Sermon for MHBC (6 December 2020. You can listen on Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or our website. Live at 11:00am on Sundays.
“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else.” That’s a line from author Earnest Becker quoted in an article by The Guardian.[1] Are you afraid of death? I am. It’s terrifying. No matter what you accomplish, no matter how much money you have, no matter how successful you are, no matter how many people you know, you are going to die. It’s depressing.
Do you remember that famous speech in Hamlet? “To be, or not to be? That is the question.”[2] Hamlet has a conundrum in that speech. On one hand, he looks at the crushing harshness of life and the world and he wonders if it wouldn’t just be better to escape it, by ending it. We can sympathize. Something is terribly wrong with this world is it not?
On the other hand, Hamlet asks the question because he doesn’t know exactly what happens when someone dies. There’s this mystery surrounding it—maybe it’s final, but, then again, maybe it’s not. That’s Hamlet’s conundrum. And it’s pretty devoid of hope.
But the Bible teaches a third way. Yes, the world is hard. Yes, death is scary. But death is not the end of the story. The Bible says that the living God is going to defeat death. Death, that great enemy, is going to be put to death.
It’s that idea that has enabled Christians from every generation to suffer and to die without fear. Athanasius, a Church Father from the 300s, once put it this way: “If you see children playing with a lion, don’t you know that the lion must be either dead or completely powerless? In the same way … when you see Christ’s believers playing with death and despising it, there can be no doubt that death has been destroyed by Christ and that its corruption has been dissolved and brought to an end.”[3]
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there is this beautiful picture of the resurrection. Christ stands over the broken doors of hell. And he’s reaching for Adam and Eve on his right and his left. This symbolizes the destruction of death.
The orthodox confession is: “On the third day [Jesus] rose again.” If that’s true, it changes everything. If that’s true, there are answers to Hamlet’s conundrum. There is an answer to the harshness of life and there’s an answer to the problem of death. Isaiah wants to tell us about the living God’s victory over sin, Satan, and death.
Isaiah 24–39 is a section that has much to say about judgment, but I continue to remind you that while the Lord’s judgment is serious and intense, it is what the world needs. Look at 24:1: “Behold, the LORD will empty the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.” Now that’s a fearful statement, but it’s because the living God is an awesome God. There is none like him. As the Bible puts it, “Our God is a consuming fire.”[4] And if we do what Hamlet did and seriously ponder the world, we are forced to admit that something is terribly wrong, and if something is terribly wrong, we need a big solution. That is the purpose of the Lord’s judgment.
Now what exactly is wrong with our world? We can look at the social ills and injustices, the devaluation of human life and the dysfunction of human relationships, suicides and murders, abuse and crime, suffering and sickness, and we can identify things that are wrong. But the Bible pulls back the cover and shows us that there’s more than meets the eye. Behind the nations and structures and world events are powers and authorities. These are spiritual beings, angels and demons, that have direct influence in our world.
Now that might seem out of touch with our sophisticated times, but let’s remember how small we actually are. There are depths of the ocean on our own planet that we know nothing about yet.[5] We can only see a portion of the universe. Those portions that we can see are so large that it takes light over 13.3 billion years to traverse the distance.[6] Why would we dismiss the potential reality of unseen forces?
So the Bible tells us there are unseen forces. The battle that the Lord is waging is bigger than we imagine, but the Lord is a warrior and he will be victorious. Look at Isa 24:21–23:
On that day the LORD will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth. They will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit; they will be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished. Then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed, for the LORD of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and his glory will be before his elders.
All of this language indicates something big that’s going to happen, and the Lord will be victorious. Let’s go into ch. 25. Look at v. 1: “O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.” Why will Isaiah praise the Lord? Because he has done wonderful things. And these things aren’t haphazard. They were planned long ago. They reveal the Lord’s faithfulness and his commitment to his people. Do you realize that before the foundation of the world God determined to redeem his creation? Do you realize that Ephesians 1 says that if you are in Christ, God set his affection on you before the foundation of the world? That’s who you are. It’s breathtaking.
And the Lord is striking down what is wrong and unjust. Look at v. 2: “For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the foreigners’ palace is a city no more; it will never be rebuilt.” (Be charitable to Isaiah. He isn’t some sort of bigot. Remember God has a plan for all people. This language of foreigner has more to do with that which is opposed to God than with ethnicity.)
The result is the glory of God. Verse 3: “Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you.”
The Lord is redeeming and setting the world right for his glory. Verses 4–5: “For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat; for the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall, like heat in a dry place. You subdue the noise of the foreigners; as heat by the shade of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is put down.” This is the great reversal that the Gospels talk about like in Luke 1 or in the Beatitudes.
This great reversal is followed by a great blessing. Verse 6: “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.” The Lord is feeding the people of his creation. He is pouring out his abundant grace upon them. This is a vision of the future—what to expect—because in vv. 7–8, he deals with the real problem:
And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.
As the famous commentator Derek Kidner wrote, “In a single verse the last enemy is gone and the last tear shed.”[7] The living God puts an end to death. And here’s the response in v. 9: “It will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” Death is defeated for the glory of God.
Now how could death be defeated? Well Isaiah pictures a bodily resurrection. Turn to Isa 26:19: “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead.”
Do you remember the fear we all felt in the middle of March? We didn’t know what COVID was. There were predictions that millions would die in the US. I did something oddly therapeutic. The church I served previously had a cemetery. One day I walked through the cemetery. First, I visited the graves of those that I had known and ministered to as they died. Next, I looked for graves of those who died in the 1918 flu. Finally, I just walked around looking at dates.
Perhaps it was an odd thing to do, but it reminded me of the confession I make as a Christian. See, one day Jesus visited a cemetery and as he was speaking to a grieving family member, he said something astonishing. He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”[8]
Jesus was saying that Isaiah’s vision of the bodies coming back to life is true in him. He would conquer death. If Jesus is alive, it changes everything. And his first followers were so convinced that he had beaten death that they were willing to die for him.
How is it that Jesus defeats death? How could that possibly be? Well I told you that something more is happening behind the scenes. And I told you that the Lord is a warrior. We’ve already seen Isaiah talk about God punishing the powers. He clarifies that vision in 27:1: “In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.” This serpent is the archdemon, the ancient foe who threw creation into chaos. We meet him in Genesis 3 as he comes telling Adam and Eve that they, too, can usurp God’s throne. In fact, Isaiah is tapping into a promise that goes back to Gen 3:15. To the serpent, the Lord says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Someone born of a woman will deal a deathblow to the serpent. And when that happens, death itself will be defeated.
God becomes incarnate in order to do just that. Hebrews 2:14–15: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” Christ has crushed the head of the serpent.
This is the great hope of the gospel. Death has been defeated. Let me suggest two takeaways by way of summary.
1. The battle on this earth is much deeper and more serious than we can imagine. For that reason, it is absolutely vital that we as a church and we as individuals don’t get sidetracked by the wrong things. What I mean is that we tend to focus on superficials. But we need to remember what Paul says in Eph 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” For that reason, we are told to take up the whole armor of God. Pray and fast, immerse yourself in Scripture.
2. The victory is coming. Some of you may be anxious or depressed, and I use those terms seriously. I mean the world feels suffocating at times, and you sympathize with Hamlet’s conundrum. I just want to share one word from Isaiah in this section. Isaiah 26:3–4: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock.” You can trust the Lord with all your futures, all your fears, all your disappointments, because he is an everlasting rock.
Let me tell me a story about a lady I knew. I’ll call her Jennie. A few years before I met her she had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer. She was in her early 60s. She went through several surgeries and multiple rounds of treatment. But it was only a matter of time. Yet, she was not afraid because she knew the Lord. You have to understand what I mean. She knew the Lord. At one point, she decided it was time to end the treatments. But she was not afraid. The night she told me that she decided to end treatments, she said, “You remember what I told you. Everything is going to be OK.” In her last hours, I asked her, “Are you ready?” Now I’m pretty sure most of us would say, “No.” She said, with absolute confidence, “Yes.” Remember what Athanasius said: “When you see Christ’s believers playing with death and despising it, there can be no doubt that death has been destroyed by Christ.”
[1] The Denial of Death as cited in https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2017/jul/25/we-fear-death-but-what-if-dying-isnt-as-bad-as-we-think.
[2] Act 3, Scene 1.
[3] This and the following material is adapted from Ben Myers, The Apostles’ Creed, pp. 79–84.
[4] See Deut 4:24; 9:3; Isa 33:14; Heb 10:31; 12:29.
[5] https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html
[6] https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/farthest_info.html
[7] New Bible Commentary, p. 647.
[8] John 11:25–26