This man, Hezekiah, lived his life in the fear of the Lord ever since the Lord saved him by His grace. He walked in the truth of the gospel. He maintained a confidence in Jehovah. looking to the Messiah who would come to save his people from their sins. And though his walk was imperfect, as is the walk of all of us, yet he, in sincerity and in truth, he sought the God of his fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he sought the glory of God above everything else. His intentions were right. And his beliefs were according to the revealed will of God. I was a little uncomfortable, to be honest with you, when I read what his prayer was. When he says, I have walked, verse three, he says, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. Ordinarily, to hear somebody speak those words It kind of sounds like self-admiration or patting yourself on the back. I don't know what Hezekiah was thinking. I have no way to know what was going through his mind. But as I looked at it again and again, he did walk before God in truth. The very truth of God meant everything to him. For it was in the name of the truth of God and the glory of God that he destroyed idols, that he destroyed the brazen serpent, calling it nehushtan, a worthless piece of brass. It was with the very glory of God in mind that he with a perfect heart, with a sincere heart, that's what that means, with a sincere heart, he sought to do those things that were honoring to God and glorifying to God. And based upon what we have read of him and his faithfulness to God, I can better come to grips with what he had to say. I do not believe that he was speaking of his faithfulness as being meritorious before God. I don't think he was saying, Lord, in light of all the good that I've done, hear the desire of my heart. You'll notice he did not ask for anything specifically. He did not ask for 15 years. which is why the word behold is attached to what Isaiah said. All he does is present his case before the Lord, and he said this, look in verse 3. I beseech thee, O Lord, remember. Remember. And that puts me in mind of the believing thief. who when he was hanging beside the Savior, and he looked over at this bloody man, bloodied and gory looking, suffering, being crucified, being mocked by the multitudes. When he looked at Jesus of Nazareth hanging on the middle cross, he believed him to be the Lord of glory. And he said, Lord, remember me, remember me. And here is this man who has just heard from the lips of the prophet Isaiah that he's going to die and not live. And his cry is, I beseech thee, O Lord, O Jehovah, O sovereign of all, I beseech thee, remember now, remember. Remember whose I am, I'm yours. Remember, Lord, that I believe you because you have gifted me with faith. Remember me, O Lord, in this time of death. Because he believed what Isaiah said that he was going to die. And he just wept. You know, sometimes as children of God, we bow our heads before the Lord and maybe we can't even speak. That which is the desire of our heart, and we're thankful that according to Romans chapter 8, the Spirit of God takes our thoughts and our desires and puts them in form, puts them in a way that is expressed to the Lord Jesus, to the Father. Here's a man believing that the Lord remembers him. The Lord cannot forget His children. And here is Hezekiah saying, I'm one of yours. I'm one who trusts you. I'm one of your little ones who out of the sincerity of my heart have sought to glorify thy name. Lord, remember me. Remember me. And the Lord does remember his children. Hold your place here and go to Isaiah. Look at Isaiah chapter 49. Isaiah 49. Let me read you three or four verses here. Isaiah 49. Verse 13, I'll begin. Isaiah 49, 13. We read, sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains. For the Lord hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted. But Zion said, the Lord hath forsaken me. You ever feel that way? The Lord hath forsaken me. And my Lord hath forgotten me. Sometimes it seems like the Lord hides His face from us. And we wonder where is the Lord? Here I am grieving or hurting or suffering. Where is the Lord? I need the Lord and yet He seems so far away from me. The Lord has forgotten me, the Lord has forsaken me. And the Lord speaks up and says in verse 15, Can a woman forget her sucking child? That she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet I will not forget thee. Hezekiah says, O Lord, remember, The thief on the cross said, Lord, remember me. And I'll tell you, when you don't know what to pray or how to ask for something, this is a good prayer. Oh, Lord, remember me. Don't forget me. And he says in verse 16, Behold, you'd be amazed at this. I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands. Thy walls are continually before me. Thy children shall make haste. Thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee. I'm not going to forget you no matter what seems to happen to you or what you experience. I'll never forget you. In Hebrews 13 we read the Lord says, I'll never leave thee nor forsake thee. And I want to encourage the Lord's people tonight by reminding you that you are always on his mind. There's never a moment that he ever forgets you. You say, but he has so many children. scattered across the world. Oh, we have no idea of the greatness of our God. And each of His children are very, very special to Him. He chose us unto salvation. He did that. And He redeemed us by the blood of His Son. And in due time, He sent somebody to preach the gospel of God's grace to us through the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Spirit of God did a miraculous work within us. And we found ourselves believing, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and casting our souls upon Him. Lots invested in us. The Son of God laid down His life to save us. While His own blood was shed for our redemption. He will not forget us. There's a verse, I tell you, if you're still in Isaiah, look at this verse, Isaiah 43. And then I'll go back to 2 Kings. Look at Isaiah 43, 26. Verse 25 says, Isaiah 43, 25. I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake. and will not remember thy sins." There is something he won't remember, but it's not you, it's your sins. And he says in verse 26, this is an interesting way the Lord phrases, put me in remembrance. Let us plead together. As it were, let us plead upon the basis of the sacrifice that's been laid down to justify us before God. Remind me of that, God said. Not that he needs reminding, but don't forget to always plead the blood of Christ. He says, declare thou that thou mayest be justified. Well, Hezekiah did what the Lord, through Isaiah, was told to do. Pour out your heart to the Lord, knowing that He's mindful of you. And he asked for nothing, and I want to emphasize this before I go on. He made no specific request, it's as though The yearning of his heart, the hurting of his soul, the worry, I suppose, of dying, this is all in his mind. Remember, these Old Testament saints, they didn't have New Testament passages that they could go to and find the promises of God like we do. And they very much operated, if I may put it this way, sometimes in the dark. And here he is, he's heard the word from the prophet Isaiah, set your house in order because you're not going to live, you're going to die. And this is all weighing heavily on his mind and he just turns his face toward the wall and weeps. You know, the Lord says in Job that he He catches our tears like the Egyptians used to do. The Egyptians, when they were, people were weeping and sad, they had a mourning rag. And they'd wipe the tears of a bunch of people to where it would finally, the rag would be wet with tears. And they'd squeeze it into a bottle. And the Lord, in the book of Job, he likens his memory to tears squeezed into a bottle. He knows every tear you've wept over your children, your grandchildren, over your sorrows. He knows every tear. He remembers them. He remembers them. Well, Hezekiah With a broken heart he came before the Lord and not knowing what to ask for. And the Lord gave him exceeding abundantly above all that he could ask or think. Gave him 15 years. Now I don't know what this sickness was. what this illness was that afflicted him, but it's obvious that had it been allowed to run its course, this man would surely have died. Such was the severity of it that had not the Lord intervened, Hezekiah would have fell victim to whatever it was he was afflicted with. Why do God's people get sick and sometimes deathly sick? Well, I can tell you the very first reason is to drive us to the throne of our sovereign, to drive us to his feet. When the body grows weak, when we have fever or cancer or heart disease or whatever it is, There's something about that that brings a solemnness to the mind and to the heart. And then we run to our Lord. Oh, God, help me. And anything that drives us to our Lord is good for us, even if it's painful to the body. This disease of Hezekiah reminds us of sin, a horrible Infectious disease which affects every man, woman, boy and girl born into this world of the seed of man. It is disease which is inward and revealed outward. And it has destroyed our standing before God. It is as incurable as was Hezekiah's illness. And this disease of sin, if it runs its course, it will result in threefold death. We're born spiritually dead. We're going to physically die. And if sin runs its course, we're going to die eternally. In the case of Hezekiah, he was healed. God gave him 15 more years. It was a miraculous healing which involved the Lord using something that was unusual, but something that was common and ordinary, figs. And in the healing of our souls, the Lord used that which is common and ordinary, the death of somebody. But the death that He used was not by any means common and ordinary. It was the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was nothing short of a miracle that our Savior laid down His life for us. how great the cure was. We were sinful and we were dying. But our Lord Jesus intervened. Peter says, and with his stripes, we were healed. The healing took place at Calvary. That's where the price was paid. Well, here is Hezekiah. He's sick. And the Lord says to him, through Isaiah, in verse five, he says, turn again, the Lord says to Isaiah, turn again and tell Hezekiah, the captain of my people, thus said the Lord, the God of David, thy father, I've heard thy prayer, I've seen thy tears, behold, I will heal thee on the third day. That's when healing would come to him. On the third day, thou shalt go up unto the house of the Lord, and I will add unto thy days fifteen years. On the third day, go up to the house of the Lord. Now, what did he say on the third day? Well, the third day in Scripture is very significant. In the book of Genesis chapter 1, At the end of it, God creates man, and it's a picture of the new creation. But all the verses before the creation of Adam and Eve, because Eve was in Adam, male and female, made he them, all that came before that was the Lord making a residence capable of nourishing and taking care of the people of God. And on the third day we read that the Lord, well, turn back to Genesis chapter 1, let me just read this to you. Verse 9, it was a time of separation. God made a location, He made a place, a place where a man could dwell. You see, Back in eternity, God ordained salvation. But that's going to have to be worked out in what we call time. And it's got to be worked out somewhere. So God ordained the somewhere in the beginning. God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth is where the great drama of redemption is going to take place. The earth is where the Son of God is going to come. Because the earth is where the people of God dwell. So He's going to come down here and dwell among us and then lay down His life. Verse 9, And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. We've got to have somewhere to live. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called seas. And God saw that it was good, and then God said, let the earth bring forth grass and herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after His kind. Our Lord Jesus Christ, He is the seed. He's the seed of the woman. And He brings forth a people after His kind. We're His offspring. whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass and herb-yielding seed after his kind, not its kind, but his kind. That which is in view here is Christ the Savior and his people. And the tree-yielding fruit, he is the tree of life, whose seed was in itself after his kind. And God saw that it was good. This is good in the evening and the morning where the third day, the third day, that's when the earth came into being. There's dry land and this is where the seed and the fruit came in. And we have a picture of our Lord Jesus. He's the seed of the woman whose fruit we are. We are. The third day is significant. In the Bible, the word The number three you know is very important. It means completeness. It means perfection. It's used to indicate divine intervention. In the Hebrew language, it means literally harmony, new life, completeness. And to begin with, the number three is the Trinity. And of course, the word Trinity isn't in the Bible. But there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. These three are one. And many significant things happen on the third day. You remember that God told Abraham to take Isaac to a mountain that God would show him and offer him up as a burnt offering. and they traveled with two servants. And the scripture says, on the third day, on the third day, they came to the mountain. God said, this is the mountain where it's going to happen. And the Lord said to Abraham, tell the servants, stay here. You see, when God dealt with our Savior upon the cross of Calvary, there were two people who were very close to the Savior, location-wise, hanging beside of Him. But they could not enter into that transaction between the Father and the Son when redemption price was paid. So God turned the lights out. There was darkness over the face of the earth. Even so, on the third day, Abraham and Isaac went to the mountain. And that was the time for Isaac to be offered it, so it would appear. And when Abraham raised the sacrificial knife, the Lord said, stop! This was a test. And he passed the test. And the Lord said, there's a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. Kill that animal in the stead of Isaac. And that's what redemption is, it's substitution. It's our Lord Jesus Christ dying in the stead of his people. And of course the third day is significant in many places through the scriptures, but I just want to camp on this one for just a little bit. Our Lord Jesus raised from the dead on the third day. The third day. The third day was, to the Jews, very significant because if a person had died, if they'd been dead for a total of three days, death was assured. Death was assured. In the case of Lazarus, he'd been dead four days. And Martha said, don't open the, don't roll the stone away, have the stone rolled away from his tomb because by this time he's stinking. But for the Jews, three days was proof that life had exited the body. And you remember in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, he died. Of course, he had said that destroy this temple in three days, I'll raise it up. And then the enemies of our Lord, they went running to Pilate after the Savior had been buried. And said, well, that deceiver, he said he was going to come back after three days. Seal the tomb with your own signet. And he did that. Surely nothing could break the seal of Pilate, the governor. But on the third day, the seal was broken. And our Savior came forth in triumphant glory. And I'll tell you this, because He came forth from the grave on the third day, our bodies are sure to be raised. But there's a resurrection that we experience even in this life, isn't there? It's called regeneration. And our regeneration, that's connected to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Turn to 1 Peter chapter 1. Let me give you this and I'll leave you with it. 1 Peter chapter 1. Verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Our spiritual resurrection, it's called the new birth. It's called being born again. It's called regeneration. Our regeneration, our new birth, being born again is a direct result of what happened on the third day when our Lord Jesus Christ conquered death and came back from the grave having been victorious over all of our enemies. And then in due time, he came to us who were ruined in sin, but who had been redeemed by the blood of Christ. He came to us at exactly the right time and regenerated us. Those are the three R's that have to always be set forth, ruined, redeemed, and regenerated. The Lord regenerated us because of what happened on the third day. Christ came forth triumphant over all of our enemies. We live because he lives. Because he conquered death, we live spiritually and though these bodies must taste death, yet Our Lord Jesus who rose on the third day will see to it that our dead bodies are raised from the grave wherever Abel was buried, if he was buried. All those particles of his dust long since gone. The Lord knows where every particle of dust is. And Abel's body will be gathered together again at the final resurrection, as will all of the Old Testament saints and all of the New Testament saints, right up to the last one who has died. And we're going to all have glorified bodies, and here's the reason, because of what happened on the third day. Our Christ arose, and he ensured our spiritual life, our everlasting life, and that this body will live again on the third day. That's the title of this message, the third day. Well, let's sing the closing song. Get your songbooks out