21st June 2026 : 2 Kings ch 20 v 1 - 11

2 Kings ch 20 v 1 - 11

We'll turn for our reading today in 2 Kings chapter 20 and verses 1 to 11. Yeah, page 475 in the church Bible. So give you a few moments to find that if you want to follow the reading.

It's really about the most peculiar and extraordinary healing miracle. One of those in the Bible that you have to read it through two or three times before it really becomes something you can digest. We're used to reading the gospels and Jesus touching someone or speaking someone and it happens. Today's Christians have become very familiar with a kind of healing culture that says, click, it's done, you know. And some healings are a little bit different to others, and we just need to be mindful of that. This is one of them.

2 Kings 20 1 to 11, and there's a lot more information besides. So I'll read that to you.

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. Then 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. And it happened before Isaiah had gone 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 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? Then 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 10 degrees or backward 10 degrees on the sundial? And Hezekiah answered, It's an easy thing for the shadow to go down 10 degrees. No, but let the shadow go backward 10 degrees. So Isaiah the prophet cried out to the Lord, and he brought the shadow 10 degrees backward by which it had gone down on the sundial of Ahaz.

Did that blow your mind? We'll have a look at it in a moment. Let's pray and ask for some revelation from the Lord.

Lord, whenever you reveal to our hearts this morning, let it be precious to each heart, to each mind, as we carry away blessings that are so personal on all of our own, and yet borne out of a corporate blessing of being together in Jesus' name. And coming under the power of your word, Lord, not as spoken by man, but I pray in Jesus' name, you'll go over and above all I can say and speak, Lord, in that way you do so personally and so powerful to each soul and that, Lord, you make yourself known in it for them and take from this reading and this passage that which is precious to them this morning. And Lord, we know that may not be the same for each person. But Lord, we know that when you speak, there is power in what you say. Speak to us, O Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, as per usual, I like to look at a bit of background to this. Hezekiah himself, you know, if you read 2 Kings chapter 18, verse 1 and 2, you'll see that he came to the throne when he was 25 years old. And it tells us also there in verse 2 that he reigned in total for 29 years. What's 29 and 25? 54, right, okay. 54, you're doing well. He was 54 when he did die. But if 15 of those years were an extension of his life, how old was he when he became fatally ill? Take 15 from 54, he was 39. Okay.

Put yourself in his shoes now. You're 39 years old. That's still only a young person, a young man or woman. And the prophet of the Lord's got a really nice job to do. Everybody wants to prophesy, don't they? And he came to Hezekiah and he said, put your house in order. This is it. This is your time.

How would you respond? You're 39 years old. Probably his wife, his children, the kingdom, everything to think about. He's daily concern because of the threats of foreign armies, particularly from Assyria. And we know what was coming don't we, the city was going to be surrounded by Sennacherib and his armies, and that was another miracle to get him out of that. But you know, when you're in that situation or something similar of your own, or maybe not as profound or as serious, even so. It's become so personal to you, don't you sometimes cry out and say, Lord, not me, you know, not me. What's going on? I'm only 39, or, in his case, or, you know, why me? Why now? Why this?

And how familiar is that to the human condition? You know, when I first read this passage and I saw him turn to the wall and start crying, I thought, you big baby, you know, what's wrong with you? Somebody just told him something crucially important. Put your house in order, you're going to die. And that was the word of God to him. And I had to ask this question, how would I respond first of all? What would I have done? I don't know whether I've turned my face to the wall or not. I'd have probably got down on my knees or something like that. But just like he did, I would have prayed, wouldn't you? I'd have said, never mind what word has come to me, never mind what the circumstances or condition. I will go to the throne of grace and consult God on this. And God wasn't surprised.

Actually, the purpose of Isaiah's visit then was to give him the opportunity to pray. How else would he have known that what he was suffering from was fatal? They didn't have X-rays and stuff in those days, did they? They probably didn't have very much information at all.

Once upon a time, I had a blister on the sole of my feet. I was only a young man and not a Christian. And friends came around to the house, are you coming out? We've got a special expedition this evening which involved drinking and public houses. And my mum and dad were going, no, you shouldn't be going out. Then I went out. I walked up and down. We went from pub to pub. And I came home and my foot was throbbing. And the next day you could see it had gone nasty. All the veins of my leg had turned red. You know what that means, don't you? That's serious. If that goes septic, I could have died. It was one of those occasions where the Lord saved my life again and I didn't deserve it. But never mind going into that story. You know what the doctor gave me? My dad went up the wall and he called the doctor and the doctor came round and said, don't walk anywhere, rest it. And he gave me some penicillin, prescribed penicillin.

And you know, that took a while to heal. Didn't take three days like this. Isaiah said, it'll be 3 days. That's the word of God. Marvellous, isn't it, when you get a word like that and you know in your heart, I've got the word of God and I'm going to stand on it. You know, even penicillin takes its time. And the Lord prescribed this intricate and interesting medicine. I'm going out of all the prepared now. This is not going out. I planned it. But hallelujah. You know, what he said was, prepare for him a poultice of figs. Verse 7, isn't it? Take a lump of figs in my Bible.

If you've got the New International, I think it says the poultice of figs. You know what a poultice is, don't you? Crush something, either the leaves or the fruit, and make it, and spread it on a cloth and put it over the wound. All right. I thought, what was a poultice of figs do you know? Was it just a symbol that God would heal him and confirmation? I had to look it up, but I'm not a dietitian or a scientist.

I had to look it up. And you know, figs are full of powerful enzymes and something called phycin, I think. Someone else will have to tell me what that is, but it's so powerful. in the restorative and regenerative properties, particularly to heal diseases of the skin. And what did Hazekiah have? A boil. And that had gone nasty, and I think all the veins on his leg, or wherever it was, were going red. They're probably going purple by now. It was bad, it was fatal. But they put this poultice on him. And that... The power of that natural remedy, a god-made, not a man-made, a god-made remedy can heal anything from dermatitis, psoriasis, or a septic boil.

Draws out the pus from the boil, so I understand. Bear in mind I had to look that up. And I thought, how wonderful is that? How absolutely wonderful is that? God knows just what to do. And when he speaks to the prophets and they have the faith and commitment to proclaim what God is saying, God honours what he has spoken. And a remarkable thing is, in answer to this prayer, Heziakiah trusted God? I believe he did. And I wondered at this, that he nevertheless asked for a sign. You know when you've got the word of God, it's a bit naughty, isn't it, really, to ask for a sign? I want confirmation. Is it naughty or is it human? Have you done that? Don't bother to tell me yes, I already know the answer. It's just the human condition.

You get the word of God. I want confirmation. I want you to confirm it, Lord. And it's usually through another Christian who doesn't know your circumstances but says something that they couldn't have known was from God and it is, or you read it in scripture or something will touch you. God will give you confirmation. He understands our weakness and no matter how much faith we think we've got, he understands when we're weak in our faith.

Are you weak in faith today? Did you soon appear feeling, oh, I'm not really part of this? Well, God understands you, and he'll still answer you when you call out in his name. Amen. And that's what Isaiah told him. This is going to take three days. And then he went further, asking for a sign. He said, what will be the sign? And it's the most remarkable miracle at the moment I can think of.

You know how a sundial works, don't you? I'd have to go back to when I was about 11 years old, a teacher called Mr. Higginbottom explained this to us. Thank you, Mr. Higginbottom. The sundial is basically like a clock face of flat circle with a pointer on it, or sometimes called a style, and it's set, when the thing is set up in line with the Polaris star. We call it the North Star, don't we? And that's because, how the ancients knew this, I don't know. That's because the pole star is always in alignment with the Earth's rotational axis. Genius. Genius. And then when the Earth revolves, it revolves, it takes one orbit every 24 hours, doesn't it? Yeah. And as it's going round, it's actually orbiting the sun at the same time. And wherever the shadow falls because of the pointer, that's the time. There's more to it than that, actually.

How do you calculate the 10 degrees? Well, if the Earth rotates 360 degrees in 24 hours, you do the maths. Fifteen degrees an hour. So how much is 10 degrees? This is fun, isn't it? Yeah. If you're not baffled yet, this is the last bit. It's 40 minutes. Two-thirds of an hour. Two-thirds of 15 degrees. Isn't that wonderful? Thank you, Mr. Higginbottom. But 40 minutes. It seems like an odd period of time. It's almost as though the Lord did something like somebody holding the hand of a clock and just going like that and it could land anywhere.

But what did he do in principle? Did he turn back time? Did he make it stand still? Remarkable. There's only one other instance in the Bible that can think of like this and it's in the book of Joshua. And they were fighting a battle and Joshua called out to the Lord, increase your power. You know, we want to make the most of this against the enemies. And the Lord made time stand still and extended the day. I think it's Joshua chapter 12. Remarkable miracle. And that was just a sign to confirm to Hezekiah that God had heard him. What faith did he have? When you look at his prayer and the way he responded, I say, boom, not much really. He turns to the wall and cried his eyes out. He was just like us. And yet look at all that God did. It's a remarkable miracle.

Now I want to look at Isaiah himself. a lot of people fancy the gifts of the Spirit. They fancy, they want, oh Lord, make me a prophet. And prophets have a lot of different expressions, you know. John the Baptist did no miracles. That's what we're told in scripture. But yet, he touched many people. He had a ministry of baptism and preparing the way for the Lord. He was a preaching prophet. You look at the book of Haggai, he was a preaching prophet. You look at the book of Zechariah, he was a visionary prophet. He did some preaching as well. You look at Elijah and there's no book of his name, and yet he was a prophet of miracles. He wasn't a writing prophet. He was a miracle prophet. So what was Isaiah? Well, read it this afternoon. It'll take you all afternoon and maybe more because it's about 60 odd chapters of it. He was a writing prophet. He was a visionary prophet, and he wrote it down, or his secretary or scribe did.

He wasn't normally associated with healing or miracles, but God used him that time. I think it's the only time I can find in the book of Isaiah. You'll find this story again in Isaiah chapter 38 and also in 2 Chronicles chapter 32, verses 24 to 26. It's in three places in the Old Testament, this. But Isaiah would not normally be involved in healing miracles. Was he surprised? No. At least there's nothing in the record that tells us he was surprised. Maybe you're not normally involved in healing miracles, certainly not as spectacular as this. If God involved you in one today, would you be surprised? How about you in other words? Do you really fancy this? Lots of Christians say, I want to be like that, I want the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but bear in mind, you need to be prepared for a surprise.

Isaiah listened for God. And even when he delivered the word of God and he was on his way from the building, he was still sensitive enough to the Lord and to the Lord speaking to him to hear him a second time. Not to contradict what he'd said, but to add to it. And the Lord does that often, you know. He will add to what you first received.

When I first became a Christian and started to speak of spiritual things, I used to blurt it out in a prayer minute. I couldn't wait to get out, you know. I wondered that people looked at me strangely and didn't understand. And I realized after a while that I had to take care of it for a while and nurse it. I had to screen it through the lens of the Bible. That's how it became what I am now, really. And looking into scripture to confirm it, refine it a bit, not change it, but when it was time to deliver, you say, the Lord has said this, and people then understood. But if I just blurt it out, they didn't get it. What's that, who's he?

But Isaiah was prepared to listen the second time. Are you prepared for that? Are you prepared for a surprise? You know, Christians that wander around on some kind of spiritual plateau, and feel as if they're not getting anywhere. There's no way off a plateau, is there? Unless you get in a helicopter and somebody beams you up somewhere. A spiritual plateau can feel like that. And God doesn't want us to go there. He doesn't want us to be there. Every Christian must develop and understand this level of expectation that God may use you in a different way today than he did yesterday. Don't be surprised. If you're available for God, he might well do so, especially if no one else is available for God. Would you be surprised if the Lord spoke to you like that today? And would you be reluctant if the Lord gave you the word for somebody that says, put your house in order, this is it.

How would you fare with that? We're only used to prophecies these days that say, you're blessed, you're going to grow, this is going to happen. That's, you know, the end is coming in two years' time, you know, and on. You get all kinds of stuff coming through. But very rarely do you get the reality. And Isaiah only ever dealt with the reality. He received from the Lord, he was available for the Lord, he wasn't surprised by the Lord.

And that's what it involves, to be somebody who the Lord might use today in a different way than he has done before. Are you prepared to be surprised? Do you want to be surprised? Are you expectant that God will speak to you and through you? And if you're sick, do you believe God can heal you? In all his weakness and with all his faults Hezekiah dead and the Lord gave him 15 years and healed him of a fatal illness in a remarkable way. Isn't that wonderful?

So you know a little bit more about Isaiah now, and you know a little bit more about the healing gifts. It doesn't all happen like that. And when you've prayed and you think nothing's happened, you have to go on praying and ask for wisdom. And maybe like Hezekiah, ask for a sign. How do I pray now? I don't know what to do. Why hasn't anything happened? Is there a roadblock? What is it? It could be this person's got a spirit of unforgiveness. It could be anything. But you need that word of God a second time and then pray. Okay?

I don't know who this is for, but I'm just going to pray right now for everybody. All right? Let's pray.

Lord, in Jesus' name, you've shown us some special things and you are a wonderful God who does things in ways that we don't expect. And I pray for anyone today who's on a spiritual plateau, someone more who may have walked in through that door with very little expectation and very little confidence in their own faith, having only been conscious of their own weaknesses and faults, maybe suffering from a critical spirit, which often accompanies those things. And Lord, in Jesus' name, I pray that you will deliver them from that and raise the level of expectation. And that, Lord, you'll go over and above what we ask or imagine, for this is what it says in your word, and we read at the beginning of the service. Go over and above what we ask or imagine. Go over, as you did with Hezekiah, over and above what he asked. And Lord, in Jesus' name, follow one miracle with another. Come to us, Lord, with the revelation of Scripture. Come to us in visions and dreams. Come to those people who are full of doubts and fears and visit them in the Word and in the power of your Spirit and surprise them. Lord, we just pray.

If you're praying this yourself, you're agreeing with me, pray this for yourself. Surprise me, Lord. Surprise me with your love and your grace, the extent of your power. And Lord, surprise me with your hand and the way you work in my life. If you can pray that, prepare yourself to be surprised and be open for the Lord to speak to you. And that's the word of God.

And Lord, we pray these things in the precious and holy name of Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Bless these folks in this room and visit them with more grace. Amen.