Working Backwards

The Baptism of Jesus (Matt 3:13-17)

So in the Gospels, when Jesus comes on the scene, he announces that the kingdom of heaven has arrived.

Matthew tells us in chapter 3 of his Gospel that Jesus comes up from Nazareth and is baptized.

Now John the Baptizer was there baptizing people, and when Jesus goes to him, John objects, saying that Jesus ought to be the one baptizing him.

But Jesus says to John, “Let it be so for the time being; for it is good for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.”

And Matthew tells us that “Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’”

The voice from heaven is quoting two passages of scripture.

Psalm 2:7

“I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;

    today I have become your father.”

–Isaiah 42:1

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

    my chosen one in whom I delight;

I will put my Spirit on him,

    and he will bring justice to the nations.”


The Temptation by Satan (Matt 4:1-11)

But then Matthew tells us that “The Spirit” immediately sends Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan for forty days and nights.

Now, in the Bible, the number 40 is almost always associated with times of trial and testing (e.g., Moses as a shepherd for 40 years, Israel wandering the wilderness for 40 years, Elijah in the wilderness for 40 days, etc.) and this is also where we get the 40 days of Lent. It is a time of testing… of suffering and self-denial.

And Matthew tells us that Jesus fasted this whole time out in the desert, and that by the end of it… he was very hungry.

Now the devil comes to Jesus and he says to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

And Jesus responds by quoting from the Law-Book of Deuteronomy, saying, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

This passage of scripture from the Law-Book of Deuteronomy explains how God led his people Israel into the desert in order to make them hungry and to teach them to rely on him for everything. We must rely on him for everything.

Then the devil took Jesus to the great city of Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.

He said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.”

And the devil justified this command by quoting from the Bible himself. He quotes from Psalm 91, saying:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,

    and they will lift you up in their hands,

    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Now, this was actually a really stupid thing for the devil to say, because if he had gone on to read the rest of that verse he was quoting, he would have read the following: "You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent." And we know that the devil is often described as what? As a lion and a serpent… so he was actually quoting from a psalm that was speaking of his own destruction by the Messiah.

But Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy again, saying, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.

He said, “All this I will give you, if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus again quotes from Deuteronomy, saying, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

HOPE! - Working Backwards

There is an enemy at work against us whose desire is to pull us away from union with God out into the void of nothingness. The enemy has been known by many names – the devil, Satan, Apollyon, and so on…

He is seen as the great enemy of God and all who follow Jesus. But sometimes we talk as though the devil were God’s equal – as if good and evil were equal powers fighting to gain the upper hand… like the Force or something. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The devil lost a long time ago. He was never really much of a threat. Oh sure, he seems all big and scary… especially when we begin to behave the way he does. But really, there is nothing big or great about the devil. He is consumed in himself… and anything consumed by itself isn’t so great. It may trick you into appearing powerful and explosive initially… but it quickly burns out.

And we’re not that much different than the devil, really. Like him, we can be consumed by pride and we can lock ourselves away inside of ourselves and devoid ourselves of all that is good. That’s what the devil did. And that’s what we do too. And isn’t that really where hell begins? In being so consumed in ourselves that we become isolated from all that is good?

But the kingdom of heaven has come… and it has come ahead of schedule. When Jesus drove out demons, they accused him of coming to torture them before the “appointed time.” You see, the kingdom of heaven works backwards. The goodness of God and the sacrifice of Christ transcend time and space, so that the glory of the future travels backwards and becomes the reality of the present. The kingdom is… and is yet to come.

Throughout biblical history we see a protoevangelium – a gospel in advance. We see this from the beginning when God promises that a descendant of the woman will crush the head of the serpent – the enemy.

This type of imagery is seen in other places in the Old Testament, where the enemy of God who is described as having serpent-like qualities receives a crushing head wound. One example would be Goliath, whose armor is described as having the appearance of “scales” like a snake. And David defeats Goliath with a blow to the head. Another example would be the story of Jael, who drives a tent peg through the head, or temple, of the snakelike General Sisera. This kind of language pops up all over the place in the Old Testament. Pictures of the Gospel show up before the Gospel itself arrives.

You see, salvation works backwards. So that the final redemption starts in the here and now.

Damnation works the same way, too, though.

In his book, The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis speaks of heaven and hell beginning in this life, and that the next life will be the continuation of what we have chosen in this life.

He describes a group of people living in a grey town who take a bus to the outskirts of heaven. When they arrive, they find themselves in a beautiful, wide open country, full of grass and trees and streams, and they are eventually greeted by messengers who come to them from Deep Heaven, and they are invited to journey with them together into Deep Heaven – to go further in and higher up.

Most of the travelers are eager to journey inward… bit they begin to run into obstacles along the way.

One woman whose husband had died, wants to know if her husband will be there. When she finds out that he is there, waiting for her, she is pleased, because she says she has a long list of things she would like him to do for her. She is quite convinced that he has been sitting around doing nothing this whole time since he arrived, and she is keen on getting him back to work. She says he’s probably been sitting around working on that stupid novel of his, and she will soon make good use out of him once again. But… she is told that in order to survive this journey into Deep heaven, she’s going to need to leave some things behind… she will need to let go of her desire for control. And she gets angry… and she argues with the messenger. And she spends the rest of her life arguing and trying to prove that she is in the right.

Another man, who spent his life being an actor, is greeted by a woman he once loved. And he dramatically declares that his love is all that this woman would have ever needed. And he pretends to be jealous when he learns that she’s found something better than his love. …But it’s just an act. He cared for her once, but now all he cares about is drama. And he can’t survive the journey into deep heaven without letting go of his mask.

Another woman arrives who wants to know if her dead son is there, because she wants to go see him. She wants to go be his mother again, and she says that the only thing she cares about is seeing her son again. She will do anything to see him again… even if it means trampling over others… even if it means killing someone. Her desire to see her son appears to righteous and noble, and even justified… but her dead son has become an idol to her… and until she can let go of her son… she cannot see her son.

Another man is greeted by the guy who murdered someone he knew. And the man just can’t believe that they would let a murderer into this place. The man who committed the crime confesses his sin, and he tells him that he has been forgiven by the King. But the other man decides that he doesn’t want to make this journey after all… not if he has go with the man who murdered his friend. He would rather continue murdering the murderer in his own heart… than forgive him and find life.

Another man arrives on the outskirts of heaven… and he shows up with a lizard on his shoulder. And a messenger greets him and invites him on this journey into deep heaven with him… but the lizard speaks… and he whispers lies into the man’s ear…what would you do without me?... you are nothing without me … you would die without me… what would people think if they found out about me?

And the messengers offers to kill the lying lizard and remove it from the man’s shoulder… and the man says he would like that… but he’s grown so accustomed to it… he’s not sure if he can ever be any different than what he is right now… there can’t really be any change… the lizard has become a part of his own identity… if the lizard dies… he will die, too.

And the messenger asks him again if he will let him kill the lizard… and the man says he loves the lizard… and he hates the lizard… he has no life without the lizard… he has no life with the lizard… and he screams and he curses the lizard… but the lizard stays put… and the messenger asks again, will you let me kill it? and the man says yes… kill it quickly. And the lizard is killed. …and to the man’s surprise… he’s still alive… and the corpse of the lizard is transformed into a beautiful horse on which he can ride in freedom into deep heaven.

Eventually, one of the messengers takes us to down to a little blade of grass on the ground, and beneath that is a small little crack in the ground, and he tells us that… last time he checked, anyway… hell is somewhere down in that tiny little crack in the ground. Because heaven is so much bigger than hell.

He says that those who are in heaven at the last will look back on their life on earth and say that they had always been in heaven… and those who were in hell at the last would look back on their earthly life and say that they had always been in hell… and both would speak truthfully.

Those who are in hell, then, lived life on earth in a weird sort of anticipation of ultimate damnation; and those who are in heaven, lived life on earth in anticipation of salvation. Both the damned and the saved experienced the end results of their choices before the end results were finally brought about. This is how, Lewis says, heaven and hell “work backwards.” He says that heaven works backwards from the future to the present in the life of the believer, making even the worst trials and persecutions bearable through hope and joy; and that hell works backwards in the sinner, contaminating even the most pleasurable of sins with the stain of the anticipation of damnation.

Just as it is important to view the kingdom of God as “is and is yet to come,” so it is also appropriate to view the kingdom of the devil in this way. Though, hell would work in the opposite way of heaven. When heaven comes to earth, there is no more room for any traces of hell to remain. If heaven is the presence of God and hell is the absence of God’s presence, then the fact that heaven would come to earth would mean that hell would no longer have any place or hold here.

Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God has arrived.” But there is still more to come…

The hope of a future heaven where no good thing is destroyed means that we will be able to see our lost loved ones who died in the Lord. They will be raised in the Lord along with us, and there will no longer be any stupid and hateful death that takes us away from our loved ones, destroying God’s good creation, and defying God and the image of God. We will be together again and it will be wonderful. The creation will be reconciled… and our bodies will be restored. For God will restore all things, and death will be damned forever.

John writes in the book of Revelation that death and hades and the devil will be thrown into the lake of fire. Fire is meant to purify, but they will be in this fire forever, indicating that there was nothing in them that could be refined. There was nothing gold about them that could emerge from the flames. They all melted away like wax in everlasting destruction. And through this final destruction, we will be rid of all our enemies forever.

This belief in a future hell is one of the ways in which we are reminded of the surpassing greatness of the glory of Christ Jesus that will be revealed in us – a greatness that is greater than all of sin and death. A belief in hell helps us to realize that we need God. We need salvation. We need to live in a healthy fear and love of the holiness of God. A belief in heaven gives us hope that there is more to this life than what we currently see, and that in the end God will restore all things and be all in all.

Jesus says, “The Kingdom of heaven is near you”… it’s so close… it’s inside of you. That’s how close it is. The Kingdom of heaven starts right now.