Tozer: Victory through defeat

On Facebook I've been posting excerpts from A. W. Tozer's The Pursuit of Man. I'm continuing that series here. The following is from chapter 4: Victory through Defeat. Tozer's basic point in this chapter is that we must be conquered by the cross and know death thereon, before we can truly know life.

We might well pray for God to invade and conquer us, for until He does we remain in peril from a thousand foes. We bear within us the seeds of our own disintegration. Our moral imprudence puts us always in danger of accidental or reckless self-destruction. The strength of our flesh is an ever present danger to our souls. Deliverance can come to us only by the defeat of our old life. Safety and peace come only after we have been forced to our knees. God rescues us by breaking us, by shattering our strength and wiping out our resistance. Then He invades our natures with that ancient and eternal life which is from the beginning. So He conquers us and by that benign conquest saves us for Himself.

With this open secret awaiting easy discovery, why do we in almost all our busy activities work in another direction from this? Why do we build our churches on human flesh? Why do we set such store by that which the Lord has long ago repudiated and despise those things which God holds in such high esteem? For we teach men not to die with Christ but to live in the strength of their dying manhood. We boast not in our weakness but in our strength. Values which Christ has declared to be false are brought back into evangelical favor and promoted as the very life and substance of the Christian way. How eagerly do we seek the approval of this or that man of worldly reputation. How shamefully do we exploit the converted celebrity. Anyone will do to take away the reproach of obscurity from our publicity-hungry leaders: famous athletes, congressmen, world travelers, rich industrialists; before such we bow with obsequious smiles and honor them in our public meetings and in the religious press. Thus we glorify men to enhance the standing of the Church of God, and the glory of the Prince of Life is made to hang upon the transient fame of a man who shall die. . . .

. . . The loss, the rejection, the shame, both belong to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. The cross that saves them also slays them them, and anything short of this is pseudo-faith and not true faith at all. . . . How can we face Him who was crucified and slain when we see His followers accepted and praised? . . .

. . . [I]f I see aright, the cross of popular evangelicalism is not the cross of the New Testament. It is, rather, a bright new ornament upon the bosom of self-assured and carnal Christianity whose hands are indeed the hands of Abel, but whose voice is the voice of Cain. The old cross slew men; the new cross entertains them. The old cross condemned; the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh; the new cross encourages it. The old cross brought tears and blood; the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches and sings about the cross; before the cross it bows  and toward the cross it points with carefully staged histrionics--but upon that cross it will not die, and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear. . . .

. . . The life that halts short of the cross is but a fugitive and condemned thing, doomed at last to be beyond recovery. That life which goes to the cross and loses itself there to rise again with Christ is a divine and breathless treasure. Over it death hath no more dominion. . . .

Immanuel

We know this name! We refer to it at Christmas time; it’s one of the names of Jesus. Matthew makes sure that we non-Hebrew speakers know what it means: “God with us” (Matt 1:23).

Was doing some Bible reading this morning, was in the book of Isaiah. What a great book! Finally understood an odd verse for the first time. In chapter seven, during the days of evil king Ahaz, Judah was invaded from the north by a coalition army made up of Israel (aka, Ephraim, or the Northern Kingdom) and Syria (also known as the Arameans).

The year was 734 BC. There was a fresh, growing power in the north: Assyria. The Assyrian king, Tiglath-pileser, was consolidating his power and doing battle with his opponents to his east, in Urartu. The small kingdoms to Tiglath-pileser’s south, Syria (capital: Damascus, king: Rezin) and Israel (also known as Ephraim, capital: Samaria, king: Pekah) saw this as a good time to form an anti-Assyrian military coalition. They courted Judah (capital: Jerusalem, king: Ahaz), seeking an alliance. When Judah refused, Syria and Israel decided they could not afford to have a possible pro-Assyrian opponent to their rear, and so assaulted Judah with the intent of setting up their own puppet king, Tabeel, on the throne of Jerusalem.

To make matters worse, the Philistines to the west, and Edom, to the southeast, chose just this time to make trouble for Judah as well, with the result that the tiny mountain kingdom was now involved in a hot war on three sides.

Which brings us to Isaiah chapter seven. Reports of the advancing coalition army to the north are brought to king Ahaz and he is scared to death, along with all Judah (7:2). Isaiah is told to meet the frightened king and to encourage him. He is to acknowledge the gravity of the situation, including the intent of the aggressors to depose Ahaz (7:3-6). And then he is to give this message:

thus says the Lord God, “It shall not stand nor shall it come to pass. For the head of Aram is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin . . . , and the head of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you will not believe, you surely shall not last.” Isaiah 7:7-9 (NASB)

Sounds strange to our ears, does it not? The last sentence we get, because it has to do with faith and we understand faith, as believers in Christ. But, “the head of Aram is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin.” What’s that all about? And “the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samariah is the son of Remaliah [aka, Pekah].” How is that comforting, or encouraging?

Isaiah invites Ahaz to ask for a sign of God’s faithfulness. Ahaz refuses, but Isaiah gives him a sign anyway.

“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel. He will eat curds and honey at the time He knows enough to refuse evil and choose good. For before the boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken.” Isaiah 7:14-16 (NASB)

What is the sign? It is that a young woman, a virgin, will bring forth a child who will be named Immanuel. By the time the boy is old enough to begin distinguishing between right and wrong, the nations behind the invading coalition army will themselves have been destroyed.

Now we are in the position to understand both the odd comfort of 7:8-9 and that of verse 14.

Think! What is the capital of the Aramean army? Damascus. Who rules Damascus, thus providing help and sustenance to the Arameans? Rezin.

What is the capital of the Ephraimite army? Samaria. Who rules Samaria, thus providing help and sustenance to the Ephraimite army? Pekah, the son of Remaliah.

Or to put it another way, who is with Aram? Who is with Ephraim?

Are you seeing it yet?

Who is with Judah? The name of the child is the answer, and comprises the message of comfort for Ahaz: Immanuel, God with us, or as the margin of the NASB puts it, God is with us!

Why is this promise so secure and so powerful? Because Judah is the remnant through whom God’s covenant promise of a Davidic Kingdom will be fulfilled. Which is what makes the occurence of the phrase, “house of David” so interesting. It occurs but three times in the entire book of Isaiah. Two of those occurences are here, in Isaiah 7: once in verse 2 in which the bad news of the invasion is announced, and once in verse 13 in which the promise of deliverance is proclaimed. The promise is secure because God’s covenant with David is secure, and Ahaz belongs to the house of David.

Which is also what makes Isaiah’s child’s name so interesting: Shear-jashub (7:3) means a remnant shall return. God will always preserve His remnant. Isaiah is instructed to take that child with him to the meeting with Ahaz, as a reminder to the beleagured king.

True to God’s promise, Aram and Ephraim are destroyed within a very few years and the Assyrians are the destructive instruments in God’s hands. Unfortunately, Ahaz choses not to believe, and both Judah and he pay dearly for the king’s unbelief.

There’s much more here, but that’s enough for now.

Isaiah 7:14 is not only a Messianic announcement; it’s an announcement with a context, a context that helps us understand the Messiah. When death reigned through sin, God sent Immanuel, who accomplished the impossible and defeated sin and death and delivered us by His sacrifice on the cross, and His resurrection to life.

And again, when surrounded by overwhelming odds and certain defeat, when the Christian is in danger of being overrun by fear, tragedy, suffering, failure, death, there is that name, that reminder: Immanuel, God with us.

Did he know Who to thank?

There were three crosses prepared on that hill. It was going to be a triple execution; not an unusual thing for Rome who had at times crucified tens, and even hundreds. Who would the victims be this time?

Mark 15:7 indicates that there were some insurrectionists in prison, who had committed murder in the course of their insurrection. The two who wound up on the left and right-hand crosses are called robbers (Mark 15:27). The word used (λῃστής) can also be translated insurrectionist.

For whom was the third cross prepared? Perhaps it was prepared for Barabbas. John uses the same word “robber” in John 18:40 of Barabbas, and Luke makes clear his crime: Luke 23:19 (NASB) He was one who had been thrown into prison for a certain insurrection made in the city, and for murder.

Perhaps the three crosses were meant for three who had rebelled against the imperial might of Rome. There was but one sentence for the crime of insurrection: crucifixion.

The sun had risen on Barabbas' last day. I wonder what he was feeling as he contemplated the horror the next six to twelve hours would hold. Doubtless he had seen men die under a Roman whipping. Surely he had seen at least several crucifixions, and knew that they were always preceded by scourging. Was his hatred of Rome so strong that it obscured his fear? Or did he dread the coming lash that would expose his bones and internal organs as the flesh was ripped from his body?

I wonder if he could hear, faintly through the prison walls, as the crowd roared his name? Was someone shouting for his condemnation? Was he the next blood spectacle? The booted feet he heard approaching his cell – was it the guard coming to tie him to the whipping post?

I wonder whether icy fear gripped his heart as the ring of keys clanked against the bars when the jailor unlocked his door, and two burly soldiers stepped in, grabbed his manacled hands, and began to drag him out of the cell. Did he scream, or cry out, or beg for mercy?

I wonder what he thought when they dragged him out of the prison door, removed the shackles, and left him standing alone on the outside, blinking in the sunlight. I wonder, did he know Who took his place on that middle cross?