Fix You
Seeing the Sacred in the Secular

Below is an automated transcript of this message

”When you try your best and you don’t succeed. When you get what you want but not what you need. When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep. And the tears come streaming down your face. When you lose something you can’t replace. When you love someone but it goes way…I will try to fix you.” Good morning, church! Are you ready for another sermon in the series called, “Seeing the Sacred in the Secular?” Here’s what we’ve been talking about in the last few weeks: we’ve been playing a secular song and then we’ve been looking at it to see the truth that it points to but doesn’t completely fulfill. Here’s what we believe: we believe that all truth is God’s truth. Even people far from God can be inspired by God and by His creation. Sometimes, when we listen to a secular song , we hear something there that would be better fulfilled if only the person who was singing it and wrote it knew about Jesus.

The same is in this song, “Fix You,” that we just listened to. It was first released by a group called Coldplay in 2005. It deals with trying to help someone who was dealing with grief and sorrow, someone who was hurting. Although Chris Martin, who’s the lead singer for that group, hadn’t really spoken in detail about his inspiration for the song, we can kind of pick up from some of the things he has said. For instance, it is said that during the year they were writing this song, his wife at that time , Gwyneth Paltrow, had lost her father that year. In USA Today, Martin discussed this. He said, “My father-in-law, Bruce Paltrow, bought this big keyboard just before he died. Noone had ever plugged it in, but after he died , we plugged it in, and there was this incredible organ sound.” Did you hear it at the beginning of this song? He said it inspired him; it was a sound he’d never heard before. All of these songs poured out through inspiration.Then, he goes on to tell Mojo magazine that this particular song almost single handedly got us through a really difficult number of years. “Fix You” was written during a time when his wife had lost her father. Perhaps he was writing it thinking, Maybe I’ll try to fix you.

Have you ever had a friend or a loved one who was going through a time of sorrow or grief and you wish you could fix it for them? If you could just push a button, you know, or get a doctor to fix it. Maybe it’s a friend or a loved one who has an addiction. Maybe it’s a brother, a sister, a spouse or a teenager with an addiction. You love them and you know them so well, but now they’re in the middle of this addiction. It’s like they’re an alien; you don’t know them and you just wish you could fix it. Maybe someone you know is going through a time of loss and you want to fix it. Maybe it’s you; maybe you’re here today and even before you came to church today, you had tears streaming down your face. Maybe you’re struggling with an addiction, or you’ve had a recent loss. Maybe you’re lonely, you’re grieving, you’re in sorrow and you just wish someone could fix it or someone could fix you.

Well, it just so happens there was a man in the Old Testament named King Hezekiah. King Hezekiah had been given bad news on two accounts. One, his city was being besieged by the Assyrians and the other, he lay on his sick bed and he’d been told he was dying. He cried out. He had tears pouring down his face and he cried out. I believe as we look at 2 Kings today, we’ll see that King Hezekiah knew that there was only One who could fix him. He knew that only God could fix his problem.

I believe that today the same is true for us; others may try to fix you. You may try to fix someone else, but you can’t do it. You can’t even fix yourself. There is only One who can truly repair our brokenness, our grief and our sorrow. There is One who can truly fix us.

We’re going to be looking at 2 Kings today. Get your seatbelts on, because we have five points. Some of you have looked at the bulletin already and have thought about leaving. Come on, it’s gonna be great. If you’re watching online, it’s going to be great. Don’t check out.

There are five reasons why God is the only One who can truly fix you. Let’s look at the text. 2 Kings 20:1-7 (ESV) 1 “In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’” 2 Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, saying, 3 “Now, O LORD, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4 And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the LORD came to him: 5 “Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the LORD, 6 and I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.” 7 And Isaiah said, “Bring a cake of figs. And let them take and lay it on the boil, that he may recover.”

Why God is the only one who can truly fix us: Because He is… 1. … the God who hears us.

Do you believe that God hears us when we pray? We’re going to be looking at verse five and six, primarily, today to find out our five reasons. This is where God told Isaiah to go back to tell Hezekiah he would be healed. He told him five reasons. Two of them are “I have” statements and three of them are “I will” statements. We will deal with the two “I have” statements first; these are things God has done and has been doing. And then, there’s three “I will” promises.

You may be wondering how I came up with this. I study the scripture; the points are in the scripture. I see, five times, God saying, “I have” and “I will.” That is why there are five points today. Circle this: “I have heard your prayer,” found in verse five. Tell Hezekiah I have heard his prayer.

Do you believe that God hears you when you pray? Some of you are praying for something. You’ve been praying for a while and you’re thinking, My prayers must be bouncing off the ceiling. I don’t see an answer. It’s up to God; the timing is up to God. Here’s what the Scripture teaches us: He hears you. He hears you. Keep praying. He hears you. God is listening. He hears you. He is a God who hears.

Hezekiah is the thirteenth king of Judah. Judah is the Southern Kingdom. It took place after the division of the two kingdoms. Israel is the Northern Kingdom and Judah is the Southern Kingdom. Hezekiah is the thirteenth king in the line of David. The Bible says of him that he was more zealous for the Lord than any of the previous kings. This is a godly man, so, when he makes this claim in his prayer, he doesn’t ask for healing. He doesn’t ask to be set free from the Assyrians. He asks that the Lord will please remember him. Don’t forget him. He says, 3 “Now, O LORD, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” Basically , he doesn’t make a false claim. If you read about Hezekiah he says, I’ve been living for you. This is not false. Just remember that, Lord.

Hezekiah has bad news coming from every direction, you know. They say, “trouble comes in pairs” sometimes; he’s surrounded by enemies and he’s sick on his bed. He calls his great friend, Isaiah the prophet, perhaps one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament. Surely he’ll have a good word for me. I’ve got the physicians around me. He’s the king. He can bring any kind of medicine there, but he’s still sick. Isaiah comes in and gives him the bad news. Isaiah says, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’”

Have you ever had a loved one hear that kind of news from the doctor? You’re in the final stage; call the family in. Isaiah had to give him the bad news. God said you’re not going to recover. Brother, get your house in order. He is lying there sick. It says in verse one, “at the point of death.” Okay, now we know it’s the point of death because Isaiah confirms it.

Later, in verse seven, it refers to a boil that had broken out on him. Now we don’t know what caused this. It could have been the beginnings of leprosy, which was terminal in those days. It could have been where a cancer had broken through, or some sort of melanoma. Whatever it was, it wasn’t just a common boil. It was something that was going to kill him. He had a deadly disease. He was dying.

The book of Isaiah is the first of the Prophet books. It’s the same Isaiah who preached during the days of Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz, kings of Judah, and then, Hezekiah. He died during the reign of Hezekiah’s son, Manesseh, who, ironically, was considered the most evil king that Judah had ever had. Go figure; the most righteous was Hezekiah and his son was the most evil. Although it’s not mentioned in the Bible, some Jewish historians suggest that Manesseh actually had Isaiah killed. It would have fit his character based on what we read of Manesseh.

This is the Isaiah that comes to Hezekiah. He says, “Thus saith the Lord…” May I say to you, that that is my desire when I come. I do not desire to give you my opinion. I desire to tell you what the book says. When I preach, I pray that I preach in a prophetic voice, which is not Gary talking. You don’t need to hear my opinion anyway. We all have opinions, and none of them are worth very much, are they? We don’t need to hear another man’s opinion. We need to hear the Lord; “Thus saith the Lord.”

Whenever Isaiah gave that word to Hezekiah, it said Hezekiah turned his face to the wall. Why do you think he turned his face to the wall? The physicians couldn’t heal him. Isaiah brings the bad news. Ladies might not immediately get this, but the men will get this: We don’t like to have other people see us cry. Men like to go hide somewhere and cry because we don’t like to show weakness. And so, here’s the king of Judah; he’s already sick. He’s got the Syrians at the gate and then his prophet comes in and says, Get your house in order, You’re going to die. He turns his face to the wall and he says, “Lord remember me,” and weeps bitterly, with tears pouring down his face. Who can fix this? He turns to the only One who can. He doesn’t want Isaiah, the physicians and the servants to see him, but they hear him. He turns his face to the wall, and he cries bitterly.

Have you ever done that? You don’t know where to turn, so you cry your eyes out. That’s what he does; he says, Lord, remember me, and weeps bitterly. God heard his prayer. I don’t know why God waited for Isaiah to get to the middle court. It said Isaiah left the king’s bedroom, he’s leaving the palace and he’s in the middle court. Then the Lord says, Go back, go back and tell him this. He he goes back. says, Does God change His mind, and apparently, so quickly? I know this is a question that sometimes we ask, Do our prayers change God’s mind? I’m not sure about the answer to that.

Theologians have all kinds of possible answers. One is, they say God’s will is like a target, and He has, at the bullseye, His perfect will. But if you hit the target somewhere, that’s His permissive will. If you miss the target, you are outside His will. That’s one way that might help some of us to think about it. So, was it God’s perfect will for Hezekiah to live? I don’t know.

The Bible rarely answers our “Why” questions. That is, mostly, what you come to me with is. ”Why” questions. I have to say, as a pastor who says, Thus, saith the Lord, I don’t see why here. All I can do is do the same thing you do; try to suppose why.

Here’s my supposition for the “why:” I think sometimes God allows us to go through suffering in order to deepen our commitment to Him so that we cry out in prayer like we never have before. Then he brings us through it and we’re better than we ever were before because we went through it.

God decided Hezekiah was not going to die after all. God heard his prayer. Isaiah, go back and tell him. The psalmist David was confident that the Lord hears us. In Psalm, chapter four, he says this, Psalm 4:3 (ESV) “ … the LORD hears when I call to him.” Do you know that today? Do you know that the Lord hears you when you call to Him? The Lord hears you.

It says in 1 John 5:14-15 (ESV) 14 “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”

God hears you; keep praying. We have been praying a long time. God wants you to learn something; keep praying. Keep praying. He’s listening. That’s the first reason why God’s the only one that can truly fix us. He’s the only one that truly hears us. Here’s the second reason:

Why God is the only one who can truly fix us: Because He is…

2. … the God who sees us.

Notice what he says here. This is his second “I have” statement. It says, “… I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you.” God saw Hezekiah turn his face to the wall. He saw his tears. Isn’t it wonderful that you don’t cry alone. The Lord sees your tears. Wecould think about His name. “El Shama” is the name for the God who hears. “El Roi” is the name for the God who sees. I heard someone laugh. I’m not referring to the dog on the Jetsons. It’s not that Elroy. God was named “El Roi” by Hagar, the concubine of Abraham, who went and hid in the wilderness to get away from Abrahams’s wife, Sarah, because they were not getting along after Hagar had become pregnant with Ishmael. The Lord told Hagar to go back. She named God, “El Roi,” in Hebrew because He saw her.

Now, why does He see us? Not only does He see our tears, but He doesn’t see them from a distance. He’s felt our grief. He has cried tears with us. Here’s your opportunity to learn a verse of the Bible. Some of you may think you have a hard time memorizing , but you can memorize this one; it’s the shortest verse in the Bible. It is found in John, chapter 11, “Jesus wept.” If you don’t know anything about Jesus, know this: He knows your pain. “Jesus wept.”

Why did Jesus weep? He was coming to the graveside of Lazarus, his friend. Lazarus’ two sisters, Martha and Mary, came to Jesus; Mary came weeping. When Jesus is getting ready to raise Lazarus from the dead, he’s not crying over Lazarus; He’s crying because the women are crying and his heart is so tender He cries with them. “Jesus wept;” He knows our pain. He knows our suffering.

It says in Hebrews 4:15 (ESV) “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses…” Jesus is our high priest; the high priest has to come from us. So Jesus was sent to us to be a human, to be like us, and to be tempted as we are, yet without sin . He came and He took on our sin, our pain, our suffering and our tears. When God sees our tears, He knows our tears because of Jesus.

David writes this in Psalm 56:8 (NLT) “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” God is interested in my pain and my tears. He sees my tears.

I don’t know how many parents we have in the house. There must be a lot of you because a lot of kids are next door. I remember when we were raising our three, especially, when we brought that first one home. When they would cry, it was the cutest thing we ever heard. Then, after about four or five nights in a row of no sleep, it’s no longer cute. Can I get a witness? My wife was at the first service this morning and she was shaking her head like it was still cute, but she has infinite patience. She has the patience of Job. God is still working on pastor Gary. You all pray for me; if I lose a lot of sleep, I get grumpy like an old grizzly. I’m trying to grow; God’s trying to grow me. I still need that T shirt; somebody needs to make me that T shirt that says, “under construction.” God still has got me under construction. I get kind of impatient, but God doesn’t. He keeps up with every time you cry. He records it in His book. He never made you with that in mind that you would suffer, but sin has brought suffering into this world. As long as we’re in this world, there will be tears. God sees you and you’re not crying alone.

In his book, “Weapons of Grace: God Is Aware Of Every Tear You Cry,” the author Josh Powell, writes, “Have you ever thought about the reason we cry? Why would God create a physical act to coincide with our emotional feelings? One reason may be for the social aspect it provides. Think about how difficult pain is when you are alone in it. Tears communicate to others your need for support and love. So in one way, God’s designing of tears was actually a design born from His care for us. That tears would symbolize “I’m hurting” to those near us. If they communicate our pain to those around us, how much more to God?” Praying, with tears, touches the heart of God perhaps like no other prayer. He bottles them up and He records them in his book. He hears you and He sees you; sometimes it helps just knowing that.

But God’s not finished. It helps a lot to know that He hears your prayers, He sees your tears and He understands. Do you know this? Those are the first two reasons. Let’s hear about the third reason.

Why God is the only one who can truly fix us: Because He is…

3. … the God who heals us.

Now, we’re at those three. “I will” statements. He said, “I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears.” Then in verse five, here comes the word I’m trying to bring back into modern English. It’s the word, “behold.” I like that word. We don’t use it a lot. Behold, I’m preaching to you right now. Verse 5 says, “Behold, I will heal you.” Wake up; your prayers are answered. I will heal you.

I was talking about the same word last week, when we read about Naaman the leper. It said ”But now, behold, I know I thought like this before, but now I know.” He used the name, “behold,” twice. I had someone send me a photo of their mantle. They have block letters that spell out “Behold.” She told me, Pastor, I’m trying to help you bring the word, “behold” back.

The word, “behold,” hasn’t happened yet. Here comes the word of the Lord, “I will heal you.” That’s a promise; it is something that hasn’t happened yet, but it will. God says it will.

Do you believe that God has a lot of promises? In the Hebrew, the name of God that says God heals is “Jehovah. Rapha.” We see this in Exodus 15: 26 , where it is first revealed. You won’t see it in English; it’s in Hebrew. There’s no “j” sound in Hebrew, so it’s more like a “yah.” “Jehovah Rapha,” the God who heals. He gave the name, “Jehovah Rapha,” to Moses. I am the Lord who heals you.

I saw something else here; He says “I will heal you on the third day.” Did you see that? Behold, I will heal you on the third day.” Now listen, I don’t know how you read the Old Testament, but I read the Old Testament through the “lens” of Jesus. I look for Jesus on every page. And so when I saw “the third day,” “on the third day I will heal you, and you shall go up…” That pointed to Jesus for me. I see it there. You know, when Jesus was asked by the Pharisees to give them a sign to prove that He was the Christ, that He was the Messiah. He told them that the only sign He would give was of Jonah, who was in the belly of the fish for three days. He will be crucified and will be in the grave for three days, but on the third day He shall rise.

He says to Hezekiah, “Behold, I will heal you,” and the healing will be so immediate, powerful and miraculous that you’ll get up and walk around on the third day and go to church. Three days from now, you’ll get up and go to the temple. I like to look for Jesus on every page because He’s there if you look closely. This overcomes a problem in the Levitical law; the Bible has a whole book called Leviticus, a book of law. If you read Leviticus, chapter 13, you’ll see the problem.Don’t read chapter 13 while you’re at the meal. Read it at some other time; it describes all of these skin diseases and how they look. But in that chapter it says that if you have a boil, you’re not allowed to go to the temple because you’re unclean until it goes away. The chapter is very descriptive (if there’s any evidence of it, if there’s anything coming out of it or anything, you are unclean and you’re not allowed to go to temple.) You have to go to the priest and present yourself.

“…on the third day you will go up to the house of the Lord.” Don’t miss this. Three days from now, there will be no evidence that you had a sickness. You’ll be able to show yourself to the priest you’ll be able to go into the temple. This is a miraculous healing that’s coming Hezekiah’s way.

Verse six says, “and I will add fifteen years to your life.” I don’t know if I’d want to know that or not. I asked some people at first service about this. I asked them, “Would you like to know if you had X amount of years left?” A lot of people said, “I don’t really know.” Somebody was talking to me in the lobby afterwards, and they said, “You know, it would probably be okay the first few years, because I would have a sense of urgency and I would be busy. I wouldn’t want to waste a lot of time. That 15th year, I would wonder, ‘Is this the day? Is this the day? Is this today?’” I’m not sure if that would be a blessing, but the Lord Jesus says that you’re not promised tomorrow. There’s enough trouble in today. Don’t be worried about tomorrow. The Bible says the Lord knows the day right now. He could tell you the date, the hour and the minute when you’re leaving. It could be today; it could be tomorrow. No man knows. But he told Hezekiah.

Why did you tell Hezekiah that he had fifteen years more of life? It was because he needed to get his house in order. It apparently seems that he had no male heir at this time. Manesseh, his son, would become king, but he was yet to be born. He was born during this fifteen year period. He needed to get his house in order. He’s got Sennacherib, the king of the Assyrians, around his house. He needs to get his house in order. God takes care of all that, and he’s explaining how he’s going to take care of it in this answer to his prayer. But it hadn’t happened yet; God is giving him fifteen more years. Well, that’s the mark of his healing. That’s how it’s going to go.

One other detail that I would mention in verse seven, And Isaiah said, “Bring a cake of figs. And let them take and lay it on the boil, that he may recover.” God is going to heal him, but God has no problem with him using medicine. If you read about this, a poultice made from figs was a well known cure, a medicine to draw the poison or the infection out of a boil. You would lay it on there, and it would have a drawing effect. It was a well known medicine during that day.

When you pray for God to heal you, it’s not wrong , biblically, in my opinion and in the opinion of what I’m reading here, to go to the doctor and to receive medicine because, where did they get their truth from? Where did the medicine come from? It came from the creation that God made; all good things come from God. So it’s ok to take an aspirin? Isn’t that lack of faith?

Isaiah said, in verse seven, “Bring a cake of figs. And let them take and lay it on the boil, that he may recover.” Don’t tempt God by saying, Oh, the only way I believe You can heal me is if You do it this way or that way. Remember, in last week’s sermon, Naaman thought that surely the prophet would say this or wave his hand over me like this to heal him. Instead, he was told to go take a bath in the Jordan river. Don’t come to God, telling Him how He’s going to heal you. Utilize every possible resource, but healing, ultimately, comes from God. Somebody needed to hear that today.

It says in Matthew 4:23 (KJ21) “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.” Jesus is the healer; He’s the Great Physician. When you pray, pray in the name of Jesus. He heals all kinds of sickness. He’s the healer, and, more than that, he heals us of our most terminal disease. What disease is that? Is it cancer? Is it Covid? No, the most terminal disease of all is a disease that infects all humanity. It is the disease of sin.

It says in 1 Peter 2:24 (ESV) “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” There’s only one Who can fix that problem. His name is Jesus. He’s the healer. Here’s the fourth reason. He hears us. He sees us. He will heal us. Here is number four.

Why God is the only one who can truly fix us: Because He is…

4. … the God who delivers us.

Now, we’re in verse six. He is the God who delivers us. This is the second “I will” statement, “I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria.”

You know, they say trouble comes in pairs. I think I’ve had some times when trouble came in triplets. This man is lying sick on his bed, dying. He’s got the king of Assyria, their enemy, who’s brought hundreds of thousands of warriors and they’ve besieged. In other words, they’re starving out the city behind the walls of Jerusalem. The name of this king is Sennacherib. He wrote a letter and had it given to King Hezekiah. The letter talked about how his God was not going to be able to deliver him. His God is not as great as the gods from Syria and he “bad mouthed” Hezekiah’s God. Sennacherib said, We’re going to come in, and he describes all the evil things that will happen if Hezekiah doesn’t surrender. It was an evil letter and Hezekiah carried that letter into the temple. He got down on his face and laid the letter in the courtyard of the temple. He said, Lord, look at this letter. Lord, read this letter. God reads too; God read this letter. Look what he said about You.

Has anyone ever sent you a tweet or a message on Facebook that hurt your feelings and you feel like you need to strike back? Why not do what Hezekiah did; Lord, would You read what they wrote about me? God will be his deliverer.

“Deliver” could be translated rescue or salvation to save. Jesus’ name, Yeshua, means “Yahweh is salvation, God’s salvation.” The “Ye” means God and the “shua” means salvation. God’s salvation in the name of Jesus means God saves. He’s our deliverer. He’s the one who saves us to the uttermost. He delivers us. He told Hezekiah he would deliver him and the city. Hezekiah only prayed one thing: Lord, remember me. Don’t forget me. God said, I’ve got this. I’m coming at you with five answers from your “remember me” prayer.

Have you ever been so weak, so sorrowful and crying so hard that you couldn’t even pray? A good prayer would be, Have mercy on me, Lord Jesus. Have mercy on me. That’s the best sinner’s prayer of all. Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner. Lord Jesus, have mercy on me.

The only thing Hezekiah prayed was, Lord, remember me. God heard him. He saw his tears and will heal him. More than that, God is going to deliver him and his whole city from Sennacherib of Syria.

Now, Sebbacherib was a great king, but when he got up the next day after Hezekiah laid that letter before the Lord, he saw his men were laying out there dead. Sebbacherib ran away; he called for a retreat. What few people that were still alive ran all the way back to Syria. And so, the people in Jerusalem, who had been starving, went out into their tents and collected the spoils.

The scripture says in II Kings 19:37, “One day, while Sennacherib was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons, Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword.” That’s what happened to the one who would come against God.

Who is our greatest enemy? He’s the evil one, come to destroy us. The Bible says that he is like a lion, roaring and desiring to devour us. But Jesus has defeated him already. Jesus is our deliverer.

I don’t know what you think is coming against you. Give it to the Lord Jesus. He’s your deliverer; He’s your Savior. He can deliver to the uttermost. He can save you. He can take care of it. He is the God who delivers. Here’s what David said in Psalm 18:2 (ESV), “The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. “ I don’t know if they had a thesaurus back then, but David got a hold of one, and he said, How many words can I praise God with as my deliverer? It is Christ who delivers us.

Here’s what Paul says in Romans 7:24-25 (ESV) “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” He’s our deliverer. Amen.Jesus is the deliverer. He will save you to the uttermost. I don’t know what you’re facing, but He will deliver you. Here’s number five.

Why God is the only one who can truly fix us: Because He is…

5. … the God who defends us.

He hears, He sees, He heals, He delivers and He defends. Here’s the third “I will” statement at the end of the fifth reason: He’s the God who defends us. He’s the God who defends us. God said in verse six, “ and I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.” He will keep this promise to put a hedge about you, to surround you, to protect you. We know that He saves us but he, also, keeps us. He keeps us. We don’t have the power to save ourselves. Nor do we have the power to keep ourselves saved. But He keeps us. He’s our defender. He’s the wall around us.

Jesus says in the book of John, chapter 10 , “No one can snatch you from my hand. I will never leave you nor forsake you.” I like both of those promises. He says, “I will never leave you,” but he, also, says, “I will never forsake you.” I’m not letting go of you. I’m your defender. I will defend you. I’ll keep you.

He says, “for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.” He loves Hezekiah, but he says, I’m going to do it for my own namesake because I have said that you are my people. So I’m going to defend you and I’m going to do it for the sake of David your forefather. He had made David a promise that he would always have an eternal king that would sit on David’s throne. Well, who’s that? That’s Jesus. But, if Hezekiah doesn’t have a son and there’s no line, then the line is broken and then it affects the coming Messiah. So, God is going to defend him for his sake and the sake of David, for that Messianic promise he gave David.

How do we apply this to us? Here’s how we apply it to us: He says that He is going to keep us, even if we are a new Christian. We are growing, but we are still struggling with some things. We don’t have to worry because now that we have, by faith, trusted Him, He is the one that will keep us for my name’s sake and for the son of David’s namesake, Jesus. He’s the one that has asked for you. Jesus says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man opens the door, I will come in.”

Some of you are sitting here right now and you’re disturbed. You’ve never received Jesus as your Lord and Savior. There’s a sense in which the Holy Spirit, right now, is moving in our midst, knocking on heart’s doors. You may be wondering, What is that? What is that discomfort? It’s the Lord. He desires you. He desires to have fellowship with you. Would you say “yes” to Him today? He wants to defend you for His own namesake.

It says in 1 John 2:1 (ESV) “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” We have an advocate, a defender, a defense attorney with the father; it is Jesus Christ the righteous. Whenever we stumble and when we fall, if we have made ourselves right with God, through faith in Jesus Christ, Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father as our advocate. Jesus says, That one is mine, Father. He defends us. He is our defender. Oh, don’t you know Him? Come on. I hope you know Him. Some of you still have tears pouring down your face. You’re facing something that you just need help with.

There’s one more verse that comes to mind as we close another promise. It’s in the future. I don’t know how far it could be; it could be tomorrow, it could be next year or it could be five or 10 years from now. I don’t know. Revelation 21:4 (ESV) “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” That’s a promise. That’s a promise. That’s a promise. There will be tears. There will be trouble in this world. As long as we’re in this world, there will be pain. There will be suffering; we have lost loved ones, but He sees you. He hears you. He offers to heal you and He offers to deliver and defend you.

Do you know Him? If you don’t know Him, would you come into a relationship with Him today? Let me pray for us . Let’s talk to the God who hears our prayers.

Lord, I pray, first of all, l for that person that’s here today that came in far from You but wants to get close. Is that you, my friend? Right in your seat. Would you pray with me right where you are? Pray with me, Dear Lord Jesus, I’m a sinner. I need a Savior. I believe You died on the cross for my sins and that You live today. I believe You were raised from the grave on the third day and that You live today. Come and live in me. Make me the person You want me to be. I want You to be my Lord and Savior. Make me a child of God. Oh, He’s ready to wipe away the tears. He’s ready to come in and bring you so much joy that you’ve never known. Others are here today and you know the Lord; You’ve received Jesus. But you have a hurt today. You have an unanswered prayer. You’re almost about to give up praying. Don’t give up. Keep praying. He hears, He sees, He heals, He delivers and He defends. Maybe, He wants you to keep praying because it’s not the right time yet. Don’t give up. Don’t lose faith. Oh, Lord, we lift it all up to You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.