“Just as a pregnant woman writhes and cries out in pain as she gives birth, so were we in your presence, Lord. We, too, writhe in agony, but nothing comes of our suffering. We have not given salvation to the earth, nor brought life into the world. But those who die in the Lord will live; their bodies will rise again! Those who sleep in the earth will rise up and sing for joy! For your life-giving light will fall like dew on your people in the place of the dead!”
Isaiah 26:17-19 NLT
Isaiah describes the efforts the people made so that something would happen. They writhed apparently in agony, “but nothing comes of [their] suffering”. In times of extreme stress and distress, people sometimes do extraordinary things, as much out of desperation as anything else. The bottom line, though, was that Israel’s own efforts could not bring about the salvation they desperately needed. That points us towards a fundamental biblical truth: our ultimate hope does not rest in what we can accomplish, but in what God accomplishes for us. Isaiah wrote that salvation could not come through human efforts, no matter how hard we try. Some people do extraordinary things to maintain their appearance or prolong their lives through this potion or that snake oil, but inevitably their efforts reach an endpoint that keeps them from reaching their ultimate hope. But even that doesn’t stop some people. They arrange for their bodies after death to be frozen, a process called cryopreservation, where their body fluids are replaced with a medical form of antifreeze before their remains are frozen in liquid nitrogen to a temperature of -196 degrees Celsius. But their salvation still cannot be guaranteed, even if, on some future date, they can be unfrozen and brought back to life. Sooner or later, eternal death will result. As we pilgrims know, there is only one way to be saved, and that is through Jesus. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Paul wrote, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God” (Ephesians 2:8). The reality is that no matter how much money you spend, it is impossible to purchase a life after death through anything we can do. Our bodies will die and be returned to the elements from which they have been constructed, but our souls and spirits will live eternally in the place of our choosing. We can reach out in faith to our Heavenly Father, accepting His free gift of eternal life spent with Him, or we can reject Him and find out what hell will ultimately be like.
There is another Godly “but” in the next verse from our reading today. “But those who die in the Lord will live; their bodies will rise again!” The previous verses speak of pain, failure and helplessness. Then God says that death itself is not the final word for God’s people. David wrote, “For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave. You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever” (Psalm 16:10-11). The first “Holy One” was, of course, Jesus, and we know that the tomb in which He was laid was soon empty. Jesus only borrowed it for the weekend. After the death of Lazarus, Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?” (John 11:25-26). Early on in His ministry, Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”. Such a straightforward and simple statement, but the truth and reality of Jesus’ mission has divided mankind for centuries, with most people choosing to reject what He said. Worse, partly because of Jesus’ heritage and ancestry, there has been an uprising of animosity against the Jews, something we term anti-semitism. But this animosity has been extended to include Christians, and Open Doors has calculated that 388 million believers in Jesus are being persecuted for their faith today. This amounts to 1 in 7 believers across the globe.
One day we pilgrims will be resurrected. Jesus was the first: the angel said to the women who had come to prepare His body for a proper burial, “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay” (Matthew 28:6). No matter how hopelessly final Jesus’ crucifixion, death and burial seemed to have been, we worship a God who specialises in bringing life out of situations that appear to be hopeless. What happens next is beyond even our wildest dreams. Paul wrote, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). In 1 Corinthian 15:53, Paul wrote, “For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies”. The hope that we pilgrims hold is therefore much more than wishing tomorrow will be better. Our hope reaches beyond the grave. Even death cannot separate a believer from God’s purposes and promises.
Our verses today end with a song. Isaiah wrote, “Those who sleep in the earth will rise up and sing for joy!”. How marvellous is that! Our future hope is in a life of joy where there will be no more sickness, crying and death. The dead are described as awakening and singing, and we are promised that the grave is not the end; our resurrection will lead to worship. Can we get our minds around the fact that we will wake up in God’s presence with a song of praise on our lips? In our current lives, we may be passing through the valley of death, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. One day we will be singing our spiritual hearts out in God’s presence. It is only God who can deliver the salvation our hearts yearn for, and once again I am reminded that I have been commissioned to tell this fact to those around me. A simple message: “Hell is hot, Heaven is real, and Jesus saves!”
Dear Heavenly Father. A song is already forming on my lips, a song of worship to You, who loved me so much that You sent Your Son, Jesus, to die for my fellow pilgrims and me. There are no words available to express our gratitude, but grateful we are with every fibre of our beings. We worship You today, and will continue to worship You across the Great Divide into Heavenly places. Amen.
