10/21/2008
2 Kings 20:5 - 11 (HCSB) 5“Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of My people, ‘This is what the LORD God of your ancestor David says: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I will heal you. On the third day [from now] you will go up to the LORD’s temple. 6I will add 15 years to your life. I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for My sake and for the sake of My servant David.’”
7Then Isaiah said, “Bring a lump of pressed figs.” So they brought it and applied it to his infected skin, and he recovered.
8Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, “What is the sign that the LORD will heal me and that I will go up to the LORD’s temple on the third day?”
9Isaiah said, “This is the sign to you from the LORD that He will do what He has promised: Should the shadow go ahead 10 steps or go back 10 steps?”
10Then Hezekiah answered, “It’s easy for the shadow to lengthen 10 steps. No, let the shadow go back 10 steps.”
11So Isaiah the prophet called out to the LORD, and He brought the shadow back the 10 steps it had descended on Ahaz’s stairway.
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Hezekiah had fallen ill and Isaiah was initially sent to tell Hezekiah that he would not recover. Hezekiah prayed and wept over this news and before Isaiah had exited the palace, God told Isaiah to return and tell Hezekiah that he had 15 more years. Hezekiah then asks for a sign, which Isaiah provides.
The shadow would normally and naturally advance as the afternoon progressed into evening, so Hezekiah asked that the shadow retreat. It did so.
We often fail to think of God as outside of our universe. We tend to think of Him as a super-human somewhere in space who is somehow subject to the laws of physics and time just as we are. But what we need to realize, and occasionally need reminding, is that He is outside of our time and space because He *created* our time and space. Now whether the earth rotated backwards, whether the sun actually moved, or whether God simply caused the light to bend or the shadow to crawl backwards we do not know. However, any of these events demonstrates the power of a God outside of the laws of this universe.
God is above all. He has the power to cause anything to be or to cease to be. He can alter the laws of this universe at His command.
If this is true, then can He not also intervene in our lives to bring about blessings?
As you pray, do your best to think of God outside of the limits of our universe. This is naturally a difficult concept, but therein lies the mystery of faith – to see something that the natural mind would not. Practice seeing God above all, not subject to time or space, gravity or motion, but rather the creator of these things.
How awesome is our God!
Jeff Justus
Cleff Publishing
www.cleffpublishing.com
©2008 Cleff Publishing, all rights reserved.
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