Isaiah 37:14-20 - Homiletics

Taking our cross to God, and casting all our care upon him.

Deep afflictions seem to pass beyond the reach of human aid. Whether it be bereavement, or sense of sin, or coming trouble of any heavy kind, the profoundly afflicted soul for the most part feels human hell) vain, human sympathy impertinent, and finds no refuge, no consolation, except in pouring itself out before God. We know that "he careth for us" (1 Peter 6:7); we know that he can understand us. It is true wisdom to fly to him, and put our griefs before him. Only let us be sure that, like Hezekiah, we "spread" the whole before the Lord ( Isaiah 37:14 ), that we keep nothing back—no dark corner of our heart, no "secret place" of our complex nature, no hidden act of our life. Unless we be honest with God, we have no claim to his help. He hates such as "dissemble in their hearts" ( Jeremiah 42:20 ) before him. The best human counsellor can give us little aid unless we "make a clean breast" of our difficulties to him. So God will have us "make a clean breast"—not for his information, since he "understandeth our thoughts long before" ( Psalms 139:2 ), but that we may be fit recipients of his grace—that his healing balms may have power to work on us and comfort us and effect our cure.