Pointing Over the Hill
"Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger and the staff in whose hand is My indignation." Isaiah 10:5
"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by His Son…" Hebrews 1:1-2a
Myth, says George Lucas, is always located just over the hill.
So it is that God uses various people and stories, myths not in the sense of being untrue, to point to Himself. He kept the people of His covenant looking just over the hill for the revelation to come. In times of good kings, He showed them aspects of His forbearance. In times of correction, like the use to which He put the king of Assyria as referred to in Isaiah 10:5, He used human rulers to point to the ultimate reckoning before Him that was just over the hill.
The opening of the Bible's book of Hebrews would keep us from making too much of these types. They are, as John the Baptist himself said, forerunners of the One, but they are not the One. Rulers or heroes who excite us don't deserve to have all of our hopes piled upon them and stifling them.
Authority figures who deal with us as we would rather not be dealt with don't deserve our unmitigated scorn. Like David putting up with a curse in a season of correction, we can recognize that things we least want to hear might be sent by God.
Our sterner warning might come in seasons of ascendancy. There will be times in life when we are likened to the king of Assyria, when we have power over someone else because God has given it to us. As the Holy Spirit through Isaiah goes to some length to detail, this king expounded on his own greatness. He took the victories and influence God granted him as proof that he would profit evermore and went to the extreme of blaspheming against God.
May it not be so with us. When we prosper, in whatever respect we prosper, may we use the resulting testimony to point to our ultimate prosperity which is in Christ. Meanwhile, may we have the wisdom to look for humans God might use to address our own rough edges.
"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by His Son…" Hebrews 1:1-2a
Myth, says George Lucas, is always located just over the hill.
So it is that God uses various people and stories, myths not in the sense of being untrue, to point to Himself. He kept the people of His covenant looking just over the hill for the revelation to come. In times of good kings, He showed them aspects of His forbearance. In times of correction, like the use to which He put the king of Assyria as referred to in Isaiah 10:5, He used human rulers to point to the ultimate reckoning before Him that was just over the hill.
The opening of the Bible's book of Hebrews would keep us from making too much of these types. They are, as John the Baptist himself said, forerunners of the One, but they are not the One. Rulers or heroes who excite us don't deserve to have all of our hopes piled upon them and stifling them.
Authority figures who deal with us as we would rather not be dealt with don't deserve our unmitigated scorn. Like David putting up with a curse in a season of correction, we can recognize that things we least want to hear might be sent by God.
Our sterner warning might come in seasons of ascendancy. There will be times in life when we are likened to the king of Assyria, when we have power over someone else because God has given it to us. As the Holy Spirit through Isaiah goes to some length to detail, this king expounded on his own greatness. He took the victories and influence God granted him as proof that he would profit evermore and went to the extreme of blaspheming against God.
May it not be so with us. When we prosper, in whatever respect we prosper, may we use the resulting testimony to point to our ultimate prosperity which is in Christ. Meanwhile, may we have the wisdom to look for humans God might use to address our own rough edges.
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