Today we are continuing our look at the writing King Hezekiah composed after he recovered from a deadly illness. The king gives the Lord the credit---credit where credit is due---for healing him. "But what can I say? He has spoken to me, and He Himself has done this. I will walk humbly all my years because of the anguish of my soul." (Isaiah 38:15)
What can Hezekiah say in thanks to the Lord? No words will be enough to express his gratitude. No words exist to adequately describe the power of the Lord or to describe Hezekiah's relief. In verse 5 of our current chapter the Lord sent word to the king by Isaiah that He had heard his prayers and would heal him of this illness, so Hezekiah says, "He has spoken to me." What an awesome thing it is to have the God of the universe to speak to a mere mortal! We were created from the dust of the ground and yet our God desires to communicate with us and to have a relationship with us. As King David once expressed this thought: "What is mankind that You are mindful of them, human beings that You care for them?" (Psalm 8:4)
In response to how bountifully the Lord has dealt with him, King Hezekiah vows to walk humbly before the Lord all the days of his life. I believe Hezekiah sincerely means his promise when he makes it. I believe he thinks he will be able to keep this promise. However, something doesn't go quite right in the spiritual life of King Hezekiah during the additional fifteen years he is going to live. Humility somehow turns into complacence and pride.
You may recall from our study of the kings that, upon hearing that the Assyrian troops have withdrawn from Jerusalem and that King Hezekiah has recovered from a deadly illness, the king of Babylon sends envoys with many fine gifts to Hezekiah. This is likely done in hopes of making an alliance between the two nations against their common enemy of Assyria, for Assyria had already subjugated Babylon during the years it was on the decline. No doubt a friendship and an alliance with the king of Babylon looks like a good prospect to King Hezekiah, from a human standpoint, but from a spiritual standpoint it is the wrong thing to do. Isaiah has already cautioned him against making alliances with heathen kings but Hezekiah ignores his warnings and welcomes the envoys with open arms, proudly showing them all the treasures of his kingdom in an effort to compete with the riches of the king of the larger nation of Babylon. Hezekiah hopes these treasures will make him appear as a valuable friend and ally but, when Babylon rises from the ashes and throws off the shackles of its oppressor, the tales of the riches of Judah will come to mind and Babylon will want them for itself.
We can find this passage in 2 Kings 20 when the prophet Isaiah comes to the palace and demands to know what Hezekiah told the envoys and what he showed them. Hezekiah, feeling proud that the king of Babylon would seek friendship with him, will announce to the prophet, "They saw everything in my palace. There is nothing among my treasures that I did not show them." In response Isaiah answers, "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." We might expect Hezekiah to be alarmed at this news, to turn his face to the wall and weep and cry out to the Lord as he did during his illness. But instead he has the attitude of, "Very well, then. At least it won't happen in my lifetime."
We see this attitude in our world today and have seen it in times past: people not caring what kind of world they are leaving for their descendants. And speaking of descendants, during Hezekiah's additional fifteen years of life he fathered his son Manasseh who was one of the most wicked kings---if not the most wicked king---that Judah ever had. What went wrong spiritually for Hezekiah during those extra fifteen years? Why did he not obey the words of the prophet Isaiah, which were words that came straight from the Lord? Why did he not bring Manasseh up in the fear of the Lord? I realize that there are a lot of people who bring their children up in the fear of the Lord and yet their children go astray as adults, but Manasseh will only be twelve years old when he ascends to the throne upon his father's death. Twelve years is old enough to have been provided with a secure foundation of faith and religious instruction but it seems too young to have already become spiritually reprobate and morally destitute.
Would Hezekiah and the nation of Judah have been better off if Hezekiah had perished of his illness instead of living those additional fifteen years? Many have asked that very question. The answer is we do not know. If it had been the Lord's will to allow Hezekiah to die, then I presume he would have died, so I think the problem here is how the king handled his reprieve from death. Perhaps he didn't handle knowing the approximate year of his death very well, causing him to think, "Life is still so short. Why start any more major religious reforms in the nation? And why spend my time with my son making him memorize Scripture when we could just be having fun?" Or perhaps he became prideful that the Lord heard his prayers and he slacked off on godly living, as if he were constantly living in the favor of the Lord no matter what he did. We will never know in this lifetime exactly what happened to the king's manner of thinking but we can strive not to let it happen to us. We can commit every morning to living in a way that pleases the Lord and, though we will fail at times due to living in mortal bodies in a world polluted by sin, we don't have to let sin overtake us and cause us to drift from the Lord.
No comments:
Post a Comment