In Scott Brown's sermon titled 'What Good Has Your Sickness Done?', the narrative of King Hezekiah's illness and recovery in Isaiah 38 is explored. The sermon highlights how Hezekiah's near-death experience led him to reflect deeply on his life, his relationship with God, and the lessons learned through suffering. Hezekiah's lamentation and subsequent praise illustrate the transformative power of trials, emphasizing that troubles can lead to personal growth, closer adherence to faith, and a greater appreciation for life's blessings. The sermon underscores that God uses such experiences to fulfill His promises, specifically referencing the preservation of David's lineage. The use of a poultice of figs in Hezekiah's healing signifies the role of practical means and divine intervention in recovery. Additionally, the sermon draws a parallel between Hezekiah's renewed dedication to praise and the broader Christian call to glorify God through life's challenges.

Isaiah 38, 9. This is the writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, when he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness. 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. I said, I shall not see y'all, the Lord in the land of the living.

I shall observe man no more. Among the inhabitants of the world, 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.

I have considered until morning like a lion, so he breaks all my bones. From day until night you make an end of me. Like a crane or a swallow, so I chattered. I mourned like a dove. My eyes fail from looking upward.

O Lord, I am oppressed. Undertake for me. What shall I say then? 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. 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. 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. For Sheo cannot thank you. Death cannot praise you. Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your truth. The living, the living man, he shall praise you, as I do this day.

The Father shall make known your truth to the children. 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. Now Isaiah had said, Let them take a lump of figs and apply it as a poultice on the boil, and he shall recover. And Hezekiah had said, What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord?

Lord Father, we thank you for your word. It is truth, it is righteousness to us, and Lord, you are sovereign in all things as we see in Isaiah. I pray that the reading of the Word would go far and that we as a congregation would be sanctified by it. I pray for Scott as He comes forth to divide the Word and to give us truth from it. Amen.

We enter again into this great section of Scripture where God is using two historical moments in the lives of a nation on the one hand and the life of Hezekiah in order to prove something. He's proving that he is faithful to fulfill all of his promises to his people. He's proving that he's faithful to preserve the sure mercies of David. And there's this incident of the death of 185, 000 troops of Hezekiah that happened for a specific purpose and God states what that purpose is and that is that he might fulfill his promises to David. And then Hezekiah falls sick and is on his deathbed and that very sane purpose is declared in the first part of chapter 38 where this incident is to prove the sure mercies of David.

These incidences are here to point to the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're here to point to the surety of the resurrection of Christ and his salvation. These things have happened in the world to real nations and to real people in order to declare to all of those who would read about them or know about them that Jesus Christ will save his people. Now here in this passage that we're in today, there's a very simple outline. It's really a picture of the troubles that came upon Hezekiah.

And it really, I think it should help us to ask a question. What have our troubles taught us? Everyone has troubles, and everyone learns something from his troubles. Troubles always change you. And they changed Isaiah or Hezekiah as well.

But when you have troubles, there's a process that you go through in your thinking. There are ways of feeling that are responses to your troubles. There are ways of acting that are direct responses to your troubles because everyone learns something from his troubles. And it's important for us that we know how our troubles have changed us. Sometimes troubles change you for the better, and sometimes they change you for the worse, depending on how you deal with them.

And the most important thing I think I want to bring out from this passage is to help us to make sure that we're learning the right things about our troubles, that we're not leaning on falsehoods in the midst of our troubles or phantoms or that we egged at our trials, you know, smoldering away and bitterness and unhappiness, you know, chewing glass all the days of our lives because of our troubles. Because troubles, they either teach you to praise God and have more confidence in Him than you ever had before. Or they teach you to pine away. And that's what we see here. Somebody said, I don't know who it was, pain either makes you bitter or better.

And that's true. And you see that with Hezekiah. Now many people say this is a song it's definitely a writing of Hezekiah but it follows a metrical pattern that is fitting for a song. And just to help us to see this section, verse 9 is an introductory statement that establishes the subject of the song. And it's this, when he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness.

Verse 9 speaks of what this is about. It's about a moment of time. And then there are two strophes or two stanzas or divisions in the song. And the first is in verses 10 through 14. You can see it on your outline there.

And in this first strophe, it's a lamentation of when he was sick. And then the second is in verses 15 through 20, which is an expression of his praise toward God for what he learned when he was sick. It's about what he learned in many ways. And there is much here. There's the doctrine of sickness that's embedded here.

We'll get to that later. And there's also a declaration of the positive power of suffering. You know, we dare not be too simplistic in our understanding of sickness. And there's correct thinking in here, I think, for us to understand the doctrine of sickness and recovery and things like that. But we need to always keep in front of us as we're in this passage, what is the central message of this whole section?

And that is that God is preserving the line of David. Why did Hezekiah get well? Because God resurrects those who would preserve his line. That God is going to be faithful to his people. And he uses this near-death experience to prove it.

He rescues a man on his deathbed and resurrects him in order to sing in the house of God and to sing in his family. It's interesting to me, you know, God saves Hezekiah to sing. He raises him from the dead so that he would sing the praises of God to his children and also in the household of God. And I think it's a parable of salvation. How God raises you from the dead so that he'll make you sing.

You never really sang before like you sing now. God makes you sing. It's a beautiful thing and I think it's depicted here in this passage. So let's go into the passage. Just look at verse 9.

You see this summary of the subject at hand, which are these reflections of sickness and recovery. So verse 9 says, this is the writing of Hezekiah, the king of Judah, when he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness. So This is the instruction of a man who has just experienced a near-death experience. And it just shows these moments of life that just grip your soul. And they define your life.

Often your troubles define your life. And that's really important. It matters how you deal with your troubles because how you deal with your troubles defines your life and you write things and you think things about your troubles And that's what we have here. This is a journal of the lessons that Hezekiah learned. Matthew Henry said of this, he said, it's good to write a memorial of our afflictions.

That's exactly what this is. And you know, when you go through a difficult time, it's helpful to write down the lessons learned from the Lord so that you'd be wiser. Also I think you see there are weaknesses displayed here, I think. In this recounting of the journey of His being near death, you can see his weaknesses. Pressure brings out our sins.

Trials, difficulties, makes us say things and think things and feel things that often are contrary to the Scriptures. And the heat brings up the dross to the surface. And while the cleansing process is taking place, the dross is still there for all to see, and that happens to us in times of trouble. There is perhaps some lack of understanding of things that we understand very well as a result of progressive revelation. Hezekiah lived according to the life that he had under the old covenant.

But The New Covenant gives us more. There's more light, there's more knowledge about life and death and heaven and hell. And there's a greater presence. There's the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Pericles, the one called alongside to help, to come and He helps you in your weakness. And He buoys you up.

He's the spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and faithfulness and self-control. There's an added thing that we have that Hezekiah did not have. And all of this ends up happening in the midst of a time of a revival, one of the most blessed times in the whole history of Israel. The people were rejoicing. There was a great revival.

They were tearing down the high places. They were singing. They were filled up with the knowledge of God. And here Hezekiah is 39 years old. He's just experienced a pivotal moment in the history of redemption.

And God's people, many of them have been restored to true worship. They had dead worship, now they get true worship. There's a reality, there's a truth about their lives before God. They know it, they feel it, they see it, and it feeds them and soothes their soul. This is the environment that all of this is taking place in.

And so here Hezekiah is writing his reflections on his whole experience. And the first thing that he does is he itemizes the various things he thought and felt when he was in the midst of his trial. He takes us back to the death bed. That's the first section. And he shares what was going on through his mind.

Remember last week we read that he turned his face to the wall. Here's what he was thinking when he turned his face to the wall. This is it. This defines what was going on when he turned his face to the wall and cried out to God. These are these first verses, verses 10 through 14.

And then second, in the second section, he explains what he learned from that brush with death and their helpful principles that he embraced after he had this brush with death. And there were actual commitments that he made. He seems to make things that look like vows as a result of this experience. So I think we ought to learn from Hezekiah. I think it's very clear that Hezekiah was an honest, godly man before God, and he lived according to the life that he had.

And so we ought to learn from him. It shows the joy and the sorrow in sickness and in health and even in prosperity. I think this story is the story of every man and woman's life. And God gives us men and women so that our faith wouldn't be so theoretical, but that would be very, very practical faith. And the Bible makes this very clear.

You know, even the men of the old covenant are given to us for our instruction. We shouldn't dismiss what they say. This is why Paul said in Romans 15 for whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through that though in through that that through endurance and encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. These things were written for our hope. Well, also we understand from the word of God that God has given us these narratives to show us what we should avoid.

They're not only for our instruction positively, but they also show us what we ought to avoid and to help us understand our own idolatry. And that's why the apostle Paul said in 1st Corinthians 10 verse 6, Now these things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil's things as they also lusted and do not become idolaters as were some of them. So this is here for our instruction. Hezekiah is our teacher. He comes and tells us what he thought about during the time of his trial, and then he tells us what he learned about it.

And everybody learns from their trials. Troubles always change us. And I think the question I want to ask us as a congregation is, how have our troubles changed us? How are they changing us? And are they changing us for the better or for the worse?

That's a critical matter. Okay. Now, then there's this lamentation when he was sick in verses 10 through 14. Let's unpack this. There are a number of perspectives that he had.

I've identified five perspectives as you can see in this outline that Hezekiah had when he turned his face to the wall. And first, there is a profound sense of deprivation. In verse 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." So here's a man, he's 39 years old, and he's at the middle point of his life. And he looks out and he sees that his years are going to be deprived of him.

And I mean, Hezekiah's always been a zealous man, an energetic man. If you go back to Kings and Chronicles, you'll see he was enormously creative. He wanted to do things that mattered. And he engaged himself on a broad range of interests. He had his interests reached across many, many, many categories.

And he was a man of plans. I mean, think about who this man was. Within two months, at age 25, after becoming king, There's a revival in the land. He's tearing down the idols. He's a man of action.

And now the action is going to come to an end. All of the hopes and desires that he had for good were now going to come to an end. So he says, in the prime of my life, I shall go to the gates of Sheol. Now, there are a couple of different ways that we can take this statement here. I go to the gates of Sheol.

First, It could be that he feels that he's going to hell for his sins. There's a sense that he feels God is taking action against his punishment. Again, he's recording his feelings here. And it's quite possible that this is what he's thinking, that God is punishing him for his sins and throwing him into hell. It could be also that he simply does not see death the way the New Covenant believer sees death due to the principle of progressive revelation.

He doesn't really understand all of what the afterlife is composed of. But what are the gates of Sheol? Well, in the Old Testament, the word Sheol is used in different ways. So you have to look at the context to understand what it means in the context that you are reading. She-all can mean just simply the grave.

It is used of death. It is also used of divine punishment and it is also used of the final resting place of the wicked in hell. So, You know, how is Hezekiah using it? I think that he's using it the same way that David, his father, used it. You can't think rightly about Hezekiah until you understand David, because Hezekiah understands who he is.

He's in the line of David. He's fulfilling all the promises that were given to David. And so for us to understand, I think this use, it would help to see how David uses the same term. In Psalm 115, David uses similar language. He uses it also in Psalm 6, verse 5.

The dead do not praise the Lord, nor any who go down into silence. But we will bless the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Praise the Lord. Here, David uses death as just the time of departing from this world and not being able to praise God in the world. He uses it for that purpose.

How has Achaia used it? I'm not exactly sure. Whatever it is, this is a lamentation of his feelings. And maybe we won't know exactly what he meant by I'm going down to Sheol, but we know this, that He was going to be cut off from the land of the living early in life. As a result of this, he then next in verse 11 speaks of this deprivation of the relationships in the land of the living.

And so the second thing that he's meditating on when he has his face against the wall is the loss of blessings of human interaction. And that's in verse 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." You know, there's such a blessing of seeing the Lord in the land of the living, to know His comfort, to have His Word direct you to change your mind, to help you think differently and live differently, to know His love, to meditate on His mercies. It's such a blessing to have that in the world.

He's realizing that this is going to be taken away from him. So there are pleasures in this world that are preservable. They're good. They're every, while this world is going to be replaced by another world, there are many blessings and pleasures in this world. And He's dealing with His troubles in this way.

He's no longer going to be able to see the beauty of the Lord in the land of the living. I love that phrase, the land of the living. And it's a blessing to be in the land of the living, to know the people in the land of the living, to see the sights in the land of the living, to see the sights in the land of the living, to go through the various contours of thinking and feeling and learning and growing. You know, the land of the living is marvelous. It really is.

You know, every stage of life is new and remarkable. You know, when you're really little, you long for that next stage and then you get there and then you long for that next stage. And then you get there and there's more and there's more and there's more. And guess what? I'm old enough to tell you, it doesn't stop.

There's more. There's more joy. There's more. There are more experiences that are glorious that are out there. Just when you think you had the ultimate when you got married, then you find out there's more.

You know, those of you who are longing to be married, it's good to have a longing to be married as long as it doesn't overtake your soul. But you're longing for something good that God placed there. But guess what? That's not the end. There's more.

And in the land of the living, there are these many, many, many marvelous things. I just think that we should be careful not to take for granted the pleasures and the joys of the land of the living. Even right now, as we're sitting in this room, we're experiencing many of the joys of the land of the living. Our friends are here, our brothers and sisters are here. We share so many of the same thoughts and feelings about life.

We look at the Bible in very much the same way. We have a unity in Jesus Christ and His salvation. He's bound us together as brothers and sisters. There's help here. There's prayers here.

There's all kinds of marvelous things here in the land of the living. You know, here you look into people's eyes and they laugh, maybe they cry. You weep with those who weep, you rejoice with those who rejoice. This is the blessing of the land of the living. And He's placed us here.

And it's such a marvelous thing. And here Hezekiah is lamenting being separated from seeing Yah in the land of the living. The pleasure of just seeing the Lord in the eyes of your wife or your children or your friend. The pleasure of seeing Yah in the preaching, in the reading, in the books, the various things that God has given, the sights, the amazing things that God has put in this world, and you look at them and you say, oh Lord, you are marvelous. You are so good.

Psalm 116 speaks of this so beautifully. Read it this afternoon. Spurgeon explained this, his desire to stay on the earth this way. He says that it is his continuing in this world he would have opportunity of doing God's service. And he says, it lets us see why a religious man may desire life, that he may walk before the Lord and minister to him in the place wherein he has set him.

Indeed, that joy, hope, and desire of life, which was founded upon this consideration, is not only lawful, but it is commendable. Some might say, oh, Hezekiah shouldn't have felt so bad about leaving this world. I think there's a sense, and that can be true, you can love this life too much. You can have Idols in this world that you don't want to be separated from your idols. That's different I think than what can be and what I think most likely was with Hezekiah from what we know About him and so there's such value of the land of the living, you know There's a time to be born.

There's a time to die There's a time to plant and the time to pluck up and the time time to kill a time to heal. All these things happen in the land of the living. And Hezekiah doesn't want to be separated from that. And then thirdly, there's a sense of being cut off in verse 12. Not only does he want to stay in the land of the living, he says, 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." And so there are three vivid images here. The First is the shepherd's tent being just taken down. You can just picture a tent and it's just taken up and taken away.

I think the emphasis there is the speed. This thing came upon him very quickly. And then the thread cut off from the loom. We were in Williamsburg recently, and we went into the weaver's shop. And there she was.

She was weaving, and the shuttle was moving speedily. And then she would just cut off, cut off a thread. That's what he's talking, just cutting it off, it's gone. Just in a second, like that. And then he speaks of, from day until night you make an end of me.

This is just the grinding pain that never ended. From day to night, from night to day, he couldn't escape it. These are his feelings that he had when he had his face against the wall. And then fourthly, a sense of being violently destroyed. That's verse 13.

When he had his face against the wall, he said, I have considered until morning like a lion. So he breaks all my bones from day and night until night you make an enemy." You know, this is a picture of the terrifying prospect of being torn to bits by a lion. There was a violence to his illness. It was to him as if a lion was tearing him apart. That's what it was like for him.

And he was saying, oh Lord, how long. You know, He did not seem to have such a grasp of the glories of the resurrection and the love of God in it. But he was overcome when he was sick with his pain. You know, pain is such a difficult thing. We've invented so many different kinds of painkillers as a result of that.

It was the kind of pain like a lion shredding into bits. And then, fifthly, he was overcome with mourning, verse 14. Like a crane or a swallow, so I chattered. I mourned like a dove. My eyes fail from looking upward oh Lord I am oppressed undertake for me and he he explains his pain through these through the the sounds of these different animals the crane which makes a loud creaking sound if you want to hear it come over to my house their cranes creaking fairly regularly the swallow murmuring and chattering infestantly There's the sound of the dove mourning.

I won't try to replicate the sounds here. I thought of it, but I decided not to. I think my wife is very happy about that. But you know, this is a picture of mourning, the incessant, grinding, consistent sound of mourning that filled his soul. You know, weeping is appropriate at times.

Jesus weeps. We're commanded actually to weep with those who weep. And You know, Solomon said it's better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting. There is an appropriateness to weeping. I don't think we should just say to Hezekiah, you are so worldly to weep like this.

It's possible for one to weep like one who does not know the Lord, like one who doesn't know the power of the resurrection. There's that kind of weeping, but there's an appropriate, I think, kind of weeping. And perhaps that's what we see here. Hezekiah says something here in this section. He says, Lord, undertake for me.

What does he mean? What does he mean when he says undertake for me? He's saying, Lord, Lord, meddle with, meddle in my life, you know, be a surety, be a pledge. It means to occupy. Lord, come and help me.

Come and be my own, my surety. You know, we know that Jesus Christ is his better surety. Christ is the pledge. Christ is the surety of the better covenant. There are the sure mercies of David.

That's what he was crying out for. So he experienced this morning and he cries out and there are these, I just identified these five responses that he had to his suffering and the things that he was crying out to God for when he turned his face to the wall. Now we turn in the story to what he concluded after he recovered. These are the lessons learned because everyone learns lessons from their troubles and they always change you in some way. And here we'll get an insight into some of the changes of thinking and feeling that Isaiah experienced as a result of his trouble.

First of all, verse 15. He says that it would make him walk more carefully. His near-death experience is going to change him to help him to walk more carefully. He says, what shall I say? 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. Now I want us to dial in on a few, several of the phrases here, three of them. He has spoken to me. Do you see that in verse 15? I think that he's saying that his, that God was speaking to him through the affliction.

Every affliction is a sermon. Every affliction can have the voice of God speaking. And we ought not to miss the meaning of the things that happened to us. Do you think this is a meaningless life? Do you think the things that have happened to you don't have meaning?

Everything has meaning under the care of the sovereign God. And then he says, and he himself has done it. He himself has done it. Hezekiah sees that this was a work of God. He traces the affliction back to God.

Now, let me say that you have no hope in this world unless you can trace your afflictions back to God. You cannot understand anything of your afflictions unless you understand that they came from God for His glory and for your good. And if you attribute them to chance, then you'll just be lost in a world of random difficulties that you'll never really understand. You'll just be waiting for one shoe to drop after the next, obsessing about what you can do to try to dodge the pain. But if you know that God rules the world, you know that he has made the shoes the drop.

So he says it here, he says, and he himself has done it. Hang your life on that. He Himself has done it. And then he says he will walk carefully in all his years in the bitterness of his soul. Now his affliction made him want to walk differently.

It seems like a vow that he's making here, that he wants to walk more deliberately. He does not want to walk like a proud man. But It was the bitterness of his soul that caused him to change his mind. And I think that he has put the bitterness of his soul behind him because he now has relief. And I think he's saying that the bitterness had a good effect, that it brought him to a place of sweetness.

His bitterness is a memory, and his memory is going to change the way that he acts in the future. The memory of the bitterness is causing him to walk differently. And there are several instances of bitterness in the Bible. There's the bitterness that God condemns. There's the springing up of bitterness among the saints.

There are many other instances like this. Crying without hope. There's the bitterness of Ahab. That's not the kind of bitterness that he's talking about here. There's a difference between being bitter against your God or your brother, and being bitter over the troubles that happened.

It's different. E.J. Young speaks of his change this way. He will go slowly step by step, thus living a quiet and peaceful life. And so his entire course of life will be an answer to the question, How shall he praise God?

Events have humbled the king and brought him low. He cannot live proudly or haughtily. He must walk in humility before the Lord all of his days." Now, the word bitterness is always used of man, but not of God. But I think that it was the bitterness of his soul that made him move on. But it always hung in his mind.

You know, I, you know, my friend R.C., Sparrow Jr. Lost his wife a few years ago. He wrote something this week. He said, now I understand that you can't simply move on. He says, I'll never forget this.

I think that's the sense of it. The difficulty of the moment lives on in your heart. It continues to instruct you in a good way. You cannot just forget it. It would be so strange and unreal to say, just forget about it.

Well, you can forget about it only in a certain way. God has made the mind to actually remember things. And then he says not only that it would make him walk more carefully, because he's learning. He's learning. He, everyone learned something and Hezekiah learned that he ought to walk more carefully.

So it was a beneficial thing. And then secondly, he learned that it was God's doing. Verse 16, Oh Lord, by these things men live and all these things is the life of my spirit, so you will restore me and make me live." He's identifying God as doing something. And he's saying that God made him live. Oh Lord, by these things men live.

And by what things? The things that he has spoken. That's in verse 15. By the things spoken, these are the things that have made this thing happen. It was the Word of God that spoke.

It was the Word of God that made him live. And again, this is just another demonstration of Isaiah's message that God is in control. It was God's doing, and he acknowledges that God is the one who restores and God is the one who restored. And it just brings us back to the same thing. Everyone learns something from their troubles.

Troubles change you. And Here, Hezekiah learned that God was behind it all. And then third, the third thing that he learned was the affliction had a good purpose, verse 17. Indeed, it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness. This word indeed or behold, it's a marker of emphasis.

It was for my own shalom. He uses that word. He uses the defining word of peace in the Old Testament, which means, it means just comprehensive peace, peace in everything, peace in your mind, peace in your body, peace everywhere. Peace with God, it was for my own peace that these things happened. It's a picture of blessing and tranquility.

The ESV translates it this way, behold it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness, but in love you have delivered my life." So he's learning, he's learning something here. You know, I think he's he's learning what the Apostle Paul spoke about in 2nd Corinthians 4, verse 16. Therefore we do not lose heart even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us, a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal." And here, Hezekiah is learning something from his trouble.

His trouble is changing him, and he's learning that God is near to the suffering, and that the suffering was good for him. That the suffering was for his peace, for his entire well-being. He was learning that, and it's something that we need to learn as well, about our troubles. And then fourthly, He learned that it was for love that he was delivered. Verse 17b.

He says, but you have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption. You have cast all my sins behind your back. And here he sees that in spite of the bitterness that he had in his soul, God had mercy on him in the moment of his despondency. Maybe there was an element of sinfulness in his despondency, But God's love remained strong in the midst of even his sinful despondency. And again, I don't know how much of this was sinful despondency or not.

I don't know. There had to be some. He was a human being. He was fallen. He had to have thought wrong things.

I think you can see evidences of it. But, God's love, God's love is being made clear to him. He sees himself being delivered from the bottomless pit, you know, from the terrible jaws of the lion. He's being rescued. And he blames it on something.

He blames it on God's love. This verse speaks of the motive. Love taking pleasure in a sinner. So he says, but you have lovingly delivered my soul. And I think it just gives a sense of the deep sense of attachment that Hezekiah had to the Lord and the Lord to him, particularly the Lord to him.

And so the love of God is not withdrawn from a man who's struggling in his time of trial. I think that should help us understand God's mercy toward us, even in the times of our greatest difficulty, where we might be confused in our thinking. He may have considered things that were wrong in his own mind. He might have said things that were completely contrary to wisdom, completely inappropriate. But God loved him.

In Psalm 91 we read of this same thing, because he has set his love upon me, Therefore I will deliver him. This is David, I think, speaking. I will, no it's not David, I think Moses wrote this one. I will set him on high because he has known my name. He shall call upon me and I will answer him and I will be with him in trouble.

I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation." This is the love of God toward sinners. This is the love of God toward those who are in times of extreme difficulty and pain. His love continues on. And then his love is even so great that he forgives sin.

Hezekiah is very clear in his mind that God has had mercy upon his sins. He says, He has put our sins behind us. You have cast all my sins behind your back. It's one of those pictures of what God does with your sin. There are many of these beautiful images that God has given us to help us understand just how deep His love towards sinners is and how great His mercy is, that He puts His sins behind.

He puts his sins behind. In Psalm 103 verse 12, we know that he puts our sins as far as the east is from the west. In Micah chapter 7 verse 19 that our sins are cast into the depths of the sea. In Isaiah 43, 25 that they are blotted out. Earlier in Isaiah we learned that they are whiter than snow.

Now we learn that they're cast behind his back. And you know, everyone learns something from their troubles. And Hezekiah is learning that the suffering was an expression of God's love and it showed his mercy to forgive him of his sins. And then fifthly, the fifth thing he learns is that it was designed for a purpose to multiply praise on the earth. The suffering was designed to multiply something, to keep it going.

For she all cannot thank you, death cannot praise you. Those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your truth. The living man, he shall praise you as I do this day. The Father shall make known your truth to the children." Here he recognizes that his deliverance was designed to perpetuate the praises of God. And that those praises would be communicated both in the temple, among the people, and in his own family, to his own children.

There's something wonderful about being a living man. When you're a living man, you can do things. You're designed to be a source of praise toward God. This is one of the great purposes of a man's life. The living man, the living man, he shall praise you.

This is the Father who's praising God. This is the pastor who's delighted in his praising God in the sanctuary. This is a picture of the beneficial nature of your life and really the purpose of your life to bring praise to God. It's the living man. You know, there are a lot of men who are living but they're not praising.

They're not sources of joy and happiness in their work or in their home. I mean, God desires happy fathers, you know. Living men, Living men who will praise God, who will fill their families with the songs of deliverance and the beautiful things of God. And Hezekiah is learning the importance of praising God and he says, the living, the living man, he shall praise you as I do this day. Everyone learns something from their troubles.

Troubles always change you. And Hezekiah was learning the importance of praise. Maybe Hezekiah looked back and thought, I have not been the praising man that I should have been. Maybe he thought I lost so many opportunities to praise God and to declare the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, because the living man, You know, he almost lost it. He thought he was going to lose it.

And the prospect of losing it made him see how much he had neglected the praises of God. That's often the value of a near-death experience. It makes you realize what you neglected to do. Maybe there's somebody here that's like that. Don't wait for a near-death experience.

You know, the living man. We have many living men here. What a blessing it is. What a blessing it is to have a life in the world for a purpose. To praise God to the children.

And then sixth, it made him sing. Verse 20. The Lord was ready to save me, therefore we will sing my songs with strained instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord. So he's he's going to dedicate himself to singing his songs with strained instruments in the house of the Lord. And this is characteristic of what he was already doing in this revival in 2 Chronicles 29 is recorded, the things that took place during that revival.

And in chapter 29 verse 28 it says, So all the assembly worshiped, the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded, And all this continued until the burnt offering was finished and there was praises and gladness and they bowed their heads and they Worshipped God and they were using instruments and Hezekiah was using David as the pattern remember Hezekiah is fulfilling the promises of David. In this whole matter of stringed instruments, I think he got it from David. In Hezekiah 29, verse 27, we read this. Then Hezekiah commanded them to offer burnt offering on the altar. And when the burnt offering began, the song of the Lord also began with the trumpets and with the instruments of David the king of Israel.

So what happened was Hezekiah pulled out all the instruments of David. And David used flutes and trumpets and harps and cymbals and tambourines and lyres and timbrels and what are called organs, which were more like pipes, in a way. And so there was this mixture of singing and instrumentation that he was going to rededicate himself to, really, and that he was going to bring out the instruments of David. Or at least he had done that already. I think he's just kind of rededicating himself to that.

And you know, we've had discussions about instrumentation in our church. There are two dishes with instrumentation, too much and too little. Those are two ditches. Instrumentation that so totally dominates that you, that the heart of the lyrics are lost and you idolize the sound. On the other hand, You know, you can have no instrumentation that doesn't help hardly at all to enhance the words.

I think those are the two ditches. But here there seem to be lots of instruments that were used in this kind of revival that Hezekiah was having. Now, there is a danger. Too much and too little. But the danger shouldn't scare us too much.

Any more than using wine in the Lord's Supper should scare us too much. We should use the things that are useful and we should govern our idolatries. That's how we should do it. Music is so marvelous and it can get a little too marvelous as well. That's the problem.

Well that's the problem with everything isn't it? But here we have this glorious picture here. Psalm 33 speaks of the importance of skill in the use of the instruments. Psalm 33 verse 3, sing to him a new song, play skillfully, and shout with joy." Psalm 150 speaks of the use of many instruments. Praise him in his sanctuary, praise him in his mighty firmament, praise him for his mighty acts, praise him for his excellent greatness, and then he talks about the timbrel and the clashing cymbals, and then he says, let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.

Psalm 81 verse 2 speaks of the volume of the singing and the use of the instruments. Psalm 82 verse 1, to the chief musician on an instrument of gath, a psalm of Asaph, sing aloud to God our strength, make a joyful shout to God, the God of Jacob. Raise a song and strike the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the lute. Blow the trumpet at the time of the new moon, at the full moon on our solemn feast day. For this is a statute for Israel, a law of the God of Jacob." You know, we should sing.

We should sing and we should use instruments. Here's one reason we should sing, because God sings. By the way, God sings loudly over us. We should sing loudly over Him. Zephaniah 3.17 says, the Lord your God is in your midst.

The mighty one will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing." Well, everyone learns something from their troubles. And here, there are six things that I think Isaiah, Hezekiah learned from his troubles.

That he would walk more carefully, that he would see it as God's doing that he would see the good purpose of it that he would see that it was for God's love that he was delivered that it would multiply praise on the earth and then finally that it would make him sing. God heals a man to make him sing that's what happened here. What a great story. Now then in the final two verses Isaiah prescribes a poultice And this is sort of a flashback, because he's already been healed. He's just reporting sort of the sequence of what happened with the healing.

And so in verse 29, now Isaiah had said, let them take a lump of figs and apply it as a poultice on the boil and he shall recover and Hezekiah had said what is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the Lord now we know what the sign was we learned that last week that was the the the the shadow on the sundial moving backward. That's what the sign was. But what's this whole thing about the poultice? So I talked to some of the doctors in the house here about this whole situation. And, you know, one of them said that they thought this was some type of, you know, skin, you know, abscess and infection of the skin that formed a pus pocket.

And, you know, you would normally lance it and to drain the pus but you know but something was happening that caused infection to go throughout the whole body probably something like that. We don't know exactly what it was But what are we supposed to learn from the poultice? You know, that God is a God of means. God uses means. Going to the doctor and taking medicine is something that a prophet prescribed.

Okay. And God uses the remedies of man in His plan. He was told He was going to have 15 more years, but He still goes to the doctor. You know, My opinion of this is that people who are careless with means should recognize that godly people in Scripture use means. There it is.

A prophet prescribes means. Should we use means? There are people who have said, no, I'm not ever going to the doctor. I'm not taking any medicine. That's of the world.

I just don't think that's the biblical worldview. I know that's not a biblical worldview. Matthew Henry said it this way, we do not trust God but tempt him if when we pray to him for help we do not second our prayers with our endeavors. We must not put physicians or physics in the place of God but make use of them in subordination to God and to his providence. Help thyself and God will help thee." That's what Matthew Henry said.

Now the remedy came from Isaiah. We live in a day where you can get remedies so fast. Google it and you can have a hundred remedies for any kind of thing, you know, from the weird to the wacky to the very best, you know. You can get anything, you can pretty much get anything you want. But I think his heart was going up to the house of the Lord here, but there is this poultice.

And figs, in this case, may be a representative substance in the Bible, I'm not sure, if this occasion is. I do think that everything points to God, Everything in nature somehow points to God and His character or His ways or His salvation or His laws. And there are substances that are explicitly declared to have a double meaning, maybe a triple meaning. And this might be the third of the triple meaning of figs. I don't know.

But you have oil and wine and leaven and bread and water and fruit and tears. And you have a fig tree in the New Testament. And you have figs in the Old Testament that seem to have to do with blessing and abundance and God pouring out His grace toward His people. So I don't know. Here's what we're not going to do.

We're not going to cook up a brew of Hezekiah's poultice and sell it on the market. Okay? We're not going to go have a fig poultice business. That's not the point of this, you know. And you know, any more than we're going to market spit because Jesus touched ears and eyes with spit, we're not going to be selling mud.

Although, you know, you might try, they're probably, There may be hundreds of thousands of people who will buy spit mud or even Hezekiah's pulses. They might. You might be able to make some money on this because there is, as that one man said, there's a sucker born every minute. And so, you know, there's a hermeneutical principle here that we should recognize, you know, in the same way that, you know, we're not going to make Ezekiel bread as some kind of a holy bread, we're not going to make a poultice out of figs and think that we've done something really, really tricky. I don't think that's the point of it at all.

And we're not going to market the water in the Jordan River that Naaman dunked himself in seven times. We're not going to do that. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to say that God is the healer, number one. We're going to say that God is the healer.

Number two, we're not going to think that we're using potions that are magic. Number three, we ought to apply known cures as much as we can. Known meaning I think you should probably have double blind studies on the known cures. Number four, that's my opinion. Number four, Don't force your cures on everyone, OK?

Maybe the poultice worked for you. But remember, number five, remember what cured you or your family member might not cure everyone. Just because a substance worked for you doesn't mean that there's any real power in the substance. I just hope everybody in this church understands that it'll make life a lot easier. You know what?

You can take every precaution. You can eat the healthiest foods. You can get yourself in the best of shape and you'll still get sick. And don't trust your regimen. Don't trust your food.

Trust God. Trust God. He is the one who makes alive and he's the one who kills. He's the one who makes sick. He's the one who lifts you out of your deathbed.

You know, you may have carefully and thoughtfully and accurately prepared your body to be strong, but getting sick may happen to you. And they're just demonstrations that God is in control. You know, I think there's a theology of sickness here in this passage that we shouldn't miss. And I think one of those aspects is that, you know, God heals through means. And I'm just going to very quickly, I'm going to give you seven pillars of the doctrine of sickness, and you can trace almost every one of these in this story of Hezekiah.

First of all, sickness's ultimate cause is sin. Genesis 3 makes it clear that sickness entered the human race at the time of the fall. Before that there was no death and no sickness. Every sickness is a consequence of sin. And when we see sickness in the world, we should recognize how devastating and damaging and how sickening it is to engage sin.

Sin will make you sick. Secondly, sickness may be caused by your own sin. Much sickness exists because of personal lifestyle of sin. It could be gluttony or worry or hatred or bitterness, lack of self-control. With alcohol or drugs, these things can get you sick.

Immorality can get you sick. This is why you have various sexually transmitted diseases. That's why James in James 5, he says, there's this little word in James 5 about what you do with the sick. When you're sick, you call the elders of the church and it says, if he has committed sins, if. The sickness may be because he committed sins.

It may not be. That little word if is pivotal in James 5, verse 15. Sickness may be caused by your own sin. Number three, sickness may be caused by the discipline of the Lord in your life. God disciplines every son he receives.

He does it out of his love. This was perhaps one of the reasons for Hezekiah's sickness. Sickness is so that you wouldn't trust in yourself. God gave Paul a thorn in the flesh so that he wouldn't exalt himself. Number four, sickness can be a form of testing in order to strengthen you.

I think this was the case with Hezekiah as well. Number five, sickness may be a tool in the hands of God to glorify himself. There are some really prominent examples of this. Job is one of them. God was exalting himself before the devil to prove to the devil that there's a rich man in the world who only loves him because he loves him, not because of his riches.

The story of Lazarus was also for that purpose. Lord Jesus said of Lazarus that this sickness is not unto death, but it is for the glory of God that the Son of God may be glorified in it. So some sickness is just part of God's demonstrating his glory in the world and he might make you sick in order to declare his glory. Number six, sickness may be the consequence of the sin of another person. Your Sickness may be the consequence of the sin of another person.

Your sickness may be the consequence of the sin of another person. This is what happened with David and his son. In 2 Samuel, verse 12, we learn that This is true. Listen to the language here. And the Lord struck the child that Uriah the wife bore to David, and it became ill.

The child became ill because of the Father's sin. Sickness may be the consequence of another person's sin. Number seven, sickness and divine healing spreads the word of God's goodness. Now, this these deliverances spread all the way to Babylon and the kings of Babylon came to see Hezekiah. There was the fame of God as a result of this cure.

God uses cures to draw attention to His own name. And you know, the Lord Jesus Christ healed people and his fame would spread far and wide. Healing is a good thing and it's a blessing. Well Hezekiah was miraculously healed of his sickness and as a result he dedicated himself to God in new ways and he learned something. He made promises which are recorded in this chapter.

But after God healed Hezekiah, his pride was lifted up again. And long in the past was his healing. And his pride grew, and his self-sufficiency expanded. The lessons that he learned he began to forget. How about that?

He learned such marvelous lessons. Look at them! They're so helpful. They were so helpful to him. And yet he began to forget them, perhaps by degrees.

That's usually how it happens. Something really big happens and we turn to God, we cry out to Him, and then three or four years later, it's like it never happened. We've returned to our vomit. That's what happened to Hezekiah. In 2 Chronicles 32, we read about it, in those days Hezekiah was sick and near death.

This is 2 Chronicles 32, 24. And he prayed to the Lord and he spoke to him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not repay according to the favor shown him. For his heart was lifted up, therefore wrath was looming over him and over Judah and Jerusalem. Then Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, and he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah." So he turned to God because of his troubles, and then he forgot about them, and then he returned to God again.

That's what he did. Maybe that's what some of us need to do. We need to return to those days when we had that near-death experience and we cried out to God and we said, Oh God, I'll never live this way again. But we forgot about it. But God has sent us these trials to teach us certain things.

He sends them to change our lives. And I pray that God would make us a kind of people who are teachable. That our trials would teach us. And then when we forget the value of the trial, that we would wake up and return to the Lord and come back into that place where what we care about most is praising God in the land of the living. Would you pray with me?

Lord, we thank You for Your mercy toward sinners. We thank You for Your Son, Jesus Christ, who is our surety of salvation, who is the one who saves us. We thank You for His mercy in atoning for our sins, throwing them behind your back, putting them in the bottom of the sea for the sure mercies of David. Amen.