What was Hezekiah's Secret to Success

Turn your Bibles with me this morning to 2 Chronicles.

2 Chronicles 31:20-21. And thus did Hezekiah throughout all Judah and wrought that which was good and right and truth before the Lord his God. And in every work that he began in the service of the house of God and in the law and in the commandments to seek his God, he did it with all his heart and prospered.

I was doing a series of messages on the ordinance, the Christian ordinances this morning. I felt led to take a break from that as my wife and I have been going through 1 Kings, 2 Kings, right on into 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles.

And just looking at the life of these kings and the choices that these kings made, these verses just really jumped out at me, and I'm inspired this morning to talk about the life of King Hezekiah. And he's one of those few kings that went into the kingdom being a good king and came out being a good king. His burial was an honorable burial. They buried him in the sepulchres of the chief sepulchres of David, and there was honor at his time of death.

And those that were mourning his loss had still a good hope and a good feeling about this man's life that all was done well. And folks, that really is what we all desire. It doesn't matter so much where we start. What is really important in the journey of this life, how are we going to go through and come out successful? The title of the message this morning would be this: What was Hezekiah's secret to success?

And if we look at these two verses again, there's three words here that are powerful. Verse 20, it says, "Throughout all Judah, he wrought the things which were good and right and truth." Are those three words are we able to separate those three words at all?

Good, right, and truth. That's powerful. That could answer the question to the title right there. And he did all these things with all his heart. Now, do you know they say that Hezekiah there's so much written about Hezekiah's life in the Bible that he takes up 1% of the Bible. I found that interesting. That's a lot for one man. If you take Chronicles, Kings, you take Isaiah has several chapters on his life. But relax this morning. We're not going to go into 1% of the Bible.

We'd be here for quite a while, wouldn't we? There's some highlights that I want to look at in his personal life. Four things I want to think about this morning is Hezekiah's passion. Brother John keeps us familiar with that word here in our congregation.

Passion. The second thing I want to look at is his prayer.

The third thing we want to look at is his humanity. We will find in his life of kingship he was a human being. We can relate to him in many ways. And then fourthly, I want to look at his humility.

Let's look at his passion. Before we go there, let's think a little bit about his history. Who was Hezekiah's father? Does anybody remember his name? I'm working hard to try to I'm doing what Jesse encouraged us to do. I'm trying to memorize some of the names. I have a hard time even pronouncing some of these names.

Ahaz, I believe, if I'm saying that right, was Hezekiah's father. And we can just flip our Bibles. We're going to spend a good bit of time in 2 Chronicles and then back into 2 Kings. But to find out a little more of the history of Hezekiah and his upbringing, it's found in 2 Chronicles 28. I'll read a few verses there. Ahaz was 20 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem, but he did not that which was right and the sight of the Lord like David his father. But he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and made also molded images for Balaam.

That tells us a little bit of the home life that Hezekiah grew up in. He had a very wicked father. He was the king in Judah, the southern kingdom at that time. There was a lot of tension going on between the north and the south. Now, a little bit more about his worship. Read a couple more verses there. So he was taking his cues from the northern kings, and they were wicked kings at this point. And that is where Hezekiah's father was taking his information from. As Romans says, "We are to walk after the Spirit." The Bible says Hezekiah's father was walking after the kings of the north who were wicked kings. They were worshiping the wrong kind of gods.

And then he says in verse 3, "Moreover, he burned incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and he burned his children in the fire." That means Hezekiah's siblings were burned in the fire as a sacrifice to these heathen gods. Can you imagine the trauma that might have brought on young Hezekiah if he saw his own siblings being sacrificed in the fire and burned?

And not only that, Hezekiah could have had a lot of insecurities right now because his father was at odds with the God of heaven. And when he would worship, he would go out to the groves and under the green trees, and he would bow to these foreign gods. That was the family devotions that Hezekiah grew up with. And I say young people today, if you have a father that is leading you in prayer, and he's leading you in the word of God, and he's teaching you that it's the God of creation that's going to keep you, you better count your blessings. You better thank God this morning. Hezekiah did not have that example in his life.

Continue to read a little bit, the insecurities, the tension. And then he was in trouble and was defeated, and God became angry with his father so that he allowed the northern kingdoms and the heathen nations to overtake many of the cities of the south. And he lost a lot of ground in the kingdom right over the time of Hezekiah's young life.

It's interesting. If you continue to read and study chapter 28, you will find that Ahaz, the father of Hezekiah, when he was in trouble and was defeated, heaven was against him and earth was against him. And the kingdom was coming to a low point in life. And out of desperation, Ahaz went out and he worshiped the gods of his enemies.

I cannot imagine that. The very enemies that destroyed the cities and were taking them, he made sacrifices to them. He worshiped their gods. And then as time went on and things got worse, he went into the house of God, the temple, the temple that God told Solomon or David was anticipating for many years. And Solomon was told that, "By God, that I'm going to put my name there forever." And Ahaz took that temple, and he just cleaned house. And all the instruments of worship were taken. The gold was stripped and the values were taken. And he went over and made a bribery, could we say, to the heathen kings and said, "I need your help.

Our kingdom is in trouble." And he paid them with God's treasures out of the house of God. Then when he had finished stripping the things in the house, it says that he went out and he closed the doors.

He barred them shut. That's what Hezekiah had going on for him in his youth, in his background. That was the example. The house of God was shut down. We drive the road sometimes, and we see an old building. That was once a beautiful building. The doors are boarded shut.

There's old plywood across the windows. There might be a little sign on the door. If you go to read, it might say something like this, "This place has been condemned." I get the picture. Solomon's temple, that beautiful place, the place of permanent worship for God's people was shut down. And then Ahaz died.

And I could only imagine young Hezekiah went to his father's burial, and they took him out to Jerusalem, and they did not bury him in the sepulchres of the kings. They had a spot outside because the father was so bad that he couldn't share the same cemetery.

You know, if there was ever a person that had all the rights to be bitter and angry in life and be bitter and angry at God, to be bitter and angry at his father, it would have been Hezekiah.

If there was ever a person that could have played the victim's game, "I saw my siblings being sacrificed by my father," it would have been Hezekiah. If there was anybody that could ever say that the God of heaven is a dishonest God and if he's filled with love, where is he?

Their mothers, their wives, and many of their children at that time were taken captive by the other kings.

Now, the father dies away, Hezekiah is 25 years old, and now he's called to be the new king. What hope, what purpose is there for young Hezekiah?

Where would he start? The southern kingdom is probably at the lowest point of its entire existence at this point.

Well, you know, the first thing we see that he did as a new king - and this is where it takes us to - his passion. I covet the passion that this man had. Let's look at his passion in restoring the temple. And this is found in 29. 2 Chronicles 29, he's just a new king. Verse 3, he says, "And the first year of his reign, and the first month" he didn't waste time, did he? "It's the first year, the first month he went out and he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them." He took the lag bolts out or the two by fours off the doors or the plywood or however they barred doors down at that day.

I don't know. But the first month, the first year, he went out and he opened the doors and had them repaired. Now, I'm guessing old Ahaz, his father, crude and rough as he was, when they closed the temple's door, I think he just probably did it in a very shoddy way and didn't care if he breaks them or whatever.

Hezekiah said, "We're going to start right here. We have to start somewhere. We're going to repair the doors. We're going to open the doors to the house of God." After all, this is God's house, and the promise was given to this place right here.

The next thing he did, he went out and gathered together the priests and the Levites, and he reinstated them into their position, into their responsibility of cleaning the temple, the sanctifying of the temple. First of all, he tells them, "You need to sanctify yourselves." Keep reading there in chapter 29.

After the doors were opened, the places opened. But you imagine you walk in. Ahaz had left a real corruption in that place. And there were these little idols. You can just imagine. They're setting up on the shelves. And I don't know how that all looked in there, but you can get the picture that there's all these little temple can't say the word I want right now, but the place is polluted and is tainted with idolatry. And he says to the priests and the Levites, "You go in there and you clean house." And they cleaned house. And they took all this thing, anything that looked and smelled and tasted and had a touch of idolatry, they took it out and they took it to the Brook of Kidron.

I think Josiah talks about that later. When he cleaned the temple, there was a field out there. That was their garbage dump. And anything that was evil and polluted, they took there and they burned it. We had a dump like that when I was a kid at home too.

Everything that was not needed and that was useless, we knew where to take it. And these people had that. This was a very familiar thing, and this meant something to this people. That's found in verse 16.

And then after they had the temple back sanctified, cleaned up, the Levites and the priests had themselves cleaned and prepared and put back into the responsibility, the next thing they did, "Now we're going to have to deal with all the pollution in the human heart of all these people that have for all these years been influenced by wrong worship and idolatry and all of that." So it had the day of atonement in verse 20. "Hezekiah, the king, rose early and gathered the rulers of the city and went up to the house of the Lord, and they brought seven bullocks and seven rams, seven lambs and seven hegoats for a sin offering for the kingdom and for the sanctuary and for Judah.

And he commanded the priests, the sons of Aaron, to offer them on the altar of the Lord." Jump to verse 24, "And the priests killed them, the animals, and they made reconciliation with their blood." Now, that really stands out to me. So they killed these animals, and they used their blood to make reconciliation.

Oh, there is passion here. There is passion here. And he's drawing from the blood of the poor animals. Revelations tells us that we, as his saints, have been washed by his own blood, the blood of Jesus Christ, and he became our atonement. Hezekiah saw it necessary that everybody that is going to come into this place needs to do something about their sin, the pollution of the corruption in past years.

And they all came there, and it was for the atonement of the people of Israel, to clean them up. And there's confession, and there's sin brought, and the animals are suffering. If we go on and the animals are giving their life, the Bible says, "Without the shedding of blood, there's no" - what's the word? - "remission." Remission. What does that mean?

Put out of commission? That's how I sort of remember that. Without the shedding of blood, we do not put sin out of commission. There's no other way to do it. And Hezekiah saw it very necessary for these poor animals to come in there, shed their blood out, to put out of commission the sins of the people of Israel.

So they had the day of atonement, the coming together. There was worship. If you continue to read verses 27, 28, 29, and so on. And the next interesting thing that he did - and remember, all of these he's doing - King Hezekiah, young man with no example, no good example in his home life.

He loves the Lord, and whatever he's doing here is out of a good, honest heart with all his heart, the Bible says. It's good, it's right, and it's truthful. Somehow, he was tapping into a source that his father missed.

And then the next thing that's time to do in this place now, they have the doors open. They have the priests and the Levites cleansing the place. It's cleansed. They have the day of atonement, and now the time has come for the day of worship. It's the eating of the unleavened bread. It's called the Passover in their days. And traditionally, their Passover would last seven days.

You know what I really like about this Passover? This is a special one. It says here, if you keep reading, that there was not a Passover held quite like this one since Solomon's day. And that goes back several hundred years. So this was an exciting Passover they're having. And Hezekiah got some letters of invitation together, and he sent the letters out not only to Judah, the southern kingdom, but he sent them to the north. By this time, the north is already overrun, but there's a remnant of north of people that are sincere and are open to the truth. He says to his men, "Take the letters up there to the north, to the remnant of the people of it.

Invite them to our day of worship." So he's blending together the north and the south to the day of the Passover. I think that is so powerful. You know, Hezekiah was a missionary. He truly was. This is not going to stop with our own little southern kingdom. It's going to extend. And the invitation in those letters was, "Whosoever will." He said, "I have good news for you, folks. If you stop rebelling against the God of heaven and stop worshiping your false gods, I have good news for you. You can be reconciled back into the kingdom, and you become a part of this great worship feast." And it says there, if you keep reading, that as they took them up there and they went into the cities, in verse 10, it says, "They laughed them to scorn."

Some of them laughed them to scorn and mocked them. This is of the northern kingdom. Nevertheless, there's some of them that responded and humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem, and there was that great day. I love that. So you have the I think as far as Hezekiah was concerned at this point, the kingdoms were not divided anymore. They were reunited in this special day to those whosoever will. You see the passionate worship? And those folks were so excited, if you keep reading, this seven-day feast. Think of our love feast. So we gather - we're going to gather a love feast here Saturday, Lord willing - and we're going to do sort of what they're doing here.

We're going to take of the bread. We're going to take of the juice. We're going to share testimonies. They were doing that. They were getting themselves right with God. Confessions. Some of the priests weren't quite sanctified yet, and that was happening in this service, if you keep reading the story.

They were sharing their testimonies. They were confessing their sins. They were eating together for seven days in gladness. So then the seven days were up, and they took counsel. "Hey, folks, do we want to do this another seven days? This is great."

And they all voted and said, "Yeah." And they repeated another seven days. And did they do it with heaviness? No. It says they did it with gladness. There was rejoicing. So you do love feast for seven days. You eat a meal. You sing some songs. You confess more sins. You pray together. You keep doing this seven days and seven days and then another seven days, and they do it with rejoicing. You know what was going on? This was the first Passover these people had together in a long time.

And I guess the challenge I want to throw out for us today, over COVID - we were shut down, I think, for seven weeks or so - you sort of get the feeling a little bit like they might have had. John Martin and myself went to the local police station after we were just tired of not having church. We said, "Hey, what are you folks going to do with us if we start church again?" And they said, "Well, don't do anything stupid. Don't pack in there like sardines. Do a little spacing. You might want to wear your mask, but go right ahead." And when John and I came home, "Wow, we're going to have church.

Praise God." That's what was going on. These folks had for since Solomon's time, 200 years, 400 years - how long was that? It's a long time. And they said, "Seven days just is not enough." And you know, their God is worthy of that, is He not? After all, He's the only God that has everything in control. All these other gods that we've been bowing down to have done nothing.

Ahaz was still fooling around with those gods up until his death, and those gods did not help him out, the Bible says. He found no help with those gods. And I believe these people were seeing that. Ahaz got no help, but we're going to find help with the God of heaven, and He's worthy of our worship. He's worthy of our praise.

So now the seven days are ended. The 14 days are ended, and the work's not finished. The very next thing they do - and there's again, it's part of His passion - He says, "The worship's over, but we're not finished."

Let's look at what they did next. So they had this Passover, and now they go out in verse 31, "When all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah and broke the images in pieces and cut down the groves and threw down the high places, the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin." Now, this is out in the country.

They already done this in the house. Now they go out in the country and the groves and the mountains and the bushes, if you please, and any little old idol that they would find, they were commanded to destroy it. Do you remember what they found when they were out there digging around and finding, "Over here's a little thing"? And they didn't only stick to their own territory. They went to the north, clear up in northern territory into a couple cities there. That was risky business. But Hezekiah, with his passion, he encouraged his people, "Let's go up there, and whatever we find that has any kind of taint to it, to this idolatry, we're going to destroy it."

And among all of that, they found this little old brass serpent. Remember in Numbers 21, I believe it is, God commanded Moses. When Moses said, "These people are crying out, and the snakes are biting them," God told Moses, "Go and erect a brass serpent."

And then they were supposed to look at the serpent, and when they did that, the snakes stopped biting. Remember the story? 700 years ago, here's that brass serpent, and it says that these people were going there, some of them, and they were burning incense in front of this serpent.

How did the judges miss this? How did Joshua miss this? How did King David miss this? How did Solomon miss this? How did all the kings, going back 700 years, miss that these people were burning incense in front of this old brass serpent?

Well, you know what Hezekiah said? "Take the thing and just break it to pieces." And they destroyed that 700-year-old image. I love that picture. You know, Solomon - I mean, Hezekiah - is very serious about his God. He's very passionate about the things God loves.

And I want to call us to that today, folks. We are in trouble, too. We say our society. We say our country is at a low spot. Is there any hope for God's people? Is there any hope for God's people? If there was hope for Hezekiah, there's hope for you and I today. But we're going to learn from Hezekiah. If we don't have the passion about the things of God, we're not going to make it. We're going to go down with all the northern kingdoms and all the rest of the southern kingdom that went down.

The next thing we want to look at is Hezekiah's prayer. Now, it was about this time that things were starting to look really good around Jerusalem, and Hezekiah and his people were very jealous over this spot because this was God's city. Remember, Jerusalem, the surrounding cities had now been taken. Some of the walled cities had been taken by the northern kingdom, by Syria, by the Assyrians.

But Hezekiah got jealous over this city, and he went and reinforced the wall, and I think the Bible says he even put another wall on the inner court. And then old king of Assyria at this time - I can't remember his name. I don't know if I can even say it - Sennacherib.

Thank you. Sennacherib. That now sounds very intimidating and fearful to start with. Say that again. Sennacherib. Sennacherib. He's the king of Assyria. Sennacherib. Let's say it often enough so we can say it. Sennacherib. He's the king, and he looks down over Jerusalem, and he says, "Those people are doing quite well." I mean, things are back to order. I failed to miss - I failed the part that they got the tithing system back in order, the priests and the Levites, and there needed to be financial support to keep the temple running smoothly. So Hezekiah got all that back. Now they have this kingdom, this thing running pretty smooth. I mean, they're worshiping. They're celebrating. They're doing their tithing, and old king Sennacherib is up there at Syria, and he's saying, "Hey, you know what?

They're pretty arrogant about that city, aren't they? They don't know that we're going to take that thing, and we're just this close to taking it. Either they're going to surrender, or we're going to take it from them." And Hezekiah, the Bible says, he rebelled against this king. Now, when we think of rebellion, it's a negative term, but in this term, it was a positive thing.

He rebelled against this Sennacherib, and then he sent his people out, and Sennacherib sent his people out, and they met there at the outer wall of Jerusalem. And of course, Hezekiah told his folks to go and just not say too much. Listen to what they have to say. Well, Sennacherib's people came out there, and they had intimidating words. They could speak two languages. They could - I mean, they came there with words of fear. They had a message of fear. Hezekiah told his people, "Don't fear, but trust that God that we're worshiping."

And I think when they went, they thought that's what they were going to do. But you know, with all the threats that were thrown out - if you read it, it's in these chapters somewhere. Some of it is in Kings with a little more detail, 2 Kings.

But he started spitting out some - his people started spitting out some very fearful attacks on Hezekiah and his people, and he said, "If you don't surrender and start paying taxes again, we're just going to take this place. And who are you if you think you're going to withstand us? I mean, you already lost most of your army." And he did. If you go back in the history, a lot of the men of Hezekiah were already taken.

The good men of war were thrown down, I think, several thousand or more. And he says, "If we come up with 200,000 horses - if I have the numbers right - you couldn't even fill the riders. You couldn't even fill these spaces with riders. You don't have an army. How are you going to keep them?" And they told him to tell Hezekiah - if Hezekiah tried - if Hezekiah's people tried to say that our God in heaven is going to protect us, He's going to keep this city. Well, then you're supposed to say, "Really? Where was He earlier?" And he put all this in a letter, and that was the truth because if you just back up in His Father's day, the God of heaven did not spare these people, but He allowed them.

It says that God was angry with them, and He allowed the gods of the kingdoms of this world to overthrow them and take hostage their wives, their mothers, their children. A number of them were still held hostage. Well, they brought that letter back, and those men - it says they put on sackcloth, and they went to prayer, and they brought the letter to Hezekiah.

And you know what the Bible says? Hezekiah - I think this is found in 2 Kings - that Hezekiah put on - he rent his clothes. That means he took his royal garb, and he tore it off of himself, and he replaced that royal garb with sackcloth. And sackcloth was an expression in that day. We know maybe it would be equivalent today of what we know of burlap material, something sort of rough and crude and so on. But the expression behind sackcloth was, "This is saying to God, it's an expression of my nothingness before You."

And the messengers came back and said, "We're all in trouble. These people are intimidating." And they used the comparison. They said, "It's like a child that is due to be born to a mother, and there's not enough strength from the mother to bring forth the birth."

That's the example he used. And in those days, what that meant, the mother and the child are going to die in the birthing process. You know, Hezekiah began to fear. He humbled himself before the Lord, took off the king's garment, put on the sackcloth, and it says he went into the house of God, and he took that letter, and he rolled that letter out before the Lord. Here's a lesson that we want to take, folks. We all have a letter that's bigger than we are, and he showed that he read the letter. The Bible says, "And then he rolled it out before the Lord, and he read the letter with God."

And there was some truth in that letter that Hezekiah pointed out to God. They said in the letter that all the gods prior to this could not stop our army, and Hezekiah reminded God of that in his prayer. He said, "Remember, God, that letter's true. There's some truth. Our history has defeat in it, and what are we going to do with this?" I want to learn from Hezekiah's heart right here.

If we're going to expect our prayers to be answered and heard by God, we're going to have to get ourselves in a right position. We're going to have to get our sackcloth out and say, "God, I am nothing in Your sight. I need Your help.

This letter is huge. What are You going to do about it, God? I can't do it. My army is much smaller than their army. I can't handle this." You know, Jesus said, "Come unto Me, all you that are tired or labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I'm meek and lowly in heart." That's what Hezekiah was doing. He was bringing his big problems. He was bringing that nasty letter to God. You know, years ago, when we were still new here at this church, I remember one Wednesday evening in our prayer meeting, there was a visitor that came in these back doors, and we went down to pray.

I don't know who this man was to this day. I don't have a name for him. I never saw him before that I knew or never saw him since that I knew. He was sort of a stranger to us, but he sat in the midst of our prayer group downstairs, and he had the most eloquent prayer that I ever heard.

I was so impressed with his wording. I thought, "That was such a beautiful prayer. Oh, the words were so right. The requests were so right." And I went home impressed with his words. But you know, in the New Testament - and now I'm still learning this - there's two things that really bring out the power of prayer, and that is, one, we need to find our position before God and recognize our nothingness and recognize His bigness. In the Lord's Prayer, we say, "Our Father who art in heaven." Hezekiah's prayer said in this letter, he said, "God, You're the one that is between the cherubims."

Same idea. You're not out in the groves. You're the one between the two cherubims. The Lord's Prayer reflects that. "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done." You see, we recognize who He is, and then we go on to recognize who we are in that prayer. We say, "Forgive us, Father. Forgive me my debts."

Jesus in Mark 11, He once told His disciples, "If you want your prayers to be heard by God, there's two things that need to be in place." He said, "You must believe God, and the next thing is you must forgive." Like, what does forgiving have to do with answered prayer?

Because Jesus goes on to explain that He only answers those prayers according to the condition of our heart. Chronicles somewhere to one of the kings is said, "The seer or the prophet comes, and he says, 'The eyes of the Lord go to and fro over the whole earth to show Himself strong to them who? That are a perfect heart toward Him.'" When I read that, I get the picture that there's a lot of energy that God has. There's a lot of power that God has, that He is just wanting to pour out, but He cannot do it on the unprepared heart. And when God - when Hezekiah had his heart in the place it needed to be - what happened?

The victory was won that night. The angel of the Lord came, and there were 185,000 soldiers, top soldiers of Sennacherib's army were strewn around, 185,000, and Hezekiah didn't have to pull an arrow. He didn't have to shoot a gun at all to make it happen. That was God's army. That was God's work. You know what? He says to the prophet Isaiah, "I have heard your prayer."

Prayer number two about that time. Hezekiah got really ill.

For whatever reason, the Bible doesn't really say what the illness was from or what kind of illness. Josephus, the historian writer, tells us that it was some type of distemper. Josephus says that he went and he visited physicians, and the physicians tried to doctor him to health, and they gave up, and they basically sent him home to die.

And then on top of that, the prophet Isaiah comes and says, "The Lord says, 'You're going to die. This illness is going to bring you to death. Get your house in order.'" So he's there in his sickbed, and the Bible says that he turned toward the wall.

That's about the only thing you can do when you're on your deathbed, if you can still do that. He turned himself toward the wall, and there he talked to God. Now, this was an earnest prayer.

The Bible doesn't give a lot of detail on what the burden of this prayer was, but he prayed earnestly to God about something, and I think it had to do - and Josephus, again, helps us look into that prayer a little more. Josephus said the burden of that - some commentators are trying to say it was a selfish prayer, that he's trying to stay alive and, "Oh, I'm sick," and so on, "Have mercy," and so on.

Josephus says the burden of this prayer was when the prophet Isaiah came and said, "Get your house in order." It didn't mean his personal life. He was in order with God. He was at peace with God at this point, but the house - he had so much passion about the house of God. Josephus said he was 39 years old at this point, and he had no children. That means what's going to happen with the kingdom? What's going to happen with this house when I die at this point? I don't have a son to take over the kingdom, and that was the tradition of doing that.

And it says that in that prayer that he wept, and God came through the prophet again and said, "God has heard your prayers, and He has seen your tears." What did God do? He said, "We're going to change this plan. The doctors were wrong.

Heaven was wrong. Heaven and earth had already pronounced death on Him. God said, 'We can change this. I'm going to give you 15 more years, and the third day starting today, you're going to be back in the temple again. You're going to be in the house of God again commissioned.'" It didn't mean - and you know, apparently, Hezekiah was so surprised at this answer that he didn't believe it. His faith staggered, and he told this prophet, "Really?"

He had a heart - and he said, "I need a sign to believe this answered prayer." He was so delighted with this arrangement, but it's too good to be true. "I need a sign." And the prophet Isaiah said, "Okay. We're going to come up with a sign, and we're going to give you two choices. We're going to make the sun go fast forward, the sun dial again go forward, or the sun dial go backwards ten steps."

And Jesse, I thought of your devotions. He chose - he said, "Well, making it go forward is pretty light. I mean, we're all wanting to turn it back a little, slow it down," and that's the choice he said. "Let's have the sun dial go backwards ten degrees."

Josephus says, "Well, if you read the arguments up to this day, people that want to prove the Bible to not be true, astrologers, those that study such things, say, 'This can't be true because we have evidence of eclipses before Hezekiah's time and after Hezekiah's time, and nothing changed.'

So this could have never been true, and some are saying it was just some dark cloud that came and messed up with the shadow and so on." Josephus said in his recording that the sun had already set in the evening, and God answered that request, and He made the sun come back up again ten degrees, and I don't know how much that would be in that time of the evening, but it went backwards ten degrees, and Hezekiah got his sign, and he saw the sunlight again in the evening.

Then after Hezekiah had his sign, then God went and put the sun back fast forward again and put everything back into sync, order again with the solar system. So it was no disruption in eclipses and all of that.

I love that. I think God is good. He just did that extra little thing for Hezekiah. And I'm saying, if God can put the sun there in the first place, He can make it go fast forward if He chooses to, and He can make it go backwards ten degrees if He chooses to, just to show Himself the great Creator of all things.

And this is the God that Hezekiah and you and I need to be passionate about today.

Now, let's just look at quickly His humanity. So about that time, these miracles are happening. The Bible says that He was blessed with riches and honor. So now the king becomes very wealthy by the blessings of God. He has honor, and he became well-known, and about that time, there's this king over in Babylon that hears about this success. After all, Babylon is interested in success, so he sent his people there to visit him in the excuse of, "Oh, we heard that Hezekiah was sick.

Take him some letters and cards and presents." So they go in there and say, "Hey, Hezekiah, we heard you were sick, and we have the king from Babylon is sending us some letters and presents for you, and how are you doing?"

And, oh, Hezekiah got big-headed. The Bible says that his heart was lifted up in pride. Now he has these big officials from Babylon come in, and he said, "Oh, yeah, okay." Josephus says he even made a feast for them. He was very hospitable to those people, and he showed them around, and he showed them his wealth. He showed them his stalls of horses and his cities and his storehouses of silver and gold and oil and wine, and the list could go on. He showed them around, "Oh, you want to come over here? This city over here we just acquired. See that city? And come over here and look at this storehouse." And they were just taking it all in.

The prophet Isaiah came and said, "Who were those people?" Oh, he said, "They were people from a far country. They were from Babylon." And Hezekiah or prophet Isaiah, "So what were they doing here?" Well, he said, "I showed them around." What all did they see? He said, "I showed them everything that could be seen. I showed them the whole dominion, the whole everything."

And the prophet prophesied judgment on this. He said, "You just did a bad thing. You know those people? You know what they're going to do with that? They're going to come out, and they're going to take everything away. There's judgment on you and your house.

They're not interested in your sickness. They're interested in your success." And, "Oh dear, oh dear. How can this be?" He said, "Your descendants, your children are going to suffer from this, and Babylon is going to take over your children, and they're going to capture your young men and make eunuchs out of them, and they're going to put them in the camp of the Babylonians." And that's what happened if you look at the future from that time forward. His descendants ended up under the harsh hands of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

The prophecy became a reality. You know, a warning for us, if we dabble around with pride and self and big-headedness, there's always somebody that's going to suffer for that. In this case, it was the descendants, and that is true for us today.

Whenever we sin, whenever we allow pride to rise up, there's always somebody that's going to suffer from that. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. But now let's quickly look at his humility. Just like King David, when Nathan the prophet came to him and said, "What have you done?" He said, "I'm sorry," and he used an entire psalm to repent, to confess his sin, and he was restored, but his family suffered, and that was the case with this man. He repented. The Bible says here in 2 Kings that he humbled himself. When the prophet's word came, he humbled himself before the Lord. He repented, and he was sorry for the mistake that he made, and God gave him another peaceful journey until his death.

But the law of sowing and reaping is in place. Because of that mistake, his descendants suffered the consequences, and that should be a warning to us. The highlight of it is when somebody comes to us, whether it's the prophet Isaiah or Nathan the prophet or the Holy Spirit, and says, "You know what you just did? That was so wrong. Do you realize the damage that's going to do to such and such, to your children, to your grandchildren, to the church, to the community?

How do we respond?" My call is that we respond. When we do a human thing like Hezekiah did, we respond with humility before the Lord, and we can die in peace. The law of consequences, the law of sowing and reaping is still there, but let's exercise that humility and that brokenness before God when we're caught doing the human thing. God bless you. Any comments before we pray?