Oh Death, Where Is Your Sting?
(1 Cor 15:55b)
 Share  Forward  Share  Pin I lived in Wisconsin as a girl, and on exceptionally cold winter nights, thick frost covered the inside of my bedroom window. I carved stick figures with a spoon, and moonlight filtering through tree branches created a host of dancing figures on the wall behind me. During a powerful gust, the figures disappeared altogether and quickly appeared again. Fascinated, I etched until figures danced on my bed, wall, and ceiling. When the dancing figures became too real, I pulled my blanket over my head until my heart stopped pounding. The next morning, I saw my room in the light of day. Jesus Christ and the Bible are a Christian’s light of day. But through the ages, many people have lived in dreadful darkness. Recently, I wrote sixty study notes for Zondervan’s Upside Down Kingdom Bible due out September 2024. One of my passages was Deuteronomy three where the Israelites faced King Og of Basham in the territory bordering the Sea of Galilee. King Og, a giant of a man, terrified the Israelites, but God assured them this was his holy war—they would win! Parenthetically, the passage explains that Og was the last of the Rephaim (v 11). The ancients believed that when a successful warrior-king died, his spirit traveled to the underworld where he was deified. The Rephaim were spirits of these warriors who emerged from the underworld to rule as deity over a nation.[1] Og’s bed or more likely his coffin was 13½ ft. x 6 ft., which supports their claim that he was a giant of a man. The dead fascinated and frightened the ancients. In the cult of the dead, the eldest son honored the family’s dead patriarch by setting a place for him at the table and offering him food. An ancient Babylonian text reads, “Come (dead ancestor), eat this, drink this, and bless . . . the king of Babylon.”[2] There was a fine line, if one existed at all, between honoring and worshipping the dead. They also believed that spirits of the dead emerged from the underworld and spoke through mediums, spiritists, and necromancers. Demons preyed on human fear of dying and ignorance of the afterlife. Absent a relationship with God and knowledge of the Bible, people were easy prey for demonic masquerades, just as they are today. God condemned talking to the dead and consulting a medium or spiritist (Dt 18:10–13, Lev 19:26, 31). A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads (Lev 20:27). God did not teach the Israelites much about Satan and the demons. He simply commanded them not to participate with them. Undoubtedly, the Israelites knew exactly what he was talking about. God warned that pagan deities were false gods and demons (Dt 32:16–17, Ps 106:34–38, 1 Co 10:20–22, Eph 2:2). Jesus brought Satan and the demons into the light of day and demonstrated his authority over them. He exposed them as pure evil, tempters of sin, the source of mental and physical torment, and deceivers through counterfeit miracles and false doctrines. Amy Meets a Spirit Girl Ten-year-old Amy awoke in the night and saw a pint-sized spirit-girl sitting at the foot of her bed. The spirit said she needed a friend and was sad that she died so young. They talked nightly for a week. But Amy was sleepy at school, and she noticed that the spirit-girl repeated the same sentences night after night. When Amy asked her to stop coming, the spirit verbally, viciously attacked her. The demon refused to leave. Terrified, Amy hid under her covers. Amy finally told her mother who brought her for prayer after a worship service. I talked and prayed with Amy. The following week, I went to her home where we sat on her bed, read the Bible, and prayed. The demon never returned. Jesus delivered Amy from this evil and strengthened her faith. What Does the Bible Say? Demons capitalize on human fears of dying and fascination with the afterlife. The Bible assures us that we are with God when we die. In the Old Testament, we read, dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it (Ecc 12:7). In the New Testament, Jesus told the thief on the cross, Today you will be with me in paradise (Lk 23:43). Jesus prepared his disciples for his death and said, Do not let your hearts be troubled; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going. (Jn 14:1–4). Paul wrote in Philippians, If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far (1:22-23). Jesus Christ and the Bible are daylight for the soul. Jesus removed the sting of death when he provided the Way for sinners to deal with sin and be with him, now and forever. O death where is your sting? (1 Cor 15:55b). On the Day of the Lord, Jesus will appear and gather us to him. 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. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever (1 Thess 4:16–17). What a glorious day that will be! Come, Lord Jesus, come. [1] See Deities, Demons, and the Dead, Karl Van De Toon, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), Og 638–640, Rephaim 692–700. [2] Edwin Yamauchi, “Magic or Miracle? Diseases, Demons and Exorcisms”. In Gospel Perspectives, The Miracles of Jesus, edited by David Wenham and Craig Blomberg (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986), 100. |