DEATH OF A TYRANT
The ancient Greeks told stories of Sisyphus, the cunning founder of
Corinth. For making fools of the gods of the underworld he was punished
to labor at a hopeless task. He was to roll a huge block of granite up a
high, very steep hill and roll it down the other side. Each time he got
the huge stone to the pinnacle his strength was gone and it rolled back
down to the bottom. It wasn't just the effort that bathed him in sweat
and exhausted him completely that made the punishment intolerable, it
was the 'almost but never' aspect of it. Had he believed, without doubt,
that it was beyond him, the torment wouldn't have been so exquisite but
coupled with the endless failure was the conviction that this time he
could manage it.
Exodus 14 tells of Israel trapped between the Red Sea and the most
powerful army in the world, between an insurmountable obstacle to
freedom and pitiless tyranny. In response to their despairing protests
Moses assures them God will deliver them. “You see these Egyptians?”
asked God (14:13), “you will see them again no more, for ever!” The
waters opened up for Israel and closed to bury forever the army of their
bitter oppressor. The text tells us that Israel looked at the dead
bodies of their once feared tormentors and believed in God and Moses.
Finally! Those who picked their bones clean, those who bled them white
were dead! 'You will never see them again' said God. Whatever they had
to face in years ahead-this battle was won and it would remain as a
prophecy, a promise that nothing was beyond their hope!
Years of torture and generations of humiliation—ended. How many
rebellions had been planned and come to nothing? How often had they
turned their eyes heavenward in despair? The hope born in youth would
often die in old age. Optimism and cheerfulness would have been replaced
in a nation's heart by grim submission and a sullen endurance. Then
with such speed and finality the tyranny was obliterated and the years
of bondage were forgotten in the joy of liberty as they gaped on the
corpses of their oppressors on the shores of the Sea (Exodus 14:30).
And has "the Exodus" no message for the world at large? Is there any
aspect of biblical teaching more eagerly sought than the message that
the God of all the earth hates oppression, punishes oppressors, takes
note of the weeping of the poor and exploited? That the Lord of all the
earth will right all wrongs? Israel wasn't just lucky that their God
happened to hate cruelty and felt the pain of the defenseless. No,
Israel's God is the God of all humans and they all need to hear that he
is as opposed to their tormentors as he was to Israel's! This is the one
true God we must take to the nations of the world who (often in
desperation) have turned their eyes to lifeless idols or dark and savage
deities.
Well bred and well fed secularists sneer at a message which has
become too familiar to them but which has laid the foundations of their
freedom and prosperity. Theologian Clark Pinnock protests that we in the
West allow the bored and argumentative secularists to set the agenda
for our proclamation while multiplied millions of bewildered people are
eager and need to hear about the true God who delivers the oppressed
from the clutches of their enemies (see Psalm 10). Since secularists
thrust the message from them, we turn to the rest of the world and
(maybe) they will hear.
But the message of the Exodus is not only for brutalized nations and
communities; it has a word of assurance and hope for all who suffer
under tyranny of any sort. Too many of us have lived under a tyranny of a
personal nature. Uncleanness, bitterness, drunkenness, greed, gossip,
arrogance, immorality, self righteousness. To be endlessly assured that
we were forgiven was grand but not nearly enough. Years ago we became
captives. So long ago, perhaps, that we can't remember when we knew what
freedom was. There was never a doubt in our minds that it was slavery
and there never was a time when we didn't long to be free but endless
rebellions, countless uprisings against the dictator came to nothing,
hope died and we were left with gloomy views of the future; a future in
which we saw ourselves as old men and old women still in the clutches of
a cruel parasite. When we came to see it as that, life became grim
submission, a joyless patience; better than nothing, of course, but so
far beneath the life in which the soul dares to believe that the tyrant
can and will die.
Then one day it happened. For some of us the calendar could be marked
because on that day our Redeemer arrived, not silently and in secret
but as though with a mighty rush of water and we saw the enemy dead and
lying all around us. For many of us the passage from death to life, from
slavery to liberty, from shame and humiliation to honour, happened
without our noticing it and the tyrants we saw in former days passed
away. We saw them again no more. Whatever the future was to hold,
whatever tyrant we were to face-we'd see that slave-lord never again for ever. (I don't believe every person is enslaved to a particular besetting
sin that is of life-destroying proportions but I believe that every
person—no exceptions—is in dire need of saving and keeping grace. I
believe that every person—no exceptions—can be humbled by a tyrant and I
believe that there are those who haven't yet seen their bondage.
Comparing themselves with themselves they're blinded by their own glory.
I believe that God is anxious to deliver hosts of us not from
particular and grievous wickedness but from pathetic lives, shallow
views and trivial pursuits. But it's mainly for those who struggle with
evils that single them out, evils that make others doubt the genuineness
of their discipleship, evils that cause even themselves to doubt their
longing for a holy freedom—it's for those these words are especially
aimed.)
The healing of others must not be viewed as one more nail in your
coffin but as another prophecy, another assurance that tyranny will die.
That God will not allow his child to vanish without rescue. Your day is
coming. Your name is not Sisyphus. Those who have never known a deep,
enduring and awful struggle can still sympathize and are praying you on.
Those who have finally found God's redeemer in a friend, a husband, a
wife, a child, a parent, a doctor and now know the joy of liberation,
they are urging you on. One day God looking out of heaven will hear you,
out of the darkness of your own crucifixion, taking on your lips the
words his own Son had on his: 'It is finished!'
Finished the power and lure of the evil, finished the shame and
humiliation of it, the bird has escaped the snare and the tyrant is
dead!
[I borrowed most of this from my HEADING HOME WITH GOD [Weaver Publications, check home page on books and how to order.]
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.