Saturday, March 27, 2010

David & Goliath: A Battle With Death (part 4 of 4)

When it came to fighting His battle, Jesus did not forget David’s example. He would join with David and say, “the battle is the Lord’s, and He will deliver you into our hand” (1 Samuel 17:47b). Jesus would defeat death and usher in His kingdom in a way unlike that of all of the kingdoms of the world. Rather than engage in violence, doing battle with sword and spear, He would suffer violence. He would take all of the blows that His enemy could deliver, and still emerge victorious through a Resurrection. Truly, in His arrest, His trial, and His crucifixion, He proved that the battle was the Lord’s; and though it seemed as if Jesus was delivered into the hands of His enemy, just as it would have seemed to everybody in David’s day that he was marching forward to his own destruction and to what would result in Israel’s subjection to its enemy, the Lord did indeed deliver Jesus’ enemy into His hands, as He would be said to have claimed the keys of death (Revelation 1:18). Because Jesus took those keys, death would no longer be able to lock away a people and keep them in exile from their God. Both David and Jesus would engage in battle as representatives for their people, and both would emerge victorious. Their peoples would gain victory in their victory. In Jesus’ victory, all the people of the land (that being the land of Israel) should have recognized that Israel has a God, and that its God was their resurrected Messiah King, Jesus of Nazareth.

Goliath, employing his training, methodically marched toward David. He “drew steadily closer to David to attack him” (17:48a). On the other hand, “David,” with complete trust in His God to deliver his enemy into His hand, “quickly ran toward the battle line to attack the Philistine” (17:48b). Jesus could have put off His confrontation with death. He could have delayed it. At His “trial,” He could have asserted His rights, defended Himself, demanded witnesses, or engaged in any number of procedural technicalities in order to push back the time of confrontation. However, He did not answer His accusers. He did not attempt to defend Himself or explain Himself. He merely said all that needed to be said in order to hasten the inevitable. Yes, He “quickly ran toward the battle line to attack” the enemy force that had been arrayed against Him.

When David dropped his enemy to the ground, he “did not even have a sword in his hand” (17:50b). Having felled his opponent, “David ran and stood over the Philistine. He grabbed Goliath’s sword, drew it from its sheath, killed him, and cut off his head with it” (17:51). How does this fit with what it was that Jesus did? Well, just as David utilized Goliath’s own weapon against him, by cutting off his head with his own sword---the very weapon that Goliath had planned to use to strike down David and thereby bring God’s people into subjection---Jesus defeated death by going down into death. In that, He gained all power by being subject to the weapon of death that had been used to strike fear and terror into the hearts of people throughout the world. He conquered that which was designed to foster subjection and subservience to the claims of power. Jesus used the very cross of Caesar---the great symbol of the world’s power and Caesar’s power of death over life---as the means by which He would enter into the conflict from which He would emerge victorious by Resurrection.

With their champion defeated and dead, the Philistines ran away. How did Israel respond? How did God’s covenant people respond to the defeat of their enemy? Before David’s victory, Israel saw Goliath and the Philistines as a curse, very much in line with that promised by God in Deuteronomy. Had David been defeated, they would have been subject to the Philistines, and therefore under God’s curse, in exile from God’s promises. Trembling in fear before that enemy, the men of Israel had no hope. Figuratively, they saw themselves as dead men. Now, with Goliath’s defeat and the enemy’s retreat, they were able to walk into the realm of God’s blessing. They were not going to be in subjection. Death was not going to come to them. They were resurrected! “Then the men of Israel and Judah charged forward, shouting a battle cry” (17:52a). When Jesus defeated His enemy, being raised from the dead, all those in union with Him through believing in Him (the mark of God’s covenant people) were moved from cursing and exile and death and hopelessness in the face of its relentless march, into eternal life through the power of the Resurrection, with no more fear. As did Israel, those that now find themselves as God’s covenant people charge forward, with a battle cry. What is that cry? The cry is the proclamation of the Gospel. The cry is Jesus is Lord, for He has won the battle!

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