Swallowed up in victory

Sunday 20^th July

Read Nahum 3:18-19

“King of Assyria, your shepherds slumber;
    your nobles lie down to rest.
Your people are scattered on the mountains
    with no one to gather them.
¹⁹ Nothing can heal you;
    your wound is fatal.
All who hear the news about you
    clap their hands at your fall,
for who has not felt
    your endless cruelty?” (NIVUK)

The great leveller in the end is death. It is apt that the last word concerns the king. All around him is an accumulation of death. It is inescapable and inevitable. His wound is fatal and healing is far off. When judgement finally comes it is final and no one will mourn the death of the wicked. Everyone will rejoice when death finally claims them.

Yet death claims us all doesn’t it? We may rejoice at the fall of the enemies of the God but that same fate awaits us also. There is evil within us that warrants the same judgement. Unless we flee to the One who has conquered the unconquerable.

“I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. ⁵¹ Listen, I tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – ⁵² in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³ For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. ⁵⁴ When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’

⁵⁵ ‘Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?’” (1 Corinthians 15:50-55) (NIVUK)