Tag Archives: sacrifice

Why Did He Come?

Christian life, ,

Ebenezer Family Church

Sunday 15th December, 2013

            WHY DID HE COME?

INTRODUCTION

Everyone knows that Nelson Mandela passed away last Thursday night. I heard the news early on Friday morning from a friend in California who heard it on the news from President Obama! Since then there have been snippets of his life and achievements on every TV channel and every newspaper around the country.

People everywhere are urged to celebrate his life and honour him for what he did for the country but I have read not one word about his birth! Funny, isn’t it? Every time I log in to FNB, the first page I have to get past has a picture of Nelson Mandela’s face with these words written across  his forehead – SACRIFICE, FORGIVENESS, FREEDOM.

Don’t these words sound familiar? They belong to someone else who is worthy to wear them.

When the apostles went out to take the good news of God’s kingdom to the world, they had to contend with claims made by the Roman rulers of their day. Because they refused to honour Caesar as Lord, and preached that Jesus, not Caesar, is the Son of God and the Prince of Peace, they lost their lives, as did thousands of people who believed their message and followed Jesus.

Without detracting anything from the greatness of the man who is being buried today, I want us to focus on the One whose sacrifice brings true forgiveness and freedom. Madiba may have modelled and propagated forgiveness and freedom because he was prepared to make sacrifices to bring about political transformation in South Africa but he could never do anything to effect change in the hearts of the people.

At this time of the year the people of the world, even those who do not acknowledge Jesus, celebrate the birth of a baby in Bethlehem by the worst of human behaviour — overindulgence, debt, carnage on the roads, suicide etc., without ever realising why He came. Now South Africa is celebrating the life of a man who made sacrifices, forgave and was part of the initiation of political freedom in this country. But none of this would be possible without the sacrifice that Jesus made that brought the forgiveness of sin and freedom from our worst enemy, ourselves to become sons and daughters of God.

1. SACRIFICE

Nelson Mandela made many sacrifices to achieve his dream of political freedom for his country. He spent 27 years behind bars because he believed in what he was doing. No one can play down what he did or what he suffered to make the day possible when he stood before the nation to take the oath of office as president of a new South Africa. Everything he suffered was geared towards one goal, the right of his people to vote. On 28th April, 1994, in spite of the fear of civil war and a bloodbath in South Africa, the people voted and a new era began in this country.

But Nelson Mandela’s sacrifice could never pay for the sin of the world. Even if he had shed his blood, it would not have brought us back to God. He was a human being like us. He was responsible for his own debt of sin he could never pay. What did his sacrifice achieve?

Now, after almost 20 years of so-called democarcy, what do we have? We have a nation that is free to vote in the same corrupt government run by the same corrupt politicians and civil servants as we voted in in 1994. Nelson Mandela’s sacrifice won political freedom but it did not change a single heart. It could not because Nelson Mandela was only a man.

The world also celebrates at this time of the year — with trees and ornaments and tinsel, and turkeys and ham, and snow and reindeers and sleighs and presents, and Santa Claus and toys! What are they celebrating? A baby born in a stable and asleep in a feed trough! Shepherds and wise men and a star!  And we hear Christmas carols blaring out in the supermarket while people shop to indulge their children and their appetites with money they need to pay their bills and buy school uniforms and books for next year, all in the name of Jesus!

Is that why Jesus was born?

In a few months time the world will celebrate Easter. How will they celebrate Easter? With Easter bunnies and Easter eggs, with crosses and mournful songs, with communion or mass. Some will even carry crosses and beat themselves. But what will that accomplish? Most will carry on as usual the next day, no different from the day before.

Is that why Jesus came?

We can celebrate great people’s lives and even learn lessons from them; we can celebrate great religious events and even go to church but unless the meaning of Jesus’ sacrifice enters our souls and changes our lives, it will mean no more in the end than the sacrifice Madiba made to give his people political freedom.

2. FORGIVENESS

The world also admires and celebrates the forgiveness Madiba exended to those who arrested, tried, and had him incarcerated for 27 years, sometimes in solitary confinement and sometimes doing hard labour for his crimes. I often wonder whether there was a Gideon Bible beside his bed. Did he pick it up and read it when he sat alone in his prison cell,? Did he capture the heart of Jesus when He said, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing?”

The debt South Africa owed Madiba is a drop in the ocean compared with the debt the world owed God because of its offences against Him. No one person could pay that collective debt. We all have to pay our own. But God’s solution was to send His own Son to live as a human being, debt free in His relationship to God and then to pay our debt so that we can go free.

This is the miracle of God’s forgiveness. There is no longer any debt to pay. Jesus paid for all  the sin of all people for all time. The means that there is nothing we owe God, not even the debt we owe Him for the sins we will commit in the future. That clears the obstacle between us and God forever. That means that Madiba owes God nothing, whether he knew it or not.

Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice. He didn’t spend 27 years in prison to pay for our sin. He shed His blood and gave up His life as an atoning sacrifice to satisfy God’s wrath and the settle the debt we owed Him so that we can go free.

But He was not only a sacrifice of atonement to guarantee our forgiveness. He was also a terumah offering, the firstfruits offering which belongs to God, guaranteeing our resurrection. Let me explain.

God requries the first portion of everything we gain through our work. In the old Testament that meant that the first portion of their crops and the firstborn of their flocks and herds belonged to God. It became an offering when it was given to Him and was His guarantee that the rest of their crops and animals would be blessed. For it to become ‘terumah” or an offering, it had to to lifted up, i.e., offered to God and then given to the high priest for him and his family to live on.

When Jesus was crucified, He was “lifted up” on the cross, and He placed His spirit into the hands of His Father. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, explained the significance and implications of what He did. “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep…for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn; Christ the firstfruits; then, when He comes, those who belong to Him.” 1 Corinthians 15:20,22-23 (NIV).

Jesus’ sacrifice not only made provision for the debt we owe the Father; His resurrection also guarantees that we will be resurrected when He comes again, to live with Him in perfected human bodies.

But what about the debt we owe one another? Are we still liable for the offenses we commit against each other? Can we still demand payment from those who are indebted to us?

Unless we realise that all sin is against God, we will think that those who have offended us owe us. When we refuse to forgive, we don’t understand that the debt someone else owes us had already been paid. We allow our feelings to dictate to us because what we believe is false.

The first miracle is that God has forgiven us.

The second miracle is even bigger, not that we HAVE TO forgive, but that we MAY forgive. We have the privilege and honour of forgiving any debt against us because Jesus has cleared it away and the other person owes us nothing. The opposite is equally true. Whatever debt we owe others has also been paid. We owe no one anything and, if he or she refuses to forgive, they pay the penalty, not we.

3. FREEDOM

This leads to the third word  written on Madiba’s forehead – freedom. What is freedom? Is it freedom from all laws and restrictions? Are people free when they can do as they like? No! This is what the Hebrew people called hell. Hell is a situation where there are no boudaries. Your home can be hell if the members of your family live as though there were no boundaries. Society can be hell if everyone does as he pleases without considering anyone else.

I drove to East London in the pouring rain on Wednesday. It was a nightmare trip. In spite of the poor visibility, many of the drivers, especially those with red number plates, drove at breakneck speed. As if that were not bad enough, instead of staying in the fast lane after they had passed another car to stop the spray from making visibilty worse, they pulled in front of the car they had just passed, shooting up a cloud of water on his windscreen. Thoughtless and careless — the attitude of many people who think they are free..

The forgiveness Jesus bought for us provided freedom from guilt and the pernalty of our sin but that is only half of the story. How can we enjoy the freedom God gives us through His forgiveness when we still hold other people accountable for the debt they owe us? When we try to make others pay for what had already been paid, we are out of sync with God; we are sinning and God’s forgiveness no longer applies.

My friends, the greatest freedom we can ever experience is not the freedom to vote, or the freedom to do as we like. It is the freedom to forgive because that is the only thing that sets us free to enjoy the blessing of fellowship with God. Jesus paid all debt but He said that we can only enjoy the benefit of God’s forgiveness when we forgive others.

Madiba experienced that because he forgave, even if he may not have understood why he was free to forgive. He sat in prison a free man long before he came out of prison a free man, He would have been free had he been in jail for the rest of his life. It was not what he did for South Africa or what FW de Klerk did for him that set him free. It was Jesus, who died on the cross to pay his debt that set him free.

Madam Jeanne Marie de la Motte-Guyon was imprisoned for her faith in France in the seventeenth century. She wrote these words in her prison cell:

“A little bird I am,

Shut from the fields of air;

And in my cage I sit and sing,

To Him who placed me there;

Well pleased a prisoner to be,

Because, my God, it pleases Thee.

 

Naught have I else to do;

I sing the whole day long;

And He whom most I love to please

Doth listen to my song;

He caught and bound my wandering wing,

But still He bends to hear me sing.

 

Thou hast an ear to hear,

A heart to love and bless;

And though my notes were ere so rude,

Thou would’st not hear the less;

Because Thou knowest, as they fall,

That love, sweet love, inspires them all.

 

My cage confines me round;

Abroad I cannot fly;

But though my wing is closely bound,

My heart’s at liberty.

My prison walls cannot control

The flight, the freedom of the soul.

 

O, it is good to soar

These bolts and bars above,

To Him whose purpose I adore,

Whose providence I love;

And in Thy mighty will to find

The joy, the freedom of the mind.

CONCLUSION

Today a great man is being laid to rest at Qunu but we need to understand that without Jesus, Madiba could never have achieved greatness. However, his greatness has all the limitations of his frail humanity.

Whatever he may have sacrificed could achieve only one thing, the right of his people to cast their vote and choose their government. After that they were and are at the mercy of those who rule.

He could only forgive those who were indebted to him because Jesus paid the debt of all people including the debt Madiba owed others.

The freedom Madiba enjoyed was only his own. He could do nothing to set another single person free. The freedom he experienced was the freedom he gained from the privilege of forgiving his debtors.

Today is decision day. There are people in your life that you think still owe you. There are people you are still trying to punish when their punishment has already been taken by Jesus.

Start with your father. Will you recognise today that Jesus has paid the debt your father owes you for not being a perfect father. Will you look him in the face and tell him, “Dad, you owe me nothing?” When you do that, you will be free to embrace your heavenly Father as a perfect father.

What about your mother, your siblings, your teachers, your friends, your colleagues at work, whoever has wronged you? Will you look them in the eyes and say, “You owe me nothing?” When you do that. you will step into freedom you never would have believed possible.

Jesus’ sacrifice paid your debt so that God could forgive you and so that you can forgive others. When you do that you will step through the door into real freedom, freedom from bitterness, resentment, and anger, from being a slave to yourself; freedom to be kind and generous and to love.

Really, Paul!

Bible Study, , ,

REALLY, PAUL!

“‘We’re worried about what will happen when they discover you’re in town. There’s bound to be trouble. So here is what we want you to do. There are four men from our company who have taken a vow involving ritual purification, but have no money to pay the expenses. Join these men in their vows and pay their expenses. Then it will become obvious to everyone that there is nothing to the rumours going around about you and that you are in fact scrupulous in your reverence for the laws of Moses. 

“‘In asking you to do this, we’re not going back on our agreement regarding Gentiles who have become believers. We continue to hold fast to what we wrote in that letter, namely, to be careful not to get involved in activities connected with idols; to avoid serving food offensive to Jewish Christians; to guard the morality of sex and marriage.’

“So Paul did it — took the men, joined them in their vows, and paid their way. The next day he went to the temple to make it official and stay there until the proper sacrifices had been offered and completed for each of them.” Acts 21:25-26 (The Message).

Really, Paul! A few days before, you spoke such noble words. You were not concerned about your safety — you only wanted to be obedient to the Lord. And now this! Vows! Sacrifice! Was this what God wanted you to do or was this just human wisdom and bad advice? Look at the outcome. Did it work for you?

Paul was just as human as we are and, in a moment of fear, tried to duck out of what he knew was coming. By associating himself with men who were still following old ways, was he compromising on the very thing he was so earnest about defending? Since Jesus was an all-sufficient Saviour, what place did vows and sacrifice have in his life any longer, especially as he was simply going along with others and not acting out of his own conviction?

It is easy to have noble intentions when we are not in the thick of difficult or dangerous circumstances. We know what we would say or do but, when it comes to the moment, it takes great courage to carry out our resolve and not to cower and back down. Have you noticed how easy it is to rehearse in your mind what you would say or do, for example, when you have to confront someone with a confession of guilt, or with the truth? When the time comes, and you are in a face-to-face situation, your courage fails and all the things you wanted to say evaporate from your mind like the morning mist!

Perhaps Paul was eager to concur because his fellow believers were far more aware of the danger of his situation than he was. For a moment he had forgotten that his life was in the hands of God, and that he still had a purpose to serve, even in the circumstances that lay ahead for him. The Holy Spirit had forewarned him to prepare him so that he would not be caught off guard. A little deception to put his old adversaries off the scent was not going to change God’s plan for him.

Whether his plan worked or not, Paul was a marked man, not marked by men but by God because He wanted him to testify to His grace in Rome also. Paul may not have liked the process that got him there, but God needed him in the very precincts of the palace itself so that the message of Jesus would not only be spoken but lived out in the presence of the highest authorities in the land.

What might have looked like a tragedy in his eyes was a triumph and an honour for a man like Paul. Once he got his perspective right, he would rise to the occasion, correct his wobble, and become exactly what his Master intended for him to be — a beacon of hope for Rome also, and a source of knowledge, strength and comfort for the recipients of the letters he was able to write at his leisure, right down to the present.

“Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone, that I am in chains for Christ, Because of my chains, most of the brothers in the Lord have been encouraged to speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.” Philippians 1:12-14 (NIV).