Isaiah 38 vs 1-22

Isaiah Chapter 38 Verse 1

·    This is a jump back a bit in time from the end of the last chapter because we will find out in verse 6 that the Assyrian army had not yet been defeated. We also know from 2 Kings 18 that when he began to reign as king, he was 25 years old and reigned for 29 years. So, some quick math (and what we will see in the rest of this chapter), he is roughly 39 years old when he gets sick. And his sickness includes some sort of boil…, kind of gross…

·    At any rate, as he lays there super sick wondering when he will get better, here comes his buddy to pray for him. HA! Nope. Not so good news, king. Set your house in order because you are not going to recover…

Isaiah Chapter 38 Verses 2 – 3

·    It’s interesting, this prayer of Hezekiah. First off, it was entirely private. He turns from Isaiah, to the point that Isaiah just ups and leaves, (we’ll see that in just a moment), and his prayer has within it no request (other than the Lord to remember). Remember how Hezekiah has served the Lord and set right what many others had turned so wrong…

·    First of all, God forgets no detail of anything that I have ever done in humble service to Him. Striving to set right what is wrong in this world. He treasures my works. He cherishes my serving Him. He doesn’t need it…, nothing like that, it’s just a thing about our bond, me and Him, our relationship, it means and meant the world to Him. I mean, obviously, He gave up His life so that we could have that…

·    And He’s perfect. No flaws. No capacity for something to slip His mind or fade from His knowing. He stores them up as His own special gifts from me to Him and one day books will be open and for all that I have served Him, in Spirit and in truth, there will be some sort of accounting. How? What? I’m not entirely sure. But somehow it will translate into who I am and what I am for all of eternity.

·    Jesus said in Luke 19:15-19, “And so it was that when he returned, having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading. Then came the first, saying, ‘Master, your mina has earned ten minas.’ And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.’ And the second came, saying, ‘Master, your mina has earned five minas.’ Likewise, he said to him, ‘You also be over five cities.’”

·    I believe there is an acceptance of sorts on the part of King Hezekiah here and that acceptance includes the word of God. Isaiah is the prophet of God and he just told him its over. So, he doesn’t argue, he rolls onto his side and even at the very end of his life, holds fast and faithful to the Word of God. And God decides to do something particular, peculiar, specific in this situation…

Isaiah Chapter 38 Verses 4 – 8

·    Does God heal people? All the time! Does God not heal people? All the time! In 2022, 67.1 million people died worldwide. 128 people each minute, y’all…, how’s that for a morbid statistic! How many people are healed each year? No clue. There’s no readily available data… Did Hezekiah pray the prayer of faith to be healed. Nope. Did someone lay hands on him? Anoint him with oil? Nope. Folks think there is a special potion or ritual to bring about healing. Bro, that’s witchcraft, not Christianity…

·    We dwell within the sovereignty of God and sometimes maladies, illnesses, bad situations, hard circumstances and difficult seasons aren’t for us to pray our way out of but to glorify God within! In John 9:1-3, we read, “Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.” This man was blind from birth such that there would come a time when God was glorified in him.

·    Paul at one point in his ministry is literally raising a young man back to life, healing the sick, preaching to the poor, and then he tells us in 2 Timothy 4:20, “I have left Trophimus sick in Miletus.” Paul himself pleaded with God for healing and God’s response in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me…”

·    Paul boasts in his infirmities and yet there are those that would rebuke Paul today for doing that! I’m not sure why this topic is so hard to grasp for some or even discuss with some. God heals according to His sovereignty and it’s a far stretch to try and make the case Biblically that God’s will is that everyone would be physically healed of all ailments. I mean, just one data point, for the first 2,500 years recorded for us in scripture, there is no mention of any healings whatsoever…!

·    Let me give you a grace filled, faith filled, God glorifying modern day example. Joni Eareckson Tada was born on October 15th, 1949. She grew up riding horses, hiking, playing tennis, swimming…, but when she was 17 years old, she dove into the Chesapeake Bay misjudging the depth of the water and broke her neck and became a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the shoulders down.

·    She then went through two years of rehabilitation and learning to live life with control only over her face and according to her autobiography, she was sad, then filled with faith, then furious, depressed and suicidal, struggling through doubts about God’s goodness, and truth.

·    As she recounts in her book “Joni,” she sought physical healing of her quadriplegia. She prayed and fully believed that God would heal her. In her words, “I certainly believed. I was calling up my girlfriends saying, ‘Next time you see me I’m going to be running up your sidewalk. God’s going to heal me’” (quoted in an interview with Marvin Olasky, January 17, 2013). Yet Joni is still in a wheelchair today…

·    Seventy years after the accident that left her paralyzed, God has still not healed her…, although since then she has been healed twice of cancer! Her perspective is one of great faith and Biblical, sovereign truth: “God may remove your suffering, and that will be great cause for praise. But if not, He will use it, He will use anything and everything that stands in the way of His fellowship with you. So let God mold you and make you, transform you from glory to glory. That’s the deeper healing” (quoted on Grace to You, October 16, 2013). Some feel that God will never heal anyone miraculously today. Others feel that God will always heal a person if he or she has enough faith. But God will not be put into either box.”

·    BONUS NOTES – Will only read if there is time. “After 55 years in a wheelchair, I’ve got it, and it’s miserable. It is downright miserable,” she said. “And there are times, in fact, just this week, at 2 a.m. I’m in bed paralyzed. I can’t move to readjust my position. And I have been awakened by my pain. I’m praying, I’m saying, ‘God, I don’t think I can do this and I can’t believe that you think I can do this. Yeah. I think you are asking way too much of me.’” Now 73, Joni continues to find strength in her faith. She says of God: “I’m going to trust that if I do believe you and what you’ve said here, I could do everything without complaining. You are going to give me the grace to keep my mouth shut from grumbling and murmuring against the mission that he has called me to carry out.” Her advice is this: “Nothing makes our hope more sharp and clear than focusing on the word of God. So, when other Christians feel deflated or discouraged or overwhelmed by their sufferings, I tell them to hang on because the healing is coming. Maybe not when you want it, but it’s coming. God has promised it. “So hang on a little while and be constant in prayer, patient [in] your affliction, but also rejoice in your hope. Rejoice in that happy day when the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf will hear, and people who are lame like me are going to leap like deer.”

·    Just food for thought, what is the greater miracle? A quadriplegic healed or the faith of this human, just like you and me, for the past 54 years in a condition of total physical paralysis?

·    Here, for Hezekiah, we aren’t even told if God healed him. All we are told is that God extended his years by 15. From the age of 39 to the age of 54. Still young in my book! AND, God signs His commitment with a miracle! He sends them back in time! SO COOL!

·    Impossible to know how long is represented by 10 degrees because we don’t know the design of the sundial but if we assume it is a 360-degree sundial then we are talking about 40 minutes. At any rate, what kind of God is this that He can rewind and write time again?! Far beyond our finding out, for sure!

Isaiah Chapter 38 Verses 9 – 14

·    Not a very faithful prayer at all, right? James 5:15 says, “The prayer of faith will save the sick…,” what about the prayer of bitterness? In Isaiah 38 it saves the sick. Why? Such that God may do what is in His mind to do… THAT is the sovereignty of God. It’s interesting, to live with the desire for what is in God’s mind to happen isn’t even Christianity 101, its bottle-milk, and so many in the faith scream and starve…

Isaiah Chapter 38 Verses 15 – 17

·    Some say that the writing of Hezekiah lends itself to the sickness he dealt with was a result of some sort of personal sin…

Isaiah Chapter 38 Verses 18 – 19

·    This is a glimpse of the understanding of death before the New Covenant. Today, because Jesus has overcome death through the forgiveness of sin, it is as we read in 2 Corinthians 5:8, “We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.”

·    And Hezekiah says something great here, I’m going to tell my kids about this. Even my nation. Through scripture, even the world! What God has done for us, we ought to take account and make sure we tell someone about it at some point, at some time…, why? Because if we don’t then how are we even thankful. What we are is forgetful and spoiled! Why would God work again in my life when that is how my soul responds…? That’s terrible for me… I think of that often.

Isaiah Chapter 38 Verses 20 – 22

·    Interesting…, even though God had made the declaration that Hezekiah would live…, look at this, medicine is still applied. Come on folks. To take an aspirin doesn’t mean you’re faithless that God can’t or won’t heal your headache. It makes you wise. Who created the elements of aspirin and how those elements react with the human design? DUH, God…. And so be free… Be free to pray. Be free to seek the Lord. And be free to take a swig of cough medicine if you need it!

·    The whole point of liberty is just that, liberty! And God, He’s in the business of setting folks free to live unto Him and bring GREAT GLORY to His name! And sometimes that freedom looks like sending people back in time and extending life 15 years, and sometimes freedom looks like living your life as a quadriplegic. Maybe not in accordance with what’s in your mind, but in accordance with what is in God’s sovereign, eternal and majestic mind…