Posted on June 7, 2023 by Elizabeth Welte in Freedom Fighters
“Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the LORD, and said, “Remember now, O LORD, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.” – Isaiah 38:2-3 (NKJV)
Here’s a few questions to start your day off with: Does your theology have room for God to accomplish His eternal purposes through different means? If His being doesn’t change, and His eternal purposes do not change, would you still raise an eyebrow if the way He accomplishes His eternal purposes changes according to what we do in response to Him? Yeah. Ya may wanna give that cup of coffee and extra stir, anyway…
There was this king back in ancient days who “trusted in the LORD God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him.” (2 Kings 18:5) He shreds the high places where idol worship is taking place and since “he held fast to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses” (2 Kings 18:6), everything he did was successful. Until this little moment happens: “And in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them.” (2 Kings 18:13)
King Hezekiah panics, and rightful so. Even though my own theology say’s “don’t panic,” I can’t blame this king for panicking. Sennacherib’s armies carry Israel away into exile, and since King Hezekiah ain’t been paying “tribute” to Sennacherib, Judah is next. So, when King Hezekiah sees that he is surrounded by Sennacherib’s armies, he makes this statement, “I have done wrong; turn away from me; whatever you impose on me I will pay.” (2 Kings 18:14b) WHAT!? Then this king, who held fast to the LORD, turns around and uses, not only the treasure from his house to pay the tribute BUT King Hezekiah takes the gold off the doors of The Temple of the LORD, along with His silver and handed it all over to a pagan king, from a pagan land, where they worship pagan gods…nice.
“Like a crane or a swallow, so I chattered; I mourned like a dove; My eyes fail from looking upward. O LORD, I am oppressed; Undertake for me!” – Isaiah 38:14
There’s a whole whirlwind of things that could be said here but my focus will change to the prayers of King Hezekiah. First, is the one after King Hezekiah is publicly rebuked by Rabshakeh, an envoy of Sennacherib. The objective is to scare the people so that they will be easier to conquer. But when word gets back to King Hezekiah that Rabshakeh told the people NOT to believe that the LORD will deliver them from the Assyrian army, he’ll seek the prophet Isiah’s counsel, and then pray. And it musta been some prayer because God moved against 185,000 members of the Assyrian army and that, in turn, sent Sennacherib to head back to Assyria, where his own sons will assassinate him while he worships an idol. But within this victory there will a curveball.
King Hezekiah gets sick, Isaiah goes to him with a message from the LORD, “Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.” (Isaiah 38:1c) This causes him to face the wall and pray in a way that almost sounds like he was bargaining with God… but he wasn’t. Why? Because King Hezekiah DID walk in His ways, he did shred the idolatry that Judah was involved with, and his heart was full of His Truth. That prayer was enough for God to allow the sundial of Ahaz to go backwards to about 10 degrees. So, did God change His mind or was this His plan along? Allow me to answer that with a question: Does your theology have room for God to accomplish His eternal purposes through different means?
Ya see, in a really fast way today, we should see how prayer moves God. It may seem that God changed His mind with King Hezekiah’s illness, after all, he did stupidly give Sennacherib the gold right off the Temple doors. Most of us woulda thought that deserved punishment on its own, but that’s how we think God should operate. You should turn to Isaiah 38:9-20 and read about the heart of King Hezekiah. Ya see, God’s being, decrees, and purposes don’t change but that doesn’t mean He follows your script. God uses prayer as the means for Him to act and yet He is not bound by prayer, it’s in His grace that He acts. So Pray!
Amen?
Written by Chris Hughes: Chris is a child of El Elyon, a son, a husband, and a father. He has an education in Biblical doctrine and is a graduate of The Colony of Mercy, 11/2003. He has been a Freedom Fighter contributor since 2008. You can email him at cphughes515@verizon.net.
Think About This: “What should be our response when God does not answer our prayers in the way we hoped? Submission. Submission is only possible in relationships where there is trust. Trust is only possible in relationships where there is consistent intimacy.” — Manny Mill
The Daily Bible Reading: 1 Kings 7, 2 Chronicles 4. You can download our 2023 Daily Bible Reading Plan by clicking here.
This Week’s Verse to Memorize: “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.” – Hebrews 2:10-11
Consider a retreat at America’s Keswick retreat center.
