The Eradication of Sin, Satan & Suffering 

We are nearing the end of our series on the Christian's hope. The Bible looks forward to a time when all sin and suffering will be eradicated including Satan and his hierarchy of accomplices. 

The first chapter of the Bible paints a broad-brush picture of creation as God intends it. The account is majestic and orderly. There is one God, His world and living things, plants, animals including mankind, all in harmonious relationship. Special responsibility is given to man, made in God's image and accountable to Him, to care for God's world on His behalf. God pronounced all that He had made as very good. Sadly, this situation does not exist. This is not the world we experience. But, according to scripture, one day it will be. 

The path to that destination is unfolded in stages. God released insight and understanding through many people over the centuries. Each generation has been responsible for walking in the light of what had been revealed. 

Genesis chapters 2 and 3, deal with the origin of evil and suffering. The picture is set in a garden. A man and a woman are given a two-part instruction involving both permission and a prohibition. Then there is a snake whose question and half-truths amount to an enticement to these two humans to misuse their free will. Sin, according to scripture, is not part of the created order, nor indeed is evil. God's world is very good. Sin is the misuse of the faculty of choice given to humankind. There is both enticement from outside and selfish inclination from within. Later chapters demonstrate the depth and breadth of the problem (Genesis 4-11), before the beginnings of God's provision for a remedy. 

God's solution, working with the freely given cooperation of mankind, was to begin with a man (Abraham) whose family and descendants became a nation (Israel), who would serve as a model and mediator to the rest of mankind. Through them, key elements of spiritual understanding such as covenant, sacrifice and holiness would be revealed and illustrated. The provision of law through Moses and the subsequent history of the Israelites shows that a list of rules and requirements on its own is insufficient to bring about the change that is needed, even if it was packed with incentives, the promise of blessings and the threat of curses. It was the Old Testament prophets who explained the experience of Israel and Judah resulting from the sins of idolatry and social injustice, their failures towards God and each other. But alongside messages of condemnation for failure, there were promises that God would not give up on His covenant people. It was the prophets who called the people of God to live in the light of what was to come and to align themselves with God's purposes. These promises, framed in the language of poetry, pointed to a future time when God would bring into being a situation of universal peace, harmony and blessing based on righteousness and justice. Embedded in the experience and history of the Jewish Bible, the Christian Old Testament is a wealth of pictures, pointers and perspectives on what lay ahead. 

Isaiah saw this as centred on Jerusalem (Zion) which would act as a focus to which the nation would come. This future hope acted as a beacon of hope to those who longed for a better future. 

'In the last days the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways, so that we may walk in His paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, or will they train for war anymore.' 

Isaiah 2:3-4 

The prophet Jeremiah saw that something else was needed. God would have to work in people's hearts. It was not sufficient for the law to be written on tablets of stone or scrolls in a book. It had to be written in people's hearts. And that was something that needed the Holy Spirit. 

' "This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people." ' 

Jeremiah 31:33 

Other people saw other parts of the jigsaw. God had given a promise to David that his dynasty would last forever, but history showed that the kings were just as human as the people they ruled. David himself was a very flawed character and eventually, with the conquest by Babylon, the line of Jesse (David's father) became like the stump of a tree. 

Yet the Davidic hope was kept alive in the Psalms used for worship, even after the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple; and although the rebuilt temple did not match the glory of the former, the thought that God had not forgotten His people, nor His covenant promises, remained. Zechariah looked forward to a day when a King would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey to initiate a reign of peace. 

'Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.' 

Zechariah 9:9 

'You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show favour to her; the appointed time has come.' 

Psalm 102:13 

The book of Daniel, one of the later books in the Old Testament, encouraged God's people to see that although empires come and go (Babylon, Persia, for example) there would be another, a greater and more final kingdom associated with a human-divine figure;  one like the Son of Man who would bring in a final kingdom. 

"In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.' 

Daniel 7:13-14 

These Old Testament prophecies, traditions and hopes all spoke of something wonderful ahead and, as yet, unfulfilled at the end. But it was not possible to put all the pieces of the picture together into a clear and obvious picture. At the dawn of what we now call the first century, the Jewish people were a relatively insignificant and down-trodden nation under Roman dominion. Their hopes and dreams, as they reflected on their past, were for a military Messianic (anointed) deliverer sent by God who would overthrow the Romans and establish the promised kingdom. But there were varieties of expectations and indeed several candidates had unsuccessfully presented themselves. One of the popular ideas was that there was a yet to be breaking in by God in the form of a cosmic conflict between good and evil; this using the language and ideas that became known as apocalyptic, found in Daniel and Joel. This day of the Lord language also had its roots in the prophetic traditions. 

'Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand.' 

Joel 2:1 

It was Jesus who brought together the various elements of Jewish expectation in a way that nobody else had done before. Descended from David, as genealogies could prove, He was of royal lineage, although there had been no ruling king for many centuries. He chose not to style Himself King Jesus which would have been unhelpfully provocative. Instead, He took the title Son of Man which to perceptive Jews would have suggested the figure in the book of Daniel who was given an everlasting kingdom by God. (The Ancient of Days). But there was one further picture that Jesus appreciated, that of the Servant of Isaiah 52-3. The Servant of Isaiah is not so much a person as a role. Israel the people are sometimes called the Servant of the Lord; indeed, they were. Their destiny was to take God's justice to the nations. But Israel did not nor could not fulfil this role completely. Even a remnant within the nation could not do so. But Jesus, as the ultimate Israelite, was able to do this especially in His willingness to suffer on behalf of His people and for the world. 

So, Jesus brought together these three strands of Old Testament expectation in an innovative and unique way. He was the King of David, the Son of Man and the Servant of the Lord. He inaugurated His Kingdom in a way which made complete sense of the scriptures. 

'He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms." Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, "This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things." ' 

Luke 24:44-48 

Jesus' Ministry 

It appears that the first Christians, like the disciples, expected the return of Jesus to end the age very soon, although Jesus Himself did not say that. Jesus made it very clear that He did not know the day, not the hour. 

"But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." 

Mark 13:32 

The early Christians rightly expected the return of Jesus and the resurrection of the dead. They lived their lives with the possibility that it could happen in their lifetime. Jesus had left a task for the church; to take the gospel into all the world and as time went on, that majority proportion of believers were from a Gentile background. They began to appreciate that the ancient prophecies of righteousness and peace to the nations would be a matter of God's people going to the nations ("...go into all the world" said Jesus), rather than expecting people to pour into Jerusalem (going up to the mountain of the Lord in Jerusalem and then taking their peace back home!). Turning to the God of Israel through Jesus would not depend on the need to go to the physical Mount Zion in Jerusalem. The prophets were indeed right when they proclaimed that all nations would turn to the God of Israel but at the time they lived, they were incapable of envisioning the way it would actually happen. 

It was John, the writer of the Book of Revelation, to whom God gave more understanding about the climax of the Kingdom. And God, of course, gave this understanding at the time it was needed. In the earliest days of the church, Jesus followers were regarded as Jews who followed Jesus. Consequently, they received the legal protection Rome gave to Jews. As time went on, however, Gentiles formed the majority and the church spread beyond Palestine into Asia and Europe and also to the East. There was a parting of the ways with Judaism, especially after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD70. It was inevitable that there would be a clash between the followers of Jesus worshipping in small communities and Roman authorities and culture. There were times of persecution, sometimes spontaneous and local but at other times more official such as in the reign of Nero. This was the time when God spoke to John who was exiled on the Isle of Patmos for his faith.

The book of Revelation, written to groups of churches in what is Turkey today, is both a collection of letters of warnings and encouragements to overcome, followed by some cycles of prophecy. Its message is that Rome, despite its glorious facade and grandeur, is in truth corrupt, cruel, economically oppressive and anti- God. The Roman empire was a gigantic LIE! In highly symbolic form, using apocalyptic language and shocking pictures which include a dragon, beasts and a harlot, John contrasts its fate with that of faithful believers and martyrs, and the bride (the faithful church). 

John's message takes up the language of the Old Testament prophets and is packed through and through with quotations and allusions to their words. He draws up all the various strands of the prophets' messages and shapes them into pictures of the climax of history. The picture he paints is one of the final overthrowing of all evil and in particular its expression as Babylon, the name he gives to the Roman Empire of his day. Through the faithful witness of the martyrs and the prayers of God's people, Jesus will return; not this time as a suffering servant but as a glorious, anointed warrior! The book of Revelation is about Jesus who is both the Lamb of God and the Lion of Judah. Its message is that the way to overcome is paradoxically the path of suffering. This is something which has sadly been missed or lacking over the centuries. 

The message of Revelation is that Satan, who was defeated at the cross and who has been fighting a rear-guard action ever since, will be finally removed. The apocalyptic imagery of being cast into the lake of fire speaks of his final destruction. 

'And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.' 

Revelation 20:10 

This is a huge comfort for all those who are living in seasons of suffering and injustice when the appearance is that injustice pays and wickedness goes unchecked. It has been summed up in the words, "The Lamb wins!"   

These final chapters of Revelation declare that the final overthrow of evil will make way for a situation that is pictured as heaven on earth. The language used to describe it is taken from the first chapters of Genesis which is where we began this study.

'Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.' 

Revelation 22:1-5 

If you are someone living in a place or at a time when being a Christian is costly. Or if you can see ungodly people getting away with their wrongdoing. If you are tempted at times to given in or give up, then take encouragement from the final chapters of the Bible. Those who overcome will be granted a share in these blessings! 

'To the one who overcomes (is victorious), I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.' 

Revelation 2:7 

Chris Moffett