Tag Archives: living

The Power Of The Cross – We Have Life Through His Blood

Gospel, , , , ,

THE POWER OF THE CROSS

WE HAVE LIFE THROUGH HIS BLOOD

Never cross swords with Jesus! The Pharisees tried it and always came off second best. The amazing thing was, though, that every time Jesus engaged them in debate, He said something profound and unforgettable. Like the time they tackled Him about His declaration that He was the bread of life. Once again they demanded a sign. Refusing to recognise that He was their Messiah, they kept harping on the same thing: “Give us a sign. Give us a sign.”

Jesus insisted that He had given them sign after sign but it made no difference. They were not convinced and they demanded yet another sign. Moses gave them bread of heaven. That was a sign that he was a prophet from God. What would Jesus give them? He startled them by declaring that Moses’ manna was not the real bread from heaven. He was!

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. (John 6: 51)

That shook them. He must be joking! What did He mean? Was He advocating cannibalism? Of course not! Then He said something even more explicit.

Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.’ (John 6: 53-54)

Jesus was a Hebrew. He thought and spoke like a Hebrew. He was not talking about literally eating His flesh but about what eating does. We eat food to nourish our bodies. Eating food keeps us alive. When we stop eating, we die.

Jesus spoke of His flesh and blood as nourishment, obviously not for our bodies but for our spirits. He was referring to His broken body and poured out blood given willingly as a sacrifice for sin for the whole world. To eat His flesh and drink His blood implied believing the truth of the meaning of His sacrifice. Faith in what He did for them would bring them back to life because they were dead in their sins.

Jesus was referring back to a statement in the Old Testament that explained why blood was so significant. Long before the discoveries of science and medicine, God made clear in His Word what we know to be true today. The life is in the blood.

“So says Leviticus 17:11. Everyone knows that we must have enough blood flowing around our body or else our bodily functions deteriorate and we die. Yet for a long time the exact function of blood was little understood. In what ways has modern science shown Leviticus 17:11 to be true?

Blood is fundamental to the function of every cell of every component in our bodies. Cells need food to survive, grow, repair themselves and to fulfill their specific functions, and, to reproduce. Cellular food is transported in blood to provide energy for all the cells’ needs. As humans are multicellular organisms, having separate specialized organs with highly sophisticated functions, transport and communication between these structures is essential.”

http://creation.com/life-is-in-the-blood (- retrieved October 2015)

We all know that, when the body is depleted of blood, the organs cease to function and the body dies. Without blood, there is no life.

Jesus used this analogy to explain that His blood, not flowing in His body but poured out through His broken flesh, provides life for the inner being when it is taken in by faith. Sin killed the spirit of the first pair and, since that moment, death came upon every one of their descendants because we have all sinned.

But Jesus declared the good news that His life, poured out on the cross by the shedding of His blood, has given us life, not just physical but eternal life.

For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness, reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. (Rom. 5: 17)

And this life is given to us as a free gift! Just as we take in food to sustain our physical lives, so we take in by faith the blood of Jesus which gives us and sustains our eternal life. Jesus said to Martha:

‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ (John 11: 25)

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 first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3,                                                                              eBook 978-4828-0511-6

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My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

For more details, check my website:

http://luellaannettecampbell.com/

Have you read my blogs on www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com ?

 

 

Civil War

Bible Study, , , ,

CIVIL WAR

“As it is, it is no longer I myself but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Romans 7:17-20.

Spoken like a true Hebrew!

Every year, during Elul, the last month of the Hebrew calendar, prior to the Feast of Trumpets (Yom Teruah or Rosh Hashanah) which preceded the most holy day of the year, (Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement), a trumpet was blown daily as a reminder to every Jew to prepare for Yom Kippur. This was the day when God judged and forgave all sin for another year.

Preparation consisted of three things, teshuvah, tephillah and tsidaqah – repentance, prayer and works of righteousness. However, repentance was not about turning away from sin but returning to the person God created them to be. Prayer was not about petitioning God but about turning towards Him and learning to think like Him. Works of righteousness were not about doing things for less fortunate people even though they were undeserving, but about being merciful and generous to others because God had shown mercy to them.

Paul recognised that sin was an invader, illegally occupying the person God had created him to be. This was not as God intended. He had been taken over from conception by a squatter who had no right to be there but whom he had no power to evict. He differentiated between his true self and the sin that ruled his life. He was not making excuses for his behaviour or trying to evade responsibility for his choices, but rather recognising that God was not responsible for what he was because sin was not in His blueprint for man.

God is good (functional) and everything He made, including man, was good (functional), working together in perfect harmony with His nature and with one another. The entire universe was created to be a unit. It would remain that way as long as human beings, who were to rule the earth, chose to live in harmony with God’s will.

When man chose to disobey God and set up his own rules, he and the whole universe became dysfunctional. He has repudiated God’s right to tell him how to live by giving his allegiance to a usurper, and paid the price God had warned him about – death. He was still man, made in God’s image with the potential to be one with God, but now his bent was towards rebellion. There was a foreigner in charge and he was obligated to obey Satan because he had seized control.

Paul recognised that his sinful nature was dysfunctional, incapable of obeying God and doing the right thing. There was civil war in his inner being. He longed to be obedient to his Creator, but he had no power to change his nature which was under the influence of the enemy and driven by enmity towards God.

He was trapped in this inward conflict with no hope of ever getting out of it by his own efforts. The problem was that, legally he in the dock, judged guilty, living in shame and fear and awaiting sentence on the Day of Judgment. By his own sinful life, he proved that he was in cahoots with the usurper and rightfully declared guilty.

What a terrible plight he was in. He knew he was condemned yet, at the same time, he yearned to be free to worship God and follow His ways. He was inside his prison cell peering wistfully through the bars at the beautiful world outside, with no way to get out and enjoy the freedom that should have been his.

What was he to do? He needed someone to step in and rescue him.

Acknowledgement

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

 

Convinced?

Bible Study, , , ,

CONVINCED? 

“While he was still on the way his servants met him with the news that the boy was living.

“When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’

“Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he and his whole household believed. This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.” John 4:51-54 (NIV).

The second sign? What was the first sign?

John obviously did not record the first sign. Was the first sign part of the “many other things” that Jesus did which were impossible to record because there were too many (John 21:25)? John was selective about the stories he recorded because he wrote with a specific purpose in mind. Each miracle he wrote about, which he called “signs”, ended with a response of faith in those who were involved in it or those who witnessed it.

Why did he call them “signs”? A sign points to something. The purpose of John’s gospel was to point to Jesus as the Son of God so that His people would believe in Him.  “Jesus performed many other signs, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in His name.” John 20:30, 31 (NIV).

John left his readers in no doubt as to the purpose of his book. It was not just an interesting and well-written story. It was about a man who was more than a man, the God-man, the Son of God and the one chosen and anointed by the Father to represent and reveal Him to the world so that the facts would speak for themselves of who He was.

The sick boy’s father believed that Jesus could heal his son and acted on His instruction, ‘Go home. Your son will live.’ Jesus did not need to be physically present to heal his son. The confirmation came when he learned that the miracle happened at the exact moment when Jesus had spoken the words, ‘you son will live.’

Why was this another sign? To what did it point? Jesus made claims beginning with “I AM” which incensed His enemies because they recognised how outrageous they were if they were not true. Since they had already decided that He was a blasphemer and refused to weigh up the evidence, every time He said, ‘I AM’ was another nail in His coffin.

But, while they refused to be convinced, there were those who responded with simple faith to the miracles that were a witness to whom He said He was.

In the Jewish legal system, there had to be two or three witnesses in a court of law for an accusation to be valid. When the Pharisees accused Him of blasphemy, He called His witnesses — John bore witness to Him, the Father bore witness to Him and His miracles were signs to point to the validity of His claims.

His first miracle at the wedding in Cana in Galilee bore witness to His claim to be the source of the new wine of the Spirit. His healing of the dying boy in Capernaum spoke of His power to give new life to those who are dead in their sin. On both occasions Jesus did nothing more than speak the word and the miracle happened. John’s introduction to Jesus in the first sentence of His gospel was, “In the beginning was the Word…”

As the story of Jesus unfolds, John gathers evidence and piles on witness after witness to show his readers the absolute authenticity of Jesus’ words…miracles…responses…all point to the same thing; this man, Jesus, is none other than the Messiah, the Son of God. But still, the Jews in the main rejected Him. Why? It was their choice.

What’s yours?

 

 

God of the Living

Christian Life, , ,

GOD OF THE LIVING

“‘Even Moses exclaimed about resurrection at the burning bush, saying, ‘God: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob!’ God isn’t the God of dead men but of the living. To Him all are alive.’

“Some of the religion scholars said, ‘Teacher, that’s a great answer!’ For a while, anyway, no one dared put questions to Him.” Luke 20:37-40 (The Message).

Hidden truths! Did anyone notice that the truth about resurrection is hidden in that short and seemingly insignificant statement – “God of Abraham”?

Every Jewish boy would have known that because his text book from birth was the Torah, the five books of Moses. He would have heard the Shema – “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one,” (Deuteronomy 6:4) – every time he suckled at his mother’s breast. By the age of six he would have memorised the book of Leviticus and by twelve, the whole Torah. In the Torah are the seeds of every major doctrine in the Bible, including the truth about the resurrection.

God created time and lives in a realm which is not subject to time. Unlike Him, human beings are not eternal. Our existence begins at a point in time but, from that point, we never cease to exist.

Because of Adam’s choice, we are subject to death, but death is not the end. It is the transition from time to eternity, from the realm of the physical to the realm of God where we shed all the imperfections of our fallen humanity and stand before God in the perfection of Jesus which He gave to us because of His death on the cross.

Because Jesus came from that realm, He could speak of as fact, that which we receive by faith, that God is the God of the living because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still alive in His presence.

Had the Sadducees paid a little more attention to the Torah, they would not have made fools of themselves by posing a question to Jesus that revealed their ignorance.

In His reply, Jesus shows us how we can find the answer too many of the questions that puzzle us about our faith. There is a principle of Biblical interpretation that will help us, called the Law of First Mention. The first time something is mentioned in the Bible is the key to understanding what it means in the rest of the Bible.

There is an example of this principle that will help us to understand God’s original intent about prayer. The first mention of prayer is found in Genesis 4:26: “At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord.” In the original Paleo (picture) Hebrew, the word for “call” meant “to turn the head to face the One who can bear the burden.”

That’s it! We have made prayer into something quite complicated whereas the Bible presents prayer as the simple act of changing our awareness! When Adam and Eve chose to ignore God’s command, they lost their God-awareness and became self-aware, (“’…I was afraid because I was naked, and so I hid.’ And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked?'” – Genesis 3:10b-11a), a preoccupation that has never changed

To change our awareness means to recognise and acknowledge God in the centre of whatever our concern is. We don’t have to bring God into our situations – He’s already there! When we change our awareness, we move from worry and panic to peace because He is there, He is good and He is in charge.

Jesus was saying, in essence, ‘Go back to the beginning where God has revealed His original intent. That’s where you’ll find His answers to your questions.’