Ob and In:
(1) Repeated phrase:
20: 3 “Please, LORD. Remember how I have served you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion, and how I have carried out your will.” Then Hezekiah wept bitterly.
v.4a Isaiah had not yet left the middle courtyard when the LORD’s message came to him, 5 “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people: ‘This is what the LORD God of your ancestor David has said: “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears...
v.4a Isaiah had not yet left the middle courtyard when the LORD’s message came to him, 5 “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people: ‘This is what the LORD God of your ancestor David has said: “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears...
(BKC) The king’s appeal in prayer was effective with God. Before Isaiah had left the palace on his way home the LORD gave him a second message: to return to the king with word announcing a postponement of his death. Hezekiah had behaved like a true son of David in the way he reacted to God’s first message. Hezekiah’s prayer (what he said) and his tears (how he felt about what he said) moved God to heal him.
22: 13 “Go, seek an oracle from the LORD for me and the people—for all Judah
19 ‘You displayed a sensitive spirit and humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard how I intended to make this place and its residents into an appalling example of an accursed people. You tore your clothes and wept before me, and I have heard you,’ says the LORD.
Reflection: Have you thought about God watching over you about how you are reacting to Him and His Word like He watched Josiah? He even knew what was in the heart of Josiah!
Have you thought about God really hearing your prayer and how you prayed like what He did to Hezekiah? He did not just react but He reacted right the way.
Are you encouraged to pray and pray with the right attitudes?
(2) Even though the disaster and destruction would certainly come to Jerusalem because of what his grandfather did 21:12-15, but Josiah would not personally experience that.
22:16 “This is what the LORD has said: ‘I am about to bring disaster on this place and its residents, all the things in the scroll that the king of Judah has read.
20 ‘Therefore I will allow you to die and be buried in peace. You will not have to witness all the disaster I will bring on this place.’
(BKC) Josiah would experience God’s mercy personally, however, because he had responded to God’s Word and had humbled himself before the LORD when he heard the Law of Moses. God said that the king would die and be buried before judgment would descend on Judah. His death in 609 was four years before Nebuchadnezzar’s first attack on Jerusalem in 605.
Reflection: God is fair to us. He has to judge evil but He also cares about individuals. Although we have evils around us and we cannot stop them we do not have to be part of it. God knows very well and He judges accordingly. Although Josiah's repentantance had "no use" to the history of his country his repententance saved himself. How about us? Do we choose to go with the flow? Or do we repent and experience God's mercy personally?
Audrey
Comments