SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.
In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the Prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz, came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live. Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, saying: I beseech Thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before Thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in Thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. And it came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying, Turn again, and tell Hezekiah, the captain of my people, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David, thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee; on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years.—2 Kings 20, 1-6.
In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the Prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz, came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live. Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, saying: I beseech Thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before Thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in Thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. And it came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying, Turn again, and tell Hezekiah, the captain of my people, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David, thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee; on the third day thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years.—2 Kings 20, 1-6.
None reading the Gospel-lessons of these successive Sundays with an observing mind will have failed to discover that they treat of life's ills, its sufferings and sorrows. Last Sunday it was the matter of care, anxiety, worry concerning which our Lord gave us instruction; the Sunday before ten lepers—the picture of intense bodily affliction—appear upon the scene; and previous to that we heard of the deaf-mute and of the Good Samaritan administering his work of love, until in to-day's Scripture, as if the climax, we observe a young man, under circumstances the most pathetic, being carried out to his burial-place. Nor can we do more wisely than to follow the line of thought thus indicated, for which reason we have selected the foregoing text. May we, under God's blessing, learn its comforting and practical truths!
Three things would we note from the Scripture:I. King Hezekiah's affliction;II. his recovery;III. what he gained from his experience.
The verses before us tell us that just after the destruction of the army of Sennacherib, which had been laying siege to Jerusalem, King Hezekiah was prostrated with a dangerous malady, the result, most probably, of the fatigue and anxiety in connection with the defense of his capital. At first it would seem that he had little apprehension as to the issue of his illness, but when the Prophet Isaiah told him that his disease was mortal, and bade him set his house in order, his heart sank within him. He was yet a young man, possibly forty years, in the prime oflife; he had just escaped a great peril; the Lord had given him a marvelous, yea, miraculous deliverance, from the hands of the Assyrian oppressor, and he was a good man, a pious king, who, more than any other since the time of David, was zealous for the honor of Jehovah among the people.
But now all these hopes were dashed to the ground; the cherished purpose of his heart frustrated, his life's work promptly cut short; and as he thought over these things, he turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, and wept sore. He could not understand God's dealings with him. Why had he been delivered from the Assyrian king if he was thus and now to be removed? To what end had all his efforts in the interest of true religion been if he was to be cut down before they could be carried through? It was like the gardener plucking the flower before it was opened, like the builder destroying his own structure before it was finished. It was not Hezekiah's case alone; there have been and are many others since. It is an old problem and a constantly recurring problem: Why does God deal so, and why does He deal so with those who are His people?
In reply, I would say that a full answer to that problem has not been furnished us, and yet there is some light cast upon it by this and other accounts in God's Word.—First of all, would we ward off the rash conclusion, so commonly heard and everywhere repeated, that because we are afflicted, we cannot be the objects of God's love, that, if a person is sick and suffering, he must have done something, committed some sin or sins which have brought upon him such affliction. How frequently does this lamentation reach a pastor's ear, "What have I done that God should thus deal with me?" The Savior distinctly warned His disciples against such a conclusion, that particular suffering is always the consequence of some particular wickedness. It is clear that all such reasoning in the case of Hezekiah was unwarranted; he had done no special sin; he was not a sinner above all other sinners; his ailment came in the course that all bodily ailments come. Why, then, make such conclusions regarding ourselves and others? No, God's Word offers a different explanation. The Savior, on one occasion, speaking of the sickness of His friend Lazarus, said, "This sickness is for the glory of God." Let us mark that statement. The design of God in the affliction of His people is to show forth His glory. In what respect? How? In two respects, in the afflicted one himself andupon others. God's glory is advanced by the afflicted person, if the person afflicted is helped by the affliction in his spiritual growth, is made firmer in faith, established in Christian character. Luther numbered trials as among his best instructors. The Psalmist records the experience of multitudes when he says: It is good for me that I have been afflicted. When afflictions have this effect, they are to the glory of God. Then, again, the afflictions of God's people may redound to His glory in the effects which they may have upon others, to silence the gainsayer, convert the careless, or educate the weak believer into stronger faith. An instance of that is Job. The calamities came upon him to prove the utter falseness of the assertion made by Satan that Job was serving God for what he could make thereby; and I doubt not that even in our days many Christians have been sorely afflicted just to show the unbelieving, scoffing element by whom they are surrounded how firm and abiding their faith is, and how lovingly God can sustain them in their deepest distress.
Sometimes, too, through the sufferings of a believer the indifferent and careless are awakened and led to the Lord. The affliction of a parent has been a blessing to a son or daughter; the illness of a wife, borne with Christian submission, has led many a man to Christ, while all of us are strengthened in our faith by the sight of the calm and simple trustfulness of a dear one on whom God's hand has been laid. Afflictions are often to the glory of God. These reflections may not, indeed, fully explain the mystery why God lays low His people, but it lessens it. In any case it ought to keep us from that rash and altogether too common conclusion that because we are afflicted we are particularly faulty. The contrary seems really true. When the teacher desires to demonstrate his own excellence as an instructor, he takes not the poorest, but the best pupil and subjects him to the severest examination; so sometimes, I think, the Lord exposes His dearest people to fierce trials, just because He knows their strength and would thereby commend that faith by which they stand to the acceptance of their fellow-men.
That is the first consideration that we would direct attention to: Hezekiah, the beloved, pious, God-praying King of Judah, was laid low with a serious malady. And so, as the Apostle expresses it, let God's people not think it strange concerning the fiery trial that cometh upon them as though some strange thinghad happened unto them. The very best of men are often the greatest sufferers.
Again, we notice the conduct of Hezekiah. His case was hopeless. The prophet had been directed to tell him: "Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live." What does the king do? The record says: "He turned his face to the wall." Was it to conceal his grief at the fatal intelligence he had received from the prophet? Was it to be more unmolested from the presence of his attendants, or because the wall was on that side of his mansion which faced toward the Temple of God? We are not told; but it says: "He turned his face to the wall, and prayed." He had a place whither he went in his distress. When all earthly hopes vanished and all help seemed at an end, he addressed himself directly and immediately to Him in whose hands alone rests the outcome of life and of death. Pouring out his heart in tearful sobs, he pleads with the Lord, tells Him of his sincerity of life and purpose to serve Him, and of God's promises to His people to give length of days; and He who by the mouth of His prophet had directed: "Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee," had His ears open unto his cry. He is not displeased with the outpouring of their souls to Him, He delights in it, and it has power with Him. Yes, it is by this very conduct that one can test whose they are and whom they serve. To whomsoever they first go in the time of their extremity, to which refuge they betake themselves when calamity is overtaking them, determines, more than anything else, whether they are God's followers or not. To use an illustration: Traveling once, there was among my fellow-passengers a little girl who romped about and was at home with everybody, and while she was frolicking around it might have been difficult to tell whom she belonged to, she seemed so much the property of every one; but when the engine gave a loud, long shriek, and we went thundering along into a dark tunnel, the little one made one bound and ran to nestle in a lady's lap. Then one knew who was her mother. So in the day of prosperity, it may be occasionally difficult to say whether a man is a Christian or not, but let him be sent through some dark, damp tunnel of severe affliction, and you will see at once to whom he belongs. That will infallibly reveal it. Take a note of it, my beloved hearer, and when affliction comes, observe to whom you flee for help; that is a sure test whether you are Christ's and Christ is yours.
To recur to the narrative,—Hezekiah's appeal was not without results. As he lay there tearfully communing with his own heart and with God, Isaiah returned to his chamber with a message of healing assuring him that he should go up to the temple on the third day, and directed him to take a lump of figs and place it upon the boil. This simple direction goes to refute and correct some errors very common in our day. The one is that remedies are to be absolutely tabooed, that they do no good; faith and prayer alone are to be resorted to to effect a cure. The theory, and the heresy that has prompted it, are set at naught by this one direction, in which God's prophet, under the direction of the almighty Physician, specified the remedy to be used. And the other error which it sets at naught is, that medical remedies have, in themselves, aside from God, any virtue or value. Too much does suffering humanity rely upon medicine; the drug bottle has become with many a veritable idol; that is their god who is going to help them. The application of figs to boils was a remedy known before Isaiah suggested it, in all likelihood it had been tried in Hezekiah's case without result; now, at the prophet's injunction, it is tried again and effectively. In other words, this time God worked through it, and so it proved of value. All the medicine in the world is worthless if He does not put divine properties into it. And so let us beware of idolizing the medicine, and forgetting over it Him who put the good into it, and when we take it, let us not fail to offer up with it prayer to Him who can and must make it efficacious.
And so it came about, through the use of the means which the prophet prescribed, that Hezekiah improved,—improved, I repeat, only physically, to natural strength and health? Is that all that his sickness was intended for, that is included in his recovery? Is that all that our affliction is intended for, that, having been confined to the sick-room for a while, we return to our work and calling as before? Hezekiah was a wiser man than that. The song that he wrote after his recovery, recorded in the 38th chapter of Isaiah, shows that looking death in the face had not failed of good results. No man, if he be a thinking man, can be brought to the brink of the grave, and raised almost as if from the dead, without some benefit from the experience. For one thing, it ought to make him a better Christian. "Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee, e'en though it be a cross that raiseth me." Luther was wont to say that his three great teacherswere prayer, study, and trial, and any reader of his life can perceive that if it had not been for the experiences that he passed through, he would not have been the sturdy character that he was. What the tempering is to the iron, giving it the toughness and endurance of steel, that afflictions are to the soul. The wind might shake and uproot the stripling of a tree, but its blasts are harmless to the oak that has passed through many a hurricane and storm. And so unbelief may give out its miserable twaddle, the faithless world raise its scoffing and deriding tongue, the man who once turned his face to the wall and prayed will not be upset, he knows whom he has believed, what he has experienced in his own soul and life.
And, again, as it strengthened his faith in God, Hezekiah, after his recovery, was a faithful servant of the Lord, using his kingly authority to bring his people back to the true worship of Jehovah. Simply enough; a man who has been in the very grip of the last enemy and has recovered, cannot but reason thus: "What if I had died? These possessions would have been no longer mine. They cannot, therefore, be mine at all in the highest sense; they must have been entrusted to me by God, and I must use them for God." Usefulness, in most cases, is the result of discipline, the trials we have passed through. Who is the sympathetic person? You will find it to be him who has passed through similar affliction that you are passing through. Who is the one that is willing to give a helping hand? Not the priest and the Levite, who, if we knew their prior testing, never knew a serious affliction,—but the Good Samaritan, who very likely knew from personal experience what it meant to be waylaid.
And so, to conclude, despise not the chastening of the Almighty. Learn to look upon it aright; go to the right source for relief, and thus derive from it the spiritual benefit which God designs. May you lay up what you have heard against that time when you need it, for there comes a time when you will need it. Amen.