Sermons

After Assyria is driven back, Hezekiah is healed even of a mortal illness; fifteen years are added to his life, and his nation is delivered as well. Yet when envoys arrive from Babylon, at the very moment he ought to bear witness to God, he shows them all his wealth as if to boast of it. Isaiah then brings him a word of judgment: everything in the palace will be carried off to Babylon.

Pride is not a particular act but a condition of the heart that leans on something other than God. The moment just after a blessing, when vigilance slackens, is the most dangerous time in the life of faith. Even after hearing the word of judgment, Hezekiah let it pass, content that his own generation would have peace; this was not repentance before God but a selfishness concerned only with being safe himself.

The place of blessing is not where faith ends. Hezekiah was granted a longer life, yet in those years he fathered Manasseh, the most wicked king in the history of Judah. The true blessing lies not in living long but in living in dependence on God alone, and only when we humbly hold fast to his grace can we overcome Satan.

Sennacherib, king of Assyria, has surrounded Jerusalem, and though he has already received an enormous tribute, he sends yet another threatening letter. Hezekiah has stripped even the gold from the temple to pay him, yet nothing is resolved, and at last he takes the letter up to the temple and stands before God.

Clinging to human means is like having the power line cut. Only when Hezekiah confessed his helplessness and turned to seek God’s glory was that line connected again. He did not ask for his own restoration; he asked only that God’s name be exalted.

That night the angel of the Lord struck down a hundred and eighty-five thousand men of the Assyrian army, and Sennacherib returned to his own land, where he died at the hands of his own sons. Hezekiah’s prayer did not bring about the deliverance; it simply opened the channel through which God’s zeal could flow. God is the one who accomplishes to the end what he has spoken, so one must lay aside human methods and come to the place of prayer.

Hezekiah becomes king amid a temple defiled by Ahaz and a faith mixed with other worship. As soon as he took the throne, the first thing he did was cleanse the temple. He tore down the high places that had taken root deep in the people’s lives, and he even broke in pieces the bronze serpent of Moses that the people had been worshiping, calling it Nehushtan.

The high places were not places where God had been abandoned but places where God was set alongside other things. The bronze serpent was originally God’s grace, but it became an idol when people came to worship the thing itself instead of God, its true reality. Even something God has given, if it comes before God in the heart, becomes a bronze serpent that must be broken.

The starting point of faith is whether one is upright by God’s standard. Hezekiah relied on God alone and kept his commands, and as a result he could stand boldly even before Assyria. Treating God as God: that is the essence of faith.

Crowds wave palm branches to welcome Jesus. They spread their cloaks on the road and cheer him on, yet at the end of that road stands the cross. When some Greeks come looking for Jesus, he does not agree to see them. Instead he says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

The glory Jesus speaks of is not success. It is his death on the cross and his resurrection. A grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die before it can bear much fruit, and in the same way Jesus had to die so that the nations might live. As a man, Jesus too knew anguish and fear, yet he did not run from what lay ahead; he resolved to obey.

The Kingdom of God is a kingdom where life comes only through death. To follow Jesus is to deny oneself and take up one’s own cross. This does not begin with some grand decision but with a small response: when trouble comes, turning first to God and asking for his help, rather than meeting it with irritation and a sigh. As we lay ourselves down in this way, we become people who die with Jesus and live with him.

When Assyria rose to become a great power, King Hoshea withheld his tribute and allied himself with Egypt. Egypt gave him no real help, and after a three-year siege Assyria took Samaria and scattered the people of northern Israel across many lands.

The cause of the fall was not a political misjudgment but a heart that had betrayed God. A small turning aside, begun with the golden calf, became a road no one thought to question; as hearts hardened, it set in motion a vicious cycle of unbelief that led to wrath and judgment. That cycle is broken only when a heart that loves and fears God is set at the center.

The fall did not mean that God had given up on his people; it was part of the way toward restoration. The Samaritans, a people born out of that scattering, were the very ones Jesus went in person to meet, and to the end he never abandoned his purpose of saving them. So long as we are still in the flesh, it is never too late in the sight of God.

The combined forces of Aram and the northern kingdom of Israel attack Jerusalem, and Judah suffers a heavy defeat. Ahaz, however, was a king sunk in idolatry, who went so far as to make his children pass through the fire as human sacrifices. Even in the face of crisis he refuses the word bidding him ask God for a sign, and turns to Assyria for help instead.

The human sacrifice of Molech worship looks outwardly like devotion carried to its extreme, but in truth it is an utter self-centeredness that will give up even what is most precious to protect its own prosperity. When Ahaz said he would not put God to the test, that too was not humility; it was disobedience, a way of escaping God’s clear answer and holding to the course he had set for himself. God had foretold that the invaders would come to ruin, yet Ahaz would not believe his word and entrusted his own fate and that of his nation to the power of the world.

However strong the powers of this world may appear, they are in the end only instruments God makes use of for a time, and judgment and destruction await them. No worldly power, by contrast, can lightly lay a hand on one who stands rightly before God. Just as Noah, Moses, Job and David received their names from God, to stand before him under a name that is wise in what is good and simple in what is evil: this is the conclusion of the message.

In the years when the northern kingdom of Israel was falling apart, its royal house overthrown four times in thirty years, Jotham of Judah in the south quietly kept his nation safe, repairing the gate of the temple and strengthening the city wall. Scripture gives him only a few verses, and the people still would not leave the high places.

Jotham himself was upright before God, yet he could not change his people. But because he walked the right path to the end, Judah did not crumble overnight as the northern kingdom had, even under the wicked king who followed him, and the covenant with David and the line of faith passed on to Hezekiah and Josiah. Timothy, too, who stood in Paul’s shadow, was timid and frail in body, with no miracles or revivals to his name, yet through his obedience Paul’s faith has been handed down even to us today.

The world remembers only heroes and winners, but God treasures not only those who open a new age but also those who endure their age and carry it on to the next generation. Even without any achievement that catches the eye, a life that steadily and honestly holds its place is one God never takes lightly.

Uzziah became king at sixteen, and as long as he sought God, he prospered. He defeated the Philistines in battle, built cities and even equipped his army with new weapons, making the nation strong and wealthy. But as his power grew, his heart grew proud, and he went into the temple to burn incense himself, an offering only the priests were permitted to make.

When the priest tried to stop him, the king turned on him in anger, and in that moment God struck his forehead with leprosy. The grace he had received had not vanished; rather, he could no longer enjoy it. No one betrays God in a single moment. It happens gradually, as priorities are slowly overturned amid wealth, power and praise.

Until the day he died, Uzziah was shut away in a separate house, denied both a king’s authority and a king’s tomb. It was not that he was especially wicked. A nature that loved the world more than the unseen Kingdom kept him from overcoming sin. What allows God’s people to enjoy to the end the grace he has granted is a humble heart that never stops giving thanks for that grace.

King Amaziah of the southern kingdom of Judah was regarded as an upright king, but after winning the war against Edom, he became intoxicated by that victory and brought back the idols of the defeated nation and worshiped them. He would not listen to the prophet’s warning and instead threatened him, and in the end he was defeated in battle and killed by his officials. By contrast, Jeroboam II of the northern kingdom of Israel was a king who was evil in God’s sight, yet the nation’s territory grew larger than at any other time in its history, and it enjoyed prosperity.

These opposite endings mean that the idea that good people do well and evil people are punished is not always right. Amaziah fell because of pride: carried away by a small success, he had put himself in God’s place. Jeroboam’s prosperity came not because of his goodness but because of the free mercy of God, who had compassion on his suffering people, and yet the people of that time failed to make their prosperity an occasion for repentance.

Success is not the same as God’s approval, and suffering is not the same as being abandoned. What must be examined is not one’s circumstances but what God’s will is. What is needed is a life that does not grow proud over small successes, does not take prosperity for granted, and stands humbly before God, continually turning back to him.

This is the first service of 2026. King Joash comes to the prophet who lies close to death, shoots the arrow and strikes the ground. Yet he strikes only three times and stops, and so the victories that might have been his are cut short at three as well.

In this we see ourselves, hesitating even with salvation already in our hands. God has made everything ready to pour out his grace and is waiting, while we halt our obedience and devotion at a line we have drawn for ourselves. Even after the prophet has died, a dead man whose body touches his bones comes back to life, showing that though a human life comes to an end, God’s power and love do not.

Our thanksgiving must not be for a flawless year but for the love that has brought us this far. On the cross God has already demonstrated that love, in which he did not spare his only Son but gave him up. Our limits and shortcomings do not stop that love, so rather than settling for standards of our own making, we need to go on trusting God to the very end.

A king came to the throne at the age of seven and accomplished a great work in repairing the temple. Yet once the high priest who had protected him died, he was swayed by the officials and began to serve idols, going so far as to stone to death the prophet whom God had sent.

Though he repaired the temple, he never removed the high places, which shows that his obedience stopped halfway. His faith had rested on the protection and oversight of the high priest; when the moment came to stand on his own, he relied on the power of the world more than on God. In the end he handed the treasures of the temple over to his enemies, fell ill, and met a wretched death when his own servants rose against him.

A faith that begins by leaning on someone else’s faith and devotion is something to be thankful for, but unless it is made one’s own, it can give way. It is worth asking whether one is ready to hold fast to God and stand firm even when the people and circumstances that once upheld that faith are gone. Finishing well does not come from a single resolve but from obedience built up day after day.

The words people most long to hear are “I love you.” Yet love that lives only on the lips is not true love; true love is patient and kind, and does not seek its own advantage. God did not merely say that he loves us. By sending his only Son into this world, he made that love real.

The word “gave” carries sacrifice within it. Parents would hesitate to send their child into hardship now, even if it were to seat that child one day in a place of great glory. But God handed over his Son for us while we were still sinners, and the Son, in obedience, surrendered himself to the point of laying down his life.

In this way God’s love became not a feeling or a word but a reality revealed in Christ. If we stop at being those who have received this love, we stay where we are; it is when we love one another that his love is made complete in us. Christmas must be a day to grasp this love, to love our brothers and sisters, and to go out into the world and live it.