Countdown 2 Eternity

James Kaddis: Well, hello, my dear brothers and sisters. I want to welcome you to another episode of Countdown 2 Eternity. I'm very excited about this one. This is a very special episode. We are just after the Labor Day weekend. For this episode, we decided that we would do something very special.

Just to give you a little bit of background, I just finished teaching a Bible study through Isaiah 36 this last Sunday. I thought that it was so critically important because it speaks so clearly to the time that we're living right now. Make no mistake, we are in the last days. The evidence is everywhere. In these days, we have to learn how to completely ignore the noise that surrounds us.

Not only ignore the noise that surrounds us, but use that noise to gain signal. When I say signal, I'm talking about the leading of the Holy Spirit, the word of God, understanding and discerning in how to be equipped when the enemy comes after us. He's coming after so many of us in so many different ways. If you will spend the next 25 to 30 minutes with me, you will find the answer on how to gain victory during the worst and most difficult time of your life. You're going to love this video. I hope you'll be blessed. May you continue to find strength in God that you'll continue to fight the good fight. God bless you.

Isaiah chapter 36. I want to say this right off the bat. When we go from chapters 36 to 39, we are dealing with what I would call a historical interlude. A lot of people look at history and they say, "Well, that's really boring. I really would just prefer to kind of rush through this." There's lots of guys that teach through Isaiah that actually do rush through it. I don't know how they do it, but they typically will reserve one night to just teach through 36, 37, 38, and 39. I can't believe that that happens, but it does.

I think that that's hugely erroneous. I think it's hugely erroneous because when we go over history, history teaches us about things we can't ignore. If we ignore them, we're bound to repeat these things as they happen. I will go further in saying that yes, we are dealing with historical incidents. We are talking about a very important historical interlude in 36, 37, 38, and 39. At the same time, the messages that come out of each of those chapters is remarkable, especially chapter 36.

Before we dig into the text, let me just say the obvious. The obvious is we're living in the last days. You look at what the Bible says to expect in the last days and so many of the things that we're seeing right now manifesting fall right in line with what the Bible tells us to expect. The thing about the last days that we know the Bible teaches us is that there will be many people who will be overwhelmed in these days. Why? Because these days are overwhelming by nature.

There's things that are going to be happening that are going to feel very heavy and oppressive and very difficult. I think what's beautiful about feeling these feelings and dealing with these emotions and going through these circumstances is that we don't ever have to pretend as though things are okay when they're not. Why? Because God is good at making them okay. God is good at resolving these matters for us. The beautiful part about him doing that is we can simply tell him we have a problem.

In these last days, I think it's important because what we're going to see even in this historical account is we are going to recognize the fact that those that are in Judah, specifically the king of Judah, is not going to pretend as though everything is okay. He's going to acknowledge that there is a major crisis before him. What we're talking about, and I think that this is important to be able to understand, is the time that Judah is facing right now is overwhelmingly difficult.

It feels insurmountable on literally every level. When you begin to hear what's going on and you begin to hear the historical context of what's taking place in this chapter, it's going to make you realize just how truly insurmountable it really was. The Bible gives us a great lesson here. The lesson is to put our faith and trust in the Lord no matter what we perceive is going to happen or may happen. The Lord is the one who will stand on our behalf. He's the one that will deliver us. He's the one that will strengthen us.

He's the one that will bring to us everything that we need that we might be able to navigate through the type of days in which we're living. The days in which we are living are staggeringly crazy. With that said, I think it would be appropriate to just simply read the very first verse because it will make a lot of sense. When I explain the history that this verse drives, then it's really going to... you're going to feel the overwhelming element of this that I guarantee Hezekiah was feeling and so many others.

It says this: "Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defensed cities of Judah, and took them." This verse really gives us a lot of the history right away. This immediately, by the way, would put us at around 701 BC. Because if we're talking about the 14th year of the reign of King Hezekiah, Hezekiah's rule started in 715.

If it started in 715 and we're talking about the 14th year of his rule, we're talking about 701. This becomes uniquely important to us because if we are talking about anywhere from 713 to 701, we are talking about a very unique time in the history of the southern kingdom of Judah. What we know is that Sennacherib, who by the way is a king to be feared, he is the king of Assyria. Just so you know, so you can get a geographical mindset of what's happening, this area Assyria is what we know as the area of Iraq today.

It's literally the same place where you find Babylon. It's the same place where you find a few other biblical cities that we know of. What's happening is Sennacherib, who is the king of Assyria, is a man who is known to carry the same kind of terrorist kind of a mindset in the way that he approaches every city that he conquers. The problem that Hezekiah is feeling at this moment, who is currently the king of the southern kingdom of Judah, is that every fenced city, every defense stronghold that the southern kingdom of Judah has has been overtaken by Sennacherib.

The king knows that Assyria has literally overcome, destroyed, taken over every single stronghold that sits around the city of Jerusalem. That leaves room for a lot of fear. It leaves room for a situation that is absolutely insurmountable. Hezekiah is in one of those situations. As the king of the southern kingdom, he is absolutely filled with fear and trepidation and concern and worry because one of the most powerful forces known to mankind at that moment, Assyria, is now surrounding him.

Sennacherib has defeated every city that surrounds Judah, every city in the Judean region here that is under the purview, under the rulership of the southern kingdom of Judah. It's all gone. It's all been overtaken. So it is an insurmountable situation. Verse 2 says: "And the king of Assyria sent Rabshakeh from Lachish to Jerusalem unto King Hezekiah with a great army. And he stood by the conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's field."

Let's just stop for a second because Rabshakeh, a lot of people teach this as though we're talking about a name. It's not a name. Rabshakeh is not a name; it's a title. The title denotes basically the head of all of the captains. In other words, he is the captain of Sennacherib's military. He's probably the highest-ranking military man of Sennacherib's military. Now they are at the position what we would call the strategic position to overcome Israel. They are literally standing in the area that you would stand in if you were to strategically take the actual city of Jerusalem.

As they stand there, you have to understand how overwhelmed Hezekiah must feel in observing the tactical position that the most powerful army in the world is taking. It's a serious situation here. "Then came forth unto him Eliakim, Hilkiah's son, which was over the house, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, Asaph's son, the recorder. And Rabshakeh said unto them, Say ye now to Hezekiah, Thus saith the great king, the king of Assyria, What confidence is this wherein thou trustest?"

That's a very serious question. I think that it's easy to hear the invocation of such a question in circumstances that render themselves to be ideal. You sit down in a church service and you ask somebody, "Where is your faith and trust?" You go, "Oh, praise the Lord. Amen. My faith and trust is in Jesus." But when you sit in a church service where the whole world is telling you that you'll kill each other if you breathe on each other, you maintain a distance of six feet, how easy will it be for you to lift up your arms and to say, "Okay, I trust the Lord, even though the fear of death is imminent"?

Do you understand how the circumstance can change? If you stand in the midst of an army that is powerful and that has every ability to protect you and you hear the captain of another army say, "We're going to come and get you," you'll laugh at them. But if you find yourself in a position where you are surrounded by the most powerful army in the world at that time and you are beginning to be asked the question, "Who do you trust in?", it might be difficult to answer that question. It might be very difficult.

I think one of the greatest dangers of the time that we're living in right now is that things will become so insurmountable in their appearance, so difficult, that when the imposition of the question, "Who do you trust in?", begins to materialize, many of us may be reluctant to say we trust in the Lord God. Under ideal circumstances, maybe, but when they stop being ideal and they become something that is uniquely dependent upon what we do with respect to our actions rather than the thing that we show, it's very different.

Look what happens here. This is where it gets even more interesting. Again, this is Rabshakeh talking. "I say, sayest thou, (but they are but vain words) I have counsel and strength for war: now on whom dost thou trust, that thou rebellest against me? Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him." Think about the picture.

"But if thou say to me, We trust in the Lord our God: is it not he, whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and said to Judah and to Jerusalem, Ye shall worship before this altar?" Don't trust in Egypt. You trust in Egypt, they're going to get smoked. Why? Because we smoked them. That's the idea. Assyria defeated Egypt. Egypt was relied upon for security and protection and it didn't work. The picture that he lays out is really interesting.

He says, "You lean on the reed. You lean on the reed," which the reed is a picture from the Nile. You lean on the reed and what will happen is the reed with its sharp edge will just go right through your hand. It will poke you. The idea here is you lean on Egypt, it's going to end up being your demise because we're going to defeat Egypt. We have defeated Egypt and we're going to defeat you. The same knife that penetrated Egypt will be the very one that will literally completely destroy you. That's what he's saying. He's using intimidating terminology. He's using fearful language.

Verse 8: "Now therefore give pledges, I pray thee, to my master the king of Assyria, and I will give thee two thousand horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them." Why don't you just, instead of praising the true and living God, why don't you actually praise my king? If you'll do it, I'll give you 2,000 horses if you're even fit to ride them, meaning you're nobody. I'm going to destroy you. You don't have any chance. Stop praying to God. Pray to the king who's going to kill you.

There's a part of me that thinks about what the world likes to do to us as believers. I think it happens a lot, especially in these last days. I see people who oftentimes will challenge the reality of who God is. They say things like, "Well, you've been saying the Lord is going to come back for so long and nothing has happened. There's no real God." You begin to get challenged. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob becomes challenged.

What happens in that challenge is the enemy will seek to take away your confidence in the Lord. He will show you the might and the strength of the world that surrounds you. He will get you to believe that you're doomed by that world. He will get you to think as though there's no viable way out of the circumstance that you're in. He will want you to reflexively move in the direction that takes you away from God and closer to those false strengths and securities that will never save you.

The problem with trusting in the Lord is really simple. That is, when you trust in the Lord, even when it does not look like it's going to work out, you have to be able to understand that God works in the most difficult of situations. He doesn't work in circumstances that we oftentimes abandon because everything is well. He works in the most difficult of situations. I think this is so heavy what he says.

He says, "How then wilt thou turn away the face of one captain of the least of my master's servants, and put thy trust on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen?" You're going to run to find security from Egypt to defend you from even the smallest and the weakest of any of my master's men? It's not going to happen. Verse 10: "And am I now come up without the Lord against this land to destroy it? The Lord said unto me, Go up against this land, and destroy it."

"Then said Eliakim and Shebna and Joah unto Rabshakeh, Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language; for we understand it: and speak not to us in the Jews' language, in the ears of the people that are on the wall." What they're saying is, "Can you do us a favor? Speak in your own tongue." Why are they wisely saying that? They're saying that because they don't want the people who hear it in their language to be freaked out about what's happening.

It's taking away from their morale, taking away from their confidence. I can understand why he's saying this. Sort of makes sense. I would take somewhat of a different interpretation in it because I think it might be really cool for everybody to see how intimidating and crazy and scary that it looks. Because when God intervenes on their behalf, it's going to make it all that much more valuable and special.

"But Rabshakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?" I told somebody once that the word "piss" was in the King James and they didn't believe me. There it is. Here's what's interesting. What's interesting is that Rabshakeh, the captain, is going out of his way to not only insult the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he is doing everything that he can to demoralize everybody that is sitting there and watching everything that's happening.

Look at this, verse 13: "Then Rabshakeh stood, and cried with a loud voice in the Jews' language, and said, Hear ye the words of the great king, the king of Assyria. Thus saith the king, Let not Hezekiah deceive you: for he shall not be able to deliver you." You know, this is so interesting. One of the things that I think is so unique to the circumstance that we find ourselves today in, especially knowing that we're in the last days and that the times are changing and the world is rapidly changing, is the enemy will use the tactic of division to oftentimes get people out of the single focus, out of the single mind.

Rabshakeh is basically beginning to try to develop within the hearts of all of these men an "everyone for themselves" mentality. Why? Because if he can do that, he can build into the circumstance sheer defeat. Why? Because he's taking away their faith and trust in the only person that can deliver them. So he's yelling to all these people. Look what he goes on to say: "Neither let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord, saying, The Lord will surely deliver us: this city shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria."

"Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern; Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards. Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will deliver us. Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?"

I think the enemy is so good at this. He loves, he absolutely loves to plant doubt in the heart of mankind. He loves to bring the big talk. He loves to bring the big game. He loves to get people to fear and to worry and to be concerned. He loves to speak into the mind and heart of so many people on a regular basis to get them to deny the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I'm here to tell you, do not let that voice prevail. Do not let that mindset carry over.

Do not allow yourself to listen to the lies that say, "I will not trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Why? Because when the rest of the world says it's insurmountable, God says, "I can do it." God says, "If you'll let me do it, I will do it and it will become life-changing to you." Here's the funny thing about faith. Faith involves substance to the very thing that we are hoping for because we know that hope is predicated and founded upon the sure words of God.

God will never change. God's word will never change. God will not lie to us. He tells us that if we put our faith and trust in Him, He will deliver us. The world can create a case, a large case, a big case. The world can profoundly seek to instill fear within your heart, but it does not change the fact that God moves from everlasting to everlasting. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is fully capable of delivering us in ways we never thought possible, especially in insurmountable times. This is where we find our faith and trust really blossoming.

There are many people right now, statistically speaking, statistically speaking, this isn't like some secret knowledge that God has given me. Statistically speaking, there are many people in this room that are undergoing unnecessary persecution. You're facing big mouths that think they know better. You're facing people that are targeting you. You're facing circumstances that feel as though they're overwhelming and that there's no way out. God says, "I will deliver you. Trust me."

God says, "Don't listen to the noise. Literally, kill the noise. Allow the noise to become the very thing that you ignore and allow the signal to be the very thing that you embrace." Let me read verse 18 again. "Beware lest Hezekiah persuade you, saying, The Lord will deliver us." Here is the rhetorical question that is imposed: "Hath any of the gods of the nations delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria?"

You know what the correct answer to that question is? No. None of them have delivered their land out of the hand of the king of Assyria because they're all false gods. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has a different answer. He has a different method. "Where are the gods of Hamath and Arphad? where are the gods of Sepharvaim? and have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who are they among all the gods of these lands, that have delivered their land out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?"

I love this, by the way. But the thing that I want you to notice with the imposition of this story that we read in 36 is not how God delivers them because that is a great story in and of itself and we'll talk about that. But I want you to recognize how they respond. This is going to be the literal moral of the story that we read in 36. Look what happens, verse 21: "But they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king's commandment was, saying, Answer him not."

Wow. I mean, this is big material right here. This is mind-blowing. The wisdom of the king in issuing a commandment as such is so profound. Be quiet. Don't answer him. I think we have a similar ongoing command from the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Noise is a funny thing. When noise becomes prevalent in any environment, it will have a myriad of effects. If noise is listened to and given into, paid attention to, given focus upon, noise will not only distract you from the most important element of the moment that you're facing, noise will actually dishevel you.

Noise will take you away from the main thing when the main thing needs to be the main thing. When the mind and the heart and the wisdom of God is denied from confronting the noise, the noise becomes the overpowering variable. It becomes the thing that begins to overwhelm you. You begin to go crazy. "Oh, I can't take the noise!" When you yield to it, when you give yourself to it, when you answer it, it becomes louder.

When you pay attention to it, it becomes more overwhelming. When you allow yourself to be given to it, you lose direction. You lose awareness. You lose sight of so many other things. But the noise can also do something very powerful. You see, God allows us to experience noise because if we will obey His word in ignoring the noise and not paying attention to it, you know what the noise will do?

The noise will cause us to focus harder on the signal. The noise will cause us to pay more attention to the thing that is most important. Many of you have experienced this dynamic before. You can sit in a room and you can casually listen to a Bible study that's being taught on your phone, then all of a sudden the lawnmower starts going off in the background and a bunch of engine noise is all around the street and you're hearing all kinds of crazy things happening at once.

What do you typically do if you're determined to listen to what's being said? Do you immediately go outside and tell the guy who's working on the lawn to shut up? Do you run out and be quiet? Do you start freaking out because of all the noise? I suppose you could. But you know what most people will do who are invested in what they're listening to in the moment? The noise causes them to do something that helps them to focus even more intensely than the way they were focusing initially.

I think about this a lot. I will take the dog for a nice walk and I'm listening to some kind of a Bible study being taught or I'm listening to a press conference or there's something going on audio-wise that I'm listening to. I go down the main strip and the main strip when lots of cars go by, all you hear is noise. It's noise and noise and noise. So you know what I do? I put on my headphones when I hear the noise. Now, what I could do, I suppose, is stand on the corner and just start yelling by every car that goes by and then they're going to think I'm a cuckoo. "A nice homeless guy with his dog yelling at the cars as they're going by."

Or what I could do is this. I could quietly, I could methodically and I could carefully go and reach my headphones that I know have noise-canceling capability. I can put them in my ear. I can use the noise-canceling capability to quell the sound that overwhelms my ability to listen, and then I can play the audio through those headphones. By the way, can I tell you something? When I play the audio through those headphones, no matter how loud it is outside, I pay better attention.

Why? Because the headphones are now in my ears and what I'm listening to is clear. It forces me to block everything out because I made a conscious decision to intentionally pay attention to the signal while not responding to the noise. And the words of Hezekiah were powerful. He said, "Do not respond to the noisemaker." Here's the thing that's really interesting. As the noisemaker is continuing to make noise and seeking to rattle the cage and yelling and calling out for people to listen and saying, "Give up," and saying the things that he's saying, it's so easy because of fear to say, "Okay, you got it. I'm coming. Please, please don't hurt me. I'm coming."

You could easily do it. But those men had to resort to something. They had to revert to something that they knew was available to them. They had to literally focus more on the command that was given to them than focus on the intimidation they were experiencing in the moment. When they made the conscious decision to listen to the correct voice, the loud voice, the noise became literally non-existent. I would say that's heavy. I would say that's a pretty remarkable picture.

Look at the last verse. "Then came Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, that was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah, the son of Asaph, the recorder, to Hezekiah with their clothes rent, and told him the words of Rabshakeh." We're going to watch something next week that in my opinion represents an extraordinary response by a pretty remarkable king who in the moment decided to handle things exactly the way God wanted him to handle things.

As the noise began to sound, the people made a conscious decision to focus on the signal. What we're going to find out, by the way, next chapter is we're going to find out that one angel, one, you guys, one angel kills 185,000 elite Assyrian soldiers literally overnight. The captain wasn't talking smack when that happened. What I'm about to say is so important that whatever you do, you cannot forget this.

In the last days, we are going to be given to a pattern very similar to what we are reading right here in chapter 36 of Isaiah. We are living in these last days in a world that is filled with noise, noise that you are biblically mandated to completely ignore, noise that will rip you off in ways you can't even begin to imagine. It will rob you in every way imaginable. More than ever, what God is saying is he's saying, "Stop listening to the noise. Kill the literal noise that you see and give yourself to the signal."

What is the signal? Well, the signal is God's word. The signal is the Spirit of God that is living inside of you. The signal is the will and the purpose and the call of God for your life because when you do so, you begin to see victory that nobody else can possibly imagine. Funny story and this is real, I'm not exaggerating. When I came on staff at the old church that I was at, I was the youngest person to ever come on staff. I was the youngest pastor to ever come on staff.

I had graduated with my degree much earlier than anybody did typically and many of the people I worked with didn't even have degrees. The moment I came on, there was a level of insane jealousy that bothered me so incredibly much that I was devastated every time I went into work. It felt like every single person I worked with was out to get me. That's what it felt like. For a very short period of time, I allowed myself to be given to the trial that I was going through at the moment.

I paid attention to every little thing everybody said. I got bothered by every detail. I tried to catch every conversation. I sent out spies to tell me what was going on. Finally, God showed me that there's nothing in the world I can possibly do to catch up with all the nefarious intent that surrounded me. There's no way I could gather enough information and even if there was, all it would do is discourage me.

I went through a very similar circumstance in 2020 when we started dealing with everything going on with COVID. You know, it was really funny is during that time, you should have heard the crazy things people were saying about me. You should have heard even what even many of my colleagues were saying. In both those circumstances, you know what God taught me? God taught me to ignore the noise, to kill the noise.

As a matter of fact, let me take it a step further. God taught me to use the noise as the tool that motivated me to pursue the tools that gave me focus. We're in a world right now that is trying to destroy you, it's trying to distract you, it's trying to get you to see things, but I want you to understand this. The moment you express the intent to glorify God in your life will be the very moment that the Rabshakehs of the world will come after you.

It will be the very moment where the liars will lie and the haters will hate and the truth will be twisted. But God says, "Stop focusing on it. You focus on me. You turn away." Why? Because when disruption comes after your intention is expressed, that disruption, just like the noise gave them focus, that disruption will cause you to grow in ways you never thought possible.

So what's that mean for us? Don't worry about the trials. Don't focus on the hardship. Don't allow the difficulty to distract you. Trust in the Lord and know that the more you commit to not interacting with the devil, the more you choose to not enter into a dialogue with the Rabshakehs of the world, God will accelerate the path by which he chooses to bring vindication to the matter. You will have your mind blown. Why? Because he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and he's your God that will bring you deliverance the same way he brought it to them. Trust in him. Don't listen to the liars. Focus on the truth and watch God do great things. Amen?

Father in heaven, we just thank you, Lord, for your word. We thank you for the power that comes from learning and understanding and knowing this lesson that what you say here is so true and what you say here is so real and what you say here is so viable. Lord, you're the God of heaven. We need you. We have to have you. And we pray, God, that you will inspire us to righteousness, inspire us, Lord, to live for you and understand and discern and learn what it is you're wanting to tell us in this day, in this moment, in this hour. So go before us then, Lord. Fill us with your spirit. Give us your mind. Give us your heart. We love you. We ask these things now in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Countdown 2 Eternity with James Kaddis and his message "Kill the Noise." Some threats can not simply be ignored because they are very real. Isaiah 36 shows us what happens when an overwhelming enemy uses fear, intimidation, and even carefully chosen words that challenge our confidence in the Lord. This has been a powerful reminder of where our confidence belongs when everything around us says we should be afraid.

You can hear it again at countdown2eternity.com. Countdown2eternity.com. While you're there, take a look at James Kaddis' new book *The Last Book*, a study of Revelation. Revelation isn't a book of fear; it's a book of hope. And *The Last Book* will give you what you need to know about Revelation, the Rapture, and the end times. Think of it as a guide to Revelation.

Again, you can order it right now at countdown2eternity.com. Check out our YouTube channel, where you'll find many other messages from James Kaddis. Just head over to YouTube and search for the James Kaddis channel. Then join us next time when the Countdown 2 Eternity continues right here. This program is listener-supported and brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.