Be Careful What You Pray For

2 Kings 20
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, October 11, 2020
Copyright © 2020, Gregory Broderick

In 2 Kings 20, King Hezekiah receives some rather unwelcome news.  “This is what the Lord says:  Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover” (2 Kings 20:1).  Despite God’s clear word, Hezekiah prayed to God for more years.  He does not want to die (Isa. 38).  It is an understandable impulse.

In response to this earnest prayer, God relents and gives Hezekiah fifteen more years.  And God even gives him a miraculous confirmation that he will indeed live these fifteen more years:  God causes the shadows on the steps to recede ten steps up the stairs to confirm that God will indeed do what He says.  And as promised, God heals Hezekiah, raises him up from his sickbed, and rescues the city from the invading Assyrian army.  The timing on the ordering of events is unclear, but that is the most likely chain of events.  God raised up Hezekiah and then He rescued the city.

Thereafter, Hezekiah lived a life of apparent prosperity.  It says he had storehouses full of silver, gold, spices, and fine oil.  At first glance, it seems like a wonderful tale of God’s rich mercy with a happily-ever-after ending for everyone.

But we know it was not.  The truth is that this healing was the worst thing to happen to Hezekiah.  It was bad for Hezekiah, it was bad for the national interest, and it was bad for the spiritual well-being of God’s chosen people.  It was bad all the way around.  To put it starkly, Hezekiah would have been better off dead.

God had a good plan for Hezekiah.  That plan was for him to die and to be ushered into the very presence of God forever.  But Hezekiah asked God to change the plan, and God did, and it did not go well for anyone.  This should cause us to tremble and it should make us very careful what we pray for and how we pray.  Instead of praying for our immediate desires, we must be very careful to pray for and submit to God’s good, perfect, and pleasing will for us.

1. Hezekiah’s First Forty Years

Hezekiah’s first forty years were an unbridled success.  Although his wicked father Ahaz did evil and even sacrificed his sons in the fire, Hezekiah was different.  I give the credit to Abi, daughter of Zechariah, the mother of Hezekiah.

Just look at the contrast between the father and the son.  Second Kings 16:2 says of Ahaz, “Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God.”  But about Hezekiah, 2 Kings 18:3 says, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father David had done.”

Ahaz worshiped every idol and “offered sacrifices and burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops and under every spreading tree” (2 Kings 16:4).  Hezekiah “removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles” (2 Kings 18:4).  So we see the father worshiping the idols and the son getting rid of them.

In times of trouble, Ahaz became even more wicked and idolatrous.  Second Chronicles 28:22 tells how Ahaz went after the gods of Aram.  He kept losing battles to the Arameans, so he decided to follow their gods.  He even shut the doors of the Lord’s temple and set up altars on every street corner in Jerusalem instead.  Hezekiah, by contrast, went closer to God in times of trouble.  When he had a problem, he laid it out before the Lord.  When he had difficulty, he went to the man of God and said, “Please pray for us.”  And rather than shutting the doors of the temple, Hezekiah opened the doors of the temple.  He brought back the priests and restored the prescribed form of worship in God’s holy house, as we read in 2 Chronicles 29.

Hezekiah made this re-opening of the temple his top priority.  It says he started on the first day of the first month of his reign (2 Chron. 29:3, 17).  They worked for sixteen solid days to remove everything unclean from the temple so that they could worship God in the place God said and in the way God said.  Notice that Hezekiah did all this in the first two or so weeks of his reign, and that he was only twenty-five years old at that time.  We can therefore reason that Hezekiah had thought this out ahead of time.  He did not show up on the first day wondering what to do.  He had a plan.  He made it a top priority.  He probably had supporters:  like-minded authorities, priests, and advisors.  He got organized and he did it.

This is a reminder that we can do a lot for God in a short period of time if we make it a priority, if we seek His help, and if we inspire others to follow our lead.  The temple had been closed for a long time, and in sixteen days Hezekiah opened it up and purified it.

Notice also that Hezekiah looked for ways to succeed, not for reasons to give up.  He looked for ways to overcome, not for obstacles to justify  his failure to try.  And he had a lot of obstacles.  It is not that this was all easy to do.  He was only twenty-five years old and his father was very wicked.  Hezekiah’s father’s advisors were also very wicked and still around.  Maybe some even opposed his plan.  We are not told that, but probably some were there.  Additionally, the priests and the Levites had faded away and disappeared.  They were nowhere to be found.  They were not there doing the job.  And the people did not seem to be clamoring for this big change and revival.  This was not a populist movement where Hezekiah just followed the people where they were going.  Moreover, the cleansing of the temple and the restoring of proper worship was a huge undertaking.  And Hezekiah was just starting out as king.  He opened the doors of the temple on the first day of the first month.  Maybe he should get a little more established first.  He could come up with all kinds of excuses not to act.

But Hezekiah did not stumble over any of these challenges.  He went right to work, literally on the first day in the first month of his reign, and he kept at it until the job was completed.

We see also that Hezekiah was seriously devoted to God.  The temple restoration was not some public works project.  It was not an economic stimulus package or jobs program.  He was not repairing the temple for mere cultural or artistic reasons.  This was a serious man of serious faith who was seriously interested in revival among God’s people.

Second Chronicles 29 tells us that Hezekiah assembled all the priests and Levites (v. 4).  He told them, “Consecrate yourselves to God” (v. 5).  He connected the problems they were having to their sin, saying, “Our fathers were unfaithful; they did evil in the eyes of the Lord and forsook him. . . . They also shut the doors of the portico and put out the lamps.  They did not burn incense or present any burnt offerings at the sanctuary to the God of Israel” (vv.  6–7).   And now the key:  “Therefore, the anger of the Lord has fallen on Judah and Jerusalem. . . . This is why our fathers have fallen by the sword and why our sons and daughters and our wives are in captivity” (vv.  8–9).  Hezekiah saw the clear connection between their troubles and their unfaithfulness to God.

That shows serious understanding.  Hezekiah knew that all of their suffering was from God and due to their sin.  So we know that re-opening the temple was not some vanity project.  His interest for restoring the temple was not cultural or historical; it was theological.  Hezekiah wanted to obey God and worship God in the way that God commanded.

Additionally, Hezekiah did not just make an effort to re-open the temple; he actually did it.  He completed the work.  He restored the temple.  And he made a covenant with God between God and the people (2 Chron. 29:13).  He made the proper sacrifices to purify the defiled temple and its defiled articles (vv. 20–23).  He made a sin offering to atone for Israel.  He ordered music “in the way prescribed” (v. 25).  He always acted according to the way prescribed by God.  And then they worshiped and praised the Lord and sang his praises with gladness (vv. 29–30).  Indeed, there was such a great celebration that even the Levites had to help the priests with their priestly duties because they could not keep up with all the celebrating.

After that, Hezekiah re-established the Passover.  First he restored the temple, then he got the regular worship going, and then he re-established the Passover.  The Passover was supposed to serve as a memorial to God’s great mercy during the deliverance of Israel, but apparently it had not been observed for several years when Hezekiah became king.  Exodus 12:14 says, “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance.”  It was a command from God, but the people had stopped doing it.

So Hezekiah’s next order of business after restoring the temple worship and getting the daily worship in place was to call all of God’s people to come and celebrate the Passover—not to have a nice party or some fellowship, but because God said to do it.  Hezekiah sent men from all over Israel to call people to the Passover.  In 2 Chronicles 30, beginning with verse 6, we read, “People of Israel, return to the Lord.”  There is more to that than returning to the temple.  “Return to the Lord. . . . Come to the sanctuary, which He has consecrated forever. . . . If you return to the Lord, . . . He will not turn his face from you” (vv. 6, 8–9).  He had serious faith.

Hezekiah’s action started a mass revival.  The people all came, and 2 Chronicles 30:20 says, “The Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people.”  Even more priests came and consecrated themselves to God.  The Bible says there had been nothing like this since the golden era of David and Solomon (2 Chron. 30:26).  Then we read that all the people rid the land of idols.  So they came, they celebrated, and then they got rid of their idols.  Revival.

On top of that, Hezekiah put his own money behind this effort.  Not only did he provide thousands of bulls, sheep, and goats for the initial Passover (2 Chron. 30:24), but he also gave the daily morning and evening offerings from his own possessions (2 Chron. 31:3).  The people followed suit here too, and soon there was not enough room for the great bounty that the people were bringing to store in the temple.  Pastor Mathew often says, “When God goes in, money goes out.”  These people brought offerings and probably more than the prescribed offerings.  There were heaps, and they did not have a place to store it (2 Chron. 31:6–10).  All of this allowed the priests to be priests, to do their priestly duties instead of trying to scrape out a living somewhere else.

So we see that Hezekiah was a serious man of God.  Second Kings 18:5–6 sums it up:  “Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. . . . He held fast to the Lord.”  Last week I preached that Solomon “held fast [to his wives] in love.”  Hezekiah “held fast to the Lord and did not cease to follow him. . . . The Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook” (2 Kings 18:6–7).  With God on his side, Hezekiah stared down the mighty Assyrians and trusted in God.  He prayed for deliverance and saw God’s mighty saving work.

This was total success.  Hezekiah had success in everything he did—in every way, at every turn, over every obstacle, and over every enemy.  And had he stopped here, had this been Hezekiah’s whole story, he would have easily been lauded as one of the best kings of Israel and Judah, right up with David and Josiah.  But, sadly, Hezekiah’s story does not stop there.  It only gets worse.

2. Hezekiah’s Crisis

After his great success, Hezekiah became very ill at age thirty-nine or forty.  This is fourteen or fifteen years into his reign as king.  He was very ill, as it says in 2 Kings 20:1.  In fact, it says he was ill to the point of death.  Second Chronicles 32 says the same thing, as does Isaiah 38.  Hezekiah had a very serious illness.

Surprisingly, God reveals to the righteous Hezekiah that he will not recover, but he will die, and he must put his house in order.  After fifteen successful and blessed years as king, it is all coming to an end, and early.  Hezekiah is very disappointed and probably afraid.  The Bible says he wept bitterly and prayed to God and received fifteen more years.

Now, as I said before, that seems like a blessing.  It doubled his time as king.  He had been king for about fourteen or fifteen years; now he had fifteen more years.  It seems like a blessing, but it was not.

First of all, he delayed going to heaven by fifteen years.  We should long to go to heaven, and anything that delays our arrival there cannot be that great.  Second Chronicles 32:25 says this caused Hezekiah to become proud.  You can see it somewhat in his prayer.  He says, “Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before You faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in Your eyes.”  That is his argument for getting more time.

Now, of course, this is all true.  Hezekiah was faithful.  He was devoted.  But we all know at least two things about any good we do in Christ.  First, we know that any good that we do is all God working in us.  Due to regeneration and sanctification, it is all God’s work.  We are just working out what God is working in us.  We must never boast about anything except about God.  As our Pastor often reminds us, “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7).  It is all from God.  Second, any good we do for God is at best a mixture.  We are still tainted by indwelling sin, so our motives and actions are never perfect.  Thus, anything we achieve, whether in the world or in Christ, must not make us proud.  In fact, it should make us more humble because we know that it is all God’s work, and we know that sin still taints what we do, even though so much grace and mercy is coming to us.

Nevertheless, God’s mercy caused Hezekiah to become proud.  It does not tell us exactly how.  Maybe it was his success.  (GTB)  Maybe it was the healing:  “God heard my prayer and healed me.”  That can cause us to become proud.  Maybe it was the miracle of the sun going back up the steps.  Maybe it was deliverance from Assyria.  In any case, he became proud due to this incident, and we know that pride goes before a fall.

3. Hezekiah’s Mess

The latter fifteen years of Hezekiah’s reign were marked by failure and disaster, and they brought generational trouble on the people of Judah.  First, Hezekiah shows off his palace to the Babylonians.  It says he showed them all that was in his storehouse (2 Kings 20:13).

Showing off, “Look at me,” is never good.  He should not have said, “Look at me.”  He should have said, “Look at God, who healed me.  Look at God, who had mercy on me.”  He should have testified to these visiting Babylonians about God.  He should not have tried to impress them with his great wealth.

Notice, also, Hezekiah failed to seek counsel from Isaiah, the man of God.  He used to seek counsel from Isaiah.  In 2 Kings 19, when he had a serious problem, Hezekiah sent all the officials to Isaiah and asked him to pray, and he spread out the threatening letter from Assyria before the Lord (2 Kings 19:14).  He seriously sought God’s direction and received God’s deliverance.  He sought out God through Isaiah, the delegated authority, and Isaiah brought the answer.  God struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians in a single night and sent the mighty Sennacherib scurrying back to Nineveh, and caused him later to be killed by two of his own sons.

But now, after his great healing, after his great victory, Hezekiah no longer seeks God’s will in prayer.  He no longer seeks the counsel of the man God placed over him.  He no longer seeks out God’s delegated authority, Isaiah.  Indeed, from 2 Kings 20:14, it appears that Isaiah does not even seem to know that the Babylonian envoys are there.  Hezekiah is having a nice time showing them around, but the man of God, Isaiah, has heard nothing about it.  They were likely there for a while, probably a couple of weeks or even a couple of months.  It was a 500 to 900-mile journey to Babylon, depending on the route that you took.  It took Ezra four months to make the same journey.  If you go on a four-month journey, you are unlikely to stay just for an afternoon.  So they were probably there for a while.  And yet Hezekiah never goes to Isaiah.  He never seeks out Isaiah.  And just as they are leaving, Isaiah comes to him and says, “What did they say?  Where did they come from?  What did they see?  Who are these people, and what are they doing here?”  Isaiah seems to know nothing about it.

Hezekiah became proud.  He neglected to seek out God’s will in prayer or through the counsel of the man of God placed over him.  And we know the outcome.  About 100 years later, the Babylonians would destroy Jerusalem and burn the temple and deport all the people and take all the stuff that he showed off.

It was all prophesied right away.  It was prophesied in 2 Kings 20:16 by Isaiah, but it happens in 2 Kings 25.  And the Bible tells us it was a test from God to see what was in Hezekiah’s heart.  (2 Chron. 32:31).  It was a test, and he failed the test.

Had Hezekiah put his affairs in order and died, as God had announced to him, he would not have made this mistake.  He would not have been around to show off his riches and to mark himself as a future Babylonian target for conquest.  Indeed, they probably would not have come at all if Hezekiah had just died; if he had simply put his affairs in order and gone to be with the Lord.

First, it says in 1 Kings 20:12 that they came bringing a gift because the Babylonian king had heard of Hezekiah’s illness.  So it is likely that the king of Babylon took this chance to see a new potential ally against Assyria.  He brought a gift to the sick and recovering king and sought him out.  The Babylonians were not a big world power at this time.  In fact, it says in 1 Kings 17 they had been deported along with some other people even into Israel.  So the king heard of Hezekiah’s illness and the envoys came.  If he had just died, that Babylonian king probably would not have sent envoys.

Second, many suggest that the astrologically-oriented Babylonians saw the solar anomaly and came to find out why it happened.  They saw the sun do something funny; they wanted to find out what the story was, and so they came.  If there was no healing, there would be no anomaly and there would be no Babylonian visitors.

Whatever the case, Hezekiah would not have made this grievous error if he had not prayed for more time and instead had gone to heaven.  But he did, and he caused Jerusalem to be sacked, the temple to be destroyed, and all his descendants to be hauled away into slavery, all for fifteen more years of life.  Be careful what you pray for.

A second unintended consequence of these fifteen extra years was a serious spiritual degradation in Judah.  After Hezekiah dies in the twenty-ninth year of his reign, his twelve-year-old son Manasseh becomes king, and he was a bad king.  Wicked is literally part of his name:  “wicked King Manasseh.”  Second Kings 21 says that Manasseh “did evil in the eyes of the Lord. . . . He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed” (vv. 2–3).  Manasseh reversed Hezekiah’s good work just as Hezekiah reversed his father’s bad work.  It says Manasseh put idols in the temple itself, the temple that Hezekiah had cleansed and purified.  All Hezekiah’s good work is being undone.

Manasseh “sacrificed his own son in the fire” (2 Kings 21:6).  He filled Jerusalem from end to end with innocent blood (2 Kings 21:16).  He led all the people into wickedness and he provoked God to anger.  Manasseh even managed to lose the Bible.  Josiah found it later (2 Kings 22), so, in order for it to be found, it had to first be lost.

Manasseh ushered in seventy-five years of wickedness in Israel.  And Manasseh would never have been king but for Hezekiah’s prayer and his fifteen extra years of life.  Did you notice Manasseh’s age at the beginning of his reign?  He was twelve years old.  He would not have been king; indeed, he would not have been born, had Hezekiah not received the extra fifteen years.  Be careful what you pray for.

4. Hezekiah Repents

Hezekiah’s prayer and his extra fifteen years were not a blessing but a curse.  They caused him to become proud.  They caused Judah to be captured and the temple to be burned.  They caused Manasseh to be king and undo most of Hezekiah’s good work for God.  Hezekiah’s extra fifteen years were an unmitigated disaster.  They were perhaps more of a disaster than his first fifteen years had been a success.

Fortunately, we are told Hezekiah repented.  Second Chronicles 32:26 says that after all this trouble, Hezekiah “repented of the pride of his heart, as did the people of Jerusalem; therefore the Lord’s wrath did not come upon them during the days of Hezekiah.”  So we praise God that, though we stumble and fall into sin, he remains merciful.  He remains faithful.  He grants us the gift of repentance.  He delays or reduces the earthly consequences of our sins, in some cases, and he covers all our sins in the blood of Jesus, and takes us safely home to heaven for eternity.  You see, Hezekiah is there right now.  Yes, he sinned.  Yes, he failed in a major way.  But he repented, and he is there right now, praise God.

We heard recently about Solomon.  We are never told that Solomon repented.  That is the difference between Solomon and Hezekiah.  They both had good beginnings to their reigns.  They both had bad ends to their reigns.  But Hezekiah repented.  The difference is repentance unto life.  So we praise God for his mercy to us, and his mercy to Hezekiah.

But let us not think of this as some kind of giant triumph, for it is not.  Rather, it is a serious warning to us.  The last fifteen years of Hezekiah’s life and his great answer to prayer was all loss.  It caused the downfall of Hezekiah into pride.  Remember, he could have entered heaven in triumph at age thirty-nine or forty, having stored up treasure in heaven by his faithful life and by his good work for God.  He would have been known as one of the best kings ever, had he died at that time.  But instead of going to heaven in triumph at age thirty-nine or forty, he scraped in at age fifty-five, with most of his achievements on earth to be burned up and he, like one escaping through the flames.

Not only that, he doomed Judah to destruction at the hands of Babylon, with his own flesh and blood to be taken away to serve as eunuchs in the palace at Babylon.  Worst of all, it says he passed his kingdom on to a wicked son who would lead Judah deep into idolatry and sin, further arousing God’s anger.

So Hezekiah repented, and we praise God for that.  But he still caused great suffering, great loss, and great shame.

Application

What is the application for us?  First, be careful what you pray for.  There is nothing wrong with praying for things that we want.  There is nothing wrong with praying that God will heal us.  Even Jesus prayed, “Lord, if it is possible, take this cup from me” (Luke 22:42).  But we must be careful, and we must, like Jesus, be very careful to submit all things to God’s perfect will.  In other words, we should pray for God’s perfect will, for his best plan, not just for his permissive will, for what he will allow.  Jesus said, “If it is possible, take this cup from me.”  He said, “If you are willing, take this cup from me.”  But what else did He say?  “Not my will but yours be done.”  God always knows better, and God always does better than us.  Let us not try to talk Him out of it.

Second, we must pray with our focus on the things of God, not on the things of man.  Hezekiah lost his focus on eternity, and he looked only to the things of this life.  We can see that in his prayer.  It is recorded more fully in Isaiah 38.  He says, “In the prime of my life must I go through the gates of death and be robbed of the rest of my years?” That is how that prayer begins.  “The rest of my years”?  The rest of your years are in heaven.  The rest of your years are with God.  The rest of your years are eternal pleasures at God’s right hand.  Robbed of them?  He robbed himself.

Perhaps he thought he had more things that he wanted to achieve on earth.  More things that you want to achieve on earth?  Those things that you want to do—are they really good for you?  Are they really good for others?” After all, God will not let us die if he has something good for us to accomplish.  Indeed, he says, “No good thing does he withhold from those who love him” (Ps. 84:11).

We can and we should pray for things of this world.  But we must always seek to do it in the perfect will of God.  We must always be careful to keep our focus on the things of God and not the things of men.  We must always be careful to fix our eyes on Jesus, to focus on heaven.

Hezekiah lost his focus and essentially prayed, “Don’t force me to go to glorious heaven to be in the presence of God right now.  Instead, let me go later.”  When we say it like that, it sounds stupid.  But that is essentially what he was praying.  And we can beat up Hezekiah all we want, but we do the same thing all the time.

So let us always remain humble.  God knows all things, and we do not.  God knows better, and we do not.  God always does good, and we do not.  In fact, what God does is always perfect (Ps. 18:30).  We are fallible people with a limited perspective; a people of mixed motives who are still tainted by sin.  God is not subject to any of those limitations.

Let us never pray, “Not Thy will but mine be done.”  Instead, let us always say, “Your ways are higher than my ways, so not my will but Yours be done.”  We know this from experience, and we know it from the Scriptures.  “There is a way that seems right to us, but in the end it leads to death” (Prov. 14:12).

So let us abandon our ideas and our earthly priorities, and carefully seek and do the will of God.  Let us always be humble when we come to God.  Let us say, “Lord, this is the thing we are praying for.  But we do not know best.  We know that You know best.  And so, Lord, we are going to pray for this thing, but, Lord, You do what is best for us in Your good, perfect, and pleasing will.”  That is the way to maximum happiness.  Whether we eat or drink or live or die, whatever we do, let us do it all for the glory of God.  Let us do it all in the name of God.  Let us do it all in the will of God.  Then we will be blessed.  Then we will all go to God, not as those escaping through the flames, but rejoicing in glory forever.  Amen.