ODJ: swallowing up death
February 18, 2011
[God] will swallow up death forever! (v.8).
READ: Isaiah 25:1-8
Yesterday, I met Stephen and Roxanne at a hotel. They needed help as they entered one of the most difficult days any parent could envision. Matt, a graduate student at the University of Virginia and member of our church community, died in a freakish bike collision. This should never happen. A father should never bury a son. A mother should never have to dig through her dead boy’s lonely apartment. There is so much to celebrate in Matt’s good life (his deep heart, for instance—his last hours were spent serving in a homeless shelter). There is much to curse, however, about his passing. Death is a menacing villain.
The prophet Isaiah wrote to his people in anticipation of their Babylonian captivity. Isaiah spoke with language that cast God as the powerful, conquering God—strong enough and bold enough to take on every enemy the besieged people faced. God was the One who would “turn mighty cities into heaps of ruin” and who would “silence the roar” of violent armies afflicting them (25:2,5).
The ultimate enemy our conquering God would crush, however, would be death itself. Death is our wretched foe—our enemy and, thankfully, God’s enemy. In Jesus, God has defeated death, showing that He is Lord over all—even over death (1 Corinthians 15:54).
Melito of Sardis, a church father from the third century, powerfully captured this truth as he wrote:
"When the Lord had clothed Himself with humanity, and had suffered for the sake of the sufferer, and had been bound for the sake of the imprisoned, and had been judged for the sake of the condemned, and buried for the sake of the one who was buried, He rose up from the dead, and cried with a loud voice: Who is he who contends with Me?" —Winn Collier
Where have you experienced death as an enemy? What does it mean for you to acknowledge Jesus as victor over death?
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