The power of prayer.
The story of these chapters (36-38.) is remarkably illustrative of the power of "effectual fervent prayer." Four points may be noted.
I. PRAYER IS POTENT TO DESTROY THE ADVERSARIES OF GOD AT THE GREATEST HEIGHT OF THEIR GLORY AND BOASTING. Assyria had reached the acme of her might. She had destroyed nation after nation; she had "gone up and overflowed." All Western Asia was hers, and now she threatened to effect a lodgment in Northern Africa, and to add the rich lands of the Nile valley to the productive regions along the Tigris and the Euphrates. She had measured her strength against that of every military power existing at that day, and in all her struggles had come off victorious. What was to stop her, or prevent her colossal form from dominating the whole earth? A short prayer offered by a petty potentate in a distant city. It is the prayer of Hezekiah "against Sennacherib" that overthrows him. "Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib, King of Assyria: this is the word which the Lord hath spoken concerning him: The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn" (Isaiah 37:21, Isaiah 37:22).
II. PRAYER IS POTENT TO SAVE A NATION AT THE LAST EXTREMITY. It may well have seemed to Sennacherib ridiculous that the Jews should think to withstand him. He or his predecessors had conquered every other country of Western Asia—Babylonia and Media, Armenia and Gozan, Syria, Phoenicia, Damascus, Samaria, Philistia, Edom; they had contended with the hosts of Egypt and overcome them; how should a petty nation, forty-six of whose towns they had taken in one campaign, and two hundred thousand of whose inhabitants they had carried into captivity, conceive it possible to resist for long an enemy so vastly superior to them? They were open to invasion on every side. Tiglath-Pileser had subdued the trans-Jordanic region, Sargon had reduced Philistia and Samaria, Sennacherib himself had for tributaries the kings of Zidon, Arvad, Gebal, Ashdod, Ammon, Moab, and Edom. How was Hezekiah, cooped up in Jerusalem "as a bird in a cage"—how were his people, a mere "remnant" (Isaiah 37:4)—to escape the subjection that had come on all their neighbours? The last extremity seemed to be reached. Humanly speaking, there was no prospect of deliverance; the jaws of the monster that had swallowed all the other countries must crush Judaea also. There was, however, still the resort to prayer. Hezekiah, Isaiah, doubtless the faithful Israelites generally, betook themselves to God, besought his aid, besieged him with their supplications, and the nation was saved—saved from extinction—saved, for a long term, even from invasion—allowed a century more of independent life and. a recovery under Josiah of almost pristine glory. Such power has prayer at the extremity of a nation's need—a power the force of which, measured against ordinary mundane forces, is quite incalculable.
III. PRAYER IS POTENT TO OBTAIN FROM GOD LENGTH OF DAYS AND EVERY TEMPORAL BLESSING. Hezekiah's prayer for himself prolonged his life for fifteen years. Christians, under sentence of death, given up by their physicians and their friends, are entitled to pray, if they so choose, for an extension of the term of their probation, a respite from the doom pronounced on them. In God's hands, and in his hands only, are the issues of life and death. He can, if he will, prolong our life, and restore us to health, even when we seem at the last gasp. It may not be often suitable that we should ask this boon for ourselves; we have not the reasons to wish for long life that the Jews had. But for others we do well to ask, when they are in danger, that God will spare them to us; and "the prayer of faith" will often "save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up" (James 5:15), and give them back to us, as from the very edge of the pit, if our prayer be faithful and fervent.
IV. PRAYER IS POTENT TO OBTAIN FORGIVENESS OF SINS, AND REMISSION OF THE PENALTIES OF SIN. Hezekiah felt that, in revoking the sentence of death which he had passed upon him, God had also forgiven the sins which had provoked that sentence (verse 17). He had been sensible of those sins, even while he had pleaded his general faithfulness (verse 3). He had doubtless begged to be forgiven them. Such prayer God will in no wise cast out. It is his high prerogative to pardon sin (Mark 2:7), and it is also his delight. He bids us ask his forgiveness daily (Matthew 6:12); he promises his forgiveness to all but the unforgiving; he assures us that, if we will return to him, he will "abundantly pardon" (Isaiah 4:1-6 :7). And his pardon includes within it remission of the true penalty of sin, which is his displeasure, his alienation, and its consequence—eternal death. The pardoned sinner has his sins "blotted out." He "enters into the joy of his Lord."
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON