Time for the End of the World

It would be helpful to have your Bibles open to Isaiah 38 for this article.

I have been alive for 45 years now, and that seems like a long time, especially to my children, who can’t imagine what 45 years even means.

We all look at time a little differently, depending on our perspective, don’t we? I mean what seems like a long time for some people may seem like a very short amount of time to others. So too this may be true in that the events we are going to talk about today occurred over 2,700 years ago, and let’s face it, to everyone in this room, whether we are eight years old or eighty years old, I think we would all agree, that is A LONG TIME AGO. But, it’s not that long really, when we think about the age of the universe, or even when we think about carbon-dating pointing to evidence of creatures existing millions of years ago. We will take some time to think about time today, as we see that the Lord, as the author of time reminds us of our smallness and his bigness, our finiteness and his infinite majesty.

This afternoon, we are look  at chapter 38 of Isaiah, which records the illness of King Hezekiah in Israel, sometime around 700 BCE. For Hezekiah, it probably seemed like the world was coming to an end. In fact, the entire region of Israel had been conquered except for Jerusalem, the fortified, holy city of God.

So, let’s picture the scene, The Assyrian empire, which was the most powerful and vast empire of the period had a whopping 185,000 soldiers surrounding the city, besieging it. Jerusalem was all but doomed to be conquered, and many of the inhabitants, the armies of Judah and even Hezekiah himself, looked certain to perish. But, in one of the most miraculous events in all of the Bible, Isaiah Chapter 37:36 records that the Lord went out and put to death the entire army of 185,000 people. Hezekiah, (the king of Jerusalem and lower region of Israel), had to be relieved and astonished at the power of God’s deliverance. God had done something miraculous. Just as the world seemed to be coming to an end, God gave his people a new beginning.

How many times in your lifetimes have people tried to predict the end of the world? For centuries, people have made predictions about the end of the world, and every time, it proves to be wrong. We’re still here. We look around at the world today and we see wars in Iran, Israel and Ukraine (and these are just the ones that make the news), and many of us might think that the world is surely coming to an end, as so many probably thought during the Holocaust, the Black Plague in Europe, or possibly even during the Covid pandemic.

In our passage today, Hezekiah, having just survived a massive invasion by the enemy, is facing the end of his world, yet again.

Because in Isaiah 38, we have another miraculous intervention in the life of King Hezekiah. In verse one, Hezekiah receives a grim diagnosis from the prophet, Isaiah, that he is soon going to die, and like so many doctors tell so many patients facing a terminal diagnosis, “it would be a good idea to put your house in order.” He even goes so far as to diminish any hope whatsoever, saying “you will not recover.” Perhaps, some of you have faced or are currently facing a diagnosis like this. What’s it like to hear such a diagnosis—to know that there is no treatment available that will help you get well, but that you will soon die? Well, you might not think it to look at me now, but I have survived two bouts of cancer in my 45 years of life—one when I was just 34 years old and again when I was 42 years of age. And although I didn’t hear these exact words from my doctor, I can tell you that I was pretty certain at one point that I would die from the disease. In fact, my doctor told me during my 13-day stint in the hospital, while I was receiving treatment that I would surely die if I somehow contracted Sepsis in my neutropenic state, having only one white blood cell left in my body. Two days later, my doctor was hospitalized for Sepsis, the very infection he said could kill me. So, I haven’t been too far from death, and in fact, I sometimes think that God was showing me through that doctor’s illness of how this is a picture of how God takes on our sin in a substitutionary way. I know what it’s like to face death and be saved, and no less than 4 months before our first child, Annelise, was born.

But in verses 2 and 3, we see the reaction of Hezekiah. He turns his face to the wall and he prays. And he prays without prompting from Isaiah, to remember how he has walked faithfully after the Lord. Indeed, he tore down all the false idols of his father, Ahaz. He worships the Lord and Lord alone. We can all be guilty of going after false gods, loving so many things in life more than we love the Lord, but Hezekiah, pleads with God to remember how he has lived a life of righteousness. And Hezekiah weeps.

And then something truly amazing happens. In verse 4, we see that the Lord hears the prayers and pleas of Hezekiah, and it appears that he changes his mind! Indeed, after he tells Hezekiah about his death which is sure to come swiftly, he mercifully and graciously determines to add 15 years to his life. And we can presume that this is not just fifteen years of life of questionable health; rather, this is fifteen years of good health and prosperity! We learn from Chronicles of Hezekiah’s great wealth and prosperity and even productivity during his life (2 Chronicles 36:27-29).

And in verses 7-8, we see that the Lord does something even more gracious for Hezekiah—he gives him a sign that all this will come to pass! Maybe some of you have received a sign from the Lord in your lives…have you ever heard from the Lord in a specific way?

One sign that I will never forget was when the Lord revealed to me, while my wife and I were dating, that I would marry her, even though at the time, it looked like we might be breaking up. One sign my wife might share with you was when she heard from the Lord that I would be a pastor over ten years before I was even considering it as a position. She chose not to share that with me for many years, as my calling from the Lord became more and more clear. The Lord sometimes gives signs, but I must admit, they are rare. We must be living for the Lord and really pursuing after Him to hear his voice and see what he is revealing.

The sign that he gives Hezekiah is absolutely stunning! Look at verses 7-8: “ ‘This is the Lord’s sign to you that the Lord will do what he has promised: I will make the shadow cast by the sun to go back the ten steps it has gone down on the stairway of Ahaz.’ So the sunlight went back the ten steps it has had gone down.” Essentially, the Lord turns back time in this scene! He makes the shadow cast by the sun go back ten steps! Essentially, he is drawing the sun back up in the sky! Wouldn’t that be a sight to behold?

I don’t know if you remember a few years ago, when some areas of our nation experienced almost complete darkness due to the total solar eclipse that happened on April 8th, 2024. That was amazing to experience, even if you were only in the partial zone, as it turned almost nighttime for 1-2 minutes in the middle of the day. Well, here, Hezekiah experienced a celestial phenomenon something like this, where the Lord turns back time in order to assure him that he would keep his promise! Indeed, God is the author of time, and he can give us back our time when we trust in Him. In fact, we come to learn, as we read from Hezekiah’s writing in verses 10-20, what exactly it looks like to be given back our time. It’s not just time on this Earth, it’s time forever in the presence of God. Look again at verses 18-20: “For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise; those who down to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living—they praise you, as I am doing today; parents tell their children about your faithfulness. The Lord will save me, and we will sing with stringed instruments all the days of our lives in the temple of the Lord.” These verses are about everlasting life, about how the Lord saves us from ultimate death. Even though Hezekiah only lives fifteen years more, he has an eternal perspective here, recognizing that he will live on even after death in resurrection life.

But it’s not only that we get to have eternal life when we trust in the Lord, which would surely be enough! There also is great purpose and transformation when we go through illness and suffering.

Look closely at verses 15-17, in which this illness has done several things for Hezekiah—it has humbled him, it has acquainted him with anguish (the same anguish that Christ will experience as he dies for his own sin), it has helped him see his great need for the Lord, as the one who saves all people from death in their sin. After all, we remember from Genesis why death is in the world at all! It’s because of the sinfulness and rebellion we find ourselves in this very day! And look in the second half of verse 17, Hezekiah recognizes that God has put all his sins behind his back! His very illness has helped him remember his great need for atonement from the Lord and the loving God that He in fact is!

And lastly, it says that it was for his BENEFIT that he suffered in the first part of the verse. Do you hear that? It’s for his benefit? How can that be true? Suffering is awful! It’s terrible to suffer. What benefit can come from that?

I often tell people that if I wouldn’t have had cancer, I would never have become a pastor. It was in and through this deep suffering that I had with my first round of cance that the Lord gave me a new heart! He humbled me and made me all-too acquainted with my sin and even death itself.

So, what’s the point here? I think the point comes in verse 19, where the passage points out that it is the LIVING, THE LIVING, the living people of God are the ones that praise Him. The Lord is the one who keeps us alive and gives us the opportunity at eternal life. The fifteen years that he gives to Hezekiah, and the movement of the very sun of the sky reveals to us that the Lord is in charge of time! He can turn it back, and he can give us more! The question is what will we do with the time given to us!

But there’s  more… the time given to us on this Earth is  merely a foreshadowing of the time given to us in eternity! Can we even get our minds around what it means to live forever—to go from being sick and ill to being totally restored in good health and prosperity like Hezekiah is in this passage? This is what is promised in Revelation 21 in which it says that those who trust in God—those who sing his praises, those who confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in their heart that Jesus is raised from the dead—will not just be saved, but they will be totally restored, with no more pain and no more sorrow.

But, there’s bad news too. And just as Revelation 21 ends by stating the bad news that the unbelieving will be thrown in the lake of fire, I want you to see here too in Isaiah that there are those in verse 18 that there are those who go down to the pit—that die and go to Hell, or the pit of destruction as it is described in verse 17. Hell is a real place that Jesus mentions even more than Heaven in his ministry. Just as Jesus warns about Hell to people, so should we love others enough to tell them about the judgment of God—that all who trust in the death of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins will see Heaven, but all those who reject him stand condemned before an Almighty, all-righteous God. To be clear, it’s not that the Lord wants anyone to go to Hell. “2 Peter 3:9 states, “The Lord is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”

Indeed, Hell is reserved for those who deny the one who has paid for their sins.

Imagine if you have stood before a judge carrying an enormous financial debt, and he was demanding payment, and one of your family members approached the judge with a check to pay all of your debt…but you denied it…you refused to have your family member pay the debt out of pride or even disdain for that family member, the judge would be just to exact on you the fair penalty according to the law. This is the way it will be on the day we come into the presence of the Lord Almighty—either we will accept the free gift of God’s atoning sacrifice for our sins, or we will have rejected it, thinking it’s not needed. It’s absurd to think that way, but so many of us do.

So, in sum then, we see that the Lord saves Hezekiah from his illness. He restores him to good health, and the world is no longer coming to an end for him. The enemy was defeated, and his health is restored. No longer is death a threat for Hezekiah, the righteous king, who lived faithfully, following after the Lord. And while Christ will return one day, and those who are living in Christ, who are living righteously, sometimes look around at the devastation and death in the world and think, the end can’t come soon enough, there will be others, who are stuck in their sins and far from Christ, who will cry out, if we only had more time. But there will come a time when there will be no time, and we are all ushered into God’s eternal presence, and he will ask us one simple question about how we came to be here, and if your answer is anything other than “Jesus Christ,” you will miss the healing that God has planned for you, since the beginning of your life. For from the beginning of our lives we wailed and wept for we were either cold or hot, sick or tired, angry or sad, but at the end of our lives, there will no more crying, pain, or death for those who trust in the death and resurrection of Christ our Lord.

So, let’s turn back time today. Let’s turn back time by believing that time has no power over our eternity with the Lord. We are already a new creation who will live forever and forever in a state of indescribable beauty, love and bliss. We can start turning back time by trusting God as Hezekiah did, going to him in fervent prayer and trusting Him to provide for us. No matter what our struggles or ailments might be, we are not dying, but we are moving closer to everlasting life, like a youth who feels like he has all the time in the world to live and prosper. Trust the Lord, and he will add to you an eternal inheritance. For this is what the Lord Jesus tell us: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:1-3). In the presence of Jesus, where we will all stand soon enough, there is nothing in all the universe that can separate us from eternal joy, love and peace.