Wasted Grace (2 Kings 20:1-11)
The Gift Nobody Deserved
Imagine being the worst employee at your company. You're late constantly, you call out sick without reason, you lie to your supervisor, gossip about coworkers, steal from the company, and you even got into a fistfight in the break room over a donut. Friday at 4:45pm the boss calls you in. You're certain you're getting fired, and you know you deserve it.
Instead, the boss offers you a promotion, a raise, and a personal mentorship. You push back and say, "But I'm the worst. I've lied, I've stolen, I caused problems for everyone." And the boss says, "I know all about it. I've been covering your work. I've personally paid back what you stole. If you accept this offer, none of that gets held against you."
Obviously, that would be ridiculous. Completely unjustified. And you'd be right. This is also exactly how people have responded to the message of Jesus for two thousand years.
This may not be a perfect analogy, but it gets at the heart of something the Bible calls grace. Undeserving people being given an opportunity and an invitation to receive forgiveness, a clean record, the freedom to move forward from the past, and the promise that God will be with them every step of the way.
Grace is God giving us what we could never earn. It is His goodness at work in our lives despite our imperfections and weaknesses. And the question this week's message is asking is a simple but searching one: how are we responding to the grace God has already given us?
Hezekiah on His Deathbed
Our key text is 2 Kings 20, and it opens with one of Israel's finest kings flat on his back, dying.
Hezekiah had been a remarkable leader. He inherited a spiritually wrecked kingdom from his father, one that had been dragged deep into idolatry and corruption, and he dismantled it. He stood up to the superpowers of his day under enormous political and military pressure and trusted God for miraculous intervention. If he had died at this point in his story, his name would have been given to baby boys for generations.
But he didn't die. Not yet.
2 Kings 20:1-6: About that time Hezekiah became deathly ill, and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to visit him. He gave the king this message: "This is what the Lord says: Set your affairs in order, for you are going to die. You will not recover from this illness." When Hezekiah heard this, he turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, "Remember, O Lord, how I have always been faithful to you and have served you single-mindedly, always doing what pleases you." Then he broke down and wept bitterly. But before Isaiah had left the middle courtyard, this message came to him from the Lord: "Go back to Hezekiah, the leader of my people. Tell him, 'This is what the Lord, the God of your ancestor David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you, and three days from now you will get out of bed and go to the Temple of the Lord. I will add fifteen years to your life, and I will rescue you and this city from the king of Assyria.'"
God hears his prayer, heals him, and promises fifteen more years. Then as a sign to confirm it, He causes the shadow on the sundial to move backward. This is not a small act of kindness. This is an overwhelming display of grace and power. A life that was ending is revived and extended.
So what do you do with fifteen extra years, a fresh start, and a miraculous confirmation from God? If you expected gratitude, devotion, and faithfulness, you would be disappointed.
What Happened to the Fifteen Years
2 Chronicles 32:24-25: About that time Hezekiah became deathly ill. He prayed to the Lord, who healed him and gave him a miraculous sign. But Hezekiah did not respond appropriately to the kindness shown him, and he became proud.
The passage goes on to describe a king who became increasingly absorbed in accumulating wealth, storehouses, flocks, buildings, and status. And when a political delegation from Babylon arrived to propose an alliance against the Assyrians, Hezekiah took them on a tour of everything he owned, his treasuries, his armory, his palace. There was nothing he did not show them. He wanted to look powerful. He wanted to look like a big shot.
Compare that to the king who, under extreme threat, dropped to his knees and trusted God completely. Under pressure he had been extraordinary. In prosperity he drifted.
This is not an isolated pattern. Charles Spurgeon once wrote that prosperity is a more searching test of character than adversity. Abraham Lincoln made a similar observation: nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
The same principle runs through the book of Deuteronomy. Moses warned the Israelites in Deuteronomy 8: when you have eaten your fill, be sure to praise the Lord your God. But that is the time to be careful. Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord your God. For when you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in, when your flocks and herds have become very large, do not become proud and forget the Lord your God.
This is the pattern. And it is worth paying attention to because most of us are more like Hezekiah in his later years than we would like to admit.
The Core Statement
Faithfulness is built in tough times and tested in good times.
History shows that the gospel tends to spread fastest under pressure and persecution. Where following Jesus is dangerous, faith tends to run deep. But the more comfortable and stable our lives become, the easier it becomes to drift. Not to walk away. Not to rebel. Just to slowly, gradually let things slip.
Some of us are in a hard season right now. You're holding on, crying out to God, and growing in ways you won't fully understand until you're on the other side. Others are in a season where things are steady or even good. And that season carries its own challenge. It's in the good times that faith is most likely to slowly fade if we are not intentional about keeping it strong.
The question is not simply, "Have I received grace?" The question is, "What am I doing with the grace I've received?"
Three Ways to Stay Grounded
Have a Healthy Fear of God
The fear of God is not terror. It is awe. It is the kind of reverence that comes from seeing who God actually is, his power, his authority, his sovereignty, and then recognizing honestly who we are by comparison. In the light of his perfection we see our own imperfection. In the awareness of his strength we understand our weakness. In acknowledging how worthy he is, we are free to admit how undeserving we are, and yet he loves us more than human words can express.
Proverbs says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom because it puts everything in its proper place. When you understand both his greatness and his grace, you do not treat him casually. You respond with humility, obedience, and a life that reflects how much you've been given.
When we lose the fear of God, something shifts. Sin starts to feel smaller. Obedience starts to feel optional. We don't usually walk away from God outright. We just start treating him more casually, one small step at a time, until we are lukewarm when we used to be on fire.
Understand the Depth of Grace
The grace described in the Bible does not make sense until you understand how desperately you need it. Until we reach the honest acknowledgment that we need the mercy and forgiveness of God, the message of the cross will not make sense. But once that truth settles in, once we arrive at the realization that our mistakes have put a real distance between us and God and that we genuinely need a Savior, then the good news of Jesus is truly the best news anyone could ever hear.
Grace is free to us, but it was not free to God. The gift was given at the cost of the cross. When we remember that, the grace we have received is not something we can treat casually. It becomes the thing we build everything else on.
Build Your Life with Intentionality
Intentionality is not how we earn grace. Intentionality is how we respond to grace.
Life is busy. Demands and obligations fill every corner of the calendar. Everyone is in the same boat. But waiting for optimal circumstances before we start living faithfully is a sure way to drift, because optimal circumstances never arrive.
This looks different for everyone, but it includes the basics: building weekly rhythms around worship and community, daily habits that keep you connected to God, and a posture of continual gratitude for what he has done.
For parents especially, this is urgent. Research from Thom S. Rainer's work suggests that when only the father is active in faith, around 66 percent of children embrace faith as adults. When only the mother is active, that number drops to 36 percent. When both parents model faith together, it rises to 74 percent. The faith we model now is the most powerful sermon our children will ever hear.
If we do not intentionally build, we will accidentally go into disrepair. Faith does not maintain itself by default. Community, the essentials of worship and prayer and Scripture, and active participation in the life of the church are not optional add-ons. They are how we stay grounded whether life is hard or things are going well.
One More Story
Hezekiah's failure had a consequence he may not have anticipated. He left his son Manasseh without the example and the foundation a future king would need. Manasseh went on to become the longest-reigning and most wicked king in the entire Bible. Idolatry, witchcraft, murder, child sacrifice. He led an entire nation down a path of destruction.
But then he was captured by the Assyrians, led away in chains, and thrown into prison in Babylon. And 2 Chronicles 33 records what happened next: in deep distress, Manasseh sought the Lord his God and sincerely humbled himself before the God of his ancestors. And when he prayed, the Lord listened to him and was moved by his request. The Lord brought Manasseh back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. And then Manasseh finally realized that the Lord alone is God.
The worst of the worst received grace.
If God extended grace and forgiveness to Manasseh, we can have extraordinary confidence that the same grace is available to us. No matter what we have done or how far we have drifted, the invitation is still open.
Undeserving people being given an opportunity and an invitation to receive forgiveness, blessing, the freedom to move on from the past, and the promise that God will be with them every step of the way.
The question is what we do with it.
Reflection Questions
What do my daily habits and weekly schedule reveal about what I truly value?
What would my life look like if I fully responded to God's grace?
