ESOCS Devotional 27 January 2025 – Hezekiah’s Cry
MEMORY VERSE: “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’” Isaiah 38:1b
TEXT: ISAIAH 38:1–END
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 Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, 3 and said, “Remember now, O Lord, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what is good in Your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4 And the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, 5 “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will add to your days fifteen years. 6 I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city.” ’ 7 And this is the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing which He has spoken: 8 Behold, I will bring the shadow on the sundial, which has gone down with the sun on the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward.” So the sun returned ten degrees on the dial by which it had gone down.
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 [d]the world.
12 My life span is gone,
Taken from me like a shepherd’s tent;
I have cut off my life like a weaver.
He cuts me off from the loom;
From day until night You make an end of me.
13 I have considered until morning—
Like a lion,
So He breaks all my bones;
From day until night You make an end of me.
14 Like a crane or a swallow, so I chattered;
I mourned like a dove;
My eyes fail from looking upward.
O [e]Lord, I am oppressed;
[f]Undertake for me!
15 “What shall I say?
[g]He has both spoken to me,
And He Himself has done it.
I shall walk carefully all my years
In the bitterness of my soul.
16 O Lord, by these things men live;
And in all these things is the life of my spirit;
So You will restore me and make me live.
17 Indeed it was for my own peace
That I had great bitterness;
But You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption,
For You have cast all my sins behind Your back.
18 For Sheol cannot thank You,
Death cannot praise You;
Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your truth.
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.”
21 Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a lump of figs, and apply it as a poultice on the boil, and he shall recover.”
22 And Hezekiah had said, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?”
Read Other ESOCS Devotional Here
What was the nature of this sickness? It was a boil that had apparently become so infected that it made Hezekiah gravely ill. There’s something terribly humbling in the story, isn’t there? Imagine such a great and powerful king brought to death’s door, not by a mighty army, but by an infected zit! How frail even the bests of us are! What right do we ever have to be proud? It doesn’t take much at all to cut us down to size. Just a boil is enough to do the job. The seriousness of this illness was brought to Hezekiah in the form of a word from God given through Isaiah.
Now; that may sound like nothing more than an example of really bad ‘bedside manner’. But in reality, it was an act of God’s grace. After all, if God had truly meant for Hezekiah to die, He wouldn’t have had to say anything. He would have simply said nothing to him, and allowed the boil to do its job. But when we take the story as a whole, it becomes very clear that the giving of this information through Isaiah was intended by God to be a test of Hezekiah’s faith. He had lapsed into pride; but what would the proud king do now with the news of his impending death? Would he abandon his pride and self-sufficiency, turn once again to the God that he had neglected, and cry out to Him for mercy?
By the way; I don’t think it would be any abuse of this passage at all if we were to occasionally look in the mirror right in the midst of all our pride and self-sufficiency and say to ourselves, “Set your house in order, for you too shall die and not live.” Death will eventually come to us; and choosing not to believe it or to think about it won’t change it or postpone it one bit. But it’s good to do it occasionally; and to be motivated by it to ‘set our houses in order’ while we can. We don’t know when we’ll be called to stand before God. Have we made our peace with Him? Have we abandoned our pride and our sense of self-sufficiency? Have we humbly trusted His Son Jesus Christ as our Saviour? Are we ready to meet Him when our time comes, as it absolutely will?
So; what did Hezekiah do? This great but fallible man of God set the example for us. He humbled himself and cried out to God for mercy: he “turned his face toward the wall”, which suggests that he was bed-ridden; but it also suggests that he turned himself away from everything else in order to do serious business with God. Dearly beloved, Gods word is new every morning; hence, we are called like Hezekiah to do something extra-ordinary.
CHALLENGES
- We are reminded this morning to always per time set our house order to be at peace with our maker. This is the best decision life can ever offer us, think!
PRAYER POINT
- Lord Jesus, help me to always remember to set my house in order for you. Amen.
FURTHER READING: Isaiah 39:1-end; Matthew 18:21-end; 19:1-12
ESOCS Devotional 27 January 2025
