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Devotional thoughts (Monday through Thursday mornings) from the pastor of Exeter Presbyterian Church in Exeter, NH // Sunday Worship 10:30am // 73 Winter Street

Monday, November 05, 2007

Isaiah 38

Pain and life-threatening illness are such serious challenges to our peace and well-being. Job first had an attack against his property and children. He then had a second attack, this time against his own health and comfort. We would imagine the first to be the more difficult of the two, but that is only when we are not facing the kind of pain that Job and others face in their bodies.

The great king Hezekiah had made it through the challenge of the threat of the greatest military power of His day, the Assyrian empire. Now a message came from the prophet Isaiah that the king would not recover from the affliction of a life-threatening boil.

As he did with the Assyrian challenge, Hezekiah again turned to God, and brought his plea for deliverance from this trouble. He made His own faithfulness his plea before the Lord, a line of argument that we might tend to avoid. Many of the Lord’s most faithful servants have been puzzled by their personal afflictions. They wonder whether God has forgotten their missionary service or sacrificial giving. It is not unusual for people to remind the Lord that they have sincerely been trying to serve Him. Hezekiah also does one more thing. He weeps bitterly.

Why would he weep at this time? He is a man that knows the sufferings of this world. Wouldn’t he look forward to a release from the miseries that are part of life here, as a prisoner might greet the good news that his long sentence has been commuted by fifteen years?

The value of bodily life is not something to scoff about, and our bodies are gifts to be respected and not harmed. With the apostle Paul we recognize that it is better for us to leave our bodies behind for a time, and to go to be with the Lord. But Paul adds that he is persuaded that he will remain yet for some time, because he knows that this will be for the good of those who can benefit from his earthly ministry. Perhaps Hezekiah has a sense of the good gift of bodily life, and of the benefit that he can bring both to God and to his subjects while he is alive.

We know that the life of the Lord Jesus Christ was cut off, in some sense, before His time. He was only in His early thirties, yet He had apparently accomplished all that He needed to do here. It might seem to us that it would have been much better for Him, like Paul, to remain for our sake for many more years. But Jesus insisted that in His case it was better for us that He go to the right hand of the Father. From that place of power He would grant spiritual blessing for the church which would be of great benefit to the building of the Kingdom of God. Whether we go to our heavenly home at an early age and leave our body behind in the grave awaiting the resurrection of the dead, or if we live on for many years with the use of our senses and our mortal strength for the purposes of God is surely God’s to answer. We may have a desire one way or another. Hezekiah deeply wanted to remain for several more years in his mortal body.

To this request God was pleased to give an answer that Hezekiah liked. He would live on in the body here. He was given another fifteen years, and God confirmed this gift of extra time with a miraculous sign. The response of the king in the form of a writing of Hezekiah is recorded in the Bible for us. Here we see more of the King’s concern for bodily life on earth. It is with the body that men actually see. Yes, the spirit is eternal, but the body is somehow the right house for the spirit. Yet these bodies we have now are not yet eternal. We are made to be a great combination of body and spirit, and something is not finally right when we are spirits who have been separated from our bodies. With the use of our bodily senses we thank God and praise God. With our physical hands and the mystery of mind, eye, ear, and limb we make music on stringed instruments in the worship of God.

The Lord came not only that we would experienced redemption for our spirits, but that our bodies would be redeemed. The saints in heaven know this, and the souls in heaven are eager for the day when their blood will be avenged and their resurrection bodies will be given to them. Then we will be together with the Lord forever in a bodily existence of immortality, rather than our current mortal existence.

To diminish the importance of the body is to deny a significant aspect of the work of Christ. He became man, a man with a true human body. He died in a mortal body, and He rose again with an immortal body. We thank Him for the gifts that we have in the physical bodies that He has given us now. May we treat them with respect, and may He be pleased to give us useful bodily and spiritual lives on this earth for many years to come. At just the right time we will lay our bodies down and commit our spirits into the Lord’s hands. Again, at just the right time, when the Lord returns, our spirits will once again be reunited to our now immortal bodies, and we will live and reign with the Lord forever and ever. We do not know exactly what that will be like. But we do know this: We shall be like Him.

posted by Pastor Magee @ 6:57 AM

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