Day #35
Larry Trotter
Words of Love
The people
walking in darkness have seen a great light;
On those
living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
Isaiah 9: 2
NIV
Overcoming the Barrier
As we enter Holy
Week we are also in the last week of our Lenten Devotions that are based upon
Love Overcomes, the current sermon series at Concord United Methodist Church.
Each week I have tried to build upon the theme of the preceding Sunday’s
sermon. This week, we’ll cover this past Sunday and Easter as we look at how
the love of God that comes to us in Jesus Christ can overcome death and doubt. The
passage above seems out of place on the second day of spring. When we read on
down to verse six we might instinctively juxtapose Handel’s brilliant melody
from The Messiah as we read the words, “for unto us a child is born, a son is
given...” In real-time, eighth-century Israel God was using the prophet Isaiah
to offer a glimmer of hope during some really dark days. The Northern Kingdom
of Israel had already fallen to Assyria and Judah’s (the Southern Kingdom)
borders had likely already been breached. It was only a matter of time until
the People of Israel either would be killed, exiled, or made prisoners in their
own land. For them, the Promised Land to which Moses and Joshua had led them
was more than simply olive groves, vineyards, and fertile fields in the middle
of the desert. The land was their life, their salvation, and their hope. To
lose their land was to die to everything God had promised. The deep darkness in
today’s verse is used in only a few other places in the Old Testament, most
famously in the 23rd Psalm. The more familiar translation is “the valley of the
shadow of death.” Earlier in Isaiah the prophet admonishes the people for
turning their back on the council of God to consult pagan spiritists and
mediums who supposedly could consult the dead. This likely connects with the
allusion to the people living in the land of deep darkness or the shadow of the
dead. Moreover, there was a mythical Canaanite god known as Mot who was the god
of death and, according to the myth, would swallow his victims. Many people of
that era feared being swallowed, literally, by death. Later in Isaiah the
prophet would encourage the people by telling them that God would “swallow up
death forever (Isaiah 25:8).”
With our 21st
century Christian purview we can clearly see how Jesus was the one about whom
Isaiah prophesied even if Isaiah couldn’t see that far into the future. God had
given him a vision that death would one day be limited in its ability to impact
life. We now know that Jesus has overcome the power of death to swallow us or
otherwise end our eternal life with God. Isaiah foretold the coming of one who
would offer hope to the people of Judah who were about to be swallowed up by
the Babylonians effectively erasing any hope of a future. Jesus came to show us
how to live eternally with God now, in our mortal bodies, which he shared, and
later in heaven with a resurrection body we will one day share. Death might
have the power of stop our heartbeat, but it cannot stop God’s heartbeat in us
that began with our faith in Jesus and guarantees our eternal future. That is
why Paul wrote in 1st Corinthians 15:54-55, “When the perishable has been
clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying
that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where,
O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (NIV) With confidence
and maybe just a bit of swagger, Paul gets right in the face of Mot and
proclaims that he is the one who has been swallowed up with the victory
attained by Jesus. There is a visceral old saying that goes, “You can kill me,
but you can’t eat me.” The idea is that enemies can only do so much with their
threats. It turns out that the old saying has some theological significance as
Jesus has put death on a short leash. And though it may threaten, our faith in
the one who overcame death will overcome death's power to swallow us, or even
nibble. Hallelujah!
Prayer
Lord Jesus,
thank you for your sacrificial death that has taken away death's power to
impact my living. In Your name, amen.
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