As we said last week: Isaiah 36-39 raise a very big question. There’s very little history in Isaiah apart from these chapters. What’s so significant about these events that the Bible records them? What do we learn for our lives?
First, as we saw, they tell how in 701BC Jerusalem was besieged by the Assyrians, one of the cruellest armies of history; how God intervened dramatically; how king Hezekiah coped with the crisis, and what we can learn from all this.
Ch38 tells of something more personal. King Hezekiah becomes very ill, and Isaiah is sent to tell him he’s going to die. Hezekiah is utterly distraught, and pleads with God for a longer life. God intervenes – the second such miracle in Hezekiah’s experience – and his illness is cured. (It’s worth noting from v21 how God works this cure through the medicine of the day. Having faith in supernatural healing doesn’t mean disregarding medicine.) But God also intervenes dramatically for yet a third time. Hezekiah asks for a sign that he would be healed, and in response God provides a further dramatic miracle (how it works isn’t told us) whereby the shadow goes back ten steps on the stairs of Ahaz.
It’s a great story; but as we meditate on it some thought-provoking questions arise, questions about how even godly people can mess up – as we don’t want to do! `Death cannot sing your praise`, says Hezekiah in his song of recovery, `those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness` (v18). It’s a great song of praise, yet somehow he’s forgotten what God revealed in eg Psalm 23:8 – `I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever!`- or indeed what Isaiah taught in 26:19, `Your dead will live, their bodies will rise…` If he’d remembered these things, if the admittedly godly Hezekiah’s heart had been fixed on `the house of the Lord forever`, rather (cf Col 3:1-2) than on what he had stored up in this world (39:2)… would it have kept him from the disaster in the next chapter? (Like ch22 that we looked at a few weeks ago, is this showing us mistakes that can easily be made by genuinely godly people?)
Then too we might wonder, just why this third, spectacular sign? Couldn’t Hezekiah have just waited in faith for his healing? In answer might our minds turn to 37:20, when Hezekiah begs God for deliverance `so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O LORD, are God`? Was that its purpose? This too will be relevant when we come to ch39.
Anyway, amazing things; no king for generations had seen such a sequence. And at this point Hezekiah is very conscious what his experience of healing would, or should, mean in spiritual terms. In his deeply moving poem he says this: `What can I say? He has spoken to me, and He himself has done this. I will walk humbly all my years because of this anguish of my soul. Lord, by such things people live` [relevant, incidentally, to what we say about coronavirus, that we unlike atheists can be sure that growth will come out of suffering]; `and my spirit finds life in them too. You restored me to health, and let me live!`
But ch39 shows us a tragic aftermath. It’s all too easy for us, as we `mature`, to lose sight of what God has shown us (Lord, have mercy!) in earlier years when we saw His supernatural intervention, or when He led us through this process of anguish and deliverance, or both. (I remember meeting up with university friends a few years after graduation, and the question came up, Were we too idealistic as students? Then we thought what that meant: reading the Bible each day and responding in prayer; seeking to witness for God whenever possible; wanting each part of life to somehow fit into advancing his kingdom… That’s all; improbably idealistic? really?) So often the Bible says, `Remember!` The results of forgetfulness can be very unfortunate; and doubly so when it happens with a leader in God’s people.
So, ch39. Envoys come from the rising power of Babylon, friendly ones. (Sometimes the world’s seductions are most dangerous when they come in apparent friendship & respect, not open assault.) 2 Chronicles 32 tells us the Babylonians came partly because of the `miraculous sign that had occurred in the land`. What a fantastic opportunity for mission, centripetal mission old testament style, whereby the glory of what God had done in Jerusalem could lead to Him being glorified among the surrounding nations (Isa 37:20), like with the queen of Sheba in Solomon’s time…
That’s not what happens. `I will walk humbly all my years because of this anguish of my soul`, said Hezekiah in 38:15. But he didn’t. Instead God’s deliverance somehow led him into precisely that pride (2 Chron 32:25) that is such a big theme throughout Isaiah; he fails to glorify God, steals God’s glory. (Cf Acts 12:23.) So Isaiah turns up in v3 and asks, What did the Babylonian envoys see? And of course, had Hezekiah shown them in detail where God’s miraculous interventions had happened, had he shown them that this was a city guarded (38:6) by a God who can and does do huge miracles, the later Babylonian invasion that destroyed Jerusalem might never have happened.
But instead, Hezekiah tells Isaiah smugly that the envoys had come from far away to see him, `from a distant land!` (v3); and `There was nothing among my treasures that I did not show them.` In short, he showed them potential spoil… And Isaiah has to tell him (v6): ` The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD…`
What’s the lesson? Alas, it has to be the wreckage that can come from apparently harmless egoism and materialism – especially in a leader – even a fundamentally godly one… Lord, please help us see when we’re slipping this way! And so these four historical chapters end very sadly – and movingly – as Hezekiah’s egoism turns to exhaustion in v8: `“The word of the LORD you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my lifetime.”’ He’s no longer acting like a king. Better perhaps to have gone to heaven when God originally ordained. Better still if he’d remembered God’s revealed Word, and so had a heart free from materialism…
Very serious lessons here. But one last thing, what happens next: Isaiah, knowing this, now turns – or is turned by God –to provide the spiritual food with which the people will survive the coming captivity in Babylon (40:1-11); food for us as well, so many centuries later – some of the old testament’s most wonderful chapters…
Always – even after we really mess up – there are always new possibilities; always new beginnings with God!
