You Sound Desperate
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Intro:
2 Then he turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, saying,
3 “Remember now, O Lord, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what was good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
Today, as we continue to study prayer through Scripture, the title of my message is, [You Sound Desperate].
Desperate means done out of despair or a last resort, having no hope, giving into despair.
Most adult know anywhere from 20,000–35,000 words.
The average eight year old already know 10,000 words.
And the average four year old already know 5,000 words.
I say that to say, of all the words I know, I distinctly remember when I learned what desperate meant. I was in elementary school and my friends and I were on the playground.
Our group of friends consisted of both boys and girls. We had a lot of important matters to discuss during recess. One of them was who had a boyfriend or a girlfriend.
Upon hearing that one girl had boyfriend, another girl commented, “THAT is her boyfriend? Wow! She is SOOOO desperate.”
I didn’t fully understand what it meant to be desperate, but if it created that response, I knew I did NOT want to sound or be desperate.
Eventually, that became a word we all understood. There were some who were:
desperate for attention
desperate for a significant other
desperate for acceptance
One of the reasons being desperate had such a negative connotation is because it meant that the desperate person would take literally ANYTHING or ANYONE!
That word stuck around through high school. We all knew that we would not want to sound desperate.
Perhaps my distinct memory of this word is unique to me, but the concept sticks around in life.
People don’t want to appear or sound desperate, they would rather be in demand.
people don’t want to settle for anything, instead they have high expectations.
People don’t want the leftovers, they want the newest and the best.
On one side, I agree that it is important to have a spirit of excellence and trust God to supply all of our needs.
On the other side, I wonder how many Christians have never truly experienced ALL God has for them because they did not want to risk sounding desperate?
In life, people want to appear to have it all together. In fact, many in society consider Christians who are too serious about their relationship with God as not evolved, not informed, and not equal.
Therefore, many Christians have sought to go along to get along. They desire to seem to have it all figured out with out sounding desperate.
One author wrote a book fifty years ago entitled, $3.00 Dollars Worth of God. He described the average Christian this way:
I would like to buy three dollars worth of God please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want the warmth of the womb, not the new birth.
I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.
I want three dollars worth of God please.
I’d say that fifty year old description remains accurate, except with inflation, we could say, I want $20 worth of God.
But the fact is this, God uses desperate people. He hears desperate people. He appreciates desperate people. He accepts desperate people.
I contend if we are to truly live according to scripture, we will sound desperate to God. We will come to Him with this understanding that I need and want you SO bad, I will take WHATEVER you will give, I am that desperate.
This morning, I want to look at one Judah’s better leaders. King Hezekiah faced desperation. He recognized that he was desperate for God’s will. God heard His prayer and helped him.
As we look at the desperate events of 2 Kings 18-20, we will see similarities to our day. I have three points, [National Desperation], [Spiritual Desperation], and [Personal Desperation].
Let’s ask ourselves, do I sound desperate?
Let’s begin
1. National Desperation
1. National Desperation
1 Now it came to pass in the third year of Hoshea the son of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign.
2 He was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah.
3 And he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done.
Hezekiah became king at the age of twenty-five. He followed his father, King Ahaz, who was wicked. In fact, Ahaz showed outright contempt and disrespect for God and the Temple.
Hezekiah’s father was a bad king from the beginning. He sacrificed one of his sons by burning him to death.
He sacrificed animals to false gods all throughout the land of Judah.
He cozied up to the king of Assyria, which was a political move. At the time of King Ahaz, Israel, the nation to the north was about to fall into Assyrian captivity.
King Ahaz decided to pay the Assyrians enough money, hoping they will leave Judah alone. So he took the bronze and silver from the Temple and gave to the Assyrian king.
Instead of trusting God, Ahaz put his fate in the hands of his enemies. He died after serving as king for sixteen years, then his son, Hezekiah ruled.
Unlike his father, God’s hand was on his life. Instead of following in his father’s footsteps, he modeled his leadership after David. He honored God and wanted to please him.
I suppose Hezekiah remembered the promises in Psalms:
12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, The people He has chosen as His own inheritance.
1 Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain.
As a young king, he identified the national situation was desperate. Their sister nation, Israel, had been taken captive by Assyria.
His father foolishly trusted the enemies. Hezekiah did the opposite, he chose to trust the Lord. He knew enough history to realize once a nation stops honoring God, their days are numbered.
Therefore, Hezekiah didn’t mind sounding desperate in his prayers and decisions. He wanted God to help Judah’s desperate situation across the nation.
2. Spiritual Desperation
2. Spiritual Desperation
4 He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan.
As a righteous king, Hezekiah understood that national problems were symptoms of deeper spiritual problems. Once Judah turned their back on God, His blessings and help stopped flowing.
Therefore, one of his first actions as king was to clean up Judah’s spiritual condition. For decades they had built shrines, pillars, and poles to honor the false and pagan gods of the region.
The king knew that those false gods did nothing for Judah. Only the One True God was able to help and hear His people.
It is interesting that the kings of Israel and Judah were judged by history on whether or not they removed the high places. Sometimes a king would build more altars to pagan gods in these high places.
Other times a new king would come and tear them down and restore true and proper worship.
Only to have the next king return them. The cycle continued over and over, but Hezekiah dealt with the idol worship.
However, he also took care of another problem, but it didn’t start as a problem. Hezekiah noticed that the people of Judah would burn incense to a bronze serpent on a pole.
The bronze serpent was over 700 years old, going back to the time of Moses. Number 21:4-9 tells what happened. I will paraphrase.
The Israelites complained against God and the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people. Many Israelites were bitten and died. They cried out to God for forgiveness.
God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent, place it on a pole, and those who look at it will live. Moses did and God spared many people.
Someone decided to save the serpent on the pole. It went through the wilderness, into the Promised Land, through the time of the Judges, through King Saul, David, Solomon, and now, thirteen kings later, seven hundred years on, they have the bronze serpent.
They’ve named it Nehushtan, they burned incense to it, taking God’s gift and making it an idol. Instead of looking to God for salvation, they looked to this bronze serpent, hoping it would bring protection and peace.
This was a problem for Hezekiah, so he took their idol, broke it up and removed it from society. Why?
5 He trusted in the Lord God of Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor who were before him.
6 For he held fast to the Lord; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the Lord had commanded Moses.
Hezekiah trusted the Lord. He recognized the desperation of Judah. They were trapped in idolatry, resulting in problems from their adversaries.
However, Hezekiah realized once Judah restores proper worship, they will then walk in the favor and blessings of God.
I imagine many of those who weren’t really interested in the Lord assumed Hezekiah sounded desperate. But he held fast to God’s word and trusted the Lord, carefully obeying God’s commands.
To him, he didn’t care if he sounded desperate, he knew Judah faced national and spiritual desperation, and as king, he was in the position to solve the issues.
He did and Judah entered into a season of peace and prosperity, everything seemed to go their way. Then, after a while, Hezekiah entered a time of...
3. Personal Desperation
3. Personal Desperation
1 In those days Hezekiah was sick and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, went to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.’ ”
2 Then he turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, saying,
3 “Remember now, O Lord, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what was good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
At some point, Hezekiah became sick. If he is like me or some of the other men I know, NO ONE got as sick as he did. As he felt desperately ill, the prophet Isaiah comes to visit.
If I were Hezekiah, I would have hope, if ANYONE can fix this sickness, surely it is the prophet. Imagine his surprise when Isaiah told him, I have a word from the Lord.
What is the word Isaiah, I could use a message from God.
Get your affairs in order, update your will, say your goodbyes, you are going to die, you will never recover from this illness.
By this point, Hezekiah was desperate. What was he to do?
He moved from his bed and began to pray. He was desperate. He cried out to God, reminding Him of all the work he did for Judah. He reminded God he’d been faithful from his youth and always sought to please the Lord.
He broke down and wept. Talk about sounding desperate. The prophet Isaiah detailed what he said a little more:
9 This is the writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:
10 I said, “In the prime of my life I shall go to the gates of Sheol; I am deprived of the remainder of my years.”
11 I said, “I shall not see Yah, The Lord in the land of the living; I shall observe man no more among the inhabitants of the world.
I do not know how much lower Isaiah could get. He told God, I am in the prime of my life, and I will never see my friends or family again. What have I done? How can I comprehend this?
Hezekiah could have stayed reticent and refined. He could have remained sober with a stiff upper lip, but he was desperate and he did not care who knew.
His desperation caught God’s attention.
4 And it happened, before Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying,
5 “Return and tell Hezekiah the leader of My people, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord.
6 And I will add to your days fifteen years. I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for My own sake, and for the sake of My servant David.” ’ ”
I love how God worked. It did not take long for the Lord to speak to Isaiah again. He is barely out the door before Hezekiah begins to pray.
Isaiah is just about outside of the courtyard in the palace only to have God tell him to return with a new message.
I have heard your prayer and seen your tears
I will heal you and three days from now you will get from your bed and go to the Temple to worship
I will add fifteen years to your life
I will rescue you from your enemies
I will defend the city!
What would make such a quick change for Hezekiah? One word—desperation
He was desperate. He was so desperate, he would take whatever God would give him. He was not picky, he just wanted God’s will. God gave him fifteen years, but I think he would have been happy for fifteen months, fifteen weeks, fifteen hours, or even fifteen minutes more, he was that desperate.
But Everything changed for him when God spoke. No longer was he desperately concerned about his future, he was desperately concerned about giving God proper praise and honor.
19 The living, the living man, he shall praise You, As I do this day; The father shall make known Your truth to the children.
20 “The Lord was ready to save me; Therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments All the days of our life, in the house of the Lord.”
He would have never been in that place to praise God for the miracle and answered prayer had he not became desperate.
God took his desperation, answered his prayer, and gave him a reason to praise God!
Close:
Hezekiah did not mind sounding desperate. He sounded desperate as he led the nation, restored proper spiritual practices, and prayed for God to save his life.
What would have happened had Hezekiah got embarrassed to sound too desperate? What might have happened if he had calmed down and not trusted God?
Thankfully we do not have to answer those questions. Instead, Hezekiah serves as a model for never becoming too proud to sound desperate.
For God uses desperate people! He hears the prayer and cries of those who are not ashamed to call out to Him UNTIL He answers.
In fact, Jesus encourages and models this type of desperation.
Four days before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, Jesus shared his desperation with God. John writes what Jesus prayed:
27 “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour.
28 Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”
29 Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.”
30 Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake.
31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”
He knew the pain and sorrow that would accompany the crucifixion and the taking on of humanity’s sins. So he poured out His desperation to God.
He was desperate to fulfill God’s plan and glorify His Father in heaven.
The Father heard His desperate cry and responded— You have brought glory to me and will do so again.
Everyone heard the voice from heaven. Jesus showed them that the voice wasn’t for His sake, but for theirs. He wanted them to see what happens when people get desperate before the Father.
Then He explained— if I be lifted up I will draw people to me.
Unlike Hezekiah’s day where people looked to a bronze serpent, Jesus wanted them to look to Him, the giver of gifts, not just the gifts.
He made a way through His death, burial, and resurrection to enable people to get desperate and look to HIM for help and answers.
Because the fact is this, if people are not desperate for God, they limit their potential to experience His supernatural power.
Without desperation:
The man at the pool of Bethesda would never have been healed in John 5:1-15
The little boy would not have taken his five loaves and two fish to feed the 5000 in John 6:5-14
Jesus would never have walked on the water in John 6:16-24
The blind men would have never received their sight
The lepers would have never been cleansed
Lazarus would never had risen from the dead in John 9:1-7
Desperation ALWAYS precedes God’s intervention.
And I feel it is safe to say we’re living in desperate times.
Nationally, we have desperate problems, increased division, and uncertainty about the future
Spiritually, we have a desperate situation. Interest in God’s house is at an all time low in our country.
Personally, people face desperate events every day.
The question is not, are times desperate, we know the answer to that.
The question is, are we willing to SOUND desperate through our prayers and intercession?
My question this morning is simple— are we really desperate for God?
Are we so desperate we are willing to take WHATEVER He has to give?
Are we desperate enough to say God I do not come with a list of demands, only that I might fulfill the plan you have for me?
Are we as desperate for God as we have ever been in our lives?
Or can we look back at a time in life and think, I was much more desperate for God then than I am now.
For it is this simple— without desperation we will not see:
families come to Christ
people filled with the Spirit
the physically and emotionally sick healed
our church revived
our community transformed
Desperation is the key. Are we willing to sound desperate and not care to hears us?
If we want what God wants, we have to get desperate for Him.
Like Hezekiah, like Jesus, God we really, really need you!
We have to get to the point where we are not bothered if someone remarks, you sound really desperate. Let our answer be, I am desperate, and I will take WHATEVER God is willing to give m!
Let’s ask our selves first, do you sound desperate?
If the answer is yes, press into that desperation and keep on praying.
If the answer is no, ask God to make you desperate for Him!