◄ Isaiah 38:16 ►














Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
The Life Of Our Life
Isaiah 38:16
W. Clarkson
This verse is pregnant with suggestive truth, and finds fulfilment in Christian as well as in Jewish experience.

I. THAT THE LIFE OF OUR SPIRIT IS THE VERY LIFE OF OURSELVES. It is no uncommon thing for ungodly men, when they are pressed to give attention to the claims of their spirit, to excuse their negligence by contending that "they must live." By this they mean that the necessities of the body will excuse their want of concern for the state of their spirit. On what a hollow and vain assumption do these thus build! "As if to breathe were life!" As if to eat, and drink, and sleep, and clothe the body and minister to its cravings constituted the life of man! No; "man does not live by bread alone," and, when he has supplied himself with abundance of such things, he has not begun to live. The life of man is in the life of his spirit; it is that life in which he

(1) apprehends and appreciates Divine truth;

(2) approaches unto and communes wish the Divine Father;

(3) engages voluntarily and happily in his holy service;

(4) grows into his likeness as he manifests his spirit and illustrates his principles;

(5) serves the creatures he has made and the children he has fashioned in his own image. By these things, and in such things as these, does the life of his life consist.

II. THAT DIVINE ACTS AND WORDS ARE THE SUSTENANCE OF OUR SPIRIT'S LIFE. "These things" refer primarily to the promise and the providential agency of God (see ver. 15); the Divine word and deed. For us, we find this in:

1. The truth spoken by Jesus Christ. All that he has told us concerning God, ourselves, human life, the way back to the heavenly Father and the heavenly home.

2. The life and death of the Saviour. His life devout, courageous, generous, sympathetic; his sorrows borne in patience and resignation; his death undergone for us. "In all these things," in their apprehension, in their study, in their appropriation, is the life of our spirit. - C.

Biblical Illustrator
O Lord, by these things men live.
Isaiah 38:16
Affliction as related to life
W. M. Taylor, D. D.
The conception and quality of life as affected by the discipline of any form of trial — that is the topic.

I. Take THE CONCEPTION OF LIFE AS A WHOLE, and see how that is modified or altered by experiences like those through which Hezekiah passed. They who have had no such critical experience in any form have never fully awakened to the difference which there is between mere existence and life. In sleep there is as real existence as when we are awake; but what a paltry thing life would be if it were to be a constant sleep! Yet there are those among us in whom, though their time may be busily occupied, and though their intellects may be keen and vigilant, the spirit slumbers. They are like the landowner on whose estate there is an undiscovered silver mine, who is no richer for his hidden wealth, and who cannot be said even to possess it. Nothing has come to reveal them to themselves, or to give them any vivid sense of the existence of God and their relationship to Him. Nothing has opened their eyes to the possibilities of life that are yet undeveloped in them. One day has been to them like another; and the unbroken monotony of their experience has fostered in them the expectation that things will always continue with them as they have always been. Thus they verify the psalmist's words, "Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God." But when something like that which came to Hezekiah comes to them, then there is a thorough, if also a rude, awakening, and they discover that they have yet to begin to live. One may easily see this exemplified in the votary of pleasure. Or take the case of him whose object in existence has been the accumulation of wealth.

II. Passing to THE QUALITY OF THE LIFE, we may see how that also is affected by such experiences of affliction. Here many features of character are evoked or developed by trial.

1. There is the element of strength, whether in its passive exercise as patient endurance, or in its active manifestation as persevering energy. The poet has caught the truth when he bids his readers "learn to suffer and be strong." He who has known no affliction is easily worn out. The old sailor, who has been all but shipwrecked, is not dismayed by a summer squall. It is the same with life as a whole. You will find the strongest characters always among those who have been most sorely afflicted. We ought, then, to be reconciled to the afflictions by which alone it can be developed.

2. We can see that experiences like this of Hezekiah have a great influence in producing unselfishness in a man. When a man has been in the grip of the last enemy, and has recovered; or has been within a little of losing all he had, and has escaped, you can understand how such an experience sends him out of himself. It intensifies for him the idea of life as a stewardship for God, and he sees the folly of making all the streams of his effort run into himself. Howard's life of benevolence was the outcome of a critical illness; and of multitudes more than of him it can be said that they sloughed off their selfishness in the crucible of trial.

3. But it is only a broadening out of this remark when I affirm that sympathy is born out of such experiences as those of Hezekiah. He who would be a helper must first be a sufferer. He who would be a saviour must somewhere and somehow have been upon a cross.

4. Experiences like Hezekiah's have much to do with the usefulness of a man's life. Usefulness is not a thing which one can command at will. It is, in most cases, the result of a discipline; and is possessed by those who, in a large degree, are unconscious that they are exercising it. It depends fully more on what a man is than on what he does, or, if it is due to what he does or says, that again is owing very much to what he is, and what he is now has been determined by the history through which he has been brought. You see that in the case of a physician. His experience goes far more to the making of him than his college training has done. It is so, also, in spiritual things. The helpfulness of another to us in the prosecution of the Christian life is determined more by his personal experience than by his intellectual pre-eminence. Here is the secret of the difference between one man and another in the matter of pulpit power. I must add one word of caution. It is not every affliction that works out such results; and whether any trial will do so or not depends entirely on the spirit in which it is borne.

(W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

Luther's life enriched by trial
W. M. Taylor, D. D.
Luthers life enriched by trial: — Luther was wont to say that his three great teachers were prayer, study, and trial; and any reader of his life can perceive that if he had been required in the early part of his career to face some of the dangers which menaced him at a later date he would have faltered in his course. But through the minor experience he gained strength for the severer ordeal; and so it came about that what would have appalled him at the outset made almost as little impression on him at the last as "the whistling of the idle wind that he regarded not."

(W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

Sympathy engendered by trouble
W. M. Taylor, D. D.
Those of us who have lost little children feel a prompting within us to speak a word of comfort to every parent who is passing through a similar experience. Indeed, it was in connection with an affliction of that sort that my attention was first drawn to this text. I had just a few weeks before buried a beloved daughter, the light of the household, and had gone to attend a meeting of Synod where an honoured minister, who had been through the same trial oftener than once before, came up to me and took me by the hand, and said to me, with a reference to my sorrow, "By these things men live." That was all, but each successive year since then has given a new verification of his words, for oh! how often in the interval have I been enabled to comfort others with the comfort with which I have been comforted of God, and the efficacy of the consolation lay largely in the fact that it was offered by one who had proved its value for himself.

(W. M. Taylor, D. D.)

The life of the spirit
C. Kingsley, M. A.
Whosoever is really alive, that is, has life in his spirit, the life of man and not a beast, the only life which is worthy to be called life, then that life is kept up in him in the same way that it was kept up in Hezekiah. Let us see, then, what things they were which gave Hezekiah's spirit life.

1. Great joy, great honour, great success, wealth, health, prosperity, and pleasure? Not so!

2. Trouble upon trouble came on Hezekiah.

3. Death looked to him an ugly and an evil thing — as it is; the Lord's last enemy. He conquered death by rising from the dead: but nevertheless we die. Hezekiah lived before the Lord Jesus came to bring life and immortality to light by rising from the dead; and, therefore, he dreaded it, because he knew not what would come after death. He prayed hard not to die.

4. What was the use of his sickness and his terror if, after all, his prayer was heard, and after the Lord had told him, "Thou shalt die, and not live" — that did not come to pass; but the very contrary happened? Of this use, at least; it taught him that the Lord God would hear the prayers of mortal men. Is not that worth going through any misery to learn? Hezekiah did not pray rightly. He thought himself a better man than he was. But he did pray. And then he found that the Lord was ready to save him; that what the Lord wished was not to kill him. but to make him live more really and fully and wisely and manfully.

5. What Hezekiah saw but dimly we ought to see clearly. For the Gospel tells us that the same Lord who chastened and taught and then saved Hezekiah, was made flesh, that He might in His own person bear all our sickness and carry our infirmities; that He might understand all our temptations and be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He who made, He who lightens every man who comes into the world, He who gave you every right thought and wholesome feeling that you ever had in your lives — He counts your tears; He knows your sorrows; He is able and willing to save you to the uttermost. Therefore do not be afraid of your own afflictions.

(C. Kingsley, M. A.)

Spoil from the fight with death
E. W. Shalders, B. A.
Hope and joy returned with restored health, and we see (vers. 16-20) what Hezekiah brought back with him from his fight with death —

1. A new peace.

2. Forgiveness.

3. A new sense of the dignity of life, and of the encompassing eternal realities.

4. A joyful sense of God's personal love for him.

(E. W. Shalders, B. A.)

Physical benefit may accrue from sickness
W. Johnston, D. D.
Strange as it may appear, it is no less true that life is often lengthened and health invigorated by a sharp illness. Like a ship put in dock for repairs, an illness or an accident lays a man aside for a time out of the reach of work and worry, and the rest of mind and body restores the balance of his exhausted energies. Typhus fever successfully treated often clarifies the whole system, just as a chimney is cleansed by setting it on fire; and a severe illness often acts as a solemn warning, leading men to consider their ways and their work, and to diminish the strain which is overtaxing the system, or to give up some vicious habit of self-indulgence which is laying the axe to the root of the tree.

(W. Johnston, D. D.)

The uses of affliction
W. Johnston, D. D.
The allusion of our text is not to the life of the body, but to that which is far more important, the life of the soul. In what manner does severe sickness or affliction of any kind conduce, by the blessing of God, to the creation and development of our spiritual life?

I. AFFLICTION TEACHES US OUR ENTIRE DEPENDENCE UPON GOD.

II. AFFLICTION DISROBES US OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS. Hezekiah yielded to the insidious promptings of self-righteousness and self-glorification. Affliction was the disrobing process through which he was called upon to pass, the school in which he must learn his unworthiness as well as his weakness. And in this disrobing of all self-righteousness there was the life of his spirit.

III. AFFLICTION BRINGS US TO REALISE AND ENJOY THE FULNESS OF CHRIST. When Hezekiah was awakened to a sense of his want of righteousness before God, he expected to go softly in the bitterness of his soul all the years of his life. But the self-righteous idea of innocence and excellence is no longer the broken spear on which to lean and pierce his hand. The Sun of Righteousness has arisen with healing in His wings; bitterness and disquietude pass away together, and Hezekiah is made to see what he had never seen so clearly before — that in love to his soul, the Lord, his God in covenant, had afflicted his body, had thus delivered his soul from the pit of corruption, and had cast all his sins behind His back.

IV. SANCTIFIED AFFLICTION STIMULATES US IN CHRISTIAN WORK. Hezekiah learned on the bed of sickness that there are but twelve hours in the day, that the night cometh when no man can work, and that the brief period of life must be diligently and devoutly improved. And it is when laid upon the bed of severe sickness, with time in the past and eternity in the near future, that we shall realise in all its solemnity the importance and responsibility of life, and resolve, if spared like Hezekiah yet a little longer to recover strength before we go hence to be no more, that our chief end shall be to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever.

(W. Johnston, D. D.)

The life of the spirit
Family Sermons.
Hezekiah was a rich and prosperous king. Surrounded by the dignities of rank, the refinements of elegance, and the gratifications of voluptuousness, he, doubtless, viewed these as the very end and delight of his being, and wished for nothing, knew of nothing better or beyond them. No; very different was his character; very different were the things of which he spake. These words were not uttered in "the house of his armour," but in the chamber of his sickness; not at the festive table of his royal banquets, but upon the couch of lassitude and pain. Let us endeavour, by a few examples, to verify his pensive contemplation; and this, that we may learn "so to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

1. Take the case of a professed scoffer at religion. He is arrested, we will suppose, by the arm of Omnipotence, in his profligate course; he is thrown by a stronger hand than his own upon the couch of pain and dejection; he learns for the first time to tremble; we will suppose him humbled, converted. Sanctified affliction was the first step. This softened the stony ground: this prepared the heart for holy impressions. Will not such a one be ready to exclaim with Hezekiah, "By these things men live, and by these is the life of the spirit"?

2. Imagine a man careless and indifferent to religion, though not a hardened scoffer. He is too busy with the world to spend a thought upon his eternal safety. But God brings him low. In the silence and solitude of affliction he is forced to think. What cause will such a one have for ever to bless Him who wounds that He may heal, who kills that He may make alive!

3. Let us imagine an inconsistent backsliding Christian brought into deep affliction. He returns to Him whom he had forsaken.

4. Look at the Pharisee. God brings him within sight of death and eternity. He is unmasked to himself, and begins to exclaim, "What must I do to be saved?" What a blessing has affliction been to such a character!

5. The dejected Christian. How often has such a one had reason to exclaim of afflictions, that "by these things men live"! The season of weakness and distress is often that which God selects for the brightest manifestations of His love and tenderness.

(Family Sermons.)

The restoration of belief
S. A. Brooke, D. D.
In the especial ease of Hezekiah, belief was restored by a great shock, which brought him into contact with reality. God appeared to him — not as to Adam, in the cool of the day, but as He came to Job, in the whirlwind and the eclipse — and Hezekiah knew that he had been living in a vain show. The answer of his soul was quick and sad: "By these things men live, O Lord."

I. THE BLOW WHICH SOBERED HEZEKIAH WAS A COMMON ONE. It did nothing more than bring him face to face with death. The process whereby his dependence on God was restored was uncomplicated. But there are far worse shocks than this, and recovery from them into a Godlike life is long and dreadful. There are things which at first seem to annihilate belief, and change an indifferent or a happy nature into earnest, even savage bitterness. One of these is the advent of irrecoverable disease, protracted weakness, or protracted pain. God forgives our human anger then, but we speak roughly to Him at first. It is a dark anger, and may grow in intensity till faith and love are lost for this life; but it will not reach that point if we have some greatness of soul, if we are open to the touch of human love. One day the Gospel story in all its sweet simplicity attracts and softens the sufferer's heart. He reads that Christ's suffering in self-sacrifice brought redemption unto man. Surely, he seems to dream this is no isolated fact. I too, in my apparent uselessness, am at one with the Great Labourer: I bear with Christ my cross for men. This is not only the restoration of belief, it is the victory of life.

II. BUT THERE ARE MORE DREADFUL THINGS THAN LONG DISEASE. There is that shipwreck which comes of dishonoured love. Many things are terrible, but none is worse than this. In some there is no remedy but death, and far beyond the immanent tenderness of God. But there are many who recover, whom God leads oat of the desert into the still garden of an evening life of peace and usefulness and even joy. Lapse of time does part of the work. In the quietude of middle life we look back upon our early misery, and only remember the love we felt. Faith is restored, hope is renewed, when, like Christ, you can turn and say, Father, forgive him, forgive her, for they knew not what they did.

III. There have been and are many of us who are conscious that, as we have passed into the later period of life and mingled with the world, OUR EARLY FAITH HAS ALSO PASSED AWAY. We have lost belief because our past religion was borrowed too much from others. If we wish for perfection, and are not content to die and love no more, the restoration of belief may be attained by the personal labour of the soul. It is worth trying what one personal effort to bring ourselves into the relation of a child to a father, in all the naturalness and simplicity of that relation, will do towards restoring faith and renewing life with tenderness.

(S. A. Brooke, D. D.)

People
Ahaz, Amoz, David, Hezekiah, Isaiah
Places
Assyria
Topics
Altogether, Cause, Finds, Hast, Health, O, Oh, Recover, Recovered, Rest, Restore, Restored, Savest, Spirit, Therein, Waiting, Wherefore, Wholly, Wilt
Outline
1. Hezekiah, having received a message of death, by prayer has his life lengthened
8. The sun goes ten degrees backward, for a sign of that promise
9. His song of thanksgiving.

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 38:16

     6634   deliverance
     8150   revival, personal

Library
The Life of the Spirit
(First Sunday after Christmas.) Isaiah xxxviii. 16. O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit. These words are the words of Hezekiah, king of Judah; and they are true words, words from God. But, if they are true words, they are true words for every one--for you and me, for every one here in this church this day: for they do not say, By these things certain men live, one man here and another man there; but all men. Whosoever is really alive, that is, has …
Charles Kingsley—Town and Country Sermons

No Man Cometh to the Father but by Me.
This being added for further confirmation of what was formerly said, will point out unto us several necessary truths, as, I. That it is most necessary to be sound and clear in this fundamental point of coming to God only in and through Christ. For, 1. It is the whole marrow of the gospel. 2. It is the hinge of our salvation, Christ is "the chief corner stone," Isa. xxxviii. 16. 1 Pet. i. 5, 6; and, 3. The only ground of all our solid and true peace and comfort. 4 An error or a mistake here, is most …
John Brown (of Wamphray)—Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life

Epistle ii. To Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch.
To Anastasius, Bishop of Antioch. Gregory to Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch. I have received the letters of your most sweet Blessedness, which flowed with tears for words. For I saw in them a cloud flying aloft as clouds do; but, though it carried with it a darkness of sorrow, I could not easily discover at its commencement whence it came or whither it was going, since by reason of the darkness I speak of I did not fully understand its origin. Yet it becomes you, most holy ones, ever to recall …
Saint Gregory the Great—the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great

Sign Seekers, and the Enthusiast Reproved.
(Galilee on the Same Day as the Last Section.) ^A Matt. XII. 38-45; ^C Luke XI. 24-36. ^c 29 And when the multitudes were gathering together unto him, ^a 38 Then certain of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, Teacher, we would see a sign from thee. [Having been severely rebuked by Jesus, it is likely that the scribes and Pharisees asked for a sign that they might appear to the multitude more fair-minded and open to conviction than Jesus had represented them to be. Jesus had just wrought …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Letter Xliv Concerning the Maccabees but to whom Written is Unknown.
Concerning the Maccabees But to Whom Written is Unknown. [69] He relies to the question why the Church has decreed a festival to the Maccabees alone of all the righteous under the ancient law. 1. Fulk, Abbot of Epernay, had already written to ask me the same question as your charity has addressed to your humble servant by Brother Hescelin. I have put off replying to him, being desirous to find, if possible, some statement in the Fathers about this which was asked, which I might send to him, rather …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners:
A BRIEF AND FAITHFUL RELATION OF THE EXCEEDING MERCY OF GOD IN CHRIST TO HIS POOR SERVANT, JOHN BUNYAN; WHEREIN IS PARTICULARLY SHOWED THE MANNER OF HIS CONVERSION, HIS SIGHT AND TROUBLE FOR SIN, HIS DREADFUL TEMPTATIONS, ALSO HOW HE DESPAIRED OF GOD'S MERCY, AND HOW THE LORD AT LENGTH THROUGH CHRIST DID DELIVER HIM FROM ALL THE GUILT AND TERROR THAT LAY UPON HIM. Whereunto is added a brief relation of his call to the work of the ministry, of his temptations therein, as also what he hath met with …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

Meditations for the Sick.
Whilst thy sickness remains, use often, for thy comfort, these few meditations, taken from the ends wherefore God sendeth afflictions to his children. Those are ten. 1. That by afflictions God may not only correct our sins past, but also work in us a deeper loathing of our natural corruptions, and so prevent us from falling into many other sins, which otherwise we would commit; like a good father, who suffers his tender babe to scorch his finger in a candle, that he may the rather learn to beware …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

Assurance
Q-xxxvi: WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS WHICH FLOW FROM SANCTIFICATION? A: Assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end. The first benefit flowing from sanctification is assurance of God's love. 'Give diligence to make your calling and election sure.' 2 Pet 1:10. Sanctification is the seed, assurance is the flower which grows out of it: assurance is a consequent of sanctification. The saints of old had it. We know that we know …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

The Power of God
The next attribute is God's power. Job 9:19. If I speak of strength, lo, he is strong.' In this chapter is a magnificent description of God's power. Lo, he is strong.' The Hebrew word for strong signifies a conquering, prevailing strength. He is strong.' The superlative degree is intended here; viz., He is most strong. He is called El-shaddai, God almighty. Gen 17:7. His almightiness lies in this, that he can do whatever is feasible. Divines distinguish between authority and power. God has both. …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

I Will Pray with the Spirit and with the Understanding Also-
OR, A DISCOURSE TOUCHING PRAYER; WHEREIN IS BRIEFLY DISCOVERED, 1. WHAT PRAYER IS. 2. WHAT IT IS TO PRAY WITH THE SPIRIT. 3. WHAT IT IS TO PRAY WITH THE SPIRIT AND WITH THE UNDERSTANDING ALSO. WRITTEN IN PRISON, 1662. PUBLISHED, 1663. "For we know not what we should pray for as we ought:--the Spirit--helpeth our infirmities" (Rom 8:26). ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. There is no subject of more solemn importance to human happiness than prayer. It is the only medium of intercourse with heaven. "It is …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

Isaiah
CHAPTERS I-XXXIX Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he bore testimony, as …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

Links
Isaiah 38:16 NIV
Isaiah 38:16 NLT
Isaiah 38:16 ESV
Isaiah 38:16 NASB
Isaiah 38:16 KJV

Isaiah 38:16 Bible Apps
Isaiah 38:16 Parallel
Isaiah 38:16 Biblia Paralela
Isaiah 38:16 Chinese Bible
Isaiah 38:16 French Bible
Isaiah 38:16 German Bible

Isaiah 38:16 Commentaries

Bible Hub
Isaiah 38:15
Top of Page
Top of Page