Be careful

August 29, 2006

By Bob Caldwell

Be careful what you wish for. It might come true.

OK, so that’s not from the Bible. But it still has some truth to it, doesn’t it? The things we are often so desirous of sometimes turn out to be disappointing or even harmful.

King Hezekiah served God well. In fact, it is said of him that “there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him” (2 Kings 18:5, NIV). He removed the high places and idols throughout the land. He celebrated the first widespread Passover since Solomon’s time. In response to his prayer, God gave Judah a great victory over the powerful Assyrians.

But after he had reigned 14 years, Hezekiah took ill. Everyone recognized this was a potentially fatal condition, so they called upon Isaiah. The godly prophet was ushered into the king’s bedroom where he announced, “This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover” (2 Kings 20:1).

Hezekiah was devastated. He was only 40 years old. To die at such an age was hardly unusual in that day, but neither was it a full life. So he prayed a powerful prayer. He cried, “For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living — they praise you, as I am doing today; fathers tell their children about your faithfulness” (Isaiah 38:18,19).

God answered Hezekiah’s prayer and sent Isaiah back to let him know that he would have 15 more years to live, and God gave Hezekiah a miraculous sign to confirm it. So all was well. Or was it?

The only incident that the Bible mentions after Hezekiah’s illness was hardly to his credit. Rather than putting his entire trust in God, he played politics by welcoming envoys from the soon-to-rise neo-Babylonian Empire. Isaiah rebuked him and predicted that one day Babylon would take away everything they saw.

Hezekiah reigned a total of 29 years. When he died, he was succeeded by his son, 12-year-old Manasseh. Do the math. This son had not even been born when Hezekiah took sick. The Bible does not say so, but I wonder if lack of an heir was a driving factor for Hezekiah’s grief. Perhaps he worried how the house of David would be able to put a king on the throne. Maybe a ne’er-do-well brother was next in line.

If the need for an heir was on Hezekiah’s mind, he got what he wanted. Within three years a son was born, someone who would become king when he died. You already see the problem, don’t you? The Bible records that Manasseh was the most evil king yet. His commitment to idolatry was the final straw for God to send Judah into captivity.

If God knew this about Manasseh, why did he answer Hezekiah’s prayer? I don’t know. Perhaps Judah was going to go into captivity eventually anyway, so it did not matter exactly who brought that to pass.

The point is, Hezekiah prayed for more life. But when he got it he did not seem to do his best to justify his prayer to God. Besides the unwise political alliances, he did not train up his son properly, nor give Manasseh godly advisors to prevent the catastrophe that befell Judah.

With what motives do we pray for a miracle from God? That we would be comfortable? Or that God would be glorified?

James 4:3 declares: “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” I believe God often does not answer our prayers as we would like in order to spare us trouble.

So what do we do? Check our hearts and our motives and assure ourselves that when we pray we ask “according to his will” (1 John 5:14). When we do this, we can be confident that the answer to our prayer will match the results of Proverbs 10:22, in that “he adds no trouble to it.”

Bob Caldwell is a Ph.D. student at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Mo.