Open Your Eyes God (Isaiah 37:8-38)

Isaiah 37:8-38 (only reading selected verses of 8-20, 33-38) includes the prayer of Hezekiah when he called on the living God to defend Jerusalem against Sennacherib, king of Assyria, who had mocked the true God.  The prayer is counter-cultural.  In the Ancient Near East (ANE) people believed that each nation had a god that operated in their particular territory and that if your god was stronger than another then you might be able to defeat another nation.  Hezekiah did not learn to pray from the culture but instead insisted that the God of Israel was the God of all the nations, the only God who created all things.   We all know that God is a Spirit and thus has no eyes or ears and that God sees and hears and knows all things.  This, unlike the teaching of the culture, is true.  But Hezekiah did not learn to pray from a systematic theology textbook that relates truths without relationship.  Hezekiah learned how to pray from the Scriptures that describes God like we find at the end of Exodus 2.  We pray as if God were not paying attention and then call on him to act like He hears and sees and knows these things.  Jesus prayed in a similar way on the cross and God the Father answered on the third day.  So we can pray like Hezekiah and like the greater king Jesus, “Incline your ear God, and hear; open your eyes God, and see.”  We can pray this whenever see people mocking God’s word like Sennacherib did.  Whether that be done by fellow Presbyterians, by our state government (like with the legalization of homosexual marriage), or the general deterioration of our culture, or even (to take it up a notch-to say the least) by terrorists.  But we should always examine ourselves first — am I doing anything I do not want Jesus to see when He comes again?

New audio link.