Isaiah 38:1-20 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Under the Sun Summer Worship Series Sunday, July 19, 2020 “The Shadow of the Sun Moves Back”
We have become incredibly accustomed to it. Each day, the sun rises in the east, traces a path across the sky, and sets in the west. The sun as we witness it is repetitive, consistent, precise, and even measurable. For centuries, people have measured the movement of the sun and recorded observations. They have even created structures and objects that demonstrate those measurements and indicate the days and seasons and years. You are perhaps familiar with the concept of a sundial, that a shadow can be tracked in such a way that it can give a quite precise measurement of the time of day. So it is quite unusual and also quite significant when something different happens, when those measurements are thrown into confusion. And that’s exactly what happened in the account from our sermon text today, the account of Hezekiah’s illness and recovery from Isaiah 38. The shadow that was cast on the steps of Ahaz reversed course and moved back ten steps. Some Bible commentators and interpreters have understood the steps of Ahaz to actually be an instrument, a sundial, that was made for the very purpose of marking time. Others have understood it to be a staircase built for the purpose of allowing people to move up or down as needed, which also happened to serve the purpose of indicating the passing of time by the shadow that moved down the stairway. No matter what, it was a miraculous moment when the shadow shifted and moved in the way opposite of what was expected. While it fits our sun theme, the shadow from this account is not really the focus. The focus is what happens in the life of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was a king of Judah, the southern part of the divided Kingdom of Israel. Hezekiah was a faithful king. He believed God’s Word and had worked to restore and repair the Temple and the worship of the Lord that took place there. But Hezekiah became sick. In fact, he was dying. And in case he was uncertain about it, God sent the prophet Isaiah to King Hezekiah to tell him. Hezekiah was to get his house in order because he was going to die. He was not going to survive his illness. Hezekiah would have been about 39 years old at the time. While Hezekiah was a faithful king, he was not a perfect man. We know this because no man is a perfect man, except for Jesus Christ himself. No person born, going all the way back to Adam and Eve, has been perfect. Sinful parents conceive and give birth to sinful children, and both the parents and the children ultimately die. This is the wages of sin, that there comes an end to this existence. Whether we are ready for it or not, whether we have advance warning or not, whether we have made preparations or not, sinful people die. No matter how hard we try to stop one cause of death, we certainly cannot stop them all. Hezekiah would later admit, “I thought that, only halfway through my life, I was entering into the gates of death, deprived of the remaining years of my life. I thought, I will not see the Lord— the Lord in the land of the living. I will no longer see anyone among the inhabitants of the world.” When we don’t receive warning, when things are going just fine for us, we sometimes forget about the fact that death is a constant threat. It is all too easy to get caught up in our earthly lives. We can all too easily focus on accumulating wealth or power or fame or pleasure, or just trying to enjoy our circumstances as they are. We so often neglect the lesson that Solomon taught us as we heard last week, that everything in this life passes away like a vapor. Maybe for some dealing with a pandemic has at least brought into focus the reality that we all should know: the end of my life could come at any moment, no matter how old or young I am. Sometimes, when we do remember, we try to stop it. We look for the best doctors. We worry about germs and sanitation. We avoid as many dangers as we possibly can. And I am not suggesting that in and of themselves any of these actions are wrong, but it is important to realize that they are temporary. Even with the best doctors, the cleanest hands, and the most sheltering away, we can’t stop death. But we know someone who can. Hezekiah knew the Lord. He knew the true God, and he knew that he could turn to him in prayer, even in the face of God’s own prophecy of his impending death. Hezekiah prayed.