m listening to you and your tears are precious to me.” Look, no one who ever cried to God or wept a tear before Him has ever gone unnoticed or unheard. In Jesus Christ, the God of covenant mercy is ready. He inclines toward you. He is eager to hear and save and show mercy to undeserving sinners like Hezekiah, like me, like you. This text points us to Christ. Come what may in this crisis, Jesus, Jesus is the One that we need most. He is our only comfort in life and in death, in crises and pandemics and in all our insecurities about tomorrow. He is God’s provision for your soul. He hears your prayers. He sees your tears. Get yourself to Him. He is ready to welcome you.
Let’s pray together.
Our Father, we bow in gratitude for the promise of mercy in Jesus Christ. Please grant that the idols of our hearts, of entitlement and self-pity might be shattered, not prevent us from fleeing to the Savior. Draw us all, please, back to Christ. Fill our vision with Him. Remind us that You reign on the throne and that You are good. And teach us anew to trust You. And in the confidence such trust can give, deploy us in Your service as agents of Gospel mercy in a fearful day and in a fearful community. For we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.