Setting the Story Straight--Isaiah Series

For the last 12 years or so, Hollywood has been in love with prequels—movies that tell the back story of other movies that have already been made. To my knowledge, it all started with the Star Wars trilogy when George Lucas decided to go back and tell the story of how Darth Vader became Darth Vader. Since then, several sci-fi and superhero franchises have received the prequel treatment, including Star Trek, X-Men, Batman, and now Spider-Man. The purpose of a prequel is to enhance your understanding of the original story by giving you some of the background details that led up to it. As we return to our study of Isaiah today, we will be looking at a prequel to the dramatic rescue of Israel that we read about last time we were in this book. When we last read about King Hezekiah, he and his people were in grave danger of being conquered by the Assyrians, but God accomplished a dramatic rescue by sending an angel to slay 185,000 Assyrian troops. That was quite a story, and King Hezekiah showed tremendous faith in the midst of those dark days. But lest we forget who the real hero of the story was, Isaiah goes on in chapters 38-39 to give us some of the back story of King Hezekiah, and we learn that Hezekiah would not have even been alive in those dark days were it not for the grace of God. While we can certainly appreciate the human heroes of the Bible, Isaiah reminds us to never forget who the real hero is! Let’s learn how God prepared Hezekiah for his moment of great faith during the Assyrian invasion. 1. God applies loving grace to Hezekiah’s fatal illness (Ch. 38) Let’s read this story [READ 38:1-3]. Now, beside the obviously unpleasant thought of dying, Hezekiah was probably so troubled by this news for two reasons. First, he seems to understand that his illness was an act of discipline for some sin or sins that he had committed. We’ll see this more clearly in v. 17. The Bible does view sin as one possible cause of illness. I think God will make it very clear to us if an illness is a discipline for sin, and Hezekiah seems convinced that he is facing discipline here. He was obviously devastated at the thought of dying out of fellowship with God. Second, Hezekiah apparently did not have a son at this point and thus had no heir to his throne. He discover this when we learn how old his son was when he became king after Hezekiah’s eventual death. So Hezekiah was probably also thinking about what would happen to his family and his kingdom if he were to die without an heir. Well, the Lord was listening to Hezekiah’s prayer, and He gave a very gracious response [READ 38:4-8]. Not only did God choose to heal Hezekiah, but notice the extent of God’s gracious response. He wasn’t just going to give Hezekiah another day or another month or another year—He promised him a full 15 years of life! Then God assured Hezekiah that He would protect him from his most dreaded enemies—the Assyrians. So Hezekiah would have reason to believe that the next 15 years would be 15 good years—years of safety and security. Then, as we’ll read in a moment, Hezekiah asked for a sign to confirm this message, and God granted Him a miraculous sign to remove all doubt about His promises. So Hezekiah received far more than he could have ever hoped for, but isn’t that always true of God’s grace? Remember—the very idea of grace is receiving something that you don’t deserve. So not only are we undeserving of little acts of grace, but God pours out His grace upon us and lavishes it upon us. As John 1:16 says of Jesus, “from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” I remember hearing a pastor compare God’s grace to eating pancakes at his grandma’s house. He said that when he was a boy, his mother would only pour a little syrup on his pancakes because she was thinking about how much sugar he was eating. But when he ate pancakes at grandma’s house, grandma would let it flow! She would pour out the syrup and let it run over the sides until the pancakes were just floating like an island in a sea of syrup. That’s what God is like when He shows grace—He just lets it flow! So if you’re ever tempted to think that God has been stingy with His grace in your life, you need to think again! God’s grace is lavish and excessive, and its designed to fill our hearts with gratitude, just as it did for Hezekiah. Hezekiah wrote a psalm to recall these events and how he learned from them. Let’s read his words [READ 38:9-14]. Hezekiah’s poetry really gives us a sense of what he was feeling, but he also gives us a glimpse of what he learned that gave him a new dedication to God [READ 38:15-20; note v. 15 NIV “I will walk humbly all my years because of this anguish of my soul”]. Hezekiah realized how this whole experience had ultimately been good for him, and he had a renewed commitment to praise God and thank Him. This experience was also preparing Hezekiah for a significant test during the Assyrian invasion. Who knows how Hezekiah would have responded if he had not gone through this time? Would he have had the same faith if he had not already seen God’s power over nature with the sign of the shadow, and ultimately God’s power over his own life through this healing? Remember that God knows His whole plan for our lives, and struggles that we face today may be preparing us for victory in even greater struggles tomorrow. Let me make one quick side comment about v. 21 [READ 38:21-22]. Verse 21 tells us that God worked through the means of a medical treatment. I think verses like this tell us that God is not opposed to working through medical treatments in order to heal us. I heard a story not long ago of a boy who died from a burst appendix because his parents believed that God would only heal in response to prayer. They believed it was wrong to seek out medical help. But my friends, all healing comes from God, and His glory is not diminished if He chooses to heal through medicine. So we see from this chapter that Hezekiah would not have even been alive to display great faith if it had not been for God’s grace. But there was another important event that also prepared Hezekiah for the Assyrian invasion. 2. God applies severe mercy to Hezekiah’s naïve pride (Ch. 39) I borrowed this phrase “severe mercy” from a book with that title by a man named Sheldon Vanauken. In this book, Mr. Vanauken writes about his love story with his wife. Their romance was one that all married couples would love to have. But after many years together, his wife died of an illness, and he was left without the love of his life. Mr. Vanauken describes this loss as a severe mercy—severe because of the deep loss that he experienced, but merciful because the loss drove him closer to God. Thus, his story is one of seeing the grace and mercy of God shine through during painful circumstances. Hezekiah faced a somewhat comparable situation through some news that he received from Isaiah. Let’s read about this incident [READ 39:1-2]. Here is where Hezekiah showed some naïve pride by showing the Babylonians so much. His actions would be comparable to our president receiving ambassadors and showing them around the Pentagon, showing them all of our nuclear missiles, and giving them secrets of national security! Its hard to know exactly what he was thinking. Perhaps he thought, “I need to show these men how great I am to convince them that I am worthy of all the trouble they went to to come here.” Or perhaps he was hoping to make an alliance with the Babylonians to fight off Assyria. We know that Judah’s kings were constantly tempted to trust in friends and firepower rather than God. Either way, Hezekiah was naïve, and he revealed a sinful pride in all that God had given him. Well, Hezekiah then received some news from Isaiah that would become a severe mercy for him [READ 39:3-7]. What a devastating prophecy to hear! Everything that Hezekiah had just been bragging about would be carried away—and by the very people whom he may have thought were now his friends. And not only would Hezekiah’s things be carried away, but all of the things that had been passed on to him by previous kings and all of the things that he hoped to pass on to kings after him. And some of his own descendents would be conquered by the people whom he had just trusted, and they would be humbled and placed into servitude. This was severe news, indeed, and Hezekiah’s response has long been puzzling to students of the Bible [READ 39:8]. It is very easy to read this verse and conclude that Hezekiah is being horribly selfish and celebrating the fact that he will apparently get off scot-free. But we can’t jump to conclusions about what the word “good” means in this verse. Both the English word “good” and the Hebrew word behind it have a wide range of meaning. My dictionary listed 20 definitions for the word “good!” I think it is more likely that Hezekiah is saying that God’s word is appropriate and fitting. Given the lessons he just learned from his healing and the tremendous faith he is about to display during the Assyrian invasion, I think he is expressing a humble resignation to the will of God, saying that whatever God does is appropriate and justified. I also think that Hezekiah’s final statement is an indication that God has been merciful to him. His actions have contributed to these future consequences; God would be justified to bring down these consequences now, during Hezekiah’s time. I think Hezekiah realizes that yet acknowledges God’s mercy for delaying the consequences that are to come. All in all, I think the severe mercy of this news prepared Hezekiah for his greatest test yet during the Assyrian invasion. He learned that he couldn’t trust in money or weapons or so-called friends because all of those things could be taken away. The only option was to trust in the living God who holds our lives in His hand—who even controls nature and the future itself! Trusting in anything less would have doomed Hezekiah and his people, but his faith had been forged in the crucible of trials that had trained him to trust in God alone. My friends, consider this—Hezekiah did not know what kind of test was about to come his way when he lay sick or when he received visitors from Babylon. He didn’t know that he was about to face the most pivotal moment of his life. But God did—and God was preparing him for a great spiritual victory by taking him through the training ground of trials. We face many moments in life that don’t make sense to us at that moment, but we must remember that their importance may become very clear to us in due time. Today’s trials may simply be the prequels to tomorrow’s victories, and those victories may not have come unless we had been trained by the trials. We also have the incredible blessing of knowing how the last chapter of our lives will play out. Jesus told us that He has gone to heaven to prepare a place for us. You and I have a reservation there—the angels are putting the mints out on the pillows as we speak! So we may not know what the next chapter of life holds for us, but we do know how the story will turn out, don’t we? So can’t we live with greater faith today since we know how the story ends? We’re like characters in a movie who already know how the movie ends! What an awesome advantage for life! Don’t you think Dorothy would have liked to see the final scenes of “The Wizard of Oz” when she was first picked up by that tornado? That could have saved her a lot of trouble! Don’t you think Luke Skywalker would have liked to see “Return of the Jedi” before he had to go through “The Empire Strikes Back?” My friends, we’ve already seen the closing scenes of this movie called “life,” and we’ve seen the credits, too! Who is directing all of this? God! Who wrote the screenplay? God! Who plays the starring role? Jesus! So we don’t know what the next scene has in store for us—big deal! We know how the story turns out, and we know the director who will get us there! Today’s trials may just be the prequel to tomorrow’s main attraction, but no matter what, we know the sequel to this life is gonna be a blockbuster!