Health and sickness.
This touching psalm of Hezekiah, written in the day of returning strength, when mental effort became possible and perhaps enjoyable to him, may teach us many things.
I. THAT OUR HEALTH IS NOT IN OUR OWN HANDS. There is a distinct note of disappointment here. The king had evidently set his heart on a long life, and was hurt in his soul that his days were cut in twain. It seemed an abrupt, unnatural termination. He was deprived of that which he might have expected to enjoy (Isaiah 38:10, Isaiah 38:12). Though we know well it is not so, yet we harbour the thought that we can measure our days—can reckon on a large period of time in which to work out our plans; we are apt to be surprised and even hurt in our heart if our health be removed and our life be threatened. But we ought to learn that God is the length of our days (Deuteronomy 30:20), and that it rests with him to say when our strength shall decline and when our spirit shall return.
II. THAT THE TIME MAY COME WHEN LIFE WILL BE WITHOUT VALUE TO US; when we shall be ready to speak in the strain of the king (Isaiah 38:14, Isaiah 38:17). Instead of song is silence or complaint; for peace is bitterness of soul. Among the living, at any time, there will be found a large proportion of those to whom life is without any value, and who would gladly lay it down.
1. Do we appreciate the value of our health while we have it?
2. Are we laying up resources on which we can draw when the enjoyments of life will be gone, and the season of privation and infirmity has arrived?
III. THAT IT IS RIGHT TO ASK GOD FOR RESTORATION FROM SICKNESS. "O Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me" (see 2 Corinthians 12:8; James 5:14). We should do so,
IV. THAT THE PERIOD OF CONVALESCENCE IS A TIME FOR THANKFULNESS AND CONSECRATION.
1. Thankfulness. "Himself hath done it" (Isaiah 38:15). Whatever the number or the nature of the measures we adopt (Isaiah 38:21), we trace the happy issue ultimately to the hand of the Lord. All remedial agencies are of him.
2. Consecration. "I shall go softly [reverently] all my years, [remembering] the bitterness of my soul." When God gives back his life to any one of his children, it is surely a time when that soul should form a profound and prayerful resolution that, if past days have been godless, future years shall be devout; that, whatever has been the measure of piety in the time that has been spent, there shall be deeper devotedness and more faithful service m the span that may remain.—C.
The great disclosure.
"If a man die, shall he live again?" asks the anxious, hopeful, human spirit. This composition of Hezekiah either indicates or suggests—
I. THE LIGHT WHICH THE HEBREW SAINTS POSSESSED. They believed that death did not terminate man's existence; that, after death, he dwelt in Sheol with the spirits of the departed, with "the inhabitants of the land of stillness;" in a region, deep, dark, shut up within impassable gates through which they that have entered may never more return (Isaiah 38:10).
II. THE PAINFUL FEEBLENESS OF THEIR LIGHT. This abode of the dead was dismal in a high degree to their imagination; it was "the pit of corruption" (Isaiah 38:17); it was the place where God was unapproachable (Isaiah 38:11), where his praises were untold and unsung (Isaiah 38:18), where the delights of human fellowship were unknown (Isaiah 38:11), where the opportunities of gaining the highest wisdom were closed against the soul, where men "cannot hope for thy truth" (Isaiah 38:18). Such life as there was in those sepulchral region, s would hardly be worth having, where privations like these prevailed.
III. THE GREAT DISCLOSURE BY JESUS CHRIST. He did not, indeed, for the first time announce that there was a life beyond death for men. But he did reveal such a life of blessedness and glory as gave a new meaning to immortality. As his disciples, we look for a life which will be characterized, not by the removal, but by the renewal and the immeasurable enlargement, of all the higher blessings of the present time. As exactly opposed to the privations here lamented, we look for:
1. The near presence of God. (Isaiah 38:11.) To depart is to "be with Christ," is to "be with him that we may behold his glory," is to be at home in "the Father's house."
2. A life of holiest, happiest worship. (Isaiah 38:18.) Where the praises of God will never tire the tongue. Heaven is, to our hope, the very home of praise: "The living, they that live indeed,"—they will praise God in accents to which our fainter and feebler life is unequal now.
3. Communion with the perfected spirits of men. (Isaiah 38:11.) We hope to behold and to have ennobling fellowship with men at their very best, when they and we shall be purged of all that hinders or lowers our intercourse on earth.
4. Access to Divine truth. (Isaiah 38:18.) "Then shall we know even as also we are known" (1 Corinthians 13:12); then shall we look "face to face" on many truths which here we have only dimly espied; then shall we grasp with firm, rejoicing hold what now we can but delicately touch, or are ineffectually pursuing.
5. Life in its large and blessed fulness. (Isaiah 38:19.) It is they who dwell in the light of God of whom we rightly speak as "the living, the living;" it is they who "have life more abundantly." We conclude that: