By Abraham Israel
Hezekiah's Life Extended
20In those days Hezekiah was sick and near death. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, went to him and said to him, "Thus says the Lord: 'Set your house in order, for you shall die, and not live.'"
2 Then he turned his face toward the wall, and prayed to the Lord, saying, 3 "Remember now, O Lord, I pray, how I have walked before You in truth and with a loyal heart, and have done what was good in Your sight." And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4 And it happened, before Isaiah had gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying, 5 "Return and tell Hezekiah the leader of My people, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. 6 And I will add to your days fifteen years. I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city for My own sake, and for the sake of My servant David."'"
7 Then Isaiah said, "Take a lump of figs." So they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered (2 Kings 20:1-7).
God is the Healer and Jesus is His Name!
1) There may be moments in your life when you are sick and may be near death, in those moments of desperation, don’t start fretting, fuming and whining in doubt and anger, but seek the Lord in prayer and tell him how you have always trusted Him to deliver you.
2) Don’t store up your emotions, but freely express it to the Lord in prayer.
3) The king Hezekiah knew that only the Lord has the ability to deliver him from His sickness and eventually death. When the word of the Lord came through the prophet he did not accept it as fate passively, but he turned his face toward the wall where no one can reply him but only the Lord. He did not seek after any man to deliver Him not even the prophet, but the Lord. It is the active faith that He had in God’s healing power that gave him healing from God.
4) Sickness and death are the result of man’s fallen condition that brought this curse upon us (Gen 3:16-19; Rom 6:23). The result of sin is the deterioration of the body of which one of the causes is sickness. But God is able to deliver us from both (Ps 68:20).
5) David always believed and lived by this truth of God's merciful character to heal, so God was pleased by his life of faith in His healing, delivering and defending power and always referred to him as one of His reasons to heal others. He lived by faith in the provision of God’s atonement that He will make for appeasing Himself and His wrath for the wrong things that David had done (Psalm 65:3; 79:8, 9). David always trusted in the mercies of the Lord and the Lord had special pleasure in David especially because of it (Psalm 147:11; 106:44-45; 41:4, 3, 10; 59:10; 71:17).
6) When Hezekiah spoke and prayed to the Lord about his walk with the Lord in truth and his loyal heart and the goodness he had done in his past life, the Lord reminded him that not because of his goodness that he will heal but because of his mercies that he will do it. Here God was saying for My own sake and My servant David’s sake because He is the God of mercy and David was the man who perfectly believed in the mercies of the Lord (Micah 7:18; Ps 52:8; 59:10; 145:9).
7) Believe in the mercies of the Lord to receive healing for yourself and for others, depend on His merciful character not on your own righteous deeds when you ask God to heal you.
8) When God speaks to a person to believe Him in faith for healing, doesn’t mean that those who take medicine do not have faith (1 Tim 5:23), but it is a rhema [a word from the Lord for a particular situation and to a particular person] word from God. It can be used only for that particular person at that particular time.
9) Do not make a doctrine out of a rhema word spoken to a particular person. But God may act in the same way or differ in His way of working; it is up to Him to decide. You can take that rhema word as an example or a case study to increase your faith in God and to know more about His faithfulness to His word and His character.
10) God uses the natural means in a natural way to bring forth His supernatural result which he has spoken.
Ex: Figs were used in a medicinal way as usual over the boils in this case, but the recovery was immediate because of God’s supernatural intervention.
11) It is more important to believe in the word of the Lord and obey what He has told us to do, than to process and understand it fully to know how He is going to work.
12) When God says “I will”, you can be absolutely sure that He will do what He has said. He will do it in His way and in His time. But you should be faithful and loyal to Him and should continue to walk in truth and do what is good in His sight. This is the only way you can repay God for His goodness.
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