A Faithful Fool

Today I want to tell you a story from the Old Testament. We’re not going to read it directly out of Scripture because it’s three chapters long, but we are going to go through the story just the same. And I want you to pay attention to two things as I’m telling this story - if you can. First, the main character in this story suffers a lot at different times and in different ways. Pay attention to the different reasons that he suffers. Second, try and pay attention to where God is in each of these situations and how He relates to the main character.

Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, king of Judah

Hezekiah was the son of Ahaz and when he was growing up, he was terrified of his dad. Ahaz was, frankly, a terrible person. If he wanted something, he took it. If he didn’t like someone, he killed them. He even sacrificed one of Hezekiah’s brothers to some pagan god. As Hezekiah grew older, he started to fear and resent Ahaz even more. You see, Hezekiah had a good relationship with God - the one, true God - and Ahaz had desecrated the temple and disrespected God at every turn. All of this to say, Hezekiah had a rough childhood and wasn’t terribly broken up when Ahaz died and left the throne to him.

After Ahaz died, Hezekiah ascended the throne. He loved and feared God. He determined that he would lead the nation back to God, back to faithfully following the God who had led them out of Egypt, who had blessed David’s reign. So Hezekiah took troops throughout the whole country. Any place there was an altar to another god, Hezekiah had it destroyed. Places where people worshipped false gods were torn down. There was even a relic from Israel’s past. You see, Israel had attracted God’s anger at one point and God had sent poisonous snakes to attack them. As an act of repentance, God had them look at a bronze snake lifted up on a pole. The problem was, all these years later, the people of Israel had started worshiping the snake - forgetting that it was God who had ultimately healed them. So Hezekiah broke that bronze snake into pieces. He trusted God and followed the commandments that had been handed down to him.

Everything was going well until, one day, the king of Assyria (named Sennacherib) came up and began to conquer the country. And Hezekiah sent Sennacherib a messenger essentially to say “I’ll pay you whatever tribute you want, please leave us along.” And Hezekiah sends the king of Assyria a tribute. Any guesses to how the king of Assyria proceeds from there? If your guess was “continue to conquer the country,” then you’ve figured it out - or read the story before. Sennacherib sends a messenger to talk smack towards Hezekiah while the city is under seige. He makes sure to speak in a language that all the people in the city understand all of the threats. The messenger says that each nation Assyria has already conquered trusted their gods to protect them, and all of those nations fell. Hezekiah felt hopeless, his allies were too far away and Judah’s army wasn’t up to the task. He had been faithful to God and now he couldn’t stand up to this king who was blaspheming Him. He goes to the temple and God sends Isaiah to tell Hezekiah, “I heard Sennacherib’s messenger, I am with you, and I’m going to take care of this suffering waiting on your doorstep.” God sends an angel during the night who kills 185,000 Assyrians and Sennacherib retreats. When the king of Assyria goes home, some of his sons kill him in the temple of his false god.

So Hezekiah’s reign continued until he got very sick. Isaiah came to Hezekiah in his illness and told him, point blank, this sickness will kill you soon, put your house in order. Hezekiah is devastated, he cries and prays to God. He asks “I have been faithful to you my whole life, are you going to let me die like this?” And God is listening to him, he sends Isaiah back to Hezekiah to tell him, “I heard your prayers, I have seen your tears . . . I will heal you.”

As Hezekiah recovered from his illness, the king of Babylon sent ambassadors to Judah. Hezekiah joyfully welcomes them into Judah and shows off a little bit. He shows them all of his treasure, all his silver, all his gold, all his spices, his precious oil, his armory, and everything the kingdom had. Babylon is not necessarily a friendly nation! He took the representatives of a potentially hostile nation and essentially said “here are all the things worth taking and here’s how we’re protecting them.” It’s probably fair to call that a lapse in strategic wisdom. But King Hezekiah is still happy as a clam. Isaiah goes to him and asks who the men were and what he showed them. And Hezekiah says, I imagine with a stupidly happy grin on his face, “yeah, they were from Babylon and I showed them everything.” I have to imagine that Isaiah is standing there with his face in his hand - not believing how stupid Hezekiah had been. The Lord through Isaiah tells Hezekiah, that nation is going to come back and take everything from your sons. And you know what Hezekiah says? He says “The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good” and he thought to himself “that’s my sons’ problem, not mine.”

So passes Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, king and steward of Judah.

God in Suffering

At the beginning of this story, I asked you to pay attention to Hezekiah’s suffering and where God was in the midst of it. I just want to draw some connections for you. In his lifetime, Hezekiah’s suffering comes from three different places. First, when Sennacherib attacks Judah, Hezekiah suffers because of the sins of others - specifically as a result of the king of Assyria and his lack of faith in the one, true God. Second, Hezekiah falls deathly ill and he suffers because of the brokenness of creation, he suffers because Adam and Eve messed up in the Garden of Eden and the entire world still is broken as a result. Finally, he suffers because of his own foolishness in showing everything to the Babylonians. But I also asked you to pay attention to where God was - and He was right there with Hezekiah. He always saw, always knew what was going on. He heard Hezekiah’s prayers and saw Hezekiah’s tears. God was there for him, even in suffering.

In your life, you will suffer. You probably already have suffered. Sometimes we suffer because of the sins and mistakes of others. Sometimes we suffer because we live in a broken world. Sometimes we suffer because we do things we shouldn’t do and don’t do things we should do. But whether your suffering is in the past, you’re going through it right now, or it’s waiting for you in the future - Hezekiah’s story shows us that God will be with us. He sees your hurt and your pain, and He promises to be there for you. And Christ, who died and rose again, sits on His throne in heaven, holding your place in eternal life where this is no suffering from any source. And that’s what I want to remind you of this morning. When you are going through suffering, when people have hurt you, when the world breaks you, when you suffer the consequences of your own sin - God is, and will always be, there for you and you have a place in eternity with Him where you will never suffer again. Amen.