2 Kings chapter 20. We come tonight to the penultimate test. Next week we will see the ultimate test that befell Hezekiah. 2 Kings 20, 1-11. 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. And he turned his face toward the wall and prayed to the LORD, saying, 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. Then it happened, before Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 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, 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." Then Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. So they took it and laid it on the boil, and he recovered. And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, What is the sign that the Lord will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the Lord the third day? And Isaiah said, This is the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing which He has spoken. Shall the shadow go forward ten degrees, or go backward ten degrees? And Hezekiah answered, It is an easy thing for the shadow to go down ten degrees. No, but let the shadow go backward ten degrees. So Isaiah the prophet cried out to the Lord and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward by which it had gone down on the sundial of Ahaz. The grass withers, the flower fades, the word of God stands forever. Let's pray. Mighty God, show us your saving might for your anointed king in this text. Show us Christ. Free us from distraction. Help us to meet with You tonight, to feast together on Your Word, we ask in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Well, this test took place during the time of the siege in the previous chapter. It's been displaced. In fact, it seems to have taken place before the Assyrians walked away from their encampment. Why did the narrator take this episode and put it here, in the time before Assyria even attacked? The answer is that both episodes in this chapter are put here because they point forward to the rest of the Book of Kings. The fate of the king mirrors the fate of the nation. Hezekiah is sick and near death, and God's promise to deliver his life is paired directly with a promise to save the city of Jerusalem. Did you notice that? Verse 6, I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. To deliver one is to deliver the other. If Hezekiah had died and Assyria had taken over the city, that would have been the end of Judah right there in 701 BC. Instead, God prolonged the life of Judah for another 115 years. So God prolongs Hezekiah's life and he prolongs Judah's life. And in the next episode, we see a foreshadowing of the rising threat of Babylon in the east. That's where Hezekiah's life ends with this interaction with the emissaries from Babylon, even though that probably took place three or four years before the other events narrated about Hezekiah's life. In other words, the portrayal here is clearly literary. The historian is driving us onward toward the end of the Book of Kings. We've got five chapters left. We fast forward through these last 115 years to the bitter end. Let's look together at this test and the reprieve. It was a test and a reprieve. The reprieve was temporary, but what we see is that God tests His anointed King. God saves His anointed King. God hears His anointed King. when he cries out. And this shows us, as those united to Christ, the true anointed King, how we ought to respond to God's testing. We start with another test from God. Verse 1, a hard word. Isaiah comes. Right? A tough conversation, surely. Not a pleasant job to be a prophet. Hi, Hezekiah, how are you? Oh, I'm fine, Isaiah, how are you? Well, I got bad news, Hezekiah. Oh yeah, what's the bad news? Well, you're gonna die. It's a little bit of a conversation killer. According to Jewish tradition, Hezekiah was actually Isaiah's son-in-law. What a thing to come and tell your daughter's husband. God says you're going to die. So go ahead and get all your affairs in order. It's a hard word. How would you respond to this hard word? If you could somehow receive prophetic knowledge that God comes to you this week, a prophet comes to you this week and says you're sick and this is it. You're almost dead. Set your affairs in order. Well, how did Hezekiah respond? He turned his face to the wall, not, I think, sulking like Ahab, who was the last person in Kings to turn his face to the wall, but rather seeking privacy, saying, I need to get alone with God. I can't get out of bed. There's a conversation that I have to have with God that no one else needs to listen to. He cries out to God with a broken heart. He doesn't say much. He simply says, I've walked before you in truth and with a loyal heart and have done what was good in your sight. And this is true. The narrator tells us that he did right in the sight of the Lord. He trusted in the Lord God of Israel so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him. but kept His commandments which the Lord had commanded Moses. The Lord was with him. He prospered wherever he went." This is how we think. Lord, things were good. We had a good relationship. I was trying to obey You. I was doing what I thought You wanted. Don't we enjoy being together? Hezekiah wept bitterly. What can we say to a man in this condition? If you're Isaiah there in the room, are you going to point out, well look Hezekiah, God always afflicts us for the best. God isn't obligated to give you a long life. Don't be surprised by the fiery trial. It might be easy to quote some of these texts, but we can't dump them on this afflicted king without applying them to our own souls first. How ready are we for the fiery trial, for the bad news, for the hard providence? Somebody in my parents' church got a call from the cops this week. They were down at mom and dad's house. So we got the email about it, but this man's phone rang. The cop says, your wife and your two kids have just been hit by a car. And he could hear his children screaming in the background. He, of course, rushed over to the hospital, found out that they were alive, but His son had his leg broken in three places, and the wife had been walking across the crosswalk with the stroller, and his two little kids had been hit. When a hard word, when a hard providence from God comes into your life like that, what will you do? How will you respond? Hezekiah cried out to God. And that is really our only option. Hezekiah wept bitterly. He didn't say, God, take away the punishment. God, please let me live. He didn't say anything like that. He just, all he could think was, God, we had a relationship. Hezekiah did walk with God, and that didn't exempt him from suffering. And it won't exempt you either. And yet, before Isaiah has gone out into the middle court, you know, 10-15 seconds walk, already God answers the prayer. And God sends Isaiah back with a new word, saying, I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears." And God uses this title for Hezekiah that we haven't seen since 1 Kings 14. Nagid, the leader, the prince of my people. A messianic title. God is saying, Hezekiah, you are someone special to me. You are the one I chose to lead my people. And I heard you and I saw your tears and I'll heal you. God hears, God heals, and God gives a sign. On the third day you will go up to the house of the Lord. We've talked about this, the symbolism of the third day, the day of resurrection. Gandalf saying to the troops, look for me at dawn on the third day. Tolkien there is drawing on this kind of ancient symbolism. God grants Hezekiah a reprieve. Verse 6, I will add to your days 15 years. And the sign of that, going up to the house of the Lord on the third day, it's almost the opposite of the sign God gave to Ahaz. Remember the sign to Ahaz is God with us. Emmanuel, a child will be born. Now the sign to the son of Ahaz, Hezekiah, is us with God. Hezekiah, you get to go to the house of the Lord. You will get to meet God in His presence. You will get to worship. This is the sign that I heard you and that I'll keep my promises. Do you know this God, the God who answers prayer, the God who hears the cry of His anointed King? Obviously the text is not telling us that within 10 seconds God is going to respond to every prayer we pray. The book of Kings is very clear about that. We've seen some of the prayers of Elijah go unanswered. And yet here, God listens to His anointed king. Now we can say, well if God was going to heal him, why did He threaten him with death in the first place? What's the answer? Well, the only answer we have is that God wanted Hezekiah to learn to trust Him. And if we're not okay with that, that really says more about our hearts than it does about God. So God gives this sign. He grants Hezekiah a reprieve. He grants Judah a reprieve. I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. Hezekiah, it looked like the end was here for you. Hezekiah, it looks like the end is here for your city. But I will intervene and save you and your city for two reasons. My own sake and for the sake of my servant David. Why did God give Hezekiah a reprieve? glorify himself for his own sake because of his promise to David. What was that promise? One of your descendants will always sit on the throne before me. Now, if the chronology here is perfectly straightforward, then this reprieve was necessary for God's promise. Look at the first verse of chapter 21. Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king. How long was Hezekiah's reprieve? Fifteen years. Hezekiah had no son, it would seem. Hezekiah was saying, God, you're killing me, literally, before I can have a son, before you can continue the line of promise through me. What about, as Akai is saying, not just me and my life, as important as that is to me, what about your promise that David's line would never lack a son? What happened to that, Lord? God instantly gives him this reprieve, delivers him, promises to defend the city, and, it would seem, gives him a son. Hezekiah, my promise is not over. I will save you in this city. Not because you're a wonderful person, necessarily, but for the sake of my promise to David. Why does God answer our prayers today? It's the same reason. For the sake of His promise to David, which is a promise to Christ. God hears those who are in Christ, those who know Christ, those who are united to Christ. And that's why we have confidence to pray, because God hears the prayers of His anointed King. What did Jesus say? Father, you heard me and I know that you always hear me. God answered Hezekiah's prayer. because of His inexhaustible passion. And that means we can trust Him. Because He isn't in this salvation business because we're worthy of it. He's in it for His own sake and for the sake of His messianic promise. And we can't change either of those things no matter how wicked we are. No matter what we do wrong, God's promise stands. And that's what gives us comfort when a hard providence comes to us, when the word comes, when the doctor bears the news instead of the prophet and says, you will die, you will not recover. Now occasionally, sure, doctors can be wrong. An old lady that Alexa and I knew in Merrimack was put in hospice last year. She was there for three days and then she recovered and she's right back home. for such case I had ever heard of. But, that was God delivering her. God can deliver you when He sends a hard word. I will defend this city. I will save this city. Because Hezekiah's life was prolonged, the Savior of the world came in the fullness of time. And yet, verse 7, even in the midst of this high stuff, God uses ordinary means. Isaiah says, let's get a little medicine applied here. Put a lump of figs on him. Use some standard Israelite medicine. God's large-scale plans to save the world are not only compatible with but even work through ordinary means. Like what was at that time modern medicine. They laid a lump of figs on Hezekiah and he recovered. God saved His anointed king through medical science. So Hezekiah, again the opposite of Ahaz, Ahaz rejected the offer of a sign. Hezekiah asked for a second sign. He wants a sign about the sign. Verse 8, what is the sign that I will go up to the house of the Lord on the third day? Give me another sign. What does God say? No, I already gave you a sign. No, God graciously grants him a second sign. God reveals Himself. This is the sign that the Lord will do the thing which He has spoken. This is the sign that you can trust God's revelation. What is the sign? How do you know you can trust God's revelation of Himself? Because God has the power to make the shadow go backwards. We've all seen shadows move forward and lengthen. And Hezekiah says, well, you know, if you're going to ask, yeah, bring the shadow back. Now what did God do? We don't know. Did He reverse the earth? Did He stop the sun? Did He move Hezekiah's palace? Something happened that shows that God has power over time. God has power over the sun. And that's the sign to Hezekiah. God is gracious. God gives guarantees. You know, there comes a point with all of us when people keep asking for guarantees and we finally just say, look, If you don't trust me, let's end this relationship." But is that God's attitude? Hezekiah, I just gave you a sign. No. God says, okay, I'll give you another sign. A much harder sign. A sign that is literally impossible without the power of God. That's how merciful and gracious and compassionate our God is. That's how much He loves us. The God who listened to Hezekiah is the God who can change the length of shadows. Do you trust Him? Now this week is Easter week. The thing we'll be focusing on this week is the resurrection power of God. that God heard and saved His anointed one. And that's the message of this text as well. God heard Hezekiah, God saved Hezekiah as a type, as a sign of the greater salvation He would perform in Jesus Christ. Do you know that God? Do you trust Him? Do you recognize the God you serve in this text? The one who is so compassionate, so gracious, so willing to hear prayer, and yet the God who sends hard providences, no doubt about it. But who in that hard providence doesn't say, I hate you, I want to hurt you. He says, I love you, and I want to show you my love with sign after sign. This sign of the Son moving back is for you too. It's a sign that God will do what He promised and what He promised is to save His anointed one and therefore to save everyone who is united by faith to that anointed one. Will you pray? Will you seek God's healing and blessing and gift of life for His church? That's what Hezekiah sought. for Himself and His city. God saved Him and Zion as a type of the church. God saves us when we cry out to Him, if we are united to Christ. So let's pray. Let's rejoice in God's salvation. Let's call on God when we hear a hard word, knowing that He hears and He heals. Almighty God, we pray that we might be able to say, remember, O Lord, how we have walked before You in faithfulness and with perfect hearts. We pray that that might be true and that we might indeed know what it is to weep bitterly before You as we trust You despite the hard providence that has come into our lives. Father, we thank You that You heard Hezekiah, that You saved him and Your church, Your people. And we thank You that You saved Christ, the true leader of Your people, the true Messiah, the one who cried out to You. And when He cried, You heard. Help us to be united to Christ by faith. that you might hear us, be our God, because we belong to your Son. We pray these things, Father, in the blessed and glorious name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.