The Covenantal Reversal
Introduction: When God Says No, and Then Yes
We come today to a passage that is a great encouragement to all who pray, and a great vexation to all tidy-minded theologians who want God to operate like a predictable machine. Here we have a man, King Hezekiah, who has been given a terminal diagnosis, not from a doctor in a lab coat, but from a prophet of God speaking the very word of Yahweh. "Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live." That is about as final as it gets. There is no ambiguity there. This is a divine decree.
And what does Hezekiah do? He does not fatalistically roll over. He does not say, "Well, that's that." He turns his face to the wall and prays. He weeps bitterly. He appeals to God on the basis of his past faithfulness. And what happens next is staggering. God reverses the sentence. He sends the same prophet, Isaiah, trotting back to the king before he has even left the courtyard, with a message of reprieve. A message of healing. A message of deliverance. A message that adds a decade and a half to the man's life.
This event forces us to ask some very important questions. Does prayer change things? Does God change His mind? How does God's sovereignty interact with our supplications? The modern world, even the modern church, is deeply confused on this point. On the one hand, you have a sort of practical deism, which believes God wound up the clock and now just watches it run down, making prayer a useless, sentimental exercise. On the other hand, you have a name-it-and-claim-it theology that treats God like a cosmic vending machine, making prayer a form of spiritual manipulation. Both are profoundly wrong. This passage shows us a third way: the way of covenantal conversation, where the sovereign God of the universe enters into a real relationship with His people, hearing them, seeing them, and responding to them according to His own good pleasure and unshakeable promises.
The Text
Then the word of Yahweh came to Isaiah, saying, "Go and say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of your father David, “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city.”’"
(Isaiah 38:4-6)
The Intercepted Prophet (v. 4)
We begin with the immediate divine response.
"Then the word of Yahweh came to Isaiah, saying," (Isaiah 38:4)
The word "Then" is crucial. It connects this divine word directly to the preceding action, which was Hezekiah's prayer. The king's prayer ascended, and God's Word descended. There is a direct cause and effect here, initiated by the man and answered by God. God did not wait a week. The parallel account in 2 Kings 20 tells us Isaiah had not yet gone out into the middle court of the palace. God's answer intercepted the prophet on his way out. This is a God who is quick to hear and quick to answer the desperate pleas of His people.
Notice also that God continues to work through His established means. He does not give Hezekiah a warm feeling or a subjective impression. He sends His prophet with an objective, external, authoritative Word. This is how God operates. He binds Himself to His Word and to His messengers. Our faith is not to be grounded in our internal emotional state, but in the sure and certain promises that God has spoken through His appointed servants, the prophets and apostles, and which are now contained for us in Scripture.
The Covenantal Address (v. 5a)
The content of the message begins with the identity of the speaker, and this is the foundation for everything that follows.
"Go and say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of your father David...’" (Isaiah 38:5a)
This is the bedrock of the whole affair. God does not simply identify Himself as Yahweh, the sovereign Lord. He identifies Himself covenantally. He is "the God of your father David." Why is this so important? Because God is reminding Hezekiah, and us, that He does not act in a vacuum. He acts according to His promises. He had made an unconditional covenant with David, promising that his throne and his kingdom would be established forever (2 Samuel 7). Hezekiah, as the son of David on the throne, was a current beneficiary of that ancient promise.
Hezekiah's prayer was not answered because he was such a good king, though he was. It was not answered because his tears were particularly salty. It was answered because God is a covenant-keeping God. He had sworn an oath to David, and He would not break it. This is the foundation for all effective Christian prayer. We do not come to God on the basis of our performance. We come to Him on the basis of His promises, fulfilled in the greater Son of David, Jesus Christ. We pray in Jesus' name because we are appealing to the covenant God made with Him and, through Him, with us. Our confidence rests not in our own righteousness, but in God's faithfulness to His own Word.
The Personal Response (v. 5b)
God then reveals that He is not a distant, abstract force, but a personal, attentive Father.
"‘I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.’" (Isaiah 38:5b)
This is one of the most tender statements in all of Scripture. The omnipotent Creator of the cosmos stoops to tell a distraught man that He has heard his words and seen his tears. This demolishes any notion of a stoic, unfeeling God. Our prayers are not just vibrations in the air; they enter the ears of the Lord of Hosts. Our tears are not wasted; they are seen and registered by our Father in heaven. As David says in Psalm 56, "You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle! Are they not in your book?"
Hezekiah's prayer was emotional, raw, and desperate. And God honored it. This is not to say that emotionalism is the goal, but it is to say that God is not put off by the honest cries of a heart in anguish. He is a Father who is moved by the plight of His children.
And the answer is specific. "I will add fifteen years to your life." God is the Lord of time. He holds our days in His hands. The original decree, "you shall die," was a true statement of what would happen apart from Hezekiah's repentant prayer. It was not a lie. But God, in His sovereignty, made the outcome contingent on the prayer He also sovereignly ordained Hezekiah to pray. This is not a contradiction; it is a relationship. God has ordained both the ends and the means. Prayer is one of His primary ordained means. To refuse to pray because God is sovereign is like refusing to eat because God has ordained whether you will live or die. It is a foolish and disobedient attempt to be more logical than God.
The Abundant Answer (v. 6)
As is so often the case, God's answer exceeds the request. Hezekiah prayed for his life, but God gives him life and the security of his kingdom.
"‘And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; and I will defend this city.’" (Isaiah 38:6)
God bundles two deliverances together. He will deliver Hezekiah from his sickness, and He will deliver Jerusalem from Sennacherib. The personal blessing is tied to the corporate blessing. The life of the covenant king is intertwined with the life of the covenant people. This is a fundamental principle. In God's economy, salvation is never a purely individualistic affair. It is personal, yes, but it is also corporate.
The promise "I will defend this city" is a direct, unilateral declaration of divine protection. The Assyrians were the global superpower of the day, an unstoppable military machine. Jerusalem was, by comparison, nothing. But God says He will defend it. The security of God's people does not rest on their own strength, their own walls, or their own political savvy. It rests on the promise of God's presence and protection. He is a shield to His people.
Conclusion: The Greater Hezekiah
This entire episode is a beautiful illustration of God's grace, but it is also a signpost pointing to a much greater reality. Hezekiah, the son of David, received a death sentence and, through prayer, had his life extended. But Jesus Christ, the ultimate Son of David, took our death sentence upon Himself.
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall to die. Jesus turned His face toward Jerusalem, setting it like flint, to die in our place. Hezekiah wept for his own life. Jesus wept over the city that would kill Him. In the garden, He prayed with loud cries and tears, not to be spared from death itself, but to be saved through it, submitting to the Father's will.
Hezekiah was granted fifteen more years of mortal life. But because the greater Hezekiah went through death and came out the other side in resurrection, we are offered something infinitely better. We are not offered a mere extension of this fallen life; we are offered eternal life, resurrection life, life that death cannot touch. God heard Hezekiah's prayer and pushed back his death. God heard the prayer of His Son, and defeated death itself.
And just as God promised to deliver Hezekiah's city, so He has promised to deliver the Church, the New Jerusalem, from all her enemies. He defends His city, not with walls and spears, but with the blood of His Son and the power of His Spirit. And the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Therefore, let us come boldly to the throne of grace, as Hezekiah did, appealing to the covenant promises of God in His Son. For we have a God who hears our prayers, sees our tears, and has given us not fifteen more years, but life forevermore.