I want to begin reading in verse
1, Isaiah chapter 38, and let's read this chapter together, 22
verses in it. This is our third look at Hezekiah,
and we'll look at him again this afternoon, and then we'll be
finished with this portion of Scripture. Isaiah chapter 38 and verse 1,
In those days was Hezekiah, he was the king of Judah, he was
sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son
of Amos, came unto him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord,
Step thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live. Then Hezekiah turned his face
towards the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, and said, Remember
how, O Lord, I beseech Thee, how I walk before Thee in truth
and with a perfect heart, a sincere and honest heart, and have done
that which is good in Thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. Then
came the word of the Lord to Isaiah, saying, Go and say to
Hezekiah, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David, thy father,
I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears, Behold, I will
add unto thy days fifteen years, and I will deliver thee and this
city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend
this city. And this shall be a sign unto
thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that
he hath spoken. Behold, I will bring again the
shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sundial of
Ahaz ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees,
by which degrees it was gone down. The writing of Hezekiah,
king of Judah, when he had been sick and was recovered of his
sickness, I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to
the gates of the grave. I am deprived of the residue
of my years. I said I shall not see the Lord. even the Lord in the land of
the living. I shall be a whole man no more
with the inhabitants of the world. Mine age is departed, and is
removed from me as a shepherd's tent. I have cut off like a weaver
my life. He will cut me off with pining
sickness. From day even to night will thou
make an end of me. I reckoned till morning that
as a lion so will he break all my bones. From day even to night
wilt thou make an end of me. Like a crane or a swallow, so
did I chatter. I did mourn as a dove. Mine eyes
fell with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed. Undertake for me. What shall
I say? He hath spoken unto me. and himself hath done it, I shall
go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul. O Lord,
by these things men live, and in all these things is the life
of my spirit. So will Thou recover me and make
me to live. 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. For the grave cannot praise thee,
death cannot celebrate thee, they that go down to the pit
cannot hope for your truth. The living, the living, he shall
praise thee, as I do this day. The father to the children shall
make known thy truth. The Lord was ready to save me.
Therefore we will sing my songs to the strange instruments all
the days of our life in the house of the Lord. For Isaiah had said,
Let them take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaster upon
the boil, and ye shall recover. Hezekiah also had said, What
is the sign that I shall go up into the house of the Lord? Now,
if you ever want to read the parallel passage to this, it's
in 2 Kings chapter 20. It gives just a little more information
there about what took place at this time. But we're told here
that Hezekiah was sick, and he was sick unto death. He had some
sort of a boil that came upon him. We don't know if it was
a plague that others experienced and were dying of. We don't know
if it was some sort of a cancer. But we're told here that it was
a boil. And the prophet Isaiah, the great prophet of the Lord,
came to Ezekiel or came to Hezekiah and said, set your house in order. You're going to die and not live.
This is a message from the Lord. And he was so heavy hearted,
he turned his face to the wall and began to weep and begin to
pray and ask the Lord to spare his life. And the Lord heard
his prayer and he said, I saw your tears. And he delivered
him. He healed him. And the third
day he went up to the house of the Lord and worshiped. And then
he writes to us what had happened. He doesn't write during the time
that he's gone through this affliction. If he did, I don't know how much
we could have trusted his writing. He was sick. He was probably
taken with a fever. And if he had wrote down while
he was sick, we'd have said, well, he may be exaggerated.
He may have been confused. But he wrote here after he got
through this near-death experience. So we can trust what he says,
can't we? After he was healed, after he
was delivered, then the Scripture says here he writes his experience. What did he really think when
he was going through this? What was he really feeling in
his heart when this prophet came to him and said, Do you see that
wall there on your side? It's going to kill you. You're
going to die and you're not going to live. And he went through
this and prayed and the Lord delivered him. Then he sets down
and he said, I want to write to you my experience, what I
experienced, this near death experience. And that's very important
because He looks back over it all and he says, you know, this
really happened. I really thought I was dying.
And the Lord sent the prophet to tell me that I was dying. But he said, I only escaped because the Lord
intervened in mercy. I was surely gone. This wasn't
some figment of his imagination. This was something that had actually
taken place. This man was ready to die, and
he was delivered. The Lord intervened and saved
him. And now he's going to write to
us about how he felt about it all. How he felt when he was
facing death, and how he felt when the Lord mercifully intervened
and saved his life. How many people have been to
this exact place that this fellow had been? How many people in
this world can testify and say, I was at the point of death.
I had this awful disease and they'd give up on me. And the
Lord intervened and He had mercy. I was in this awful accident,
this car accident. And they gave me no hope. I thought
for sure I was gone. We got a fellow that comes here,
Carl, Carl Irvin, and he spent months and months and months
in a coma. And they come to Shirley and
they said, Shirley, you need to unplug him. You need to give
us permission to unplug him because he's not going to live. He cannot
survive. And he comes here to church sometimes,
doesn't he? They unplugged him, or they didn't unplug him. They
were going to unplug him, and he just kept living. The Lord
intervened and spared that man. Mercy intervened and spared him. You and I go to the Bible, and
we find men that were at the point of death, and they knew
it. They knew it. In their experience, they saw
no way that they could escape death. We got the story about
Jonah. that he was swallowed by this
great fish. And the Scripture says, this
is his testimony, he was in that fish's belly and it dove down
deep into the black ocean of the Mediterranean Sea. And Jonah
wrote about that experience. He said, I went down to the bottom
of the mountains and his bars were about me forever and my
soul fainted in me. He thought he was a goner. The
earth with her bars is about me forever. It was totally dark,
and the seaweeds had wrapped around his head. And he said,
I fainted. My soul fainted. But you know
something? He lived around about it. And
I tell you, it's only attributed to the mercies of God that that
man escaped that. We read about the disciples who
were in a terrible storm there upon the Sea of Galilee in their
little ship. And the waves were coming in
the ship, and here is the conclusion that they reached. These were
experienced fishermen. They knew that when you got in
a storm like this, you probably weren't going to escape it. They
didn't see any way that they could be saved. As a matter of
fact, they came to this conclusion. We perish. We perish. We're never going to survive
this storm. We'll never set our feet on land again. We perish. And if the Lord hadn't have stood
up and stilled the storm and spoke peace, they may have well
perished. They may have well perished.
I look back on my life when I was hopeless and helpless without
Christ. And there are times when I had close brushes with death. But you know, I was so stupid.
I was so spiritually dead in sins and hopeless that I didn't
even recognize it. Looking back on it now, I tremble
to think if the Lord had moved His hand
I had left this world without any hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. But I attribute my deliverance
from those awful, awful accidents, as we call them, and incidences,
I attribute it to one thing, the intervention of God's mercy. As far as I was concerned, looking
back now, there's no other reason that I could find. that I'm here
before you today. And how many people, how many
of us can witness to that? And how many times I wonder,
and only the judgment will tell, how many times we have been that
close to death and don't even know it? How many times has a
vehicle been ready to swerve and hit us at all, and we weren't
even aware of it? How many times a disease was
ready to germinate in our body and consume us and kill us, but
divine mercy said, stay your hand. And we don't even know
it, and we'll probably never know it until we get yonder to
the judgment. And brothers and sisters, here's
the wonderful thing about this. How many, how many has the divine
hand of mercy not stayed? How many have been here where
this man was? And mercy said, no, I won't intervene. And what's the difference between
you and me? Oh, it's nothing but mercy, is
it? When you and I consider what sinners we are, and when we consider
our Creator, our God and Creator, and how we sinned against Him,
and how He owes us nothing. Isn't it a miracle that we're
all alive today? It's a miracle if you're saved
or lost that you're still alive today. We look at this man's
life and we'd call this a miracle. Here he was dying. He knew he
was dying. And mercy intervened. And we say, what a miracle. But
I tell you, it's a miracle that all of us are here. The mercies of the Lord, the
tender mercies of the Lord are over all His works. Everybody will have to acknowledge
that. Not just the saved, but the lost. Why haven't you died? Why haven't you been killed by
one means or another? Why haven't you drowned in a
lake somewhere? We owe it to one thing, the intervention
of divine mercy. That's it. In our own eyes, we
would be a goner. You might hold that, but I want
you to turn with me in this same book over to your left. I want
you to look in another passage. Look in Isaiah chapter 27. Isaiah
chapter 27. He goes into detail here just
a little bit in this verse. The kind of condition that all
of us are in when we consider ourselves, in and of ourselves,
without the Lord. What kind of condition is everybody
in? Before the Lord saved you, what
kind of condition were you in? The Lord is going to tell us
that here in Isaiah chapter 27, and look here in verse 13. It shall come to pass in that
day that the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come
which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the
outcast in the land of Egypt, and shall worship the Lord in
the holy mount at Jerusalem." What kind of condition were we
in Before we heard the trumpet, before we heard the gospel, we
were ready to perish. We didn't know it until the Lord
made us to know it. But we were ready to perish. I wonder if there's someone here
this morning in this condition. You're ready to perish. I tell
you, when the Lord makes us to understand that, Nobody can talk
you out of it. When the Lord convinces you,
you're ready to perish. Nobody could convince you otherwise.
You were ready to perish. The conscience says, I'm ready
to perish. The conscience says, you shall
die and not live. We've seen some try to explain
this verse away. And they say, well, the elect
were never ready to perish. in the light of God's eternal
purpose and election, this can't be true. They don't understand
the Word of God enough to let each subject stand in its own
light. They look at everything in the
light of one subject. Each subject has to be dealt
with in itself, doesn't it? He's not speaking here of election. He's speaking here of our condition
outside of Christ. in and of ourselves, and what
condition were we in? We were ready to perish. If a man is without Christ, he
is ready to perish, isn't he? And you can't tell him anything
else. He is ready to perish. Don't you remember that, brothers
and sisters? Don't you think back upon that sometime? Your
condition? And don't it draw out thankfulness
out of your heart that when you were in that condition, the Lord
intervened by divine mercy. I doubt a person's salvation
who can't look back when he was dead in trespasses and sins and
tremble. I doubt his experience. A man
who's never been afraid of where he is, A man who has never been
without hope, and he can't look back upon it now and say, that's
where I was. I was ready to perish. Poor Hezekiah said this, I shall
go down to the gates of the grave. I am depraved of the remainder
of my years. He will cut me off in pine and
sickness. He will make an end of me. Why did he think that? Because
that was what was revealed. And that's all he had to go by.
That's all God wanted him to know. You're going to die and
not live. And what does Hezekiah do? Well,
he turns his face to the wall and he weeps and he seeks for
mercy. And God reveals mercy and spurs
his life. And you know something? That's
what God intended all along. But Hezekiah never knew it. Only
God knew it. It wasn't for Hezekiah to know. It was only for God to know.
Brothers and sisters, you and I mustn't pry in to secret things. The things that's revealed belongs
to you and it belongs to me. But the things that are secret
belongs to God. They belong to God. If you are
here this morning and you're lost, and God's intention is
to save you, I tell you what He'll probably do to you. He'll
probably make you know that you're lost. And He'll probably make you know
that you're ready to perish. That's probably what He'll do.
And then you'll hear the sound of this trumpet. You'll hear
the gospel of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that He is
able to save to the uttermost all who come to God by Him. You'll hear that message and
you'll come to God by Him. And this is what you'll say.
You'll say, I was ready to perish. I was ready to perish. Just like
Hezekiah said it. Just like Jonah said it. Just
like the disciples said it. This is where I was. This is
the truth of where I was. I was ready to perish. And I
would have perished. Divine mercy intervened and saved
me. Paul the Apostle said it like
this. He said, I was before a blasphemer, and I was a persecutor, and I
was injurious, but I obtained I obtain mercy." Hezekiah faced
the truth of what was revealed. That's what we do, isn't it?
We just face the truth of what's revealed. Where are we? What
are we? We face the truth of that. We
don't pry into things that are too deep for us. We take things
as God gives them to us in the order in which He gives them.
And I tell you, He did this to this great king. And so many
good effects came out of it. Look at some of the good effects
that came out of this. Look in verse 14. Look back over
in our text. Look back over in chapter 38
and look here in verse 14. Look at some good effects that
came out of this. This is what happened when we
simply take God and His Word and believe it. Look in verse
14. like a crane or a swallow, so
did I chatter. I did mourn as a dove. My eyes
fell with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed. Undertake for me." Now that's
a good effect. You say, Bruce, my soul, the
man was depressed. He was oppressed. He was heavy
hearted. He was weeping. Is that a good
effect? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. What did Dave read to us this
morning? He saveth such as be of a broken heart. Wasn't it
a blessing that this man was made to know his condition? And
he was so heavy hearted about it and so concerned that he sought
the Lord? I have two dear loved ones, very
dear to me. And both of them had cancer.
Pancreatic cancer. Boy, that's a bad one. If you
get pancreatic cancer, that's a bad one. My brother-in-law
had it. He had the symptoms. Wouldn't even go to the doctor.
He's just indifferent to it. And they found out, I think three
or four days before he died, what was wrong with him. He died. Died quickly. And then my niece
got it, my dear niece. And she started having some symptoms
and she went to the doctor and they couldn't find out what was
wrong with her. And the doctor said, I'm going to find out.
I'm going to put you through these tests and find out. And
they came back and said, we've got some devastating news. You've
got pancreatic cancer. And she said, I was crushed.
I was devastated. But she said, this is what I
did. And she told me this different times. I saw her just the other
day and she told me again. She said, I woke up one morning
and said, I'm going to live. I'm going to live. And she said
she went to her doctor and threw herself upon his wisdom to heal
her. And he put her through some awful
treatment. But I saw her just the other
day and she said, I'm cancer free. I'm cancer free. What am
I saying? What am I saying? There are people
who live in this world, and they've got these death pains in their
souls, but they stifle them. They're indifferent to them.
It's pains of conscience about their sins against God. The pain
of their conscience about death and dying and the judgment to
come and eternity. That's death pain. But what do
they do with those pains? They stifle them in one way or another. But there's
others when they begin to feel these pains. They say, I want
to live. If there is a Savior, a physician
that can heal my soul, then I'm going to Him. I'm going to take
my sickness of sin, and I'm going to Him, and I'm going to cast
myself upon His mighty power and grace. I'm going to live
if He'll save me. That's a wonderful effect, isn't
it? They that are whole need not
a physician, but they that are sick And it's a wonderful thing
to know yourself to be a sinner-clerch. The Holy Ghost has taught you
that. And here was a man who said, I'm going to die. I'm going
to die. But in that frame of mind, he
went to Him that was able to give him life. It's good when
you find a broken-hearted sinner seeking the Savior. That's good. That's good. Look here at the second thing
in verse 15. Look how it affected his life. Here he speaks of after
the Lord had gave him 15 years on this life. What shall I say
now? He hath both spoken unto me.
Well, he spoke to him there in verse 5 where the prophet said,
I'm going to heal you. And himself has done it. He's
done it. And I shall go softly. That word means walk carefully. because of the bitterness of
my soul, because of the bitterness I had in my soul over my sickness,
and because He has spoken and healed me of it, I'm going to
walk softly, carefully all of my years. It's a good thing,
brothers and sisters, when the Lord confronts us with our perishing
condition, It's a good thing to remember that sin is offensive
to God. Is that not a good thing? It's
a good thing for us to remember when we were lost and we felt
the judgment of God in our conscience. It's good to remember that God
hates sin. What will it make us do when
He does save us? Ah, we'll remember that, won't we? We'll go softly.
I don't want to offend Him. I remember what that was like. Look in verse 17. Boy, here's
something else, and I love this. I love this. Look what he says
in verse 17. Here's another effect. Behold,
for peace I had great bitterness, but thou hast in love to my soul
delivered it from the pit of corruption. In love to my soul
delivered it from the pit of corruption. If you read the commentaries
on this verse, and you read your different versions of the Bible,
they have more trouble, well, not so much trouble, but they
don't know hardly how to interpret this. There are so many different
ways, they said, in the Hebrew language to interpret this. I
have got almost a page of where they interpreted this in different
ways. Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it. And here's
some of them. Listen to this. It teaches him
he saw a better view of the love of God in Christ. That's what
he saw. Why did the Lord deliver me?
Because He loved me. Because He loved me. Hezekiah
was as good as dead, and now the Lord had delivered him, and
he knows what the cause of it is, doesn't he? Thou hast in
love to my soul delivered him. That's one of the translations. He delivered me because He loved
me. Because He loved me. I tell you,
we're saved this morning if we're saved at all because He loved
us. One man said, what does the love of God have to do with your
salvation? Everything, doesn't it? Everything.
If He didn't love me, I wouldn't be saved. If He hadn't have loved
this man, he wouldn't have been delivered from the pit. If God
loves a man, I'm telling you, He is going to save him with
that everlasting love. Why did He send us His Son? Here
in His love. Not that we loved Him, but He
loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
And why did His Son come? Why did He suffer so? Why did
He die upon a cross? He loved me and gave Himself
for me. Why did He call you? When you
were dead in trespasses and sin, why did He call you? Why did
He draw you to Himself? I have loved you with an everlasting
love, therefore with loving kindness will I draw you. And we've got some folks here
who knows what it is, but had to face some trials. and sickness
and weakness and death. You know what it is. Dear Jean,
bless her heart, she went home this morning. She can't hardly
go. She's a suffering soul. She knows
what it is to be afflicted. But you know why her afflictions
hasn't separated her from God? What shall separate us from the
love of God? Shall these persecutions, shall
these afflictions, shall the sword, shall famine, shall principalities
of powers, things present, or life or death? In all of these
things were more than conquers through Him that loved us. It's because of His love. Others read it like this. Thou
hast been lovingly attached to me from the pit. Even in the
pit you loved me." Oh, think of that. Even in the pit you
loved me. Oh, what a pit sin is. Isn't
that an awful pit? Sin is a pit. Think of your nature. What you are. Sinful nature is
a pit. When we were in high school,
Although your children still do that today, they probably
won't let you today, but we used to dissect frogs. We'd take frogs into the classrooms
and dissect them. You guys ever do that? Take frogs
and dissect them, take them apart, cut them up, and see what they're
made out of? They probably won't, the environmentalists and animal
rights activists probably won't let you kill a frog now. But
we used to do that, but they had these frogs in some sort
of a solution, and man, they stink to high heaven. And you
had cut into those things and, oh, it was awful. You could smell
it down the halls, dissecting a frog. Can you imagine what
it would smell like if you could dissect your nature? Layer after
layer of lust and pride and unbelief and self-righteousness and self-will. Wouldn't that stink? What a pit
it is. But you know something? In that
pit, He loves you. He loves you. I don't know how
He could do it because His love is not like ours. What attracted
Him to you? It couldn't have been anything. If He loves, the cause of it
has to be found in Himself. It can't be in you because you're
in a pit, a stinking, perishing pit. even when we were dead in
sins, for His great love were with, He loved us, even when
we were dead in sins." Oh, think of that. Thou hast done love
to my soul. Delivered it from the pit of
corruption. And some read it like this. He
kissed me from the pit. Thou hast loved my soul out of
the pit. Boy, here's the power of love,
ain't it? He loved me out of the pit. It was as though love
came in there and took me out of the pit. If you were a dad and you were
coming down the street and you pulled up in your driveway and
your house was on fire and you had a child in there, what would
you do? You wouldn't even think about it, would you? You wouldn't
even think about it. You may not come out. What would
you do? Well, you'd bust through the
door, wouldn't you? Why? Love. Love delivered me from the pit. Love. And some read it like this. His
love drew me from the pit. His love drew me from the pit. Because He loved me, I came out
of the pit. One man said, He loved us out
of the love of sin. He loved me out of my love for
sin. Why don't I love sin anymore?
He loved me out of the love of it. The love of Christ constrains
us, does it not? Oh, you don't love sin anymore.
He's loved you out of your love of Him. You've fallen in love
with Him. And you can't love Him and sin
at the same time. Oh, love, love. In verse 19,
two more things and we're closing. Look at this. Here's why He did
it. Here's a good effect. Why did
He deliver him from the pit? The living, the living. He shall
praise thee as I do this. Why did He deliver him? So Hezekiah
could praise Him for it. Brothers and sisters, that's
one of the main reasons the Lord saves us. He's in it for what
He can get out of it. And what's He going to get out
of it? Praise and honor and glory. Don't you praise Him for saving
you? Oh, you do. Oral Barnard used to say, it
changes a man's whole attitude about life. He says, a lost man
will wake up in the morning and say, good Lord, it's morning.
He says, a saved man will wake up and say, good morning, Lord.
You praise Him, don't you? It's changed your attitude. You
praise Him. I praise Him. Now, in verse 20, look at this. Now he can know something he
never knew before. Look at this in verse 20. The
Lord was ready to save me. That's something he didn't know
before. The Lord was ready? No, that's not what he said before.
The Lord was ready to cut me off. Ain't that what he said?
The Lord was ready to cut me off. See how the Lord works. See how He does things. He reveals
the truth to us. And as we believe the truth, and walk in the light of it.
You know what he does? He reveals more truth. He said to Hezekiah, I'm going
to cut you off. You're going to die and not live.
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and sought for mercy. And
he found mercy. And now he says, the Lord has
revealed something else to me and it's amazed me. He was ready
to save me all along. Oh, if you're here this morning
and you want to know more of His will in your daily life,
then I'll tell you what you do. You just open up His Bible and
you live by faith in what He's already revealed to you from
His Word. And when you walk in that light,
He'll give you more. Somebody will say, Boy, I'm anxious
to know, Bruce, if He's ready to save me. I'm anxious to know
if I'm one of His. Well, do this. Come to Him. Believe Him. Believe His Word. And follow Him. And then you'll
know. And you don't have to doubt.
You'll know. Lord bless His Word. Let's pray.