Isaiah 38:9-20 - A Terminal Diagnosis

A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness: 10 I said, In the middle of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. 11 I said, I shall not see the Lord, the Lord in the land of the living; I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world. 12 My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent; like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom; from day to night you bring me to an end; 13 I calmed myself until morning; like a lion he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end. 14 Like a swallow or a crane I chirp; I moan like a dove. My eyes are weary with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my pledge of safety! 15 What shall I say? For he has spoken to me, and he himself has done it. I walk slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul. 16 O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh restore me to health and make me live! 17 Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back. 18 For Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness. 19 The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day; the father makes known to the children your faithfulness. 20 The Lord will save me, and we will play my music on stringed instruments all the days of our lives, at the house of the Lord.

Target Date: Sunday, 5 January 2025

Sermon Text:

This morning our Old Testament reading was the parallel passage to our text in Isaiah today.

I invite you to open your Bibles with me to Isaiah 38:9-20.

[Read Isaiah 38:9-20]

The contrast between these two versions of the same event give us the picture of the event from two different perspectives:

The writer of 2 Kings 20 was most likely a court official, still inspired by the Holy Spirit, who records what can be seen.

Isaiah gives us insight into the heart of the event, including our text today, a psalm of Hezekiah.

He even adds an edit right at the end of the chapter to mention the details of the healing activity in the fig-cake and the request of Hezekiah for a sign.

These are out of order in Isaiah’s account, an afterthought, or even a later edit by Isaiah to help those who might have his book but not the book of 2 Kings.

I think to understand this song of Hezekiah, we only need a couple of things from the narrative:

1. Hezekiah, somewhere around age 39, got deathly sick from a boil – an open sore – and was healed from it by God, who declared His mercy through Isaiah.

Since he was king more than 2600 years before the discovery of penicillin, death by infection was common.

And apparently his doctors had seen this happen often enough that they recognized the terminal state the king was in.

2. The promise of God was that Hezekiah would recover and live 15 more years.

Now, I ask you: would you want to know THAT?

To know, by the authority of God Almighty, who determines the day of our birth and the day of our death, the very year that you will expire?

Is that something you would want: to know your expiration date?

We probably all know people in our lives who have received news very much like this:

“Mr. Jones, you have only six months to live…”

“Mrs. Caldwell, the cancer cannot be treated…”

“Mrs. Rafferty, we’ve done everything we can.”

Every moment of your life is another grain of sand falling from the top to the bottom of a great hourglass.

Time that can never be reset;

Moments that will never come again;

Opportunities that can never be regained.

Now that I have you thoroughly depressed with these thoughts, I will tell you that I don’t think you can understand the psalm the king has written without keeping both of these things in mind.

He is a man who has been the recipient of great mercy from God.

And he is a man who knows with the same certainty that he will soon surely die.

Every sunrise is an opportunity to praise and thank God for His mercy,

And every sunrise is one step closer to the end of his sojourn here on earth.

And in that, you are JUST LIKE HEZEKIAH.

You may not have an idea about the day our Lord will, in His goodness, bring you from this life into His glorious presence,

But it doesn’t make your end any less sure.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; - Ecclesiastes 3:1–2

For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! 17 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. - Ecclesiastes 2:16–17

Moses wrote in his prayer:

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. - Psalm 90:12

And so, because we will all come to the end of our days, it is valuable to know these Spirit-inspired meditations of the faithful king, Hezekiah.

I won’t go word-for-word through these – I will leave it for you to read through in your own time of meditating on Scripture.

I want to look at some specific points in this song that I hope will encourage, comfort, and challenge us all as we live this life in Christ.

In this song, let’s look at four things we should remember.

The first is what we have been looking at so far: Remember the end.

Remember that for each of us, it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, - Hebrews 9:27

And God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man [Jesus] whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” - Acts 17:31

Hezekiah begins his song: In the middle of my days…

That literally is “In the quiet time…”

What he is saying is that in the time of life when he felt like he should be achieving and doing great things, he has been laid low by an infection.

This was not a time where his health should, in his mind, have been an issue.

But that is how these things go, isn’t it?

While we are making plans and doing things in our strength, we hit a roadblock.

And I don’t care if you’re 18 or 80, when God sovereignly and lovingly ordains these things, your plans are as useless as the seal the soldiers put on the tomb of Jesus.

Even in the middle of doing things FOR God.

A man’s heart plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps. – Proverbs 16:9 (Berean Study Bible)

Many of our greatest disappointments here on earth are when God doesn’t go with OUR plan.

When the things we have been looking forward fall through.

When the things we have been counting on are taken away.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. - James 4:13–16

So how do we Remember the End?

It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning— 36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.” - Mark 13:34–37

Recall the hourglass over your head?

It’s counting the days until your Master’s appearing.

THAT is the end to keep in mind.

We will see Him who we have loved without seeing Him.

We will see the reality of Jesus Christ in the flesh, before our eyes, and we will know the presence of Jesus is greater even than the promise of His Appearing.

He is more glorious than we can imagine now;

He is more beautiful than we could conjure in our imaginations.

The fulfillment of His promises will be greater than all we could ask or think.

In the midst of verses 13-15, we find the second thing to remember: Remember God Holds You.

He declares in v. 14: My eyes are weary with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my pledge of safety!

There is so much comfort in the knowledge that God holds His children, His sheep, in His tender arms.

God’s tenderness takes nothing away from His holiness.

There was quite a bit of nyah, nyah over a book released a few years ago.

It was a really powerful little book by Pastor Dane Ortlund that explored the care and tenderness of God through Jesus Christ.

How any Christian would consider that controversial, I would never have guessed.

But some who would see God ONLY in His holiness objected that Pastor Ortlund didn’t do enough talking about the judgment and power of God in that book.

So let’s be clear – God doesn’t have “parts”.

His mercy, gentleness, holiness, righteousness, justice, love, judgment, and anger (and everything else about Him) all dwell perfectly and completely together and NEVER come into conflict in Him.

WE sometimes have to have one thing or another; God is both love and judgment at the same time.

Just and the Justifier, as Paul puts it in Romans.

And so we see Hezekiah crying out to God so much that his eyes are weary from looking upward.

His throat is parched from his urgent cries to God.

He has sought God time and again like the widow chasing the judge for justice.

And God, who loves His children, has answered him.

Be my pledge of safety!

He is worried.

At the beginning of verse 13, we see him “calming himself until morning.”

It seems like every English translation of the Bible has a different word for “calming”.

It is a word picture, based on the word “to level”.

He is crying out that he has been knocked completely off-balance;

He is not adequate for his own distress.

So he tried to calm his fears himself – and failed.

Have you tried that?

To reason with yourself: “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Or to create plan after plan, possibility after possibility, to prepare for the worst?

Have you lost sleep at night worried about what might happen?

Or what was likely to happen?

Or what has happened?

Remember God Holds You.

It is HE who protects you, He who supports you, He who carries you when you are too weak to stand.

It is He who sends brothers and sisters to you at the right time, who inspires people to pray for you at the right time.

And it is He who delivers you – whether in this life or up to Himself.

… neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:38–39

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” 3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. 4 He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. 5 You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, 6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. - Psalm 91:1–6

The third thing to remember: Remember God’s Past Blessings.

This psalm was written AFTER Hezekiah had been healed by God.

He cries out (v.17):

in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.

If you are His child, God has loved you.

He has forgiven you.

He has delivered you time and again.

What beat has your heart made without His decree?

What movement of your hands without His leave?

He created you and has sustained you – even those who have not followed Jesus Christ.

And if you haven’t come to Him and been converted from the kingdom of sin and darkness to His kingdom of light through Jesus Christ, He has brought you right here, in this moment, to have you hear the proclamation of His good news:

Come to Him in faith, leaving behind your life of sin, and you will be saved.

Even if you are an enemy, even if you have never believed His word,

He bids you come to Him – turn from your life of sin and turn to Him in faith.

Every believer in this room can testify to the truth that God saves sinners.

Every follower of Jesus Christ here can declare His goodness to the undeserving.

And they will be the first to tell you that they are the beneficiaries of a righteousness GIVEN to them, earned by Jesus Christ, and placed on them.

And the final thing to remember today: Remember you were made for more than this life.

It is the great tragedy that people think this life is all there is.

Or that this life is what matters.

When we read in v. 18: Sheol does not thank you,

I think we would make a grave interpretive mistake if we think the king is simply using this as an argument that he should live.

Like he is saying: If you keep me alive, I will be able to praise you.

There are passages in Scripture I have heard interpreted that way, but I’m not even sure it is a correct understanding in those cases.

But here – definitely not.

This is also not a theology of the afterlife, to be merged with the other passages to figure out what happens after we die.

It is a simple declaration that those who have passed through death no longer speak to us about the grace and mercy of God -

Only the living and breathing do that.

What the king is declaring is that BECAUSE God has delivered him, he is able to continue to raise his voice in praise and thanksgiving.

He is not offering a bargain; he is declaring his intention to use every bit of his life left to praise God.

His praise is a RESULT of God’s salvation, not intended to be an enticement for it.

Because he has breath, because he still lives, he is able to proclaim the glories of God in praise and thanksgiving.

And there is nothing he wants to do more.

If he has 15 more years, they will be 15 years of praise and thanksgiving to God.

And the hourglass that is ticking down the minutes is, for him, counting the times of praise here until His praise will be lifted to God eternally.

What will you do with the life God has given you?

How will you spend the minutes He has given you in grace?

What you do doesn’t EARN you something with God;

It is the same as the elders before the throne of God casting their crowns at His feet.

He was not enriched by their offering, and they were not more saved or blessed by their action.

They were expressing their abiding love for God that was made possible by His abiding love for them.

All their efforts, all their sacrifice, was BECAUSE of His love for them.

STUDY and PREPARATION:

Thoughts on the Passage:

The promise of God prior to this is that He would add 15 years to Hezekiah’s life.

Would you consider this good news, even from God?

That you have a terminal condition, in this case called sin, and it will run its course and kill you in 15 years.

I think for most of us that knowledge would be too great.

Could we ever live without feeling like their was an hourglass above our heads, pouring its sand from top to bottom, our life trickling away?

And yet, should we not be aware of the shortness of our own life, just a vapor?

Is it better for us to ignore the fact that we will one day die and stand before the great King of Heaven in His judgment?

I know there are a lot of Christians who are hoping that the Appearing of Christ will keep them from passing through death, but the last I checked, every single one in the past who placed their hope on that event occuring in their lifetime died disappointed.

This psalm, then, should be read with that in mind – as the heart of a man with an unavoidable expiration date stamped on his head.

It is literally what we in software project planning call a “drop-dead-date”.

9—A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:

While this was composed after his recovery, it records the anguish and cries of his soul while he was in the midst of his sickness.

It is in some extent raw, describing his fear and grief poetically and pictorially.

10–12—I said, In the middle of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. 11 I said, I shall not see the Lord, the Lord in the land of the living; I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world. 12 My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent; like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom; from day to night you bring me to an end;

10 – In the middle of my days – lit. “In the quiet time…”

In the time of life when health should be the least of his concerns.

This is the time of achievement and exploits, not to be laid up by an infection.

For most people who meet with the providence of sudden illness, their affliction interrupts many plans.

We make our plans, but they are more fragile than we think.

A man’s heart plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps. – Proverbs 16:9 (Berean Study Bible)

10 – I must depart – for all of us, that day of our departure will come.

For some, we will see it coming through sickness or dreadful diagnoses.

But even if our ordained end should come upon us suddenly without warning, it will come just as certainly.

13–15—I calmed myself until morning; like a lion he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end. 14 Like a swallow or a crane I chirp; I moan like a dove. My eyes are weary with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed; be my pledge of safety! 15 What shall I say? For he has spoken to me, and he himself has done it. I walk slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul.

13 – I calmed myself – every single translation struggles with the word to choose here because it is so descriptive.

NASB – I compose my soul

KJV/Geneva – I reckoned till morning

CSB – I thought until the morning

LSB – I soothed my soul until morning

The picture is of one who is unbalanced and fearful of the future, needing to be balanced. The picture of one who dreads the dawn and knows he can do nothing to stop it.

The root of shâvâh, shaw-vaw’; a prim. root; prop. to level, i.e. equalize; fig. to resemble; by impl. to adjust (i.e. counterbalance, be suitable, compose, place, yield, etc.

To level, to set aright.

Could also be understood “I consoled myself.” – but bigger in scope. This was no small effort to consolation; it was a complete effort of his mind.

13 – from day to night – this is not the expression of a full day as we would express it in English. This is backward – Jewish days begin with nightfall (“evening and morning” in Genesis 1).

Thus, it is not an expression of the TIME he is afflicted, but the DIRECTION of that affliction -

He is moving from day to night, from living to dying, from the land of the sun to the dwelling of Sheol, shadow.

16-17—O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh restore me to health and make me live! 17 Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness; but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.

18-20—For Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness. 19 The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day; the father makes known to the children your faithfulness. 20 The Lord will save me, and we will play my music on stringed instruments all the days of our lives, at the house of the Lord.

18 – For Sheol does not thank You – this is not intended, nor should it be used, to form a theology of the afterlife.

If death is the final enemy (the final enemy is death), what hope do those who have passed through it have? They have passed from this life immediately into the judgment of God.

The point of this verse is to point out that it is only the living who lift up their eyes with hope, who lift up their voices with praise.

Those who have passed through death before us no longer testify to the grace and mecry of God – only the record of their living years has any hope of instructing us.

It also leads us to the finale of this psalm as Hezekiah once again walks to the temple to worship God.

Because he still has breath, because he still lives, he still is able to proclaim the glories of God in praise and thanksgiving.

This should not be considered part of his “argument” toward God, that he will be incapable of praise once he has died.

We do seem to see that in the Psalms, although I am not sure even then this is the right interpretation.

Hezekiah’s lifelong praise is a RESULT of his restoration to health, not an argument toward God why He SHOULD heal him.

It seems to answer an unasked question: “What will you do with the time God has given you?”

It is an appropriate question to ask ourselves not only when we are in trouble, but even more when we are feeling good.

God doesn’t save us or heal us BECAUSE of this, but it is a question of Hezekiah to any who would seek God’s mercy – what will you do with His mercy?

Saving Private Ryan – “Tell me I’m a good man...”

What is the Good News of this passage – Where is Jesus Christ? (if you can’t answer this question, are you finished?)

Teachings:

What do we learn about God/ Jesus/ Holy Spirit?

Applications:

For the Christian:

For the Backslidden:

For the Unconverted:

Primary Preaching Point:

Building Points:

[on even numbered page]

MORNING PRAYER:

Adoration:

Almighty God and everlasting King.

Confession:

Forgive us our pride, and the loathsome lengths to which we will go to support our fleshly vanity.

Thanksgiving:

In You we find our only hope, both in this life and in eternity joined with Christ Jesus.

Petition:

We beg that You subdue the power of our sins by Your Holy Spirit.

Intercession: (also beyond our local)

We pray that Your peace would reign anew on the earth: