King Hezekiah: Illness Part 2

Good morning and welcome to another week of worship here at the Bridge. It was good to have a normal week of life this week. Thank you again for all the prayers and support. Now obviously we are doing something a little different this morning. This morning I want to wrap up the Hezekiah series because next week we will begin a couple weeks of examining Communion. I had been thinking about this connected to the meal we celebrate as a country comming up in thanksgiving i want to examine the meal that as Christians we celebrate and why it is such a value to us.

Hezekiah’s Illness

Last week we talked a little bit about Hezekiah’s illness but this morning i want to look at the passage that Hezekiah wrote in response to his Illness and his recovery. Isaiah 38:9-20 is an amazing passage. It is in many ways a psalm written about his experience with his illness. It is filled with lament, thanksgiving, and praise and it is all expressing the mortality of men. I was reading this passage and i was thinking about it when one verse stood out to me and is something that I found very interesting and to see the power of this verse.

Isaiah 38:17 NIV

17 Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back.

What a powerful verse. Hezekiah recognized in this moment that this experience was something to remember and something to value. He saw that despite the hardship that he went through and the pain that he suffered he saw the value and benefit of the dealing with this experience. Yet, this wasn’t grabbed my attention. I honestly wasn’t surprised by his view on this because it is not uncommon for those who have been deleiverd from hardship to see the value of what they have gone through. They look back and they see that they have grown as a person because of the challenges they have gone through. THis is a natural part of our growth as humans.

It was the second half of the verse that grabbed my attention.

“In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back.”

Hezekiah speaks of the revelation that not only was he saved form a physical death but he was saved from his sins by God. There is no explanation for how this has happened but there is a realization by Hezekiah that it has happened. This is a powerful recognition of what God has done for Hezekiah in his life. It is a testament to the power of God in the moment to not only physically heal Hezekiah but to free him of the bondage of his state of sin.

So what does this mean?

I kept pondering this question. Why was this so significant? Why did this verse grab my attention. My first inclination is that we slip into this attitude that the idea of forgiveness of sins is a New testament idea. It is not as predominate in the Old tesatment. Then i looked to some commentaries to gain some more insight, and i found this parrallel verse to look at.

Psalm 51 NIV

For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. 1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. 5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. 6 Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. 10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, so that sinners will turn back to you. 14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Savior, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. 18 May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. 19 Then you will delight in the sacrifices of the righteous, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

David before Hezekiah has been seeking the forgiveness of sins and this psalm was the result of his prayers and his seeking of God. It is such a beautiful passage of scripture. I noticed another v. 17 that stood out to me.

Psalm 51:17 NIV

17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

This image of the power of presenting God with a broken spirit a contrite heart is something that God will not despise. This idea of the spirit of our approach and the attitude we take in life captured me. It had me thinking about our lives as Christians and how we live currently.

We beleive in the forgiveness of sins but sometimes i wonder if we think about our comfort more than our actual faith walk.

Comfort

You see the idea of comfort is something that we as americans love to enjoy. Many aspects of our lives is filled with this general idea. We seek out comfort as much as we can. From travel, to food, even our jobs if we can find a way to increase our comfort level we take advantage of it. It had me thinking and as usual i like to go to definitions when it comes to some words.

Comfort is defined as—A state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint.

Pretty basic and straight forward right. This is exactly what i expected. Then i started thinking about in terms of our faith. The reality that i started to face was that...

Comfort is not just physical it can be Spiritual

Think about this for a minute.

How often are we seeking spiritual comfort?

How often do we go deeper in our faith because we just want to be put at ease in what is going on in our life?

We desire to be at ease when it comes to our faith. We want to know that everything is a okay and nothing is wrong when it comes to our faith. Now don’t get me wrong if we are pursuing a faith that we are trying to better ourselves and the world around us and build the kingdom of God and this brings us comfort that is a good thing.

Instead i started thinking about a danger that comes with comfort. The reality is that sometimes comfort becomes a problem in our lives. Comfort can destroy us. Becasue...

Comfort can = Complacency

I like to read and i love novels. One that i have read in the last couple years that is a dystopian novel is Ready Player One. Now recently this novel was made into a movie. I loved the movie so i read the book. As usual these two forms of media didn’t match each other. They are very different. I can appreciate both though for what they are and i love both of them. There is one part of the book though that came to mind when i wrote down the idea of comfort=complacency.

Recap Player one.

The Dangers of Spiritual Comfort

There are a lot of dangers when it comes to our spiritual comfort. We may not realize it but when we become complacent we can forget the work that God has done in our lives and the sacrifice that was made by Jesus on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. A passage of scripture came to my mind related to this idea.

Amos 6:1–7 NIV

1 Woe to you who are complacent in Zion, and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria, you notable men of the foremost nation, to whom the people of Israel come! 2 Go to Kalneh and look at it; go from there to great Hamath, and then go down to Gath in Philistia. Are they better off than your two kingdoms? Is their land larger than yours? 3 You put off the day of disaster and bring near a reign of terror. 4 You lie on beds adorned with ivory and lounge on your couches. You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves. 5 You strum away on your harps like David and improvise on musical instruments. 6 You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions, but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph. 7 Therefore you will be among the first to go into exile; your feasting and lounging will end.

Here the people of God are being complacent they are living in a life of comfort expecting things to go exactly as they would want and yet, they will be the first to enter into exile.

This is the challenge this morning.

Are you experiencing complacency?

WE have to face this head on. WE have to realize that we can not allow this kind of attitude to enter into our lives. We must give ourselves to this idea that we shouldn’t ever feel comfortable with our faith. Now this doesn’t mean we don’t find comfort in God. IT does mean that we need to be always ready to pursue God and to give our selves to what he has for us.

So how do we do this?

Salvation

We must remind ourselves of the cost of our Salvation!

We must be reminded of the words of Psalm 51:17

Psalm 51:17 NIV

17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

The reality is we must recognize that it is through our faith in God that we are made whole. That it is only through our faith in him that we come to this realization. IT is only through his grace and his forgivness that this is possible. It is only when God takes our sins an puts it behind his back where it is never to be seen again that we find redemption. This was not done easily.

It took the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The very fact that Jesus came down and considered himself nothing so that we could come to relationship with him is astounding.

So how do we avoid this complacency?

We must be reminded that of some things.

John 14:6 NIV

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Romans 3:23 NIV

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Romans 5:1 NIV

1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Romans 6:5–7 NIV

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

All of these verses call us back to the reality of our salvation. IT makes me say right now i want you to draw on what God has don for you. In this moment if you never realize that God had done these things for you or if you are being reminded of the great sacrifice and the power of what Jesus did on the cross for us enter into a time of prayer right now and be reminded of what it is that the love of God means to us. That in this moment we can be free of our sins and we can begin. WE then turn to the hope we hav ein the future.

Romans 8:24–26 NIV

24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. 26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.