Praying for God’s Glory Isaiah 37:14-20 Introduction Good morning! It’s great to be here with you this morning. If you are to look at the screen behind me you will see that the title of message this morning is “Praying for God’s Glory”. I want to begin by letting you know that I feel somewhat inadequate to stand before you to teach about how we should pray. As I look around this room, there are numerous people whom I know would have a lot more insight into the topic of prayer because they are prayer warriors. However, God has been placing the idea of prayer on my heart for a while now, mostly because I know that I am inadequate in my own prayer life and because I know that to live in a deep and connecting way with my creator, prayer is an essential. It’s funny how God works, I was slated to speak twice this past summer and one of those times I was going to talk about prayer. However, with the death of Nate that got changed some and I only spoke once, and I didn’t speak on prayer. So a couple of weeks ago when James asked me to speak this Sunday, I began thinking of things to speak on and nothing came to mind, except prayer. But feeling very inadequate I didn’t want to get up here and talk about something that I struggle with. So last week I asked James if there was a part of Isaiah that I could cover. And he said that I could go through Isaiah 36 & 37 and glean some other applications from the life of Hezekiah. So I read through chapter 36 and started into 37 when I arrived at verse 14 & 15, it was like God was hitting me between the eyes. Isaiah 37:14-15 says, “Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD. I knew right then that there was no running from it, so today we are talking about prayer. I don’t know where each one of you is at in your walk with God. But I think it is a safe assumption to say that a lot of us struggle when it comes to prayer. We know that we should pray, and quite often we feel guilty that we don’t pray more, but it seems like prayer doesn’t. Maybe we sit down with the intention to pray for 20 minutes and after a few moments our mind has wandered on to something else and we are frustrated by our lack of attention. Maybe our prayer only consists of coming before God when we need his help for something. Maybe prayer is frightening because when we come before God, open and honest, we know there are things in our lives that he will ask us to change and we know that this might be painful. I don’t know why or if you struggle to pray, but I do believe God’s word has some clear direction for us, as we journey to know God more. The Text I’ve already read Isaiah 37:14-15, but I’d like to invite you to turn with me to Isaiah 37 as we look at the rest of this passage. Again, starting in verse 14, (read 14-20)! Background A little background here helps to put this passage into context. Last week, James was talking about Hezekiah’s illness which the Lord saved him from, which is found in Isaiah 38. However, if we are to follow the events of Hezekiah’s life chronologically, chapter 38 and 39 would come before chapters 36 and 37 of Isaiah. So Hezekiah has already been healed of the illness that Isaiah said would claim his life. Now as James has already shown us, the Assyrians are the world superpower of the day. And during the years of Isaiah and Hezekiah, Assyria is moving throughout the ancient Near East, conquering and subjecting the various nations in that part of the world. Israel to the North of Judah has already been destroyed and carried off into exile by Assyria and now the Assyrian King Sennacherib has set his sights on conquering Jerusalem because they have revolted against Assyria’s authority. Isaiah 36 begins with, “In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah’s reign, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah and captured them. So the Assyrian’s have already destroyed most of the Judean countryside, and now they have their eyes firmly set on Jerusalem, the capital of Judah. Verse 2 of chapter 36 continues, (read to verse 3)! So Sennacherib has sent a large army to intimidate Hezekiah into surrendering before the Assyrians. A small aside here! It is ironic that the place where Hezekiah’s officials meet the Assyrian commander, “the aquaduct of the Upper Pool on the road to the Washerman’s Field”, is the same place where Isaiah had told, Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father to trust God, rather then turning to the Assyrians for help when Israel and Aram where planning to attack Judah, in Isaiah chapter 7. But Ahaz choose to pay tribute to Assyria and now his choice comes full circle as his son is faced with problem of the invading Assyrians. Here again, is example of the choosing to trust in man rather then in God and then facing the consequences of such a poor choice! In the remainder of chapter 36, the commander of the Assyrian command launches into a calculated attack on the psychological resolve of the people of Jerusalem. We won’t read it in full, but I encourage you to read it this week. But for now here is a summary of what he is says to them! • Where is your confidence coming from, your army is no match for ours • Don’t think for a moment that Egypt will rescue you because they can’t and won’t • Mocking them, he says even if we were to give you two thousand horses to ride, you still wouldn’t stand a chance against us • Your God has told me to come and attack you • Hezekiah is misleading you when he tells you that God will save you • No other god has saved any other nation from the wrath of the Assyrian’s, surely you will be no different In the beginning of chapter 37 Hezekiah hears this report from his officials and is terrified, so he sends them to find Isaiah to ask him to pray for those who are living in Jerusalem. Isaiah responds by telling Hezekiah that God will deal with Sennacherib and the Assyrians and that he will distract them for a while. But then Hezekiah receives a letter from the Assyrian King himself, verse 9 of chapter 37 says, (read verse 9-12)! Not a very encouraging letter for Hezekiah, and the people of Judah. Sennacherib basically says, I’m coming for you and there is nothing your god can do to stop me. Because no other god has saved their people from my wrath, yours will be no different. The Message And so we arrive at our text for this morning. King Hezekiah receives this letter from Sennacherib and goes into the temple to pray! I believe that it is in Hezekiah’s response of prayer, in the face of this insurmountable enemy, that we can be challenged to pray in the way that Hezekiah did. And that in this we learn how to honour and glorify God in even the most desperate of situations. So let’s start again in verse 14, “Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before him. And Hezekiah prayed.” 1.) Hezekiah’s immediate response was to pray! Now, we might read that and just assume that this would be Hezekiah’s natural response. But think back to what James has already taught us from the book of Isaiah. Again and again, the theme of trusting in man versus trusting in God comes out in Isaiah. Hezekiah’s own forefathers had time after time, been faced with similar dilemma’s and had chosen rather then to trust in God, to go and seek the help of another nation to solve the problem they were facing. Hezekiah’s response to the threat was not to call together all of his political and military advisors to devise a plan to defuse this potentially lethal situation. Hezekiah’s immediate response was to pray! And I love how it says that he went about it. He went into the temple and “spread it out before the LORD.” Hezekiah didn’t come before God and pray nicely worded good sounding prayers. Hezekiah, came before God and unloaded his heart his worry and concerns, he “spread it out before the LORD.” Those two verses challenge me in a two ways: 1. It challenges what my immediate response is when faced with a trying situation. I don’t know about you, but more often then not, my first response is not to pray but rather to see what resources around me can help me out of my current predicament. We are incredibly resourceful people, and sometimes that is to our detriment because it means that we trust in our own abilities before we trust in God. Now sure, once I’ve exhausted all of my own resources and I’ve not yet come up with a solution, then I might turn to God, but usually my first response is to try to figure this out on my own, leaving God as the default option, rather then the primary response. So I’m challenged by Hezekiah’s response of prayer, to turn first to God and to trust in Him rather then my own ingenuity, abilities and resources. 2. Secondly, I’m challenged by Hezekiah, to bare my heart on my sleeve. I think far too often we are afraid to let God know what is really going on in our lives. We might pray, pretty and pious prays that sound good and nice, but in reality they don’t even begin to show the things that are really going in our hearts. I’m challenged by this because who do I think I’m fooling when I’m not honest in prayer. Does God not already know my heart, why then am I afraid to bare it to Him? Hezekiah response of prayer is a natural reaction and an honest plea, because Hezekiah realized that God alone was the only one worth putting trust in. The challenge for us is the same, trust in God and not in man! 2.) Hezekiah’s prayer glorifies God! The second main point that Hezekiah’s prayer raises, is that it glorifies God. Verse 16 says, “O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.” The way Hezekiah begins his prayer is the same way that Jesus teaches his disciples and us to pray. “Our Father in heaven, Holy be your name!” Hezekiah in his prayer is not reminding God who he is. God knows exactly who he is, but as Hezekiah glorifies God, he is reminding himself who God is. Philip Yancey in his book, Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference, says that, “Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God’s point of view.” As Hezekiah glorifies God in his prayer, he is aligning himself with the reality of who God is. Look at the phrases he uses to describe God. 1.) “LORD Almighty” – which literally translates in the Hebrew as Yahweh, which means the mighty warrior, God of the heavenly armies. A fitting title for God, in light of the fact that Hezekiah is facing the most terrifying army on earth. 2.) “God of Israel” – is a claim of the promise that God step into space and time to create for himself a people through whom he would save the world. Again a fitting title as only a remnant in Jerusalem remains, and they are seemingly facing annihilation at the hands of the Assyrians. 3.) “enthroned between the cherubim” – the cherubim were the two creatures which sat on top of the ark of the covenant, and it was here that the presence of God rested. Another claim to the promise that God is with his people! 4.) “you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth” – claiming God’s lordship over every Kingdom, even the invading Assyrians! 5.) “You have made the heaven and the earth” – as if all the other statements were not enough, Hezekiah, proclaims that God is the creator, reinforcing every statement he has already made. Hezekiah’s prayer begins with him realigning himself with who God is, and it is powerful. Each statement he makes about God, drives home the point more and more, that God is the one in control. But for many of us, this is where we struggle. We struggle with the reality that it is God who is in control and not us. We don’t know how to pray because to us God is there to play our servant, answering our requests because we know what we need. But as Hezekiah pray’s, we see that he is less concerned with his needs being met then he is with glorifying God. And so as Jesus, taught, let us pray, “Our father in heaven Holy is your name!” Being reminded that God, the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, he who is enthroned between the Cherubim, the God of all kingdoms, the Creator, is in control. 3.) Hezekiah’s prayer seeks God’s will! As Hezekiah gets down to laying his request before God, he does it in a way that really, takes the focus off of what he is asking and puts to focus on who he is asking. Verse 17 says, “Give ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O LORD and see; listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God.” And then continued in verse 20 is his actually request to God. “Now, O LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O LORD, are God.” I believe that more then his own deliverance, Hezekiah is praying that God would stand up to the blasphemy that Sennacherib has spoken against Him. More then Hezekiah is concerned with safety of his city and people, he is concerned that God’s name be honoured and glorified, because he alone is the living God. Again, Hezekiah’s prayer bares a strong resemblance to the Lord’s Prayer. “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What a powerful response in the face of an insurmountable problem. A while back Judi and I were reading a marriage book and this following story stood out to both of us. Jim Burns tells this story about his friend and mentor Jon Campbell: Jon was a “behind the scenes” kind of guy who was extremely instrumental win the broadcast ministries of James Dobson, ChucK Swindoll, Billy Graham, Joni Eareckson Tada, Chuck Colson, Dennis Rainey and others. Most people who knew him forgot that he had suffered physically for a span of twenty-nine years from two bouts of Hodgkin’s disease. He was told after the first bout of this cancer that he wouldn’t live until Christmas of that year…. He lived some of his most productive and fulfilling years , both with his work and his marriage to his wonderful wife, Peggy, after the diagnosis. He did all this while living with pain so intense that it took concentrated effort to get out of bed. I was shocked to get a letter from him last year that read, Above all else, God is God. He is Holy. He is Sovereign. He is loving beyond our comprehension. He custom packages life for each of us for our good and His praise. It is within this brief yet unquestioned framework that Peg and I share the latest of what God has entrusted to us… As a result of some of my recent challenges I had an endoscope procedure last week. I’d been experiencing some difficulty in swallowing and keeping food down. The pathology came back yesterday. By God’s sovereign hand, He has asked Peg and I to embrace the cancer experience a third time. I was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma-esophageal cancer. Obviously, we’re a bit taken back, yet at the same time, we know every facet of our lives is to be given back to Him, with our trust and praise. It struck me as I read this again, what a powerful prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” really is! As we pray that, we are praying for God’s glory. We are praying that through whatever the circumstances, whatever the joy or the struggle, whatever God guides us through, that it is for his honour and glory, that his will would be done. That is a powerful prayer. And this is how Hezekiah prayed in the face of enormous physical pressure. That God’s name would be glorified, and that his Will would be done. Conclusion The Isaiah commentator Barry G. Webb, has this to say about Hezekiah’s prayer. Hezekiah’s prayer is so magnificent because it arises from a deep and true understanding of who God is, and is fundamentally an act of worship. Such praying lifts people out of themselves and into the presence of God. And in that context, present problems are not lost sight of; they are just seen from a new perspective, and the cry for deliverance becomes a cry that God’s kingdom may come and his will be done. The context of worship purges the cry of all pathetic self-interest and binds together the one who cries and the one who hears in a common desire and a common purpose. If only we could learn to pray like this, what times we would have on our knees…” Hezekiah has a lot to teach us about prayer. His immediate response of prayer, challenges us to not trust in our own resourcefulness, but rather to trust in God and to honestly lay before him all that is going on in our lives. The way he seeks God’s honour and glory, invites to do the same. Proclaiming the promises that God’s word has spoken of who he is, which serves as a constant and necessary reminder that God is in control. And finally to pray that God’s will would be done for his honour and glory, because in the end God’s will is far better then anything that we could plan for ourselves. So I invite you this morning to look at your own prayer life, to measure how you pray in light of the way that Hezekiah prayed and the way that Jesus taught us to prayer. I would challenge each one of us to look again at the way that we communicate with our Creator. So that we all might, learn again to pray for God’s glory! Amen!