God be with us now this evening
as we turn together to his word. I direct your attention to the
chapter we read in the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 37 and we'll
read verse 20. Isaiah 37 and verse 20. I really this evening
want to consider this prayer of Hezekiah which begins at verse
16 and runs to verse 20, but we'll read verse 20 together
to focus our minds. Now therefore, O Lord our God,
save us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may
know that thou art the Lord, even thou only. Hezekiah and the people of Judah
and Jerusalem were facing a great, naturally speaking, an impossible
enemy. A vast army was heading their
way and this army of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, had been
rapidly advancing and destroying other cities in Judah. The account really begins, as
I said earlier, at the beginning of chapter 36. And in verse 1
we read that Sennacherib, the king of Judah, came up against
all the defenced cities of Judah and took them. He had been warring
against these cities and he had been taking them, destroying
them. And he seemed to be, with his army, a great force. This was no small enemy, no small
army. that was now coming rapidly towards
the walls of Jerusalem. And in preparation, you could
say, for that advance, in preparation for the army to encamp around
the city, ultimately as they designed to destroy it, this
man Rabshakeh is sent by Sennacherib. And he is sent to threaten, He
is sent to discourage the people of Jerusalem. To essentially
make them give up before the battle has even started. To make
them surrender. To make them think that the battle
would be so great and so impossible that the best thing would be
to surrender to Sennacherib before they were destroyed. And he comes
with skillful propaganda. with skillful words to bring
these people to despair. In his statement to them, which
begins really at verse 4 in verse 36, we read, Thus says the great
king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou
trustest? You see, first of all, before
he does anything, he declares who he is speaking on behalf
of. The great king. the king of Assyria. He reminds them straight off
that they are facing this great and powerful man. A man who controls
a great army. A great king. And this great
king is but miles away with his great army. So straight off he
reminds them who is threatening them. Who they will have to face.
Who they will have to fight. And then, as it were, as he goes
through, he takes away, or seeks to take away, all of the things
that they are relying on, all of the things that they are trusting
in. Verse 6 of chapter 36, Lo, thou
trustest in the staff of this broken reed on Egypt, whereon
if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it. So is
Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. He says, don't
look to the Egyptians to help you. Don't look to Pharaoh to
come to your help. If you rely on him, it will only
come to hurt you, as if you're leaning on a staff and it's got
a sharp point and it will pierce into your hand. There's no point
relying on the king of Egypt. He tries to take away that thing
that they were looking to, that hope that they were relying on.
But much more than that, he then proceeds to take away where their
real stability was. Now he attacks their God. He
attacks their religion. Verse 7, if thou say to me, we
trust in the Lord our God, is it not he whose high places and
whose altars Hezekiah has taken away and said to Judah and Jerusalem,
you shall worship before this altar? He says, don't trust in
the God of Hezekiah. Hezekiah has taken away the places
where you used to worship. Hezekiah has tried to reform
and said that you could only worship in the temple. Don't
trust in him. Don't trust in his God. Look
what his religion has done to you. Look how he's taken away
the things that you used to rely on, that you used to do in your
worship. As we come towards the end of
the chapter, he again attacks the same thing. Verse 18, Beware,
lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Hath
any of the gods of the nations delivered this land out of the
hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath
and Arphad? Where are the gods of Seraphim? And have they delivered
Samaria out of my hand? You see how he attacks the Lord. Don't trust in your God. What
have the other gods done for the other cities I've taken?
What have the gods done for the other kings I've destroyed? They've
not helped. You are no different. Your God
will not help you. Your God will not aid you. We
will destroy you just as we destroyed them. Again, as we come, as he
spoke, In chapter 37, as we read together, verse 10, Let not thy
God whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying Jerusalem shall
not be given unto the hand of Assyria. Again, see the attack
of this man. The attack that there was no
point trusting in the Lord. There was no point hearing and
receiving the words of Hezekiah. They were inevitably to be destroyed. And he bribes them. He offers
them a bribe. Now therefore, verse 8, chapter
36, give pledges, I pray thee, to my master, the king of Assyria,
and I will give thee 2,000 horses if thou be able on thy part to
set riders upon them. Surrender to me. Give me yourselves. And I will give you these horses
as a bribe to surrender. Now when we put all of that together,
his attacks, his temptations, his bribery, his blasphemy, put
that with the weight of the army, the history of the destruction
behind them, and we get some idea of the attack that this
man brings to Jerusalem and Hezekiah, the strength of it, the power
of it, and how it must have brought them down. And what a burden
it was for Hezekiah. Here is an impossibility. Here is certain destruction,
certain death, certain taking of a city by this man, Sennacherib,
the king of Assyria. We have impossibilities in our
lives as well. We will not have an impossibility
like this. We will not find ourselves literally
having the king of Assyria attacking us in the city of Jerusalem. This was Hezekiah's impossibility. But we all come to times in our
life and in the experience of our soul when we feel that we've
reached a place of impossibility and we wonder, what are we to
do? How can we solve this problem? How can we get over this temptation,
this trial, this impossibility? And we have different lives and
different things may come into our minds this evening. impossibilities. What do we do with them? What
do we do? What did Hezekiah do with his
great impossibility? Did he mask the army? Did he
strengthen the wars? All sensible things to do. Did
he send back messages of defiance? Did he make messages of peace?
and take the bribe. What does he do with his impossibility? Hezekiah prayed unto the Lord. That's what he did. We read it
together. Hezekiah received the letter
from the hand of the messengers and read it. A distressing letter. A letter that must have brought
him down. A letter of threatening. He read it and he went up into
the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord and Hezekiah
prayed unto the Lord. That is what he did with his
impossibility. What an example we have of what
to do. Well here we have from verse
16 to 20 a wonderful prayer and we have before us really a pattern
or a model for prayer. a pattern to encourage or to
direct us, especially of how to pray in our times of impossibility,
when we pour out our hearts before the Lord and desire that he would
undertake for us. And there are key elements for
prayer in these words, key elements to encourage us to come like
this, before our God. So I want to consider this together
this evening. Remember the background, remember
the context. He was threatened with destruction. First of all, before he even
utters what his impossibility is, first of all he rehearses
the glory and greatness of God. He rehearses before the Lord
who God is. Verse 16, O Lord of hosts, God
of Israel, that dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the Lord,
thou art the God, even thou alone of all the kingdoms of the earth,
thou hast made heaven and earth. Lord of hosts, Almighty God,
As he approaches the Lord in prayer, he isn't bowing before
an idol of stone or wood as the other nations and kings did.
He isn't bowing before a little God and a God who couldn't hear
or do anything. He is coming before and as he
opens his prayer, he, as it were, reminds himself, I pray to the
Lord of hosts. the great, eternal, almighty,
ever being, all places, this great God, the Lord of hosts,
the almighty God, the only God, not a God of a plethora of other
gods, Not just Israel's God, and Sennacherib is his God, and
Babylon have their God, and everyone has their different gods, and
we just have our God. He's one of many. No, no, no.
The Lord of hosts. The only God. This is who He
is coming before. But He is not just the Lord of
hosts, because as He goes on, He says, the God of Israel that
dwells between the cherubims. Yes, he's praying to the great
eternal creator God. He's praying to the God of Israel
and the God who met with Israel on the mercy seat between the
cherubims. The God who could be known. The
God who could personally come to his people. The God who was
loving. The God who was knowable. The
God who met them above the mercy seat. He is not the, as it were,
the aloof, absent, distant God. As Hezekiah comes to the Lord
of Hosts, he also comes to the God of Israel that dwells between
the cherubims. The God who meets them, the God
who knows them, the God who cares for them. See, the personal relationship. My great God, and yet the God
who knows about me. This is who he comes before.
Then he goes on to say, Thou art the God, even Thou alone,
of all the kingdoms of the earth. Hezekiah has a great powerful
king threatening him. The great king of Assyria and
his great army and yet he comes to his God and reminds himself
in this prayer and lifts up his God in this prayer that he is
God of all the kingdoms. That God is sovereign and even
great King Sennacherib is in his hand because he is the God
of the kingdoms of the earth and ultimately as much as Hezekiah
is subject to him so is Sennacherib subject to the authority and
sovereignty of God. The kingdoms of the earth. So the sovereign God, thou hast
made heaven and the earth the creator God. And not only the
kings and the kingdoms, but all things are in his control. All elements, even nature itself,
is in his hand the creator of the heaven and the earth. So
you see as he opens his prayer, He opens by rehearsing who God
is, the Great God, the Knowable God, the Sovereign God, the Creator
God. And he lifts him up in his prayer
and he praises him as he comes in his need. As we pray, come to our Lord,
perhaps in times of impossibility, times of difficulty, do we, as
it were, mirror this pattern and what an encouragement it
is to do so. Before we even utter our need,
before we say our petition, we remember who God is. We remember
who we're coming before and we rehearse that before the Lord
and in our hearts Thou art the great God. Thou art my God. Thou art the sovereign God. I'm
not coming to a little God. I'm not coming to a God who doesn't
know or a God who cannot do anything. I'm coming to the almighty, holy,
eternal, all-powerful God. This is who I pray to in my impossibility. And you know, to open our prayers
in this way to rehearse the attributes of God is to give Him praise,
is to give Him glory as we remind ourselves of who He is, but it
also strengthens our faith as we pray. Because then as we,
as it were, come to our need, come to our petition, we are
in the frame of reminding ourselves who we are coming before. It
strengthens our faith. When we come to realize, with
God's help of course, but when we come to realize who it is
that we pray to, then we are encouraged to believe that He
is able to come and help in impossibility. This is His opening of prayer.
He rehearses who God is. Secondly, he then goes on to
lay the problem or the impossibility before the Lord. Verse 17. Incline thine ear, O Lord, and
hear. Open thine eyes, O Lord, and see and hear all the words
of Sennacherib, which has sent to reproach the living God. All
the words of Sennacherib have cast their gods into the fire.
For they were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and
stone. Therefore they have destroyed them. You see, he tells him the
problem. He tells what has happened. He tells him the impossibility. Hear the words, Lord of Sennacherib.
Hear what he has been saying. Hear his threatening. Hear his
temptations. and hear that he has come to
reproach God. He attacks us, he attacks this
city, but really he reproaches the living God. He reproaches
our God, the God who formed us, who made us his people, the God
who brought us and settled us in this land. He reproaches the
living God. He brings the impossibility to
the Lord. Hear his words, Lord. as he has
his letter laid before him in the temple. See the words, Lord.
See the threatened. See the army. Here is my impossibility. And having brought that impossibility,
he says, of a truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste
all the nations and their countries and have cast their gods into
the fire. It's true, Lord. You see this
letter? which threatens us and speaks
of all the conquests of the King. It's true. He is a great God. He is a great King. He is a powerful
army. He is a destroying force. He
has laid the city's waste. It's true what he says. He is great. He is strong. And
naturally, we are no match for this King. Of a truth, Lord,
has laid waste all the nations in their countries. He admits,
he acknowledges the need. He acknowledges the impossibility.
But you see, even in the midst of this, we see the element of
his faith. Because he says, they were no
gods for the work of men's hands, wood and stone, therefore they
have destroyed them. I have the impossibility. The
King is great. We do stand vulnerable. But the
gods that he destroyed, there were no gods. You see, he lifts
up his faith to the Lord. He still believes that the God
is the only and true God who can help. They were no gods,
thou art the Lord. He lays the problem before him. Well, what a blessing that we
can lay our impossibilities before the Lord. As he laid the letter
out, we can lay the impossibility before him Whether it's great
or whether it's small, we can take everything to God in prayer. We can bring it to him and we
can lay it before him and we can be, as it were, as honest
as Hezekiah was. We do not come to the Lord and
pretend that we are strong enough. We don't have to come to the
Lord and convince the Lord that we can cope or that we know what
to do. Hezekiah came to the Lord and
he said, it's true that the King has laid waste all the nations
and the countries. We can come to the Lord with
our impossibility and we can say, Lord, it's true. I do not
know what to do. Neither know I what to do, but
my eyes are up unto Thee. Maybe in a time of temptation,
It's time when the devil is getting at us, bringing us down. And
we may, as it were, spread the temptation before the Lord and
we have to say, Lord, half if not more of what the devil is
saying is true. He points out my sin. It's true.
He points out my guilt, my backsliding, my failure. And Lord, it's true. We can come and bring it as we
are, our impossibility. to the Lord. Lay it before the
Lord in prayer. Thirdly, he then moves on with
his petition, with his request in prayer. Now therefore, O Lord
our God, save us from his hand. Do you notice it's not until
quite near the end of his prayer that he comes to his request.
First he has exalted God. He has lifted up his heart to
the great and almighty God. Then he has laid the problem
before him, as it were acknowledging that naturally he doesn't know
what to do. And then he brings his request.
Lord, save us from his hand. Now he asks for what he needs. It's not wrong to ask for what
we need. We must pray that all might be
subject to His will and we might be made subject to that and willing
to walk it out. But it's not wrong to bring our
petitions, to have our needs, to have our cries, to have our
desires, to pour out, as it were, our desire as well as pour out
the problem. Lord, we desire that Thou would
appear in this way. Lord, Thou would desire that
we may have this. Lord, we desire that we might
have what we need. What we've asked for. It's not
wrong to pray. We might receive, according to
his will, these things. Save us from his hand. This was
his petition. This is what he needed. This is what he so longed
that God would give him and that God would bless them with. Save
us. This is his petition. This is
his need. Oh, that we might, as it were,
come in faith. Believing and knowing that the
Lord can hear and answer our prayers and hear our petitions,
save us from his hand. Finally, I want to move on this
evening to his motive. His motive in prayer. His request
is that they might be saved. But this is his motive. That
all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art the Lord,
even thou only. Now you see, Hezekiah desired
deliverance. And of course in one sense that
was deliverance for him. It was also deliverance for the
city and for the people. This is what he wanted, this
is what he prayed for, that they might be saved. That was one
reason why he prayed. But really overarching all of
that is this concern, that God would be glorified. That the
nations, the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art
the Lord, even thou only. His desire was that everyone
would see that God was God. The Lord was the true and living
God. Yes, all these idols have been
laid waste. Yes, they have all been destroyed.
But that everyone may see that thou art God. This is his main
concern. This is his motive in prayer. This is his reason. Because he
wants God to be glorified. God to be lifted up. God to be
exalted. We often say, don't we, that
we desire the honour and glory of God. We often pray that we
might see answers for the honour and glory of God. It's a good
motive, but what do we mean by that? When we say it and it runs
off our tongue, what do we mean? How would God be honoured and
glorified? How would God be glorified through
an answer to this prayer? Well, it would be seen by all
that God was real. That God was God. Not a false
idol, not made of wood and stone, not like the other gods of the
nations, that they would see that this God was God. He was
real. The God who Hezekiah came to
was real. the true, the living God. All the other gods could do nothing
and yet here was the real God and through that there was glory
brought to his name because they had to acknowledge that he was
God. They would then have to acknowledge
that he was a God who was aware, not remote and far off and distant,
but a God who was aware of the situation. who saw the state
of the world, who saw the advance of Sennacherib, who saw the need
of Jerusalem and King Hezekiah, and who cared in that situation. The God, and the God who was
aware, but also they would then have to acknowledge he was a
God who heard. He wasn't just a God who saw,
but a God who heard, because Hezekiah had prayed. And there
had been an answer to that prayer. So they would have to acknowledge
that the living God heard and answered prayer. And there was
a reason to pray. As the other kings perhaps had
spent their hours before their idols in so-called prayer. And there'd be no response. And
they'd been destroyed. Yet here was a God who heard
and answered prayer. That would bring glory to God.
More than that, they would have to acknowledge that there was
a God who answers prayer, and a God who does great things,
a God who turns the tide, a God who delivers His people, an almighty
God, and therefore they could have confidence as they prayed
that God would hear them and God would answer them. You see,
this brings glory to God. As we receive by His grace these
answers to our prayer, We realise he is real, he knows, he hears,
he is almighty and he answers prayer. His desire is that the
nations might know that God hears prayer, that God is God. This is how he would be exalted. Nations would see it and of course
his people then of Judah would be strengthened their faith would
be encouraged. Here is a mark of a right prayer,
a mark of a true prayer, that we might, and it is only God's
grace that does this, that we might be able to come and say
whatever the outcome, whatever the future, whatever the answer,
Our desire is that God's hand and His wisdom will be seen and
will be recognised. Whether my petition, as it were,
is granted in the way I request, or whether the Lord in His wisdom
declines because His way and His will is different, somehow
His wisdom, His goodness will be seen and will be recognised
and therefore He will get glory to His name and it's wonderful
when He brings us there. It's wonderful when He brings
us there. Though we may have a great need,
though we may have a pressing concern and desire and we long
for a particular path, that we could say, Lord, I am willing
to yield myself, I am willing to give all of that up, if only,
somehow, thou wilt get glory to thy name. And that the nations
would see, that all the people around me, my family, my friends,
would see that thou art the Lord, even thou only. We desire answers for our good,
of course, like Hezekiah did. For our blessing, for our deliverance.
But I want all the praise to go to God. I want all the glory
to go to Him. Isn't this mostly, of course,
true in the things of salvation? We desire salvation. We plead
for salvation. We cry that we might be saved. But we want all the glory to
go to God, because in our right mind, We know it's nothing of
us. Sometimes we have to come to
the Lord and we have to pray and acknowledge our pride. Acknowledge that so often we
want glory. We want people to think much
of us and well of us. We want people to praise us.
We have to bring that before him and tell him. I'm prone to
pride. I'm prone to rob God of his glory. Lord, even overcome my pride
and get glory to thy name. This is Hezekiah's ultimate motive,
ultimate desire. Is it ours? In your impossibility,
perhaps tonight, when you need, you long for an answer, you long
for Him to appear, do you still say, whatever happens, whatever
the outcome, be it good as it were or bad, be it a time of
blessing or a time of a valley, Lord, may the people see that
Thou art the Lord, even Thou only. This is His motive. We turn to the end of this chapter.
Well, after this prayer we then read of the Lord's response,
his answer through Isaiah. When we come to verse 35, we
notice something remarkable. Because this is the Lord's summary,
as it were, of his response. I will defend this city, to save
it for mine own sake and for my servant David's sake." Hezekiah
desired that God would be glorified through an answer to his prayer.
And God, to begin with, in his first answer, as it were here,
the first half of this text, he says he would defend the city
for his own name's sake, for mine own sake. And this, as it
were, ties with Hezekiah's motive, with Hezekiah's desire. I will
answer this prayer, I will defend this city to get glory to my
own name, to get glory to myself. And he had been blasphemed by
Assyria, he had been blasphemed by Sennacherib and the Rathbiskai,
he had been blasphemed by the enemies. And he was a jealous
God, he is a jealous God. And he would work, he would defend
the city, he would hear this prayer to get glory to his own
name, for mine own sake. He would claim what was rightfully
his. He would destroy the blasphemer
and he would get the glory that belonged to his name. So in that
sense he answers Hezekiah's desire, Hezekiah's motive. You see, he also adds, and this
is what's so wonderful, I will defend the city to save it for
my servant David's sake. As it were, he adds another reason,
another reason to defend the city, for David's sake. David could represent the people
of God, the Lord's people He would save the city not only
for his own glory, but because he loved his people, but because
he cared for them, because he answers their prayer, because
he wants to do them good. Here we have his desire to defend
the city because he loves his people. This is grace. This is love beyond our measure.
I will defend the city. for my people's sake, as they
were represented by David. I also think here we have a reference
to the son of David, the greater son of the Lord Jesus Christ. He would defend the city for
the sake of the descendants of David. Those who would come from
his seed He would defend the city so that the people of God
would not be utterly wiped out, would not be utterly destroyed,
and the seed of David ended because he knew that Christ must come
from that seed. The line must be preserved. If Hezekiah and all the people
are destroyed, then the line ceases. It must be preserved. because Christ must come from
that line. And therefore, for David's sake,
for the promise of the Messiah that he has made to his servant
David, he must preserve his people. And for that reason, at this
time, he would defend the city. Of course, I know the people
would go captivity and ultimately it would be preserved in a different
way. But at this time, he would defend the city because the line
must be preserved. You see, when we think about
this, This is a wonderful truth for the Lord's people. To look
at the history of the world, to look at the history of the
Old Testament, to see that God has ordered history so that we
might be saved. God has ordered history so that
Christ might come. You think of, just one example,
think of Joseph. Joseph had to go down into Egypt
to preserve the family, that the sons, his brothers, the tribes
might be saved. If he had not gone, they may
very well have died of famine in Canaan. He had to go to preserve
the family so that they might be fed and ultimately go into
Egypt. But it wasn't just preserving Jacob's children why he had to
go to Egypt. The children of Israel had to
be preserved so that the tribes might come, so that the people
of God, the people of Israel, the Hebrews might grow, so that
ultimately through that line Christ would come. If the 12
tribes had been destroyed of hunger in Cana, there would be
no seed. There would be no Christ. Think
about that. Isn't that glorious? Joseph had to go to Egypt so
that you and I could be saved. so that Jesus could come. God
has ordered history for the good of his people, for my own sake
and for my servant David's sake. Well, may we be helped to examine
our prayers with this prayer before us. Encouraged to come
to the Lord about everything, the great almighty God, The great
God who hears, the great God who knows, the great God who
can answer. We can bring everything to Him,
encouraged to continue in our impossibilities. And may we join
with this desire, this desire of Hezekiah, that in all things
the kingdoms of the earth may know that Thou art the Lord,
even Thou only, not unto us, Not unto us be glory. Amen.