Robert Kolb (PhD, University of Wisconsin) is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.
Forever is a long time. Forever moves beyond time. And we are going to be repeating the song a long time and beyond, the song that praises the God of deliverance, the Lamb of sacrifice, who came back from the dead.
What a way to go—through eternity—singing a love song to our God. For he has visited and delivered his people, time after time again, each individual and the whole Christian church on earth.
The song begins in some rather strange places. The image of people facing death in ovens is not a strange idea for those who live in the wake of the Third Reich. So it was Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego (Daniel 3). Nebuchadnezzar was relying on his god. Like us too often, he crafted his source of power on which he might rely according to his own imagination. Nebuchadnezzar could try to honor his god and preserve the god’s honor with fire as hot as that experienced by the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But neither Nebuchadnezzar nor his god should have tried to get into competition with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These patriarchs had not needed to fashion a god of their own liking and making since the Creator of all had sought them out and chosen them. God has presented himself with his voice, and his voice proved to be reliable. In contrast, the priests of Baal Elijah’s time had crafted their own gods. Like them, Nebuchadnezzar and his servants risked their own security and the reputation of their gods when they challenged Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego to their own bitter disappointment. To the adherents of Baal, the God who delivers his people from evil demonstrated his power, and he delivered Elijah once more (1 Kings 18: 16-40).
Slipping into church does not burn from the outside, but many stumble through the doors to our worship services with seared consciences and scarred souls. The search for peace goes on with deafening dissonance and disabling chords all around us, or in an eerie, empty silence that makes us feel alone and abandoned. Life has lost its meaning; it does not make sense. Its hurts are buried deep inside and choke off even desperate cries for help, our futile attempts at singing that earns the label “croaking” or simply “sobbing.” There is no joy when life strikes out again and again, and we cannot help but question our own worth, when we find it difficult to recognize our own dignity and find no affirmation of our respectability, or even our humanity, from others. As life seems to shrivel and the contempt and cruelty of others drives us into curling up into a ball to protect ourselves, a tune may catch our ear. Cutting through the lack of sense and the overwhelming oppression of sadness and vulnerability, a faint melody may catch our attention, and we find ourselves slipping out of the church into and then in the company of saints marching, perhaps hesitant and wondering whether this can last, but nonetheless in the company of people singing.
In the days before faith turns to sight, what do we have to sing about, whether in the furnaces of our foes or the despair that arises from within us? We sing about the worthiness of the God of deliverance, the Lamb of God who has delivered his people. He came to deliver us who are caught in the fires of despair. He does so with what the psalmists and prophets could describe as a strong arm and a mighty hand, an arm that turned out to be stretched out on a cross, hands with holes in them.
What do we mean when we call God “worthy”? Of what is he worthy, and how did he win or find that worthiness? Gerald Coleman confessed that the Lamb’s death makes us his own. The one who gained possession of us, not with a commercial purchase of gold or silver, but with the blood of the soldier in combat with Satan and all the forces of evil, is worthy of our praise. He is, as Creator, deserving of the creature’s thanks, praise, and adoration. Encountering him in the fiery furnaces of life, stumbling on him when joy has vanished, peace has wilted, and hurt attacks every bone of our soul, we cannot help but react with praise to his embrace, with joy to the warmth of love poured out on the cross. For he is the God of deliverance, He looked like anything but the one who was able to rescue others from their encounters with evil as they fixed his body firmly to the cross. But neither nails on a cross nor a stone at the mouth of his tomb could hold him from coming to our rescue and delivering us from every evil.
Deliverance comes from an Old French word derived from the Latin for liberating, setting free. That is why we speak of the delivery of a baby, setting him or her free from the mother’s womb. God gives us new birth as he delivers us through Christ’s tomb. That creates in us the uncontrollable urge to burst into fervent praise. Fervent comes from another Old French word that designated the energy of the flame, a fiery outburst that we cannot hold inside anymore. There is no other reasonable reaction to our delivering Lord, who has rescued us and given us new birth as children of God and heirs of the life that lasts forever.
God has deserved our thanks and praise from the day of creation, but the song that floated through paradise has intensified as we have gone through the fires of life and traversed the valleys of hostility and despair from which all peace and joy had vanished. It is the experience of his deliverance that causes us to say that God deserves our thanks and praise. It is the experience of our liberation by the Lamb that keeps us singing his praise, now and forevermore.