Tag Archives: death

The Agony Of The Hour

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THE AGONY OF THE HOUR

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ He took Peter, James and John along with Him, and He began to be deeply distressed and troubled. ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ He said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch.’ Going a little farther, He fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from Him. ‘Abba, Father,’ He said, ‘everything is possible to you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’ (Mark 14: 32- 36).

It is painful to eavesdrop on a moment like this. How can we ever know what Jesus felt like as He agonised to the Father over the coming ordeal? Up to this point, His announcements to His disciples concerning His death were matter-of-fact and philosophical, but here, in the garden, the reality and inevitability of it all came rushing towards Him like a freight train. He had spent His last precious hours with His disciples. In a few minutes He would be ripped from them and dragged through the streets of Jerusalem to face the hostility and hatred that had festered for so long but was now coming to a head.  

He was human. He needed the reassurance and love of the men into whom He had poured His life for the past three years. He needed their nearness, even if they could do nothing for Him. He needed to know that they were there for Him when He looked around for them in the hostile territory of the enemy. He needed to know that they were still for Him even if the whole world was against Him.

As they walked together through the garden, the full moon lighting their way and casting eerie shadows across their path, Jesus became restless and agitated. They had never seen Him like this before. His usually calm and placid demeanour gave way to anguish and distress. Stopping a moment among the trees, He motioned for His men to stay there while He and His three closest companions went on ahead. Puzzled, they sat down to await His return.

Leaving the three behind on guard while He went a stones-throw from them and dropped to the ground in an agony of groaning, He entreated the Father to save Him from the coming horror. He could feel the hot breath of His betrayer on His cheek as he kissed Him, signalling to the mob that came to arrest Him who the “criminal” was. When they had Him in their clutches, there would be no escape. He would have to decide, then and there, whether He was willing to go through with it or not. There was still time for Him to slip away, as He had done in the past because His hour had not yet come. This was His hour. What would He do?

In characteristic fashion, Jesus turned to the Father. He had never acted outside His will, not for a second throughout His sojourn on earth, and He was not about to do so now. It must, as always, be the Father’s decision. He ached for release, but He would bow to the Father’s will, no matter what. Perspiration dripped from His brow, staining the soil around Him red with the bloody sweat.

Addressing His beloved Father in the most tender and intimate terms of endearment, ‘Abba,’ He pleaded for release. “Let this cup pass from me.”  What cup? There is a “cup” which everyone must drink. It is either a cup of suffering – a cup of God’s wrath, or a cup of salvation. For Jesus, it was the cup of God’s wrath, not just a cup, but the cup, the one that must be drained to the dregs for the sin of the whole world so that those who believe in Him would have no other cup to drink but the cup of salvation.

What was the cause of Jesus’ agony? Was it the thought of the physical pain that lay ahead of Him? Perhaps, but I believe that He faced something far worse than that. For the holy and perfect Son of God to be made sin for us must have filled His soul with revulsion. For Him to falter through the ordeal for even a second, to take His eyes off the Father and react like a mere man, would have doomed Him to eternal death like the rest of mankind.

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him. (Heb. 5:7-9)

This was the moment! It was now that He had to decide, and with the decision, seal His own eternal destiny and the destiny of all mankind which hung on His choice. Listen to His heart. Yet not what I will, but what you will. The Father said nothing, and Jesus knew what His answer was. It had been planned from the beginning of creation.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

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Patriarchal Faith

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PATRIARCHAL FAITH

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death. By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshipped as he leaned on the top of his staff. By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instruction concerning the burial of his bones (Heb. 11: 17-22).

As little as the patriarchs knew of God, they were men of faith. Oops! What did I say? They probably knew God far more intimately than many of us do. Who was this God whom they worshipped? He introduced Himself to Abraham as el, the one who, to the Hebrew person, was not some unique being who was holy, eternal and unknowable except through revelation, although these facts are true.  God was, to them, the one who had power and authority. When He spoke, they obeyed and when He promised, He acted.

Later on, He added another dimension to Abraham’s understanding of Him – El Shaddai – the Mighty One who nourishes. He is the one who has strength and authority and who provides for those who trust Him. These were the simple, everyday experiences of the early fathers because they trusted God and did what He told them to do, even to the near-killing of Abraham’s only son-of-his-old-age who brought him joy and laughter.

God said, ‘Go, sacrifice Isaac,’ so Abraham went without hesitating or questioning. How about that for trust! He no Bible to check up on God. He had no history of a people who knew and followed El. He was a pioneer who had left home and kindred to go where this God had told him to go and he went. In his going, he discovered that his God was able to exactly as He had promised. Wasn’t Isaac proof of that? Whoever heard of a ninety-year-old woman having a child, and that after she had gone through menopause?

So confident he was in God that he was willing to put Isaac’s life on the line, as much as he loved him, for the sake of obeying God, and leave the outcome to Him. The writer commented that Abraham even credited God with the power to raise Isaac back to life after he had plunged in the knife and taken his life. Why did he believe that? He knew Him. His past was spread out in front of him like a panorama of everything he had experienced, and God was in it from the moment he first heard His voice.

Abraham lived up to God’s expectation.

Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about what He has promised Him (Gen. 18: 18-19).

Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, Abraham’s descendants, all eventually followed the way of Yahweh because Abraham obeyed God and taught his offspring to do the same. Although the Bible does not mention his influence on his grandchildren, he was still alive long after they were born. He lived to the ripe old age of one hundred and seventy five years.

Abraham’s son, Isaac and grandson, Jacob received the same promise that God gave to Abraham (Gen 26: 3-5; Gen 28: 13-15). Joseph, although he died in Egypt, was so sure of the fulfilment of God’s promise that he left instructions for his bones to be take back to Canaan when the people eventually left Egypt to take possession of the land of Canaan (Gen 50: 24-25; Ex 13: 19).

These were momentous days. Think of what this meant to these families. Abraham was uprooted from a stable life in Ur to spend the rest of his life as a nomad, with no land of his own, living in tents and moving from place to place, always at the mercy and goodwill of the local inhabitants.

Isaac and Jacob never knew what it was like to live in a house and have land of their own. Jacob twice had to relocate hundreds of miles from where he was born, ending up in a land where the ruler eventually turned hostile and enslaved his descendants.

Joseph was sold into slavery by jealous brothers, ripped from his beloved father’s side and carried off to a heathen land where he served for thirteen years before God promoted him to a position of power and authority. Even there, in spite of the honour he had received, he was still alone, without family and heritage until his brothers came and he was reunited with them.

What a story! And yet, God was in it and behind it all, working out His will to bless and provide for His people. How did they know that? He had promised and they trusted Him and did what He instructed. What about us? Would we have done what they did at the command of someone they could not see? That’s real faith!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or kindle version or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublshing.com.

A Perfect Son

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A PERFECT SON

During the days of Jesus’s life of earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him, and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek. (Heb. 5: 7-10)

What a holy moment! The writer allows us a glimpse into the anguish of the son of God. Isaiah called Him ‘a man of sorrows and familiar with grief’ and yet He was also described as a man of joy, anointed with the oil of joy above His companions. Jesus experienced the intensity of sorrow more than any other person because, firstly, He felt the pain of His people who were cut off from the Father and, secondly, He felt the power of temptation that threatened to cut His off from the Father.

What is this writer implying? That Jesus was threatened with death but He escaped it because God heard His prayers? But that did not happen. We know that He was crucified, so that cannot be what the writer meant. In what way was Jesus saved from death? The threat of death hung over Him from the moment of His birth. He was ‘the last Adam’, born of a human mother, but born with the nature of Adam before the fall. Unlike us who are born with nature of fallen man, He was able to sin but also able not to sin.

His entire human life was a test of His submission and obedience to the Father. Where Adam failed, He dared not fail. To qualify as a perfect high priest and sacrifice, He had to be the perfect Son. If He were to be an acceptable sacrifice, He has to be without sin so that, like the Levitical high priest on the Day of Atonement, He had to emerge from the Holy of Holies alive as a sign that His sacrifice was accepted.

Jesus knew the intensity of sin’s power to lure Him away from perfect trust in the Father and perfect obedience to the Father’s will. His entire life was a test of obedience, the battle in Gethsemane being the zenith of that struggle against sin. In spite of the spectre of the horrible experience that lay before Him, and the bloody sweat that poured from His pores like the precious oil pressed from the olives, He submitted to the Father’s will.

Jesus was God’s Son. He was God. He was the exact replica of God in human form. He has all the power, all the knowledge, and all the attributes of God but He chose to live as a man, never once employing His divine power as God during His earthly life. His power came from the Holy Spirit, God’s equipment who came upon Him at His baptism. He lived in perfect union with the Father, entrusting Himself to Him for every need and every situation.

This was the only way in which He could qualify to be the Saviour of humankind. He knew what it was to be weak and to have to trust His Father instead of acting as God. He had many great battles with the enemy. We know nothing of His childhood when, as a young, vulnerable and impressionable boy He had to call the devil’s bluff and trust His Abba. We have just one example of this warfare when He was tempted to act as God and to act independently of His Father in the wilderness. He passed with flying colours.

How did He overcome? Through His constant fellowship with the Father in prayer. He stayed in touch with the Father so that He would know and do His will. He listened to the voice of the Spirit. He drew strength from the Holy Spirit. He learned obedience from what He suffered. He learned the meaning of obedience by being obedient through every test. He felt the strength of Satan’s pressure on Him but He resisted and overcame every time. He could challenge His accusers with the words, ‘Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?’  What a challenge! What a testimony!

Yes, Jesus was amply qualified to be both our king and our high priest. His perfect submission and obedience to the Father set Him apart as the perfect Son and gave Him the right to be the source of eternal salvation for everyone who believes. He is now and forever the eternal high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

But We See Jesus

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BUT WE SEE JESUS

But we do see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God He might taste of death for everyone. In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what He suffered. (Heb. 2: 9, 10).

God’s purpose for mankind is a lofty one – to rule over His creation as His vice regent. But we have a creation in rebellion, triggered by man’s rebellion in the beginning.

The writer to the Hebrews caught the vision of David’s song of praise to God, recorded in Psalm 8. As great and immeasurable as the universe is, God created mankind to have greater glory than the majestic grandeur of the universe. He made man in His own image and gave Him a role that not even angels have been given – to manage the earth for Him as kings and priests.

But it has not yet come to pass as God intended. Man has squandered God’s resources and mismanaged His creation. He has interfered with the interconnectedness of the created order and brought destruction instead of maintaining order and harmony. God’s intention still stands but it would take a cataclysmic event to set everything right and get it back on track again.

This is where Jesus comes in. God’s sons and daughters failed to fulfil His mandate, choosing their own rules and messing everything up. God needed one obedient Son to put it all right, so He sent His own Son, made an exact replica of the original man, to do what the first man was supposed to do. Obedience to the Father was the key.

Just as Adam was the representative of the human race, but failed and brought disaster on us all, so Jesus was the representative of the human race to undo what Adam did. He lived the life of a perfect son, and then took the rap for all our failure. God accepted His death as a substitute for us and reckoned us to be perfect sons and daughters just as Jesus was a perfect son.

Angels can never be what God created man to be, and angels can never do what Jesus did to put right what went wrong. Jesus, as representative man, the last Adam -and there will never be another beginning to the human race because Jesus achieved what He set out to do – leads the charge to fulfil God’s plan for the whole of creation.

God never gave up on His plan to have a family of perfect sons and daughters, free of sin and living in union with Him, with all mankind and with all of creation. Through suffering as a human being, subject to the weaknesses of humanity, and suffering for the sin of the world as our perfect substitute, Jesus pulled off God’s rescue plan. Sin and its penalty gone, He is free to bring ‘many sons to glory’. What does that mean?

Does it mean that He will take us to heaven when we die? That and much more! Glory implies the radiance of who God is – His character and attributes. As heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, we have an inheritance that is our right as His sons and daughters. What is our inheritance? The Bible only hints at the nature of our inheritance in Christ, using all-inclusive words like the following:

1. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:32) – God has given the kingdom to His true sons, but not to those who lives, not their words, deny their allegiance to Jesus.

2. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Matt. 5: 5). Those whose strength is harnessed for service will have a part in managing the earth for God.

3.  He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? (Rom. 8: 32).

4. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1: 4).

These are all-inclusive promises summed up in Paul’s words:

‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived ‘- the things God has prepared for those who love Him. (1 Cor. 2: 9).

The summit of our inheritance as God’s children is that we will once again be bearers of God’s image and His divine nature as he intended. Jesus will lead us into our inheritance as God’s perfect children just as He is.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

 

 

Flesh Or Spirit?

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FLESH OR SPIRIT?

“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.” Romans 8:5-8.

But, for Paul, it’s not all good news!

The bad news is that all have sinned. The good news is that Christ died for all. The bad news is that not all people are saved. The good news is that all who believe in Jesus Christ are no longer under condemnation. The bad news is that those who are still following the desires of their fleshly nature are under the sentence of death. The good news is that those whose minds are focussed on the Holy Spirit are alive and at peace with God.

Where once the distinction was between Jew and Gentile because the Jews thought they were better than the Gentiles. They had the law of God and they didn’t worship idols like the Gentiles did, so they thought, so they were favoured by God and the Gentiles were not.

But now the distinction has shifted from race group to faith group. There are still two kingdoms at work, not Jew and Gentile but the kingdom of God and the dominion of Satan. How do we know to which kingdom we belong? It depends on who controls our minds. With who or what are our thoughts preoccupied? Since what we do and who we are begins in the mind, what we think in the end determines our destiny.

The person who is focussed on self; self-indulgence, self-fulfilment, self-gratification, is clearly still living in the realm of the flesh. Selfishness dominates; the world is very small, consisting only of self and those who can contribute to the pleasure and satisfaction of selfish desires.

The person who has escaped from the clutches of the flesh through believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and receiving the salvation He bought for us through His death, has a new focus – the Spirit of God who lives in his heart and enables him to set a new direction in his life. Instead of pleasing himself and satisfying every fleshly whim, he now wants to please God and enjoy God’s peace and do his will.

Life and peace – isn’t that what everyone wants to enjoy? But the pursuit of life and peace takes people down different paths depending on what they believe. The woman Jesus met at the well outside the village of Scar in Samaria believed the life was about being loved by a man. The path she took to fulfil her desire, however, took her into more and more guilt and shame and left her lonely, dissatisfied and despised by her fellow villagers.

Jesus gently revealed to her that the love she thought that a man would give her, would never satisfy her inner need, because only God’s love and a life lived for Him would bring her the love and peace she craved. Jesus called it “living water”. Drinking deeply of God’s love revealed through the gift of His Son would satisfy her thirsty soul forever. But she had to make a choice. She could not carry on with her old life. It was killing her. She had to turn her back on what she believed and embrace a new faith – a faith in the Messiah she had just met, who came to lead her out of her slavery to sin and into the realm of a new Master

We all have to make the same choice if we are to experience the life Jesus made possible for us, and the inward peace that will hold us steady as we navigate all the stresses and demands of this mortal life. It is impossible to have one foot in each kingdom. It’s either God’s kingdom or the devil’s domain. It can never be both…and…

When you choose God’s way and trust the Lord Jesus, you are on the way to everlasting life!

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.