Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Isaiah 38 and part of verse
17. Isaiah 38, verse 17. But thou hast in love to my soul
delivered it from the pit of corruption, for thou hast cast
all my sins behind thy back. Isaiah 38 and verse 17. This time in the history of Judah
was a very critical time The Assyrian armies had already
come and taken the other 10 tribes into captivity, and they were
seeking then to take Jerusalem. The Lord did defend the city. He delivered them, as he said
he would here in this chapter. I will deliver thee and this
city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend
this city. Verse six. But just at the time
one would think in God's providence that the king should be in good
health and able to lead and direct his armies, then he is told that
he must put his house in order and die. We think of one of our
hymns when united trials meet, show a path of safe retreat. Many times we've had these things
in our lives where it has seemed that the Lord is adding one sorrow
upon another, one difficulty upon another, and where there
is one trial, adding another to it instead of giving that
help that we would expect. And so this chapter is a very
encouraging chapter in that way. to see how the Lord brought these
two great trials together. It wasn't just two trials, there's
another one bound up with it, because Hezekiah was in line
to Christ, and Hezekiah at this time had not a son. And so if he had have died, then
those that were looking to the line of Christ, the seed of the
woman, would have seen that line broken and the promises of God
made of none effect. It was always determined God
would certainly have that line and he did because in the 15
years that were added to Hezekiah's life, his son Manasseh was born. And so that was an added trial
here. Not just that Hezekiah, and Hezekiah
was a godly king, one that was, had the faith and was looking
to Christ. Not just, it wasn't just his
life as it were. There was other things bound
up with it. His own faith in the coming Messiah
was with it as well. When we know, of course, what
happened with Ezekiah's son Manasseh, one of the most wicked kings
that there ever was. And yet he had a long reign,
over 50 years. And yet the Lord did turn him
and did convert him and brought him to a real true conversion
and true repentance. But because of Manasseh's sins,
God said that he would visit Judah than he did and they were
carried away some 130 years after this time into Babylonian captivity. We are reminded in accounts like
this that we have in the Holy Word of God a real history. It is speaking of nations, it
is speaking of real men and women, is speaking of their real trials
in their lives, is speaking of events in history that are recorded
as such. And these things are written
for our learning, for spiritual instruction and teaching, and
through them we have those types of Christ and types of the Church
of God and the experience of the people of God. May we always
remember that right from Abel to the last one of God's children,
they shall have an experience, a experience of saving grace,
experience of the faith of God. However dark the view was in
Old Testament times, yet they did see Christ. And we are told
of that in those long cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 11, that
they all died in faith. And there's evidence in their
lives that they walked by faith as well. And Hezekiah was one
of those. And so we have here a record
of his sickness, of his prayer, of his healing, of his experience,
of his thanksgiving. And where our text is, it is
his own writing, the writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, when
he had been sick and was recovered of his sickness. So I want to look at the word
this evening and look at it in predominantly a spiritual way,
but not losing sight of the literal that is before us. So firstly,
corruption known and felt. And secondly, a prayer for deliverance. And thirdly, deliverance itself. Reading the whole of the verse,
17, Behold, for peace I had great bitterness, but thou hast in
love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption, for
thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. In a very literal way,
Hezekiah had set before him the pit of corruption, that is the
grave. Had he died, his body would have
been laid in the grave, would have seen corruption, would have
returned to the dust. That was literally before him. But we each have that before
us, unless we're those that are alive when Christ returns. that there's no man living that
shall not see death or the equivalent of death of that transforming
as Elijah and Enoch did and as those at the end will realize. And so the grave is before us
each and like with Hezekiah in the literal way it was just put
off. by 15 years, and however many
answers we might have in our life spared and lengthened out,
in the end, like Hezekiah, we must be brought down to the grave. May that always be our thought
in all of our afflictions and all of our trials. There is a
sickness that shall be unto death, but there are those sicknesses
that are not unto death. And though it appeared here at
first and was told so of Hezekiah, yet the Lord worked a miracle,
two miracles really, one in raising him to life again, and the other
in the sign that was given. There must have been an alteration
in the course of the heavens. There was also another adjustment
in the days of Joshua when the sun stood still for a whole day. But here is adjustment 10 degrees
backward which was a miracle as well, otherwise it would not
have been a sign from heaven. It was what God alone could do. So there was the literal aspect
of realizing what was before him, a dying body, a body that
was to return to the dust, But surely there is more than
that, because he speaks of his sin. And when we think of death
and we think of the grave and we think of corruption, why is
it so? It is because of sin. And man
by nature is corrupt. He is, even though he's not yet
in the grave. Yet the Apostle says this corruption
must put on incorruption. And man, he goes forth from the
womb speaking lies. The whole head is sick. We're
full of wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. We are yet
living and when we are born we are growing up to die. The corruption that I specifically
want to think of as being known and felt is that which an awakened
sinner feels. That in me that is in my flesh,
says the apostle, dwelleth no good thing. The psalmist says my loins are
filled with a loathsome disease. The language of the people of
God have been like the publican to beat upon his breast, God
be merciful to me a sinner. If thou, Lord, should mark iniquity,
who should stand? And the very description here,
pit, a pit of corruption. Yes, the grave. is described
as a pit. But to get out of a pit without
any aid, we're not able to do. Jeremiah, when he was let down
into the dungeon with mire at the bottom of it, he was unable
to get himself out of that. God raised up. He bade Melech,
the Ethiopian, to come and get cords and to bring him up out
of that pit. Otherwise he would have died
in that pit. But what a picture of what we
are by nature. Our affections, says the hymn
writer, oft by sin defiled carry us away. Our Lord spoke in reproof
of those that insisted in the ceremonial, in a religious way
of washing of cups and of platters and keeping the outside clean,
the Lord said, but inside is full of like a den of thieves. Out of the heart come forth all
those evil thoughts and affections, all the corruptions and murders
and hatred and envy and strife and malice. All of these things,
gaze corrupt things, come forth from the heart. And that is like
a pit for us. And to get out of that, to be
delivered from that, by nature we don't even know that we're
in it. We don't even feel any trouble about being in it. Don't
want to get out of it, happy where we are. But what he said
of Hezekiah, he knew. He says, for peace I had great
bitterness. And he speaks of being delivered
from the pit of corruption. We may ask ourselves, what do
we know of the depravity of our heart? What do we know about
the state of our soul, the true state in God's holy pure eyesight. Are we in a place that we're
happy to be in or want to be free from? I'm not just talking
of those that are save from that pit of destruction,
or pit of corruption. But those that are like the apostle,
he still said, who shall deliver me from this body of death. The death within, the corruption
within, was still felt. In fact, it's really only God's
people that know the old nature that they have. They have a new
nature and have an old nature. But in the very first place,
those whose eyes are open, those who see what they walk in, and
those who feel how that they are so in sin, a sinner through
and through, defiled in thought, word, and deed. It must be known, if ever we
are going to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, who saves his people
from their sins, who shall at last save his people from the
literal pit of corruption, shall raise their dust again, shall
give them a new body, shall bring them to be with himself, not
just the soul, but body as well. He works that first in a spiritual
way in time, He works that by delivering his people from sin. Sin shall not have dominion over
you. You are not under the law, you're
under grace. The children of Israel weren't
in a pit, but they were in a bondage in Egypt. And they groaned there,
they sighed there, they felt their captivity there. And the
Lord dealt wondrous things and brought them out of it. If you and I know something of
the corruption of our own hearts, know that the Lord fashioneth
the hearts of men alike. Years ago, when I was exercised
on the ministry, for some time I went under quite a severe temptation. How could it be? How could I
presume? to preach to others and to even
suggest that other people had a wicked, evil, deceitful, corrupt
heart as I had? What presumption even to think
that others would be as bad and as evil as I was, and what warrant
had I to ever even to suggest it? And then the Lord showed me in
James, as in water, face answereth to face, so the heart of man
to man. We would use the illustration,
of course, instead of a mirror being water, as to look in the
mirror. And what the Word says, what
you see in your heart, is an exact reflection of what is in
another heart. I'm not saying that all have
the same temptations or is working in the same degree at one time,
but all are equally fallen far off from God and corrupt in many
different ways, so far off from God, so corrupt, so evil. The heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? That is the
testimony of the Word of God. And it is only by grace that
we actually realize the state and condition we are in. As many
people will have illnesses and they may not know until it is
too late. The symptoms come out and scans
will show of what the corruption or the illness is that is working
hidden inside. And there's many that will die.
that never ever had opened up to them what their true fallen
state was before a holy heart-searching God. The Word of God declares
it, we have in one of our hymns, nor are men willing to have the
truth told. The sight is too killing for
pride to behold. Men don't like to be told that
they are not good men and women, that they are evil by nature. Yes, we can rightly be good to
our fellow mortals, we can be kind, we can be understanding
many commendable things in an open way, and it's right that
we should. But in the sight of God, sin
is mixed with all we say and do. And for a person to do what
are termed good works and then turn to God and say, those good
works are a reason that you should pass over my debt of sin. You should disannul the sentence
of death given upon Adam and all his posterity and forget
about the sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ and
the payment that he made on Calvary, and accept my good works and
what I have done, and allow me heaven because of them. And that
would be the most God-dishonouring, terrible thought that could be
done, to pull God from his throne and to dishonour or make to be
a small thing the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. The way of salvation is not to
disannul sin or not to make out that we are not sinners. The
way of salvation is to realize that we are sinners, confess
that we are sinners, own that we are sinners, not try and make
out we are not, we are what we are not. Another one of our hymns says,
Sinners can say, and none but they, how precious is the Saviour. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. Is none righteous? No, not one. The testimony of the Word is
clear, but what is the testimony of our heart? What is the testimony
of what God has shown us? Turn again, the prophet was told,
Ezekiel was told, and thou shalt see greater abominations than
these. Are we walking that path, having
to see more and more sins we never thought we were capable
of? You know, when Job The book of Job begins, God testifies,
there was no cause why he should have brought anything upon him. He's walking in an upright way. Hezekiah here, outwardly, he
testified it in prayer as well. He was walking in an outwardly
upright way. He was a good king. Job was good. But then with Job, the things
that were brought upon him, very soon it was that he justified
himself rather than God. The fire, the trials, the things
that he went through brought out evils in his heart that were
not shown before. The fire shall try every man's
work of what sort it is, and it is God's work to find out. You think of those that came
to the Lord and said, what shall I do that I might inherit eternal
life? And the Lord said, keep the commandments. Oh, he said, I've kept to them
all. The Lord finds one thing, go and sell all that thou hast,
give to the poor. Thou shalt come, follow me, thou
shalt have treasure in heaven. The man goes away sorrowful,
he had great riches. The Lord put his finger on the
one thing that showed thee. real state of his heart. And
the Lord knows exactly how to do that with all of his people.
To show one thing with the Apostle Paul, it was through thou shalt
not covet, and that wrought in him all manner of evil sexual
desire, and the Lord brought him into conviction through that. Sin revived and I died, and that
will be The effect of God's light is a candle shining in our hearts. It will show every dark recess
and every sin and all the corruption that is there. And it must be
known and felt if we are to have a real remedy, a real saving. But this is right that we should
know this, not just at the beginning, but all the way along the way.
How many, the children of God, grown under the corruptions of
their heart. And what a mercy to see that
there is deliverance in the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to look
then, secondly, at prayer for deliverance. Prayer for deliverance. In verse two, after the sentence
of death, Set thine house in order, thou shalt die and not
live. Then Hezekiah turned his face
toward the wall and prayed unto the Lord. If ever there is a
illustration, too, of not fatalism, but how we should
act when we are told things like this. If we're a fatalist, we
would say, well, there's no hope then. We're told that we're to
die. And what's the use of praying?
What's the use of turning in? But that's not what Asikai, he
realized what was at stake, and so he prayed to the Lord. We think of those at Nineveh,
when Jonah came, 40 days, the city shall be destroyed. No hope
then. But they had a who can tell.
Why? One reason was that they'd been
sent a preacher to tell them about it. It wasn't just destroyed. The other reason that they were
given time, 40 days. Now we always value time and
value the word preached. There is hope there. And here
is Hezekiah and he is praying. And in that verse too, there's
just a summary, really two and three, of what he prayed. And then we said, Hezekiah wept
sore. But we find much more about what
was actually prayed and what was going on in his soul when
we have the writing of Hezekiah further down, the things that
he said. the things, how that he did chatter,
as it were, and poured out his heart before the Lord. He saw the Lord as a lion. He said, verse 13, I reckon till
morning that as a lion, so will he break all my bones. From day
even to night will thou make an end of me like a crane or
a swallow. So did I chatter, I did mourn
as a dove, mine eyes far with looking upward, O Lord, I am
oppressed, undertake for me. Would anyone look at one praying
like that and say, what a godly man, how graciously exercised
he is, what hope there is for that man, for that poor man,
he feels the Lord's hand is so heavy against him, and his feelings
are all laid out bare here. We try and come in and think
what was going through. Why while he's praying these
things, the sentence of death is over him. He has no hope as
it were. He's crying to the Lord. Prayer. Prayer is what is the The key
that is set before us here. God said to Isaiah, go and say
to Hezekiah, this is verse five, thus saith the Lord, the God
of David, thy father, I have heard thy prayer. I have heard
thy prayer. I have seen thy tears, behold
I will add unto thy days fifteen years. In the other account of this
we know that there was not much time between Hezekiah being told
that he should die and Isaiah going back. There was a lot happened
in that short while. Prayer doesn't need, as it were,
to be long, or a long distance of time. But how real, how real
it was here, is one of those portions that does so reinforce
the need of prayer. We had a service or two ago.
I will, for this being quite of, by the House of Israel to
do it for them. That the Lord would have all
men to pray and not to faint, to ask. And those that feel their corruptions
and those that feel the evil of their heart and those that
feel their sin, the message is to pray. and the feelings of the heart
in prayer are laid before us in this chapter. I want to then look thirdly at
deliverance. What was the deliverance that
Hezekiah had? Well firstly there was this,
there was the sentence of death. reversed or deferred. Behold, I will add unto thy days
fifteen years. We think of this in a spiritual
way, the sentence of death reversed. Ezekiel one day would die, and
you and I must, but in a spiritual way, though we die, Yet if we
are blessed with the blessing that our Lord says He blesses
His children with, I give unto them eternal life, they shall
never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of mine hand.
Then the Lord says that if any believe in Him, that man shall
not see death. Now the Jews stumbled at that.
They said, well, Abraham, he's dead. The fathers, they're dead. How is it that you can say that
he shall not see death? Our Lord said another time, the word that was spoken to Moses
of the burning bush, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. So though
their bodies had died, their souls were alive. Absent from
the body, present with the Lord, awaiting the resurrection, God's people, those that sleep
in Jesus, will he bring with him. When he comes a second time
with power and great glory, the dead in Christ shall rise first. We shall be caught up with them
in the air. We read of the death of the very
first martyr in the Christian church, that is Stephen. When he was stoned, he looked
up into heaven and he testified that he saw Jesus standing at
the right hand of the Father standing to receive him. He said, into the Lord's hand he commended
his spirit and then he fell on sleep. And the apostle Paul saw that
he was, he was minding the garments of those that were stoning him.
But the testimony of Scripture in that is not that he died,
he did die, but that he fell asleep. And the sting of death
is taken away when the Lord gives eternal life. We're told that
the sting of death is sin. And so we have here with Hezekiah,
what the Lord had done, for thou hast delivered it, for thou hast
cast all my sins behind thy back. All the sins of the Old Testament
saints, you, all of the people of God, the Lord does the same. Cast them. so that he does not
see them. Why? Because he has blotted them
out, he has pardoned them, he has shed his precious blood. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's
son, cleanseth from all sin. When I see the blood, I will
pass over you. This is then bound up with this
deliverance that Hezekiah, that all of God's people, look for
deliverance from corruption, will realise they must die. But in dying, it shall be the
way the Lord brings them from this world to the next, from
corruption to incorruption, from absent from the Lord to be present
with the Lord. Death then is change for the
people of God. What a different view of it one
has when the Lord has dealt with our corruption and our sin and
blotted out our sin and taken away the sting of death and shown
us that he has gone into death and out of death. There's another thing in the
deliverance that Hezekiah had. but thou hast in love to my soul
delivered it. Love to my soul. A blessed thing
to realise the love of God to a sinner. I have loved thee with
an everlasting love and therefore with loving kindness have I drawn
thee. The love of the Father. The Father
himself says, our Lord, loveth you. Greater love had no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever
I command you. It was love that brought the
Lord to die, to bear his people's sin, to come to this world, the
whole of salvation, having loved his only, loved them unto the
end. the deliverance of blessing that
Hezekiah had, the sins that he felt, the corruption due to those
sins cast behind God's back, the sentence of death reversed
and changed, taken away, and the love of God to his soul shown
to him. What greater blessings can we
desire or look for in the day of grace than these? To have the testimony of Hezekiah
here, thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit
of corruption. For thou hast cast all my sins
behind thy back. What a blessing, what a testimony. He says, the living, the living,
he shall praise thee as I do this day. The father to the children
shall make known thy truth. It's a wonderful thing when the
Lord blesses his people and his people then have something to
tell their children and grandchildren and something that is passed
from one generation to another. The Lord changes not. The same
God Hezekiah had. Hezekiah, his mortal remains
are somewhere in this earth as dust. His redeemed spirit is
with his God in heaven one day. We're the Lord's people, we shall
see him as well as the Lord. But every one of God's children
They must be brought to know their sin, their sin dealt with,
the deliverance from the power and dominion of death, and the
blessing of the love of God in the soul. May the Lord then be
pleased to bless this word to us and give us the experience
in this way that Hezekiah had. to know the answer to prayer
that the Lord has put in through our trials and troubles and afflictions
and brought us. The Lord began this with Hezekiah. Hezekiah didn't bring it. He didn't bring Sennacherib.
He didn't bring his sickness. The Lord began. The Lord set
the scene. The Lord brought him into it.
But the Lord brought him out of it. to the honour and glory
of God and to the blessing of his servant. May the Lord bless
us with the sign. Amen.