AN UNLIKELY BATTLE PLAN
- The Immortal becomes mortal
- Death defeats death
The Bible is filled with war. Especially in the Old Testament there were a lot of battles and a lot of killing and a lot of blood. God’s people seemed to be constantly fighting different enemies at any given time and, for the most part, the Lord made sure that the Israelites usually came out on top. But as a person reads about these different wars that are recorded for us in Old Testament history, it doesn’t take a military strategist to see that the Lord occasionally came up with some very unlikely battle plans for his people. Some of the fights were fairly straightforward and nothing out of the ordinary happened; but there were other times in which the Lord purposely asked his people to do something that was completely contrary to the normal tactics of war.
For example, when the Israelites were just fresh out of the land of Egypt and encamped on the shores of the Red Sea, Pharaoh and his entire army came after them. But instead of turning around to fight their former captors, the Lord had Moses stretch out his hands over the water, part the sea right down the middle, and guide the people of Israel through that body of water on dry land to the other side. And, of course, that unlikely battle plan worked! The Lord sent the water back down over the heads of the Egyptian army when they tried to cross the sea behind them and so the Israelites defeated this experienced group of warriors without losing a single person.
Years later, right after the nation of Israel crossed the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land, the Lord laid out another unlikely plan to capture the city of Jericho. “March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days. Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast on the trumpets, have all the people give a loud shout; then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in” (Joshua 6:3-5). It was a strange plan, it was a ridiculous plan, but it was what God told them to do. And so that’s what the people did: they marched around the city, they blew the trumpets, they shouted, and the walls of Jericho tumbled to the ground just like that Lord had planned.
A couple hundred years after that a man named Gideon was the leader of God’s people. And he found himself in a difficult situation: his 32,000 soldiers were up against 135,000 Midianites. But the Lord said to him, “You have too many men for me to give you the victory. Tell anyone who wants to go home that they can.” And so 22,000 soldiers took the Lord up on his offer and left, leaving Gideon with only 10,000 men. He was now outnumbered more than 13 to 1. But the Lord came to Gideon again and said, “Your army is still too large. Have them take a drink of water from the river, and keep only those who drink out of their hands instead of putting their faces in the water.” After that little exercise, only 300 men were left. But with those 300 men, torches in one hand, trumpets in the other, and weapons in neither, the Lord miraculously threw the Midianite army into confusing and they ended up killing each other. The Lord’s unlikely battle plan worked again, without Gideon losing even one of his 300 men.
Throughout the Bible the Lord gained the victory for his people is some highly unlikely ways. But no military engagement of Old Testament lore, no incredible rescue of God’s people, no improbable outcome from a seemingly impossible situation can even come close to comparing to the unlikely battle plan the Lord carried out to save us. The Lord’s unlikely battle plan to rescue us from death and the devil was a bizarre two-pronged attack: 1) The Immortal God would become a mortal human being and 2) Death would defeat death. That was it. That was the Master Plan. And it doesn’t make sense to the normal human mind! No colonel or general or man of war would agree with this tactic. But it’s the plan the Lord had chosen. It’s the plan he carried out. And it worked. The Lord’s unlikely battle plan was exactly what had to be done even though it seemed ridiculous to everyone else at the time and to most people still today. Listen to how the writer to the Hebrews describes this absurd plan for our salvation: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is, the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” The Immortal becomes mortal! Death defeats death! It seems so preposterous if we really think about it!
God is immortal. By his very nature he is unable to die. He has existed for all eternity. He does not have a beginning and he does not have an end. He is in control of all things. He cannot be affected in any adverse way by anything at any time. And so the devil could not touch him. The devil could not harm him. In fact, the devil was thrown out of heaven and into hell by the immortal God for rebelling against him. And Satan could do nothing about it. The devil had to take his punishment without so much as a word in complaint because he was powerless against the Lord and his will.
But then the Immortal decided to become mortal. And the devil must have been thrilled! God had become a man! The Lord had seemingly taken off every piece his armor and allowed Satan and all of his murdering cohorts to surround him! Jesus as a true human being placed himself on this earth in a position of vulnerability and permitted the devil to take as many pot shots at him as he wanted. The Lord opened himself up to be attacked. He stepped out of the confines of the castle and onto the front lines of the battle field - all alone. And there he stood - all alone - taking on the full fury of Satan’s hate and jealousy and rage. Because don’t think for a second that the devil ever let up while Jesus was on this earth. He finally had the Lord right where he wanted him: in a place where he could attack him and hurt him and punish him. Christ lived for 33 years on this earth and you can be sure that the devil was right there every step of the way pushing and pulling and poking and prodding and pounding and pounding and pounding as hard as he could… The Immortal and become mortal and the devil was going to take advantage of that opportunity as long as he was able to do so.
What an unlikely battle plan! What an incomprehensible plan of action to win back our souls! You would think that the great and glorious God of our lives would be able to come up with something a little less painful for himself. You would think he could have concocted a plan in which he avoided any discomfort on his own part. But there was no other way. God had to become a man. He had to take the punishment and the beatings. He had to suffer because the only way human beings could be saved was if one of their own suffered and died in their place. And that’s the second part of this unlikely battle plan: death.
Needless to say, death is usually not the objective of any rescue mission. Death might be unavoidable in some cases, but it is not part of the plan and it is certainly not desired. Because death is frightening. Death is not nice. Death is the ripping away of soul from body and the ending of everything we’ve ever known. But death not only has physical implications, it has spiritual implications on this earth as well: death is really the ultimate indication that a person is sinful.
People show their sinfulness in many ways, of course, and we are no different. From the moment we are born we display a brazen sinfulness that is obvious to anyone who sees us in action. And throughout our lives we continue to demonstrate our imperfections: selfishness, laziness, greed, guilt, perversion, pride… the list is endless. But over time we also get pretty good at covering them up, don’t we? We can excuse them or hide them or put up a nice looking façade so that others don’t notice how sinful we really are underneath. But death, death can’t be ignored. The final result of sin in this life can’t be excused or hidden or covered up. When someone dies it is painfully clear to everyone what has just happened. And death makes no exceptions. Death seizes even the most upright and respectable of Christians because death is the ultimate indication that a person is sinful. If a person would never sin, that person would never die. It’s not natural to die. It wasn’t originally the way it was supposed to happen. Life wasn’t supposed to end.
But death was the intention of the Lord the entire time. He planned to die. He even wanted to die in a sense because he knew that was the way he would defeat death. If he would die in our place, he could then rise from the dead and break the chains of the grave forever. It was another unlikely move in the Lord’s campaign against our enemies, but it worked. And it worked even though no one thought it would. His disciples didn’t think this plan would work! Remember how many times Peter and the other eleven disciples with him were confused at Jesus’ words or ignored Jesus’ predictions or even rebuked Jesus for the plans he shared with them? They were not convinced that Jesus’ death would turn out for the best. And the Lord’s enemies certainly didn’t think it would work either. They plotted Jesus’ death, they organized his death, they even pressured the Roman rulers to authorize his death. And when Jesus was dying on the cross they mocked him for it: “‘He saved others, they said, ‘but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him’” (Matthew 27:42)! And I’m sure Satan didn’t think God’s unlikely plan to die would work. In fact, the devil probably thought it was his own plan. After all, it was the devil who had convinced Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus; the devil had moved the hearts of the Jewish leaders to hate Jesus; the devil had prompted the Israelite people and the Roman soldiers to work together in order to carry out this crucifixion of the Lord. The devil was probably happy that Jesus was there, bleeding to death, suffering abandonment from his own Father, being mocked by those who had every reason to love him. No one thought that Jesus would be able to secure the victory for himself and his people through death.
But then Jesus died. And the devil was one of the first ones to find out that this unlikely battle plan of the Lord had somehow worked! The apostle Peter says in his first letter that after his death Jesus went back down to hell and preached his victory to those who were there - including the devil. The Lord’s death had actually defeated death! Anyone who believed in Jesus’ sacrifice would now never have to face an eternal punishment in hell at their own death. They would be saved! They would be rescued from this impending eternal torture because death had been turned into an entrance into heaven and the devil had been stripped of the most powerful weapon he once had at his disposal. Because of Jesus’ death our death no longer needs to be feared because although it is still the ultimate indication that we are sinners, it is now also the ultimate indication that we are saved.
The Lord’s unlikely battle plan to save our souls was perfectly executed. God became man in order to disable the angel who wanted to be God. And then God defeated the power of death with his own death and his miraculous resurrection. Nothing like this had ever been seen before and nothing like it will ever be seen again. Because it was not only an unlikely battle plan, it was completely unique and one of a kind. It will never be duplicated again - mainly because it doesn’t have to be. Although the enemy is still around, the battle has already been won. Although death still has to be faced, it will only bring us face to face with our Savior. The Lord’s unlikely battle plan has worked. He has gained the victory, which means you have gained the victory as well. And you can be sure that you will one day join in the victory celebration with the Mastermind behind the plan.
Amen.
“Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory.” - Revelation 19:6-7
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