This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 37:1–18; Isaiah 7:1–9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12; Luke 22:1–13
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)
Isaiah’s call to stand firm in faith. In his 5th chapter, the prophet Isaiah had chastised God’s people for failing to live up to their calling to be God’s life-giving vine. Yahweh had planted them among the nations so they could bring justice, temperance, and faithfulness into a desperately needy world. But they had responded with injustice, intemperance, and faithlessness.
In his 6th chapter, Isaiah recalls how he had been called into the overwhelming majesty of the heavenly courts. There he had been purged of his own sinfulness so he could be sent as messenger of Yahweh’s lordship, despite knowing that people would resist with unhearing ears and unseeing eyes.
Now, in his 7th chapter, Isaiah recounts how he began his ministry of announcing both judgment and hope. Judgment is coming—very soon for Israel to the north, and somewhat later for Judah in the south. As a result, Isaiah offers at least limited near term hope for Judah, and massive long term hope for both Judah and Israel (and the world as well, in a string of messianic passages, beginning with tomorrow’s promise of the birth of “Immanuel”).
In today’s passage, Isaiah offers words of near term hope to Ahaz, the young and beleaguered king of Judah, “the house of David.” Aram and Israel are trying to force Judah to join them in a military alliance to fend off an invasion by Assyria. To Yahweh, it is an unholy pact. Assyria will be his hand of judgment against faithless Israel. Isaiah’s mission is to bolster Ahaz in his resistance to the ill-fated coalition: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands…” (Isaiah 7:4).
Even more fundamentally, Isaiah is sent to challenge Judah’s king to a deeper faith in Yahweh: “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all” (Isaiah 7:9.—there is a powerful wordplay on the Hebrew word for “faith/faithfulness,” emet, translated here as “stand,” in both halves of this verse). Standing firm is a challenge that is as good for our day as it was for Ahaz’s.
Paul’s call to stand firm in faith. It is also a good challenge for Paul’s congregation in Thessalonica. They are rattled about judgment coming upon the world. Some have even stopped working (2 Thessalonians 3:6–15). In his first epistle to them, the apostle had assured the Thessalonians that they need not worry that they will be eternally lost should they die before the Lord’s return. He had insisted those in their graves when the Lord returns will have an advantage over those still living on the earth: the dead will be first to be taken up to be “with the Lord.” “Let us encourage one another with these words,” he had concluded (1 Thessalonians 4:18). Now he is writing a follow-up letter to them because they’ve somehow gotten the idea that they may have missed “the day of the Lord,” and along with it, the Parousia of Jesus and the great “gathering together to him” that was supposed to happen for those still on the earth when he came (2 Thessalonians 2:1–2).
His basic message to them is: “Chill! You’ll know it when it comes, and in the meantime be faithful.” Paul’s basic perspective on the “end times” is that Christ’s first coming has provoked an ultimately futile pushback from Satan. The Evil One received a mortal blow in the cross and resurrection of Jesus (see Colossians 2:15). But he has not stopped fighting. His response to the coming of the true Christ was to launch a program of evil that will eventuate in the emergence of a counter-Christ, whom Paul calls “the man of lawlessness” (2 Thessalonians 2:3,8), and whom John calls “the antichrist” (1 John 1:18,22).
And just as the victorious campaign of God’s gospel is enabled by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the Devil, in retreat, spews out “a mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thessalonians 2:7), strangely empowering “signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception” (2 Thessalonians 2:9b–10a). For now, God has placed a restraint on the Evil One (which, apparently, he explained somewhat to the Thessalonians, but not to us!—2 Thessalonians 2:5–6).
At some point in the future, in what biblical scholar Herman Ridderbos calls an “explosion of evil,” the Devil’s “man of lawlessness” will have his own mock “parousia” (2 Thessalonians 3:9). At his “coming out,” he will seat himself in God’s temple (whether it’s a physical [rebuilt] temple or the spiritual temple of the church, Paul doesn’t tell us), “declaring himself to be God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4). Point is: when it happens, we’ll know. We’ll know because the Lord’s response will be decisive: “…the Lord Jesus will destroy [him] with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming [parousia]” (2 Thessalonians 2:8).
In the meantime, Isaiah’s word to Ahaz is just as good for us: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint” (Isaiah 7:4). We know how the story ends. We know who wins!
Resting in the sure and certain hope of the victory of Christ, be blessed this day!
Reggie Kidd+