Day 39
Unworthy
To Start
Hustle is overrated. Don’t rush into study like a consumer (to “get something” from the text and move on). Come with your ambitions surrendered. In other words, sit down and shut up. ;)
Pray
Yahweh, as I read today, give me the perseverance to keep looking even when what I see is heavy and hard. Show me a way to understand and act upon what I witness.
Read
Read Hebrews 11:37-38 & Matthew 5:11-12.
As you read, consider…
Try to put names and stories with this list of details. It’s okay if you can’t figure out who the writer is talking about—it’s hard. Some of these details come not from Scripture but from Jewish tradition. (Try to do this before you read the “From JL” section.)
Imagine widespread persecution of Christians broke out in your country today. (To help you have a clear picture, let’s pick two things Christians are being punished for: taking communion and serving the poor. Should you be caught doing either one you’ll be given the choice to deny Jesus as Lord or be tortured and then killed.)
What “takes” would you expect to see on social media from Christian pundits? How would your local church preach about it? How would you react personally? How might the church persevere?
Earlier in our study we noted Abraham’s faith as he wandered in the land of promise. What’s different about his wandering and the wandering here at the end of verse 38?
Note that both Abraham (far from home but safe and wealthy) and these wanderers (running for their lives and destitute) are all identified as living by faith. What might the diversity of hardship on this list teach us about living by faith?
Hebrews 11:37-38 (CSB)
37 They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they died by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated. 38 The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and on mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.
Matthew 5:11-12 (CSB)
11 Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
From JL
I didn’t know who was sawed in two.
Zechariah was stoned.
Then the Spirit of God came on Zechariah son of Jehoiada the priest. He stood before the people and said, “This is what God says: ‘Why do you disobey the Lord’s commands? You will not prosper. Because you have forsaken the Lord, he has forsaken you.’”
But they plotted against him, and by order of the king they stoned him to death in the courtyard of the Lord’s temple.
2 Chronicles 24:20-21
Uriah died by the sword.
Now Uriah son of Shemaiah from Kiriath Jearim was another man who prophesied in the name of the Lord; he prophesied the same things against this city and this land as Jeremiah did. When King Jehoiakim and all his officers and officials heard his words, the king was determined to put him to death. But Uriah heard of it and fled in fear to Egypt. King Jehoiakim, however, sent Elnathan son of Akbor to Egypt, along with some other men. They brought Uriah out of Egypt and took him to King Jehoiakim, who had him struck down with a sword and his body thrown into the burial place of the common people.
Jeremiah 26:20-23
Elijah wears the animal skin.
“He had a garment of hair and had a leather belt around his waist.”
The king said, “That was Elijah the Tishbite.”
2 Kings 1:8
But I couldn’t remember reading about someone being sawed in two.
So I googled it.
And then I cried.
I’ve been avoiding writing about it for two days. Last night I told my small group, “I’m sorry if I’m emotional. I just found out how the prophet Isaiah died.”
This is how the Talmud tells the story:
“Manasseh sought to kill Isaiah, and he fled from him, and fled to a cedar, and the cedar swallowed him up, all but the fringe of his garment; they came and told him (Manasseh), he said unto them, go and saw the cedar, and they sawed the cedar, and blood was seen to come out.’‘
Other versions of the story report that Isaiah was stuffed in a sack, put into a hollowed out tree and then sawed. We can’t know what’s true—the story’s not in Scripture. But even before Hebrews was written, the oral history was widely believed.
Over the course of my life, I’ve spent hours and hours and hours with Isaiah’s words. They’ve been honey and cold water and fire and life.
I’ve dreamt of Home with Isaiah.
Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the Lord will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.
I knew Isaiah was home already. I just didn’t know what he had to endure to get there.
I don’t have words for what I’m feeling. It’s some mixture of anger, sadness, pride, love, and hope. I guess it’s grief. My brother, Isaiah, didn’t deserve that.
And the world didn’t deserve him.
That’s God’s statement on the matter. Perhaps it’s what God would put on every one of His children’s tombstones:
“The world wasn’t worthy of them.”
I have spent too much of my life trying to be worthy of the world. To earn its respect. To find my place. To belong and succeed according to its rules.
I am done with that.
I don’t want to belong in a world that saws Isaiahs in half. I don’t want to belong in a world that executes Bonhoeffers and Tyndales. I don’t want to be respected by a world that can’t respect gentleness, mercy, or truth. I could not care less about a world that makes kings of fools and fools of kings.
The world gets what the world deserves. The world did not deserve Isaiah. The world does not deserve me.
The world does not deserve you. It is entirely unworthy.
Pray
A prayer of praise to pray with your brother, the prophet Isaiah:
I delight greatly in the Lord;
my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the soil makes the sprout come up
and a garden causes seeds to grow,
so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness
and praise spring up before all nations.
(Isaiah 61:10-11)
In the comments
Today we’re engaging in a moment of silence in the comments to honor our departed brothers and sisters who lived by faith, especially the ones who gave up everything. Please don’t comment today. Please do sit quietly in respect.
Godspeed,
JL