2 Kings 20:19-20

Good is the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken.

The peace

The text is susceptible of two propositions. First, that peace is a blessing only on a basis of truth. “He said, Is it not good if peace and truth be in my days?” Secondly, that the godliest celebration of peace is to resume the social and religious benefactions interrupted by war. Hezekiah’s “might” was diverted to the construction of “the pool and the conduit of water” for the relief of his people.

I. That peace without truth is not the peace of God is capable of abundant evidence and illustration. As in a religious sense there may be “a cry of Peace, peace, where there is no peace,” except the unnatural stillness of a moral stupefaction, a stifling of the voice of conscience, and a compromise of principle with “the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience,” and under whose influence, when the “strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace,” such as it is--but it is at the best only the torpor of sordid subjection to spiritual bondage, the tranquillity of a dungeon, or the quiescence of a corpse, dead in its trespasses and sins--so in the political moralities of nations there may be a peace that has no truth in it, neither in the reality of its foundation, the assurance of its continuance, nor the uprightness of its conditions. That is a peace at the expense of truth which is not true to the eternal and inalienable principles of international rights--which is bought by the ignoble subsidy of subjection to wrong and injustice, or which consents to spare itself the possible cost and sacrifice of a generous intervention on behalf of the weak against the strong--which ignores the great plea of national brotherhoods, and asks with the first fratricide, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and which entails upon itself the malediction written against those who were “not grieved with the afflictions of Joseph.” That is a peace without truth which “looks every man to his own things, and not every man to the things of others also”; and if this maxim be a canon binding on any one man in reference to any other man, it is equally binding on any one nation in reference to any other nation.

II. Our second deduction from the text is, that the godliest celebration of peace is to resume the social and religious benefactions interrupted by the war. Hezekiah so improved even a period of respite. “He made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city.” If God condescended to put twice on record the mere municipal zeal of this pious prince; if, the pool, the conduit and the water are counted worthy of a place in the compendious annals of Inspiration, we may be sure the activities of Christian benevolence in the same direction will meet with His gracious approval. It is a miserable mistake to suppose, that Christianity has nothing to do with the common tenements, the daily vulgar wants and homespun miseries of our fellow-men. It stirs our sympathy to listen to the recital of the far-off dark places of the earth and their habitations of cruelty; but it is not so easy to extort a sigh over the dark back lanes and more noisome and cruel abodes in the next street behind us. There are no Hezekiah’s pools, except in fever-brewing abominations of the cesspool, nor other conduit except the constant exhalations of disease and death from the sluggish gutter, nor better homes than the vile hovels where in guilt and penury alike seek a covert to sin, and suffer and die. If the bitter mass of gratuitous suffering and mortality arising from a defective commissariat in the Crimea should drag into reluctant notice the amount of misery dally endured from a similar neglect of sanitary provisions in the crowded courts and alleys of the metropolis, the poor battalions will not have perished in vain. They will have incidentally achieved an involuntary victory on behalf of their fellow-citizens, attended perhaps with more comfort than glory, but none the less precious for the public welfare. Oh! there is more hope of the Gospel gaining audience of the wild Indian in the cheerful freedom of his native forests, than of its penetrating the gross darkness of the denizens alongside the Thames, or the purlieus of the city. If we would speak with any hope of evangelising effect of “the pool of Siloam,” and of “the Fountain of living waters,” we must first tread in Hezekiah’s footsteps, provide the pool and the conduit of sanitary necessities, the possibilities of popular decency and comfort, the practicableness of a family hearth and home, the humble means of health and cleanliness, of light and air and water, freely as God bestows them, and fully as a seasonable adoption of remedial agents would supply them. Such a celebration of the peace abroad would afford the happiest prospect of more peace at home, and co-operate with city missionaries and ministers of religion with the most hopeful pledges of success, in their more directly spiritual efforts for the evangelisation of our fellow-citizens. (J. B. Owen, M. A.)

Submission

“Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him: therefore there was wrath upon him and upon Judah and Jerusalem.” The prophet was sent to say to him, “Behold the days come that all that is in thy house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the Lord. And of thy sons which shall issue from thee--shall they take away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” This was the humiliating and distressing message to which the penitent king made the reply in our text, “Good is the word of the Lord which thou bass spoken.” Shall I call your attention to the holiness and happiness of such a temper, and to the universal obligation on mankind to offer this homage to their God and King? In doing this I will,

I. Explain precisely what the temper is. It is a temper of universal and absolute submission to the will of God. There is a forced submission--a yielding because we cannot help it; but this is not the thing required. There is an acquiescence in the will of God when that will sends prosperity; but this is only a consenting that another should make us happy. The only true submission is that hearty acquiescence in the will of God which arises from supreme love to him. The reason why the wicked do not submit, is that they love themselves and their own enjoyments most. While such a temper continues, they must of course value their own gratification more than the Divine pleasure, and approve of the will of God only so far as that will is tributary to them. This selfishness is the root and core of all rebellion. When our own wishes and interests are less dear to us than that universal interest which is wrapt up in the Divine will, what can tempt us to unsubmission? what is there for us to oppose to that will? what interest have we to maintain against the wishes of God? But so certain as we love another interest better than that which the Divine will protects, we shall set up that interest against God, and resist whenever he lays his finger upon it. True submission then is the necessary effect of supreme love to God, and can arise from no other principle. This submission is to be distinguished from that morbid inactivity and aversion to care which, retiring from exertion, leaves God to be the only agent in the universe--which puts off burdens upon Him just as the indolent shift them off upon each other--which, instead of exerting a dependent agency with an eye fixed upon an overruling providence, leaves God to perform both His part and ours. That may be called submission to a providential dispensation, which really is indolence shrinking from an effort to change the posture of affairs. It is an essential part of God’s plan, and for His glory, that creatures should obtain good by their own activity; otherwise there would be no use for their immortal powers. This activity He has therefore enjoined. “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,” is the Christian’s motto.

II. I am to dwell a little on the holiness and happiness of such a temper, and the universal obligation on mankind to exercise it. To love the righteous will of God, in which are balanced all the interests of the universe--which is perfectly wise and benevolent and right--to love that will better than our own interests, and to subject our interests and wishes to that; must be holy if any thing is holy--must be pure and sublime benevolence. How generous and noble is the temper. How infinitely superior to the littleness and meanness of a selfish spirit. And it is precisely what God commands. If then holiness consists in obeying God, it consists in rendering him that supreme love which will produce the submission in question. What can be holiness, what can be goodness, if it is not subjection to the will of eternal wisdom and benevolence? This submission to the will of God, so far as it operates, necessarily excludes all evil passions and conduct. For instance, it excludes all discontent. For one who knows that the providence of God is universal, and extends to the most minute events, and who is willing that the will of the Lord in all things should be done, and delights in that will more than in anything which that will can take away; what ground can there be for discontentment? If events are crossing to his feelings, still His supreme desire is gratified, for the will of the Lord is done; and though He may suffer he would by no means change a single circumstance about which the Divine will has been clearly expressed. But when the pleasure of God is known, a particle of discontentment evinces a want of submission. With proper resignation, we shall feel, under any cross event, that we have nothing to do, in mind or body, but to use the means which God has appointed to remove or support the evil. In looking forward into the wide expanse of futurity, or in contemplating the issue of any particular event, the Christian knows that nothing can happen but what the will of God appoints. While that will engages his supreme regard, how can he be anxious? It follows of course that submission will exclude every complaining word, every, angry, or bitter word, every impatient word. Submission will cure every inordinate desire after wealth, honour, pleasure, friends, ease, or whatever else we regard. An inordinate desire is an unsubmissive desire. Submission is an effectual cure of all envious feelings towards our neighbour. It follows of course that submission will exclude every falsehood, and I may add, every transgression. The temptation to transgress is a desire for some object which we cannot obtain without going counter to a Divine precept. Where the object is placed in this predicament by the providence of God, it is plain that submission to providence take away all motives to transgress. I add finally, that submission, so far as it extends, must quench every evil passion, and thus extinguish the inward fire from which all outward eruptions proceed. If it suppresses every inordinate desire, every feeling of discontent, all distrust of God, every motion of impatience. Thus the holiness of this temper appears. And its happiness is no less evident. Submission to God, as we have seen, excludes all those uncomfortable passions which make the wicked like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. It clears away everything that can agitate or corrode the mind. And as its very life-blood consists in supreme delight in the will of God, it has always the happiness of knowing that its dearest object is safe--that the ground of its highest exultation and joy is secure--that the will of infinite wisdom and benevolence will in all things be done. And in respect to the universal obligation, who can doubt that this is precisely the temper in which all moral agents ought to unite? The very definition of moral agents is, that they are under obligation to feel and do right and to avoid wrong. But in the temper under consideration, all the right feelings in the universe are involved, and by it all the wrong feelings in the universe are excluded. If you revolt from these conclusions, you must go back to the full admission that all men are under indispensable obligations to yield unlimited submission to God. Is he not our rightful King, and are we not His subjects? Is not His will perfect? Has not the Creator and Proprietor of all things a right to govern His own world according to His own pleasure? This is the religion Of the Old Testament and the New. Under the severest trials this resignation has all along been exemplified in the history of the Church. “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,” said Job when all his children and possessions were destroyed. “Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?” was his language when covered with one tormenting ulcer from head to foot. In more general and common matters, the same acknowledgment of God and the same resignation to His will have all along been exemplified. A general acquiescence and joy in His government have always distinguished His true servants. All down the ages they have sung, “The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.” (E. D. Griffith, D. D.)

Resignation in affliction

The Fram, which went in search of the North Pole, escaped many of the perils that injured other expeditionary vessels, because her commander built her wide at the decks and narrowing her down to the keel, so that she did not withstand the ice, but yielded to its pressure. The cruel masses could not get a grip of the wisely constructed craft. The pressure, so far from crushing her, lifted her clean out of the ice, and she rode triumphantly on the floes. How many of our life troubles which if faced resentfully, sullenly, proudly, threaten to grind us to powder; but meet them meekly, resignedly, recognising in them God’s wiser will for us than we for ourselves, and they will in the end lift us upward and bear us onward towards the eternal Light. (H. O. Mackey.)

Unshaken faith

The Rev. Dr. Campbell Morgan tells the following pathetic story concerning Commander Booth-Tucker, who lost his wife in a railway accident last autumn. “A few weeks ago,” he, says, “in a city of Nebraska, I was holding meetings. There came to that city my dear friend Commander Booth-Tucker. It was the city of Omaha. I shall never forget my talk with him there. I said to him, ‘Commander, the passing of your beloved wife was one of the things that I freely confess I cannot understand.’ He looked at me across the breakfast table, his eyes wet with tears, and yet his face radiant with that light which never shone on sea or land, and he said to me, ‘Dear man, do you not know that the Cross can only be preached by tragedy?’ Then he told me this incident: ‘When I and my wife were last in Chicago I was trying to lead a sceptic to Christ in a meeting. At last the sceptic said, with a cold glittering eye and a sarcastic voice, ‘It is all very well. You mean well; but I lost my faith in God when my wife was taken out of my home. It is all very well; but if that beautiful woman at your side lay dead and cold by you, how would you believe in God?’ Within one month she had been taken through the awful tragedy of a railway accident, and the Commander went back to Chicago, and, in the hearing of a vast multitude, said, ‘Here, in the midst of the crowd, standing by the side of my dead wife as I take her to burial, I want to say that I still believe in Him, and love Him, and know Him.’” (C. L. M’Cleery.).