I Have Heard Your Prayer – Isaiah 38

In an article, Pentecostal Beliefs on Doctors, Dell Markey writes, “Pentecostals teach that all believers can petition God for divine healing. This has sometimes led to the erroneous notion that Pentecostals disapprove of doctors or modern medicine. While there are small fringe groups of Pentecostals who eschew doctors entirely, the overwhelming majority believe that God is Sovereign and can heal through miracles or through modern medicine…Classical Pentecostals are united in their belief that God does not always choose to heal through miracles of divine healing and that there is no inconsistency in a believer seeking both divine healing and medical treatment. In the Classical Pentecostal mindset, healing comes from God, whether it comes by means of prayer and laying on of hands or medicine.”  That’s good, because that is exactly what is illustrated in this Scripture by Isaiah.

In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, “Thus says the LORD: Set your house in order, for you shall die, you shall not recover.” Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, and said, “Please, O LORD, remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah: “Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and will defend this city.

“This shall be the sign to you from the LORD, that the LORD will do this thing that he has promised: Behold, I will make the shadow cast by the declining sun on the dial of Ahaz turn back ten steps.” So the sun turned back on the dial the ten steps by which it had declined.

A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness:  … The LORD will save me,  and we will play my music on stringed instruments all the days of our lives, at the house of the LORD.

Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover.” Hezekiah also had said, “What is the sign that I shall go up to the house of the LORD?”  (Isaiah 38 ESV)

Hezekiah does not want to die.  We feel you Hezekiah.  He has a boil, an infection that has erupted through the skin, and he believes what the prophet Isaiah has told him, that Yahweh says he is going to die.  It may be considered a mercy from God to tell him in advance so that he can set his “house in order.”  But Hezekiah wants more mercy than that.

God grants him more mercy (did He change his mind?) with a promise of 15 more years of life and a removal of Assyria as a threat to Jerusalem.  Then God does a miraculous sign by making the sun-cast shadow on the sundial go backwards.  Hezekiah thought he deserved this because of his faithfulness to God.  God says He is doing this because He is the God of David, Hezekiah’s great-great-great grandfather and the one with whom God made a covenant.

After Hezekiah praises God in a psalm of worship, Isaiah directs him to have a poultice (dictionary definition: a soft, moist mass of cloth, bread, meal, herbs, etc., applied hot as a medicament to the body) applied to the boil in the form of a cake of figs to draw out the infection.  Why doesn’t God simply command it to go away, the way He commanded the shadow on the sundial to decline?  He chooses to use a medical treatment that was not going to be effective before but now it will be.

The length of our lives is entirely in God’s hands.  When we face illness or injury He may choose to heal us and He may choose to use conventional wisdom or healing arts of the day to do so.  Our confidence is in His healing ability first and foremost and in our healing arts only secondarily.  But of course, He may not choose to heal us.  We all will eventually die.  He won’t heal us forever.  And even before our death He may not heal us.  He didn’t heal Paul.  He heard Paul’s prayer but answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Discussion Questions

1. What has been the most dire sickness you have experienced and did God heal you from it?  If so, how?
2. Has God ever revealed the future to you?  If so, how?
3. Have you ever needed mercy from God and He didn’t give it to you?  How did you deal with that?
4. Why do you think God chose to give Hezekiah this particular mercy of postponing his death?
5. What would you do with 15 extra years?
6. Why do you think God does some of His healing through “normal” means?