I Am Alive

They call it, "Good Friday," but I don't know why.  The man who triumphantly proclaimed ... "I am alive" ... must have thought otherwise.  It certainly wasn't a good day for Him.  I want to revisit this so-called Friday when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane and is betrayed, arrested, and tried.  From there it only gets worse for Him. 

Start with the Roman army who were not known for compassion but rather brutality, and they were good at it.  Jesus was just another Jew to them, so starting to make sport of Him, they spit in His face, beat Him with their fists, and even ripped out part of His beard, which most of the Jewish men grew.
 
And then there was the scourging that He received at the hand of Pilate.  The beating itself brought Jesus almost to the point of death as Pilate made an effort to try and satisfy the Jews lust for blood.  And blood is what they got.  A Roman scourging was ordinarily very severe, and not limited to the forty stripes the Jews usually gave.

Some scholars are of the opinion that Pilate himself scourged Jesus with his own hands, because the Apostle John wrote … "Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him."  (John 19:1) 

The punishment of scourging was horrible.  The victim would have been bound with chains to a low pillar, stripped naked and beaten with a flagellum, a whip with leather thongs tipped with lead balls and sharp spikes called … scorpions …  appropriately named because of their painful sting.  Jesus would have been a bloody mess after having His back torn open from the metal ripping and tearing His flesh. 

But this was just the beginning on this, "Good Friday."  There was nothing good about it.  They mocked Him as the King of the Jews by placing a crown on His head that was made of sharp thorns one to two inches long.  Placing it on His head isn't the correct word … it was forcibly jammed into His scalp, sliding, scraping along the skull under the skin, most likely penetrating down the forehead to His eyebrows.
  
In minutes His head started swelling from the bleeding under the skin, darkening the already bloody facial tissue making Him unrecognizable even to His mother and Mary Magdalene, both of whom stayed by the cross to be as close to Him as they were allowed.  All of His disciples, except for John had forsaken Him and fled out of fear.  Even God the Father turned His back on Jesus.

As a mother watching all the events as they unfolded through the night and next day, imagine what Mary must have felt as she sees her son taken and nailed to the cross.  The pain in her soul, the anguish, the gnawing agony and emotional torture on her whole being … did she know this was coming when she watched Jesus play as a child?  Three decades earlier she followed God's will and gave birth to the Son of God … but this?

Mary has been called ... "The Mother of God" ... and rightly so I guess because she gave birth to Jesus, who was God in flesh.  Just as God cannot cease to be Holy, Jesus did not cease to be God when He took upon the form of a man … for God cannot be less than what He is.

It has also been said that God died on the cross … but God cannot die … although Jesus the man did.  Those three hours on the cross, hours of excruciating pain and torment; if that wasn't enough, God placed every sickness, every disease, every sin of man, past, present and future, upon Jesus while He hung on the cross. 
  
When Jesus gave up His spirit like we all will someday, His dead body became cold and stiff just like any other man.  After His body was taken down from the cross, He was buried in a borrowed tomb.  Why borrowed?  Because He wouldn't need it very long. 

Resurrection day was coming in three days.  The first Easter morning.  The heavy stone that covered the tomb had been rolled away to show the world that Jesus came forth just as He said He would.

Good Friday is an important day for the Christian church.  But it would be just another tragic day of someone's death ... if not for Easter ... resurrection Sunday.  If Jesus had not walked out of that tomb, good Friday would be meaningless ... having no significance or purpose.  Jesus would have died for nothing.

The greatest three words any man has ever spoken, came from the lips of Jesus when He said in Revelation 1:18 ... "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore ..."

"I Am Alive"                                                                




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Walking With Death

The words of David in Psalms 139:14, brings me to a moment of reflection when he says, "... for I am fearfully and wonderfully made ..."

The body is indeed, "wonderfully made," both male and female.  When God said ... "Let Us make man in Our image" ... He begins with the male.  He  makes him bigger, stronger, rougher, and man enough to protect and provide for his physically weaker female partner ... the woman, made so the man wouldn't be alone. 

So for the man, God makes a loving, sensitive, caring companion and helper ... which most men will agree ... was formed exquisitely nice, delicate, beautiful and desirable.  I can hear Adam saying when he first saw Eve ... "Wow." 

Back to what David said.  He is not saying that we are wonderful ... we are not.  But we are wonderfully made.  Who else but God could put this body together with all of it's different parts being held together with something as thin as our skin and then breathe "life" into it?

Solomon, speaking to we humans, states in Ecclesiastes 11:5 ... "As thou knowest not ...  how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh  all."  (And we still don't ... we just think we know.)

Isaiah 44:24-25 speaks to this as well ... "Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself ... that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish ..."

Even though medical science knows and understands much about the human body and how it works, (including the process God uses to reproduce) ... science cannot explain what the spark of life is that causes an embryo to become animated and come alive.  In other words ... what causes "life" to begin. 

They know texture of the human body, what it is made of, and even how the complexity of cells work together as if it's a machine ... pumping, flowing, beating, breathing, all in a perfect unison of rhythm ... if everything is operating as it should.

But both male and female are equally subject to accident or injury that can impair or destroy parts of the body that are necessary to the continuance of life.  Because we are so fragile, we are therefore ... "fearfully made."  Things can go wrong.   As we didn't come with a guarantee, we have only the providence of God to trust in for our maintenance and safe keeping.  That in itself is a pretty good guarantee. 

It seems to me that God has made us this way to show us our frailty, as we keep "life" in view, knowing that we are in reality  ... "walking with death" ... whether imminent or not, because it is always only a breath or heartbeat away.

Speaking of man in general, Job 14:5 states ... "Seeing his days are determined … thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass …"

The meaning is this ... the boundaries of man's life, the period of his days beyond which he cannot go; the term of man's life is so peremptorily fixed and settled by God, that he cannot die sooner, nor live longer than God has determined he should.  Just as the time of a man's birth, so the time of his death is according to the purpose of God, and all things that will come to man throughout the whole course of his life … they all fall under "the appointment of God" and are according to His design and will. 

I believe that each of us may have a hand in or play a part in our own death.  According to Scripture, God has fixed the number of man's days, so that they cannot be exceeded, nor can death be avoided.  But, although man cannot live past his appointed bounds, he may also live such a sinful and hard life that he may never reach them as it states in ...

Psalms 55:23 … "bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days …" or as it reads in the Hebrew ... "men of blood and deceit."

The meaning is to people of violence, and those who live false, deceitful lives.  But would not this also apply to those who live wild or hard lives such as drunks, drug addicts, etc.  If you flirt with death you might arrive there sooner than is necessary.      

All of us were born with the ability to sin, making us potential sinners from the start.  As we grew, sin felt almost at home in us ... at least it did in our flesh.  That's why the Apostle Paul said in Romans 3:23 ... "For all have sinned ..." and we did.  Later Paul adds in Romans 6:23 ... "For the wages of sin is death ..."

Why did I say earlier that we are "walking with death?"  Because "death came by man" and "as in Adam all die."  (1st Corinthians 15:21-22)

Consider Job's statement unto God … "For I know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living."  (Job 30:23)

The phrase "to death" means to the house of the dead, or to the place where the dead are … the grave.  That house is "appointed" for all; the rich and the poor, young or old, and it is not by chance that we go there ... it has been so ordained.  It is fixed and settled that all should die.
 
Job knows the case with him will be as with all men; death has become necessary because of sin, which brought the sentence of death on all men by the decree and appointment of God. 

But someday ... "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."  (1st Corinthians 15:26)  Until then, death will continue to be something we must face in our bodies of flesh.

I think Paul, as well as the other early Apostles of faith would certainly agree that they were "walking with death" daily as they proclaimed the good news of Christ during that first century of the Christian Church.

Paul spoke for them also when he said ... "We are confident ... and willing to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." 

Yes, death may have been waiting for them around the next bend in the road or in the next city, but the reality was that they ... "walked with Jesus" ... not with death.

So do you and I ...



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The Perfect Description Of Sin

I'm bringing up a word no one wants their doctor to say to them ... cancer.  Is there another word that brings as much fear and dread as this word does?

Let me say in simple terms ... cancer is a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells growing in the body, which then produces a malignant growth or tumor resulting from that division and wild growth of those cells.  Cancer is perceived to be evil or destructive and has proven it's hard to contain or eradicate.

Cancer is also ... the perfect description of sin. 

Sin isn't just perceived to be evil and destructive ... it is evil and destructive.  Ever since the first man sinned, like cancer it has been hard to contain and still needs to be eradicated from the earth.  But that won't happen until Jesus returns.

What causes sin?  There is some inclination of the mind, some natural tendency or propensity, (a disposition to behave in a certain way) something naturally born in our flesh, passed down from the first Adam ... which places our soul under the influence of a strong inherent inclination to yield to one or more personal temptations. 

Your propensity or inherent inclination to satisfy certain desires of the mind or the flesh may be different than mine was and sometimes still is.

Sin, just like cancer, is usually the result of some type of uncontrolled desire in our mind or physical body.  They are sometimes called fleshly appetites.  Because we are born with a sinful nature, it is normal for the fallen, un-regenerated natural man to act on that propensity to sin.   

If sin is allowed to operate unchecked, man's spiritual soul will suffer a type of  malignant growth that can corrupt the soul with evil, just like the physical effect cancer has on the body.  Just as cancer destroys the flesh, sin destroys man's will and soul.

Man has been given by God, the power of freedom, the power of choice, and he enjoys himself so thoroughly in that freedom, that he does not perceive or understand that he is in bondage to the sin and/or the objects of his affection. 

So, many times when God comes to deliver him from these things, he protests against his own liberation from them, not understanding that the sin ... is the result ... of the liberty and freedom that God allows man to operate in.  Man is responsible for what is done in that freedom, but he protests against God for what was done in that freedom.  We blame God for making us like we are. 

"God, why have you given us freedom to sin, and then judge us for that sin."

God looks at our sin as a cancer.  It must be removed if we are to live.  So He extracts whatever the object of our sin is, like a surgeon removing a cancer that would bring death if left alone.  But God removes something which had become part of our life, like a part of the body itself.  Sin can be deeply rooted in us.
 
Removing sin can be painful.  God has different ways to do that, depending upon what kind of sin God must remove.  I find that God usually uses ... "the Word of God" ... like the sword of the Spirit spoken of in Hebrews 4:12 to do His surgery upon our soul and spirit because it cuts to the heart.  The Spirit goes right to the heart of the problem.  

The freedom to sin ... is nothing when compared to the freedom from sin we receive when God operates on our heart and removes the spiritual cancer within our lives. 

When you allow God to invade your life with His soul changing Holy Spirit, you are no longer in bondage to act on the propensity to sin.

2nd Corinthians 5:17 ... "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

Oh, you will still occasionally sin, but you won't be forced too ... and when you do ... if you are anything like me, the Lord will gently say something like, "Why did you do that again?  You could have talked it over with me."  I'm sorry Lord, I thought I could handle it on my own.

Some things are too big for us.  When they are, say ... "Lord, you're gonna half to handle this one for me."  (I know it's bad English, but God will still understand.)  
 
Sin is a cancer that will destroy your life.  It will grow without your knowledge just as a cancer inside of you does.  One sin, like one cancer cell is one too many to have in your body or soul.

Stay cancer free.