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A brief bit of encouragement for the journey from God’s Word.
Speaker: Mike Gottemoller
Music: “Awaken the Dawn” by Stanton Lanier
https://www.stantonlanier.com
CCLI #1760549
- 00:16
- Good Saturday morning, people of faith. This weekend's reading starts in Isaiah, chapters 32 through 35, then continues with 2
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- Kings, chapter 20, Isaiah, chapters 38 and 39, and then 2
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- Chronicles, chapter 32. What I'm going to do is
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- I'm going to recount what the Bible shares with us about Hezekiah and Isaiah and their interaction here, and then we're going to look a little more closely at one specific verse within this context.
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- So what's happening here is Isaiah goes to Hezekiah, and Hezekiah is sick, and Isaiah tells
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- Hezekiah, get everything in order because you're going to die, and Hezekiah responds by crying out to the
- 01:14
- Lord, and the Lord relents, tells Isaiah what to do to go back to him, puts the lump of figs on Hezekiah's boil, and it goes away, and Hezekiah's life is extended, not without issue, because he does have issues with that after that, but he remains a good king overall, and let me read to you now from,
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- I'll read from 2 Kings, but what happens in 2 Kings is exactly what happens in Isaiah.
- 01:52
- These are almost word for word exactly the same. In those days, this is chapter 20 of 2
- 02:01
- Kings, 2 Kings, Hezekiah was sick and near death, and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, went to him and said to him, thus says the
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- Lord, set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.
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- Then he turned his face toward the wall and prayed to the Lord, saying, remember now,
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- 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 everything he said here so far is very good.
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- When presented with need, it is a good thing to cast our cares upon the
- 02:49
- Lord, for he's the only one who truly can answer our prayers. Whatever else or whoever else you may pray to, they will not and cannot answer, and so that part is a good thing, and then at the very end of that, at the end of verse 3, it says, and Hezekiah wept bitterly, and I have to say that my perspective on this has been changed over the last month or so.
- 03:23
- When I look at this, when I previously looked at this,
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- I thought, what right does Hezekiah have to weep bitterly?
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- Is not his position as king been granted to him by the
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- Lord? Has not the good things that he's been able to accomplish in the
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- Lord's hands? Hezekiah as a believer, shouldn't he be taking the approach that whatever happens is under the
- 03:58
- Lord's control, under God's sovereignty? Well, yeah, he probably should have, and yet at the same time,
- 04:07
- I feel like in the last month, I have gained a different point of view from the
- 04:15
- Lord's hands, and not that the Lord is speaking to me directly or anything, but roughly a month ago, my wife got sick, and I have to say that there have been times when
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- I have cried out and perhaps even wept bitterly wondering why or what is going on, and it reminds me of what
- 04:42
- Satan said to the Lord about Job and take his health away and he will do these things, and so when your health goes away or the health of a loved one goes away and you aren't able to do what you had planned on doing or gets in the way of things, it can change your perspective, and to weep bitterly over those things is not necessarily the right thing to do, but casting your care upon the
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- Lord is the right thing to do. I guess just now,
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- I happen to have a bit more sympathy for Hezekiah's response. Let's pray.
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- Heavenly Father, help us to call upon you, to cast our cares upon you, for there is no one else who is both sovereign and supreme who can hear and answer our prayers.
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- Help us to walk faithfully with you. Let us be a people that call upon you in any sort of need for every sort of need.
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- It's in your Son's name, Jesus, we pray. Amen. Have an excellent day, people of faith.