In this chapter of the Word of
God, we are once again confronted
with a basic truth that goes on throughout the scripture concerning
the life of the elect of God, whether they be natural election
like in Israel under the old covenant, or whether it be in
spiritual election which is true Israel, the Israel of God, the
church of the living God. We're confronted with the truth
that the best of men are just men. That's all they are. And
though they are held in high esteem, and rightly so, if God
says they should be, as he did about Hezekiah, that no matter
who they are as a child of God, the beast within, the carnal
nature, is always contrary to the Spirit, never changes, always
contrary to the Spirit, so that man cannot ever do what he would,
whether it be good or evil. just incapable of it. There's
a war going on. Paul said to the Galatians, the
flesh is always contrary to the spirit and the spirit to the
flesh. So that a person can't do what he would. Paul summed
it up in his words in Romans chapter 7 and verse 25 when he
said, with my mind I serve the law of God and with my flesh
I serve the law of sin and death. That's the fact of every child
of God. Before you knew Christ, all you
served was the law of sin and death in your nature, in your
carnality. But once you come to know Jesus
Christ and become a person who has spiritual understanding,
then you know that with your mind, your desire, you want to
serve God and honor Him. But you are prevented in doing
it as you would because of the flesh. And when Paul spoke those
words, he was not excusing his sin. He called it my sin in that
passage in Romans chapter 7. Nor was he stating that this
is just the way it is and it doesn't matter. He sincerely
grieved concerning his carnality. It broke his heart. And he longed
for a day when that would not be the case. When he cried, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through
Jesus Christ. The believer does not equate
his liberty which is bought by Christ and realized only with
eyes on Christ. He never equates that to license
to sin because he just can't help himself. He never says,
I can't help myself. He knows that when he sins, he
does it willingly and willfully and he might as well just fess
up to it. Might as well just fess up. The believer admits
and confesses his ability to do anything about his estate,
his disability, and applies to the only hope there is, the perfect
sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. We can't undo our situation.
Thank God that he has undone it spiritually, that he has paid
for our sin debt by the sacrifice of himself. But every believer
knows that even as he seeks to be obedient to his Lord, to seek
to please the Lord, his carnal nature waits patiently to insert
itself into the picture. It's always there. And even though
he knows this, his nature, more often than not, convinces him
that everything's okay. This is the case with Hezekiah.
These are the last words of Hezekiah here and also over in 2 Chronicles
32 as it talks about him when he finally dies. This is the
last thing that Isaiah really has to say about him. But this
chapter is Isaiah and Isaiah begins with the words, At that
time. Now what that means is that these were the best of times
for Hezekiah and for Judah. Sennacherib the king of Assyria
was dead or soon would be. The angel of the Lord had or
would soon destroy his army. Hezekiah was living in a place
where there was no threat against him and no threat against his
nation. There was no threat looming over
the horizon. Hezekiah was not waiting for
the other shoe to drop. He was feeling good. He sat in
the sweet understanding that the Lord had delivered him, the
Lord had delivered Judah, and personally he had been delivered
from a sickness that was unto death. He understands that, and he's
happy. He sits in a state of ease and
security, having experienced the power and the favor of God.
Though such a thing should bring us to a state of thanksgiving
and praise and prayers offered to the Lord to keep us from presumption,
generally and sadly our carnal nature invigorates our confidence
in such situations when everything is going well. Invigorates our
confidence in ourselves as if we had something to do with our
estate because that's our nature. the wisest of men said this concerning
his life spoken by Solomon Proverbs chapter 30 he said remove from
me vanity and lies give me neither poverty nor riches feed me with
food convenient for me lest I be full and deny thee and say who
is the Lord or lest I be poor and steal and take the name of
the Lord in vain. Lord just give me what I need
and not anymore. Don't deprive me of what I need,
just give me what I need but don't give me too much because
I'll take advantage of the situation. This was Solomon, the wisest
man that ever lived save for the Lord Jesus Christ. Hezekiah
we saw last week was smitten with a sickness, and though the
reason for that sickness is not clearly stated in scripture,
the fact that Hezekiah was stricken with a lethal malady, a sickness
unto death, did not occur without a cause. It was not a happenstance
or a coincidence or any such thing. It was caused. And we
know that the affliction, that affliction for the people of
God always has a singular purpose. And that purpose is always the
same. It is to bring the children of God to the feet of their sovereign
for help. Why do we need that? Because
when things are going well, and we're at ease and in a state
of comfort, rarely do we seek God for help. We tend to think
everything's okay. But God is always our help. Not only in times of trouble,
He's our help especially in times of plenty. And this is precisely
the result obtained when Hezekiah received the news of his impending
death. What did he do? He began to pray. He called out to the Lord for
help. And what comes to pass after Hezekiah's rather soulful
plea for his life, And in order to avoid theologically motivated
dirty questions must be viewed as all things must. How do we
know a thing? We know it by its results.
Don't we? I mean really, when you think
about it. We know something about something based on how it turned
out. It's that simple. It's really
a simple thing. You want to know what God is doing in the world?
Read the newspapers of what has been done. in the world and you'll
know because you'll see the results and in light of the results we
see that we see that Hezekiah after this sickness and after
this fear from Sennacherib overthrowing his kingdom when he prayed unto
God what it did was bring him to his knees to pray to God and
the only way a believer can discern providential purpose is how it
turns out that's just the truth But we don't know what God is
doing while he's doing it. We can't know that. I know some
people think they do. You know, some people like to
tell others that they know that God's doing something. Preachers
are bad to do that. Well, I believe God's working
on that. But you don't know whether God's working on that person
or not. You don't know. You don't know. But you can,
when the trial ends, when it's all over, you can see as a result
of what God had been doing because God had already done it. When
he took Moses and put him in the cleft of the rock, he wouldn't
let him see his face. That is what he's doing. Let
him see his hinder parts as he walked by. Designating, he can
see what I've done. And that's what the gospel is.
It's not a story of what God is doing. It's the record of
what God has done. We preach what Christ has accomplished.
What God has done. And the sheep hear the voice
of Christ and they follow Him. Knowing that God is sovereign.
Knowing that God is sovereign and does not give account of
his matters, we can look at the results and know that is how
it was meant to be. It's that simple. You say, well,
maybe that's over simplistic. Well, it's not hard to understand.
God's sovereignty is impossible to fully explain because he's
God and we're not. He's so far above us in his thoughts
and his ways that we can never discern his thoughts and his
way. But simply said, sovereignty means God rules all things. So if a thing turns out a certain
way, you can say, well that's the way it's supposed to be.
You can say that. You say, what if it's a bad end?
It don't matter. Spurgeon said, sometimes the
only reason I can give for anything, for doing anything, is that it
turned out alright. And that's generally the way
we live. Now men may busy themselves about this issue of the sun being
moved so that the shadow on the sundial moved backwards 10 degrees
as a sign of Hezekiah. That he was given an additional
15 years when his days were already determined and his months were
with God. But this is God doing with His things what He does
with His things. He manipulates the world in one
passage of Scripture that says, with His fingers. with his fingers. This is what happens. The laws
of nature are God's laws. He set them in order. And they
will be manipulated and used as God sees fit. But that sign
was, as all signs, it pointed to something else as we saw the
last time we were here. This is evidenced by every miracle
in the word of God. But such things can be and often
are a spiritual or rather a carnal misdirect. God put those miracles in his
purpose and people believe those miracles who have no interest
in Jesus Christ, but they believe those miracles. And they think
because they believe the miracles are true that they believe on
Jesus Christ, but they don't. It's a carnal misdirect. The
Bible is written in a way where a lost man can look at it and
thinks he believes it and don't believe it at all. That's the
wonder of Scripture. And the fact that you do believe
it is not because you're smarter than anybody else, it's because
God in His great kindness and tenderness revealed what it means
to you through the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ by the
Holy Spirit. That's how it happens. You'll never be smart enough
to get to God, nobody is. In fact, that was part of God's
purpose in creating the wisdom of the world. To show men, according
to 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 21, that by the wisdom of men,
by the wisdom of the world, no man could see God. And that's
according to God's wisdom. In God's wisdom, He showed that
the wisdom of the world could never find Him. How do we find
Him then? We don't. We are found of Him.
When we think we've found Him, we'll say with Isaiah, I was
found of them that sought me not. Found of them that sought
me not. We weren't seeking him when we
found him. Thank God he was seeking us. As lost sheep, bringing us
back to the foe. The sickness that Hezekiah had,
the cure, the sign resulting in Hezekiah doing what? All of
that resulted in what? He called on God. So what was
the reason for all that? What was the purpose for all
that? That he would call on God. That's the reason behind it.
You can understand that, can't you? Kind of like that old, like
the old theorems we used to learn in geometry. One of those quantities
equal to the same quantity or equal to each other. That shows
you how you never forget those things. I've never had to use
that thing. Debbie says it equals, equals,
equals, equals, equals. That makes just as much sense
to me as the other one does. The result, the past victories
of the believer's life, the ups and downs, are all designed for one thing,
to bring you to Christ. That's the reason for That's
the reason for them. You see, divine providence had
done its work in Hezekiah's life as it always does and reminds
us all that the intricacies of God's doings are not for us to
know. It's for us to bow to His wisdom
and see that the result is for our good and for His glory, no
matter how it feels particularly. Don't believe these clowns that
stand up in the pulpit and tell you that if you decide for Jesus
or if God saves you, that means everything is going to be pie
in the sky. Just the opposite, it's the truth. In this world
you shall have tribulation. Much tribulation. And in the
world to come it will turn a lot. Right here in this 39th chapter
of Isaiah, Hezekiah is on a high plane. He's feeling good. He's been miraculously healed
by God. He has been given what he believes
to be a 15-year reprieve from a death sentence. God has manipulated
the son. He's tinkered with time and tide
to give him a sign of proof. And things could not be better.
And now life should be a constant state of praise and thanksgiving,
shouldn't it? It should. But being in the state
of bliss and confidence The old man is animated. He's animated
to cause the believer to take for granted that which is only
due to the unmerited favor of God. Our carnality is insidiously
clever. Insidiously clever. Taking a
situation that should surely cause us to have confidence in
Christ and instead swerving our minds to consider that our good
fortune is due to some good thing. that we have done. Sadly, though
oft-repeated, we never seem to suspect that it's happening,
and don't even realize it until we're down on our face before
Almighty God. We never seem to learn. People say if you learn from
your past, you won't repeat it. That's not true. Not true in
anybody's life. We wouldn't keep making the same
old errors if we learned anything from them. Our carnal man, our
natural man, is at enmity with God. It is not subject to the
law of God, neither indeed can be, not subject to the word of
God. It hates God, it despises God. Part of us, our old man,
the nature we're born with, will never bow to God. And whenever
anything spiritual takes place in our lives when we worship
God, it's always seeking an avenue by which it can cause us to have
confidence in ourselves and not in God. The devil ain't out here
in the bars and the bordellas. He ain't jumping out in the street
with a pitchfork and a pointy tail telling people to do bad
things. You know what he's doing? He's
standing in the pulpits of this nation and throughout the world
telling men if they're good enough, God will accept them. and men
believe it. What did he say to Eve? You know,
if you eat this fruit, you'll be like God. You'll be like God. Don't you want to be like God?
Everybody wants to be like God. So it was. Hezekiah, as he basked
in the good situation, he received a get-well card from the son
of the king of Babylon. whose name I won't repeat because
it's too long, but it means worshipper of Baal. Worshipper of Baal. And Hezekiah was so pleased to
hear from him, just the way he said it to Isaiah. And Isaiah
said, where did these fellows come from? He said, oh, they
come from afar, even from Babylon. They come all the way from, you
know, the big guy come down to see me and brought me a gift
and a get well card. Hezekiah invited him over to
the house and showed him all his treasures. Showed him all
his money, all his spices, all his gold, all his silver, all
of his land, everything that Hezekiah had he showed to him.
What's Hezekiah doing there? You know why. He's full of pride.
He's feeling good. Life is good. That act smells
suspiciously of pride. Hezekiah was impressed that such
a dignitary would come from so far just to see him. And he thought
to impress this dignitary. Did Hezekiah praise the Lord
before these Baal worshippers? And Baal was simply Nimrod deified. You know who Baal was. Baal was
Nimrod after he died. Nimrod died A couple years later,
they made him the sun god, Bayon, and they began to worship him.
And then his wife, a couple years after he died, got pregnant and
had a son named Semiramis. And she became the son of God. Or he became the son of God.
But you see, Nimrod had visited her, she said, and caused her
to be pregnant. And this son brought forth was
God's son. and his symbol was a cross, Semiramis. That's who they worship, Nimrod. Did Hezekiah exalt and glorify
the Lord who had made him king? Did Hezekiah praise God before
these men, God who had increased his dominion, had healed his
diseases and freely given him all things putting everything in his hand.
There's no indication of that. There's simply not an indication
here when this is going on. What he did in showing them everything, what he did would bring Israel
into captivity of Babylon shortly in the history of Israel. Babylon will be the warden of
the imprisoned nation and will hold captive Israel for many
years. And all this stuff, this gold,
this silver, these spices, all the riches of Israel belong to
him who's the victor, Babylon. He gets the spoils. I thought
of this as I was reading this and I thought of Belshazzar sitting
in Babylon that night and having a party and saying, go get those
things from the temple. Go get those things that we took
from Hezekiah. Go get those things. Let's party
with the Lord's chalices and the Lord's cups. That stuff that
was gold and silver in the temple, and just as he said that, there
came a writing of a finger on a wall. Many, many tico you farson. You've been weighed in the balance
and found wanting. Your kingdom will depart for
you, and the king of the Medes and Persians will sit on your
throne tonight. It's all over for you. Where
did he get those fine things? Well, Hezekiah showed them to
him. Hezekiah showed his predecessor. But this was all providence,
wasn't it? It is. All according to plan. Purposeful
providence. The same providence that 300
or 400 years prior told Abraham, you're going to become a great
nation and I'm going to send you into captivity to the land
of Egypt, then I'm going to deliver you by my mighty hand. 430 years
before it happened. They told him. That same providence
that created all the situations of Abraham having Isaac and so
forth and on and then Jacob being born and Jacob being called because
Jacob was loved by God and he's always hated by God and Jacob
being named Israel when he wrestled with the angel. All of that.
Jacob's sons all being born. the twelve tribes of Israel. And everything was going well
and God sent a famine. And Jacob said, we've got to
go somewhere and get something to eat. One of them said, well
I've herded some corn in Egypt. Well in Egypt where they sold
Joseph to? And Joseph is now second in command
in Egypt? They didn't know that. That was
all providentially purposed before God in his grand scheme of predestination
before any of this took place. And the same providence has brought
Hezekiah here. The same providence brought Israel
into captivity with Babylon. So it is with Israel. They will
go into captivity in Babylon and be delivered by the mighty
arm of God as he employs another pagan king to do it. He'll be
delivered from Babylon by Cyrus, king of Persia. to be used of
the Lord for deliverance. And yet Cyrus, though called
chosen of God and by all historical measures a political genius,
died as a pagan, calling for his false gods on his deathbed.
But he was used of God. Why? Because God uses everything. God uses what He created and
who He created to undo His purpose. God's using you right now. So
I don't feel like it don't matter. You ain't seen the result of
you yet. But it'll be soon. Hezekiah's
progeny, when they go into Babylon, his sons will lose their humanity
in one sense, their manhood, they'll be made eunuchs. They will not be able to have
children. So pretty much it all ends with Hezekiah here. The
cassee of riches will be used by Babylon, and this is the ones
that most of them have been displayed. They will be brought into a place
of captivity. They will be stripped of everything,
except for one thing, one valuable thing, the only thing of true
value. And what is that? When all is
said and done, if you're stripped of everything you have, And you
leave this world like you're born naked as you come in. What's
one thing that is of true value? Nothing you've left behind. Nothing
that you once possessed that you no longer possess. Things
that you cherished are no longer there. They're all melted with
the fervent heat. What will matter? A covenant. That God has made
a covenant with you after the sure mercies of David. That's
what's going to matter. That's what David said on his
deathbed. God has made a covenant with me, ordered in all things
and sure. And this is all my desire and all of my salvation. The sure mercies of David. Here's
the issue. Hezekiah learned it. And Isaiah confronted him about
it. Hezekiah responded with a man who understands. Verse 8 of our
text. Hezekiah said, Good is the word
of the Lord, which thou hast spoken." Well, what has he spoken?
You're going to lose it all. You're going into captivity.
Your children are going to be eunuchs in the house of the king.
You're not going to have any grandkids and great-grandkids. And everything you own, they're
going to get. Hezekiah said, that's good. That's good. These words are not some fatal
resignation to the will of God, but rather a sigh of relief that
the ordained calamities will not come in his day. For the
last thing he says, for there shall be peace and truth in my
days. God did providentially keep Hezekiah from seeing all
this take place. He did not go into captivity
with Israel. He says, In 1 2nd Chronicles
33 and verse 32, Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and his
goodness, behold, they are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet
and the son of Amos, and the book of the kings of Judah and
Israel. And Hezekiah slept with his father as they buried him
in the chiefest of the sepulchres of the sons of David. And all
Judah and all that inhabited Jerusalem did honor him at his
death, and Manasseh, his king, his son, ruled in his state.
the Lord's evaluation of Hezekiah, this man who got full of pride,
this man who had actually went back to Egypt to get help rather
than turning to God. God said he's a good man. God
says he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. That's
what he'll say of every one of his children. Because He knows
our fame and He remembers our dust. And He's not dealt with
us after our iniquities, nor rewarded us according to our
sin. But as far as the East is from the West, so far as He separated
our iniquities from us. He pities us, thankfully. As a father pitieth his children
when they're stupid. You know, we don't ever stop
loving our kids. But they can do dumb things. I know I did
so many dumb things my mother still cringes to talk about. She never stopped loving me. God doesn't stop loving His people
when they mess up. His love never changes. Our love
for Him does. Sadly. We can get in a fix. We can get mad at God. We can
forget God, but He'll never forget us. He'll never forget us. The Lord said of Him, as He will
say of every one of His elect, well done, thou good and faithful
servant. The life of the child of God,
the ups and the downs, the victories and the failures are all divinely,
providentially manipulated to the place where the elect finally
and assuredly will proclaim when we stand at last robed in the
pristine righteousness of Jesus Christ, standing for the thrice
holy God. You know what we'll say? By the
grace of God. I am what I am. Only by the grace
of God. May we praise God for the glory
of His grace. For the glory of His grace. And
may we, at least occasionally, do it when everything is going
well. Probably won't. But I sure hope
we might do it at least once or twice before we die. Father,
bless us to understanding. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.