Isaiah, Chapters 38-39
Isaiah 38:1-8 · Vern Peterman · Sep 17, 2006
Isaiah, No. 36
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492602277326

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. Okay. I just want to make sure there's somebody there. Okay. I have to do a bit of pleading this morning. So anyway, with this pleading here, not exactly like that kind of pleading, different kind of pleading. Okay. We would like to ask you please to sign up for a couple of electives that we have in the lobby as you exit. place on the bulletin board there. We need to have you sign up. The Romans elective is continuing. We don't have a sign up for that, assuming you'll continue.

Identification truths and marriage and family and finances are the two that we have up there. Also, please provide any feedback right away, because we need to be able to respond quickly here. If you're interested in another possible elective, the Gospel of John or 1 and 2 Peter, if you can let us know. What of those might be of interest to you? So because we're starting these electives two weeks from today, we need to have some fairly prompt response on that.

OK. All right. Something else to plead with you about. We announced a few weeks back Katie Carey was engaged to Ben Franklin and they indeed are now married as of yesterday. Now, aside from that marriage being what I would say is a good thing, there's another personal and immediate benefit, and there are a large number of free small sandwiches in the lobby after the service. Please help yourself. Nancy and I will make sure that you have them quickly available. And you can take one and take it home, or you can head off in the red carpet room and chew for a while. Okay.

Now, on to Isaiah 38, after my pleadings here. We're looking at the end of an historical section. We've had it since chapter 36, 36, 37, and now we're looking at 38 and 39. This has had to do with an historical section regarding King Hezekiah, who was the fourth king mentioned by name in the book of Isaiah.

And so he particularly will be the subject, along with Isaiah, of today's passage here. We'll read about him for the last time in Isaiah, here in this passage. Here is Isaiah in the southern kingdom, and he's centered in Jerusalem, right where Isaiah is ministering. Right there, in this particular instance, in the court of King Hezekiah. Seems particularly to have access to him more so than the other kings. So here's Isaiah living seven centuries approximately before the time of Christ.

And here's you and me about 2,700 years later, reading what he wrote. Now, you will see here, this particular event we're looking at here took place about 702 BC. All the particular points and pieces of information indicate that. And we'll revisit this chart here in a minute. One of the other things to look at is we are at the brink of a turning point.

Isaiah 1 through 39 has a particular set of characteristics, including the life of Isaiah's present. Starting the next chapter, which we'll venture into next week, we'll find that the life of Isaiah and of Hezekiah just virtually disappears from the pages. And he goes on to other subjects, and there's not much focus on his life from this point on. Next week we'll begin there.

One other thing to point out to you, there is a chiasm in today's passage. That's not a disease. It's not a physical condition. This is a mirror image pattern in writing, not visually, but in writing. What I mean by that is not that the letters are upside down or anything of that sort, but rather there is similar to what we see visually in a smooth lake, this kind of mirror image pattern where the first part in literary style and literary topic is reflected in mirror image pattern in the last half. And so you gotta be careful about these. There can be some things that are tricky about them. So watch out. Okay.

Now, the chiasm splits here right at the end of the chapter 38 and the beginning of 39. And it particularly shows up here, Isaiah and the word of the Lord. Isaiah starts the middle section on each of those reflective parts with Isaiah came and said, and then he says, thus says the Lord or hear the word of the Lord in that section. Now, I need to introduce this with something here, and this is just a little piece of personal history. This is Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California. And that is the place where 35 years ago, Nancy heard me say, I'm never getting married. You can't serve the Lord that way. Okay.

Right slightly below that and to the right is where Coach Noonan was talking with a few other fellows. And I began talking to him and Coach Noonan was just kind of chatting about life. And I kind of pressed upon him at that point. about, you know, hey, sometime this will be over. Have you thought about what's going to happen next?

And at that point he turned to me and he said, boy, I sure don't want to die. And I'm not ready for that. And anyway, that started an interesting conversation. Like a lot of people, he hadn't settled on the critical issues from this viewpoint in life. He hadn't dealt with the issue of what happens when this thing's over? What happens when we're all done here?

Well, Hezekiah has got an issue with that death coming upon him. And we'll take a look at that here. In those days, Hezekiah became mortally ill. And Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him and said, Thus says the Lord, set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.

How's that for definite? This is the last time we're going to hear Isaiah refer to himself in that way. By the end of the chapter, which will be coming in a matter of minutes here, Well, here's name in the text for the last time. The focus from chapter 40 on is going to be looking elsewhere and oftentimes looking into the future.

Even a far future time and in many cases a future that has yet, even in our day, yet to take place. Now, the Lord speaks through Isaiah to warn Hezekiah to get things in place to pass out of this world. Get ready because you're about to be gone. You will die. We'll come back to this part of this passage here in just a few minutes here.

Question for you, is this seen as bad news or good news? Does Hezekiah look at this, whoopee, I'm going home? Well, what do you think? Alright, if you said bad news, you guessed right. He thought it was bad news, okay? Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall. You don't do that when it's good news. And prayed to the Lord and said, Remember now, O Lord, I beseech you now how I have walked before you in truth with a whole heart and have done what is good in your sight. And Hezekiah screamed with joy. No, Hezekiah wept bitterly.

He turned his face to the wall. Now, it's interesting. We don't have some cultural background to look at that says turning your face to the wall always meant this, but we kind of get the idea that he wasn't looking to get real involved with other people when he does that, right? It could have been maybe for privacy. I want to just talk to the Lord. It could have been kind of a picture of his own withdrawal from people and maybe a combination of the two.

But there's one thing he did do and it says he prayed. Remember now, Lord. He doesn't pray with the enlightened viewpoint that we read before. Remember before, he starts off and he begins his prayer by recognizing who God is and what God has done. He begins from that standpoint. Here, instead, he has another message. He brings to the Lord's attention how he has walked before God. It is a spiritual topic. And what he's done in God's sight.

He focuses on truth, a whole heart, and what's good. Those three things. Question for you. Why would Hezekiah think that he has any basis on which to live? Why would he appeal to the Lord? Why wouldn't he just say, well, I guess I'm done? Why would he think that he has any reason to come to the Lord and say, Lord, I don't like this outcome. Can we do it different?

Deuteronomy 440, here's the message seven centuries roughly earlier that Moses had given to the Jews as they were about to come into the promised land. So you should keep the statutes and commandments and then zeroing in on the key point that you may live long in the land. Which land?

This one, the one he is in. The one Hezekiah is in, right at that moment. Here's another one, next chapter. Honor your father and mother, assuming that he has done that. The Lord your God has commanded you that your days may be prolonged and may go well with you." So Hezekiah has got some thoughts, he's got some basis on which to appeal to the Lord. Here is Samuel speaking to Israel sometime before that. "'Only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart.'" This is the same words of appeal that Hezekiah had. "'But if you still do wickedly, both you and your king will be swept away. Hezekiah is telling the Lord, hey, I didn't do wickedly. And my people, I've made sure that they haven't. Therefore, don't take me out. David to Solomon. And here he is, right in the same city, a descendant of David. As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart. This is Hezekiah's claim. I've done the same.

Or, recorded of Israel, 1 Chronicles 29.9, Then the people rejoiced because they had offered so willingly, for they had made their offering to the Lord with a whole heart.

So there was a basis of appeal for centuries. of kings, words from Moses, all saying this whole heart, this truth. Those are a basis on which you could appeal. It was looking like the conditional blessings that Hezekiah had, thought he had, promised from the Lord, weren't going to come to pass. Lord, what happened? It did everything right. So, he thought he had a basis of appeal.

Hezekiah's hopes with this were being dashed, as far as he could tell, facing the wall. So, are you impressed with Hezekiah's prayer? Would you give Hezekiah a high six? Would you give Hezekiah five thumbs up? What do you think? Do you think his prayer is pretty good? Not so good? What do you see when you read it?

Well, let's think about that. The word of the Lord came to Isaiah saying, go and say it Hezekiah. Tell Hezekiah this. So here's Isaiah being the Lord's mouthpiece. That the Lord is the God of Hezekiah's father David is important. Something to note. By the way, the word named David is mentioned ten times in the book of Isaiah. This is about the ninth time right here in front of us. God made a promise to David to have a descendant of David on the throne, over his house, throne, and kingdom. Hezekiah was in that line of kings, a descendant of David. David had a heart for God. Hezekiah does too. He says, why shouldn't I get as good a treatment as David? Why should I have my life shortened?

Here's 2 Samuel, where the Lord is making a promise to King David. Through Nathan the prophet, your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever. Your throne shall be established forever. Here's Luke, where the angel Gabriel is passing along the Lord's promise to Mary. Now, in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee called Nazareth. He speaks to Mary, and He says, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus.

Here is this Jesus. And what is He? He will be great, and He will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end. David. House. Throne. Kingdom. Hezekiah is saying, Hey, why do I get cut short? So here, we see in this passage, then the Lord has something to say.

Now, there's a Hebrew poetry pattern in here, and I want to just let folks know, we've brought this to your attention before, but I want you to just keep quiet about it. Don't make a big deal about the Hebrew poetry patterns. Alright? Now, here's the Hebrew poetry pattern. You see this? I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears. So there's a tendency to begin with repetition in the Hebrew poetry pattern. Alright? I will add 15 years." So notice what the Lord is saying. The Lord in the first two points is saying, I've heard you. I'm listening to what's going on. Now, what are the next three points? The Lord is saying, I will add 15 years to your life. I will deliver you in this city from the hand of the King of Assyria. I will defend this city. Is He maybe going to do it?

No. I will do it. Now, what do you not see in there? Is there an if? No if. So is he going to do it if Hezekiah does something? No. He's going to do it, period. He is absolutely going to do these things and it doesn't really matter what Hezekiah does. He's going to pull it off. God's going to do it.

So now, you have this repeated pattern there at the beginning. Alright, now here's the chart that you do have on page 3 of your handout. Here is this timeline. The Lord is going to add these 15 years to Hezekiah's life. What does that do? It takes him from about 702 BC into about 686 BC and there. Add 15 years to his life. You also see similar reference to that in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. The Lord is, not conditionally, but the Lord is going to add 15 years to his life. You get 15 more.

So, you might ask the question, as this sneering young lady does, hey, didn't Isaiah say, thus says the Lord, you shall die? What's going on here? Did God change His mind? Did God make a mistake? How is this being said? That would have remained the outcome. What would have happened if Hezekiah had not asked? That would have been the outcome, huh? That would have been the outcome. The Lord pronounced the initial outcome based upon the way things stood, but then when Hezekiah asked, the Lord said, I will provide a different outcome. Why? You asked. Did the Lord know he was going to ask? Yeah.

But he wanted Hezekiah to ask for it. If Hezekiah hadn't prayed, that would have been the outcome. This shall be a sign to you." Now, one of the things we pointed out before, certainly true here, is that it is typical of the Jewish mindset to ask for a sign and to look for a sign, and the Lord seems to have accommodated it even to the point of providing signs. And even with Ahaz, you may recall that back in chapter 7, telling King Ahaz, ask for any sign you want.

How's that for a blank check? Ask any sign you want, Ahaz. What do you want? I'll do it. It has turned it down. The Lord offers one, and Hezekiah hasn't even asked for it. This shall be the sign to you. Hezekiah gets a sign again. By the way, this isn't the first time he's gotten one. It's not this kind of sign. Not like these. Not those kind of signs. The Lord's not trying to confuse him. None of those. It's a different kind of sign.

This sign is a short-term verification of the truth of the prophecy given. That's one thing that the Lord did with a great number of the biblical prophets, based on what Deuteronomy 13 and 18 said. The biblical prophets would provide a short-term sign to verify the overall truth of what the prophets said, including the truth of the near-term prophecy, of course.

Now, here's this stairway. Now, this is interesting. Some of your translations may say sundial, and that's fine. We'll address that in a minute here. New King James has sundial. I think you've got some similar variations on that with other translations, except the steps are translated as degrees. Here's the translator's challenge. How do you translate words that don't show up very often? When you don't have a lot of other things to compare it with, And so it's a little bit tough.

The Jews did not commonly have sundials until centuries later. But here's the deal. This Hebrew word, ma'ala, okay, is translated sundial and dial here, is elsewhere translated and means steps. If you find most of the places in the Bible, it means steps and stairways. So you say, well, heavens, which is it? Those sound pretty different. We need to talk about the history of sundials in biblical times a little bit here.

Obelisks, you may have seen, well, Washington Monument is actually a large one of these, right? This was over in Egypt. This was like a clock tower and they were located in cities in Egypt, even before the time of Moses. And so they'd have these obelisks and they'd mark out the shadow. So you'd get markings for hours and different times during the day.

This particular one is in the city of Awn, and it's the place where Joseph's wife's family was from. Joseph's father-in-law was the priest of Awn. It also happens to be the one remaining structure in all of the old city of Awn. But that was used not only for kind of a city marking sign, but also as kind of a city clock tower. when Moses led Israel's people, the people of Israel from Egypt on the Exodus.

By that time, both Egypt and Babylon had sundials, but they were rarely seen among the Jews, fairly rare, typically only among royalty for the most part. Now, the evidence that we now have, we put it all together, here's the way it looks. Isaiah 38 is referring to a sundial, But it may also be that it was built in the form of a stairway. Here is a model built with ancient stones that shows the stairway also being used as a sundial. And what they did is they would use the stair steps as markings for the sundial. And you can see different times of the day marked on this sundial.

So that would be the steps of Ahaz, as you see in scripture. So it's possible, and I would say even quite likely, that both translations, is it stairs and steps or is it a sundial and degrees? Both. Both would be true. From Isaiah's account here, it seems that God made the shadows move miraculously. How that took place is another question, but certainly from the account, the shadows move miraculously.

Some scholars have cited solar eclipses in Israel, 710, 705, and 701 BC. The one in 701 BC seems to most easily fit the facts. Others have suggested the Earth's axis was rotated miraculously, or that the sun's rays were distorted just for King Hezekiah's sundial steps. The 701 BC date is if the eclipse is the means by which God did it, the most likely date, that certainly fits it.

That also fits Jewish tradition, but really the text here only requires at minimum a distortion of the sun's rays. That's all it would be required to fulfill, and that could be even local, to fulfill the sign that Hezekiah was to be given. Okay. We should understand two things about what Hezekiah wrote, because he did write this section after he was granted this time.

It says, in the middle of life, I am to enter the gates of Sheol. Sheol is the Hebrew word for the place of the dead. I am to be deprived for the rest of my years. He's writing his sentiments and how he's kind of processing what's happened to him here.

Two things, it reflected a limited understanding of life after death. As believers now in the church, we have a much more thorough understanding of life after death. If you want to see, let's see, I think it's Job 19, about verse 25 in there. There's some really neat verses about life after death and the understanding.

But his understanding is limited. But the other thing is, is he's looking to extend life here. That's his perspective. He's writing from that perspective. And so keep that in mind as we step our way through it. Now you see the word like a whole bunch of times. I want to make one thing very clear. Don't be concerned, Hezekiah has not gone valley girl, okay? All right?

All these likes here are comparisons to things. I call it here simile city, like this, like that, like this other thing, like a shepherd's tent, like a lion, like a swallow, like a crane. He's making a number of comparisons with occupations and animals in order to make his point clear, the intensity and the depth that he felt this deep, deep sadness and bitterness and disappointment.

In the next verses there, 15 through 17, after expressing this bitterness, he finally gives the Lord credit for keeping him from death. He steps his way emotionally through this. keeping him from death, and putting his sins out of God's own sight. Isn't it interesting that he recognizes, Lord, I've been good, but he does recognize his sins.

He says, the Lord has put my sins out of his sight. How does he express that? You have cast all my sins behind your back, out of sight, where you don't see them. You've taken care of them. You've dealt with my sins. In 18-20, He says finally in verse 20, the Lord will surely save me, so we will play my songs on strings and instruments.

Isn't that interesting? See the pronoun? We. May mean he's an instrumentalist himself. But play my songs on stringed instruments all the days of our life at the house of the Lord. So here he is finally coming to a place of thanking the Lord, recognizing, yes, the Lord will give me more time to praise Him.

Now, here's a replica of a biblical era harp. They had seven to 12 strings during that time. And specifically the ones in the temple were 10 string harps. And since that's up the hill, that's probably what he used, a 10 string version of this harp. Here he is here in the palace, right up the hill was where they would play the harp at the temple that he's referring to.

Now, this is an interesting one. Now Isaiah had said, let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil that he may recover. Ever get a boil? I guess you could give that a try. One of the things to note in biblical times, figs were used not only medicinally, but also diagnostically. If you don't have MRIs and blood tests and things like that, can't take a culture. They put the fig on the boil and then lift it up and say, what does it look like after a day or so? And they would actually use that for diagnosis. Isaiah may have meant either or both of those, either of those purposes. Hezekiah's question, real interesting.

Hezekiah's question may indicate that though he was given a sign for living, remember that? He was given a sign, you're going to live for 15 years. and that God would defend Jerusalem. Notice what God didn't promise him. He promised him that he would go up to the temple. And so he's saying, do I get a sign for that too? Do I get a sign that I'm going to go up to the temple, that I'll actually get that well, be better?

Now, we get into chapter 39. This again breaks into the last chapter, this section of Isaiah. Now we have An interesting description because what we see described here kind of gives a little more background. How did Hezekiah react with the extra 15 years that he'd gotten with the promise, I'll defend Jerusalem? How did he deal with it? It seems like God's promise of protection allowed Hezekiah to become presumptuous, to just assume upon God. It was a very careless thing for him to do, as we'll see here shortly.

This guy, Merodach-Baladan, or it's spelled Berodach-Baladan. I think the author or the scribe had a cold that day. You know, Berodach-Baladad. You know, anyway, something like that. He reigned actually twice as king of Babylon. There's lots of historical record for this fellow. And this would be during his second reign. At the end of his second reign as king of Babylon.

And since he was from Babylon, which is a major center of astronomy, it's possible that there's a connection between the sign given to Hezekiah and this fellow recognizing that, hey, something's happened here. Because if whatever took place had enough of an impact area wide, they would have seen that in Babylon, if it was, for example, an eclipse or some other distortion, possibly visible from Babylon.

Now, anyway, here's Hezekiah, and this Merodach-Baladan is riding him, and he pays a visit. Hezekiah is thinking that, oh, this guy might be an ally. He might be somebody who might be good to help me. Guess what? Does Hezekiah need help from an ally? Who's going to defend him? The Lord! He doesn't need an ally, and he doesn't need to make any compromises like he's going to. He is.

Isaiah asks a simple but revealing question after this visit from Merodach, Baladan. Hezekiah gives some open answers, except for what the men said. Did you notice that? Isaiah asked, what did they say? Hezekiah's response to that question, zip. He didn't answer that one. But it's enough for Isaiah to see and reveal what's going on.

There is a huge, big problem ahead. 2 Chronicles 32, 27-29 records, at least at some point, it may be this, maybe at another time, Hezekiah had immense riches and, at the end of that passage, for God had given him very great wealth. He had a lot to show. to impress Merodach-Baladan with. Here, verses 5 through 7, Hezekiah's lapse had not been and won't be the whole reason that Judah will be carried off, but it will make it worse.

Why? Think about this. If you're Merodach-Baladan and let's say you're pretending to be an ally, or considering it, and you're writing all this down, which of course they do in some clay tablet that's going to stick around for centuries. We still have a half a million clay tablets in that era from that area. So this is going to get recorded and he's going to go down, he's going to write down what is all this stuff that Hezekiah has that we can haul off to Babylon. What are his defensive equipments like? What defensive structures does he have? What has he done to preserve his water supply? What weaknesses does he have? What does he not have covered? You see the problem?

All of a sudden, someone that he thinks is an ally, has gotten perfect understanding of what can you take and how can I take it? Knowing exactly where to hit and what to grab when you get there. Now they know everything. They know all the assets, all the hardware.

Hezekiah's descendants would be deported, including his own son. His own son Manasseh hauled off to Babylon. The next king, King Jehoiakim, hauled off to Babylon. King Zedekiah hauled off to Babylon. This was going to hurt for a long time. Plus, there were three waves of deportations of the other people from Judah. This was going to hurt for a long time for a lot of people. Everything and everybody is going to get hauled off.

Imagine, here's Isaiah talking to Hezekiah. Hezekiah, do you realize what you've done? Everything that you have shown them is going to go to Babylon. It's not going to be here in Judah. All these people that you love and care about worked so hard to try to defend, all their descendants are going to Babylon, every last one. Do you realize what you've done? You have given them everything they need to haul all the stuff and all the people out of here. Here's Judah, one century, almost to the year after Hezekiah's death, the final hauling off of every last piece of treasure in Judah. It would all go to Babylon. All the people, all the royalty, all the paupers and peasants, every last one. It's all going to Babylon. This is phenomenal.

Hezekiah said to Isaiah, the word of the Lord which you have spoken is good. Huh? He heard the good news and he's looking at the brighter side. The longer term picture for he, His nation, his descendants, is not a good one. Not a good one at all. He's been a key part in making the near-term picture rosy, but revealing everything that the Babylonians need to haul all the stuff and all the people off, weakening his dependence on God as the defender of Judah. This is an amazing conclusion. There will be peace and truth in my days. This is code for, it's not my problem, right? That's what he's saying. It's not my problem. As long as I live, it'll be fine. It's after that, that things get really nasty, right? It's not my problem.

Hezekiah's viewpoint is extremely short-term, short-sighted, very selfish. He's set aside in this assessment of his all the awful things that are about to take place. There's one other thing. You notice that's where the verse stops. Hezekiah did not see the huge opportunity that was out there. Massive opportunity.

Could he have done differently? When he was about to die, what did he do? He prayed. The outcome appeared certain. And yet, he prayed, and the Lord changed the outcome. Couldn't he have done that here? Couldn't he have said, Lord, I realize that I blew it. And before, I acknowledge that you put my sins behind your back, out of sight. Can there be some mercy here? We have no evidence that he did that.

How about his own heir to the throne? My own son will be hauled off to Babylon. Did he think about it? Wouldn't this have been a good time to have him pursuing, aside from praying, passing on spiritual truth to his family? So that when they get hauled off to Babylon, because the Babylonians are going to brainwash you with Babylonian stuff. Remember the book of Daniel? Daniel's three friends got different names. So did Daniel. You don't get to keep your own name. You get a Babylonian name. You don't get to get called a name that you recognize. You get named after a Babylonian god. You get to eat Babylonian food and learn Babylonian ways.

Wouldn't this be a great time to pass along spiritual truth? After all, you've got 15 years guaranteed. How about you and me? What opportune moments do we have? Think about Hezekiah. This 15 years were not if years, were they? He got a guarantee, blank check guarantee, you're going to get 15 years no matter what you do. I'm going to defend this city no matter what you do or don't do.

Here is a man who lived downhill. He was the next house downhill from the temple. Here was a man who lived under the law which said, I will bless you if, and what did he get? Grace blessings. Not if. He got a phenomenal outpouring of grace, and what did he do with it?

It's not my problem. And yet, look at it. What opportune moments do we have? And by the way, are our opportune moments all of grace? Yeah. All of grace. Every one. We're saved by grace. We live by grace. We walk by grace. Grace all, grace every. Hezekiah had grace and did nothing with the opportunities. We have every minute that the Lord gives us is a grace opportunity. Grace.

Ephesians 5, 15 and 16, Therefore be careful how you walk. And this is after he told them that they've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Be careful how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the most of the time because the days are evil. Does that mean I have to walk around in trembling fear? Oh no, I might not make use of the time? No. Walk because of the position that you have.

It's guaranteed. Walk because of the blessings you have, just like Hezekiah had guaranteed 15 years. It's the grace that motivates. It's the grace that provides the opportunity. We have grace-given opportunities right in front of us. Is there any better time for us to walk in fellowship with the Lord, by the way, as a descendant of Hezekiah? Is there any better time than now to walk with Him, in intimate dependence upon Him? It's a grace-given opportunity. It's not by law, by grace. No matter what our earthly future holds, what could be better for now or in eternity than to walk with the Lord now?

It's a grace-given opportunity, just like Hezekiah had. We look at the genealogy. Here's Hezekiah. There's the hauling off to Babylon and the genealogy of Jesus Christ. This is from Matthew chapter 1. Your handout has a split for the sake of font size on two screens.

But then what we saw earlier, here is Jesus birth, the one who is grace given for us through Hezekiah. Yeah, the Lord's grace, even through a man that blew it. With Christ, we've been overwhelmingly flooded with grace. One of the things we pointed out when you're studying through Ephesians 2.7, God's grace is so overwhelming towards us, it will take eternity for him to reveal it all to us. Eon after century after age, again and again and again, his marvelous grace. We've been flooded with grace, grace that will take eternity to demonstrate That's actual demonstration. We will see God's grace made evident. And we have those grace-given moments until we see the Lord face-to-face.

Grace-given moments. Grace-given opportunities. Even better than Hezekiah's, I would say. While we ask the ladies who are going to do a special for us to come up and prepare, let me just take a minute to pray. Lord, as we look at what you have done in the life of Hezekiah, how you not only added the 15 years without condition, you of grace gave him a marvelous opportunity. You of grace gave him those times. And you of grace even promised that you would defend the city of Jerusalem out of your marvelous grace.

Lord, even so, we have been blessed. We have been blessed if we look at it more graciously than Hezekiah, because we've been blessed with every single spiritual blessing, not lacking one, in the heavenly places, untouchable and irreversible. How marvelously we've been blessed. And we just look, Lord, to You to give us wisdom in these grace-given moments as we walk with You day by day. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.