This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 61; Psalm 62; Isaiah 11:1–9; Revelation 20:1–10; John 5:30–47
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)
Isaiah’s vision of the ministry of Messiah. In today’s passage, Isaiah opens the curtain for a moment to give the people of his generation an extraordinary peek into the work of the Messiah who was to come. When Jesus came to the earth, he took up precisely the mantle Isaiah describes here.
Jesus is of David’s royal lineage: “from the stump of Jesse” (Isaiah 11:1; Luke 1:32; Acts 13:22–23, “of [David’s] posterity God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised”).
Jesus ministered in the power and under the illumination of the Holy Spirit: “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him…” (Isaiah 11:2; Matthew 3:16; John 1:32, “the Spirit descended from heaven … and rested on him”).
He clothed himself with justice, righteousness, equity, and truthfulness, not self-promotion, ego, favoritism, and prevarication: “Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist….” (Isaiah 11:3; John 5:30; 8:16, “Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid”).
The Kingdom-gospel that he proclaims brings conviction of sin; it exposes sham religiosity and deathly false dealing: “with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4b; Romans 1:17–18; John 16:7–9, [the Spirit] “will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment”).
His good news turns enemies into friends; he unites republican and democrat, pacifist and militant, extrovert and introvert, Red Sox fan and Yankees fan, dog lover and cat lover “The wolf shall live with the lamb…” (Isaiah 11:6–8; Ephesians 2:14, “For he is our peace…”).
The life-giving gospel that emanates from Jerusalem’s holy mountain will go to the ends of the earth: “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the earth” (Isaiah 11:9; Acts 1:8; Matthew 28:18–20, “make disciples of all the nations”).
Revelation and the “now” and the “not yet.” In the Book of Revelation, John is given a breathtaking vision of the way that Jesus’s messianic ministry plays out both in the “now” and in the “not yet”—that is, how it begins in his First Coming and culminates in his Second Coming.
Revelation 20 is one of the trickiest passages in all of Scripture, and there are several schools of thought about its overall thrust. In the course of a devotional writing, I ask your indulgence to allow me to offer insights from where I land in the landscape of interpretations. To cut to the chase, I believe that in Revelation 20:1–3, John is not looking into the distant future. Instead, I believe he is looking back at what transpired during Jesus’s earthly ministry, that is, during his First Coming. He “bound” Satan through his exorcisms, his healings, and his allowing himself to be lifted up on and nailed to the cross (Revelation 20:2; Matthew 12:29; Mark 3:27; Luke 13:16; John 12:31–32; Colossians 2:14–15). Most significantly, the work that Jesus began in his exorcisms and that culminated on the cross means that Satan is no longer able to “deceive the nations,” so that the saving good news of our liberation from sin and death can be spread and joyfully embraced around the world (Revelation 20:3; Acts 26:18; Hebrews 2:14–15).
What began in Jesus’s First Coming is a long period of time (of which 1,000 years is symbolic) in which our now Ascended Jesus reigns. Believers have experienced the “first resurrection,” that is, their new birth in Christ (John 3:3’s “You must be born again”; alternatively, this language of “first resurrection” may refer ironically to the deaths of martyrs, as representatives of all believers). As a “kingdom of priests” (Revelation 1:6; 20:6) believers (and especially the martyrs) share in Christ’s reign: they see Christ’s victorious gospel spread from pole to pole and all around the globe.
Isaiah foresaw all of this, if only from a distance. But what he also saw was a complete elimination of all that is evil—something that awaits the Second Coming. We know that the peaceability that Isaiah described between enemies and rivals has never yet been completely realized. Revelation 20 spells out the exact nature of Satan’s circumscription during this age: he cannot prevent the gospel’s advance among the nations. As Jesus tells Paul when he commissions him to take the good news to the Gentiles: “...to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18). At the end of the (symbolic) 1,000 years of gospel-expansion, Satan will be released for one (in the terms of biblical theologian Herman Ridderbos) “final explosion of evil.” And then the Lord will return—his Second Coming. At that time, he will consign the Devil and his cohorts to their eternal lot, eliminating all evil from the human and cosmic experience (Revelation 20:7–10).
John and belief. Meanwhile, the Lord Jesus himself calls for one main thing: belief. Not an unteachable belief in the details of the final scenario (we’re all going to be in for surprises in that regard, I’m sure). No, belief that he is Lord. Belief in him. Belief that, as he says in today’s gospel reading: “The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me” (John 5:36). Belief that the Father has sent him for you and me—and for many who as yet do not know him. Belief that life right now may be full of the sense of newness in him and gratitude for a share in his reign. Belief that when he comes again, we will be able to welcome him with joy and anticipation at the eternal fellowship that awaits.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+