Written Word

My Unusual Journal 73

My Unusual Journal 73

Thursday, April 26, 2012, 10:14 PM

There Is Yet Hope with Death All Around

Every child of God is at least somewhat familiar with Ezekiel’s vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. Here is a review of the vision that has reclaimed so many when they were perishing in their own Valley of Dry Bones.

Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones (Eze. 37.1-28 NIV)

vv1- 3 1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”

Comment on vv 1-3 “… can these bones live?” ...Can they live indeed! Did Jesus ever resurrect Himself, snatching back His soul from death and the tenacious grip of hell? Not only did it appear He had died, but all hope of a sparkling new and more abundant life had evidently crumbled to dust, and a pall of gloom had once and for all settled over all mankind. The Creation that was itself eagerly awaiting the new life promised to whatever had been indirectly cursed by Adam’s sin was still left hanging for an interminably long “second” – seconds, hours, days, it matters not if it is not an eternity – in  the slavering jaws of Death. The increments of time by which our lives are measured and inevitably ended are in themselves relative milliseconds. They begin at some point and they end at some point: nothing in time can last forever.

Vv 4-6 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! 5 This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’ ”

Comment on vv 4-6 Yes, yes, I know… I have said it myself, that time is of little matter to the God of Creation. He knows, with a certainty that no other being can have, what He is going to do. But He also knows with the same certainty that our faith is small and needs bolstering: that is why there was (and it still is in the biblical record today) a Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. It was, true enough, given to Ezekiel primarily to bolster the faith of God’s children (the nation of Israel) when their spiritual and national state were at their lowest ebb. But God foresaw the need there would be centuries later for the strengthening of faith and the shoring up of courage in these “Last Days” when men and women of faith would have that faith severely tried and catastrophes would abound on every side… so He gave a vision to Ezekiel that would help our waning faith. He gave a vision that would revive hope that was dying or had already perished and He gave us strong assurance there is no irretrievable loss of hope or faith, and no death that faith cannot reverse.

Vv 7-8 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Comment on vv 7-8 Death holds on tightly to what is has claimed… but death nor hell nor any power of darkness can avail against the will of the Sovereign God…

Vv 9-10 9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

Comment on vv 9-10 ‘…b “Come, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live!” Ezekiel faithfully relayed this command from God – and he knew without doubt it would come to pass as decreed. Why should he not? God’s prophet was already in the midst of a mighty miracle, if only in a vision. There it was: a vast army, filling the valley at first with what must have been millions of disparate bones scattered hither and yon, yet each belonging to a relatively few other bones that constituted one definite person. The event in the valley of Dry Bones was similar to the soon coming of the Great Resurrection Day, but whereas the former event was a colossal mind-blowing occurrence to Ezekiel, the Great Day of Resurrection will clearly surpass it and virtually “blow the minds” of God’s chosen people of all ages. In the vision of the Dry Bones the momentous event started off slowly with a valley full of millions of bones so dry that they were of no use without a Supreme Being to work a stupendous miracle. When God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones, the bones could not remain dry and sterile long. Irrepressible activity burst forth here and there in the Valley of Death and began to accelerate as the dry, sterile, useless bones reacted to the Word of Life being proclaimed to them. There was a rattling and clattering as bones began to move all over the valley, each bone hasting to join its partners in the revived nation of Israel and, in a later, secondary application of the prophecy, in the Church, the body of Christ.

Vv 11-14 11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel [and the whole family of God -AJS]. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.’ ” Comment on vv 11-14 A prophecy of warning or of hope, directed primarily to an individual, a group or a nation, often has a subsidiary application aimed at a different target in a different time. This is especially true of this vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. Its primary and immediate application was to the Israelites in their dangerous proclivity toward backsliding not just during the prophet Ezekiel’s day, but during most of their life as a nation. In general God equated their spiritual backsliding with sexual immorality. As He did then, He is doing now: He stripped away the niceties of the day – or of any day – and called a spade a spade: Any person or nation that leaves its God and finds in something other than God what it should find only in its God, is committing “whoredom.” They have been lured away from under the covering of their husband and are seeking their protection and their pleasure from gods of wood and stone. In today’s parlance this does not refer to literal idolatry, but whatever is not of God. They are searching for the God they have forsaken and they are seeking to replace Him with the material things of this world. Let’s make this more personal: It is no longer a matter of what “they” are doing wrong, but “we.” We may not deliberately seek to sin, nevertheless we are tainted with the sin that is prevalent among the people of the world and has even corrupted the worship and service of “we,” the spiritual Israel of today. We are fools and the grossest of sinners and deserve to die now and forever. But God did not commission me to be a prophet of doom and gloom – there is yet hope for the world of sinners; there is still an anticipated future for we who have strayed from the “one fold” of the “one Shepherd.” Let’s never give up this fateful struggle until God gives up on us – which will never happen as long as we cling in faith to Him. God in the Person of Christ gave up His all for us: glory, honor, power, His own life and Sonship with the Father – tell me, what more could He give? Now, as Paul told the Corinthians (2 Cor. 6.13 NIV), “As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also [give yourselves in like manner].” The burden of proof lies squarely on us.

 

My Unusual Journal 72

My Unusual Journal 72

Friday, April 13, 2012, 1:29 PM

Let Go of Your Past!

Whether you are an outright “backslider” or only one who realizes you have made mistakes along the way, they are all under the blood of Christ – so leave them there. They are done, and they are forgiven and forgotten by God. I want to emphasize that point in this post: when we are done with sin, whether this is the first time we have had to be forgiven or the 100^th occasion, let’s be firmly done with it; we cannot afford to carry on a flirtation with the Lord of heaven. As the most righteous God He is, He does not enter into one-night-stand relationships. We should know by now that, contrary to popular Christian belief, Grace can and will eventually end for the sinner who rejects the overtures of God for that one last fatal time. And when grace runs dry for an individual, it will nevermore flow for him in time or eternity.

A Story of Today’s Returned Prodigal Son

Following is a tale of the typical prodigal who has returned home: His name is Jonathan and it is he to whom God referred when He said, “Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan [a place of sinful practices]; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite [Jonathan was descended from a line of sinners].” (Eze. 16.3b)

This scripture describes Jonathan’s original spiritual state. It goes on to say there was no one to care for him and he was left alone and naked in his own blood, a gruesome sight. But the righteous God of heaven looked down on him and had compassion on him. God deigned to come down in His surpassing love and grace, cast His garment of righteousness over Jonathan’s wretched being and said in a voice of authority, “Live!” And he could do naught but live.

A long time after having been made righteous and respectable by the love of God, Jonathan turned in his lust and fickleness back to the sins of his fathers. He forgot the God of his salvation and plunged into the cesspool of filth and said he was enjoying himself. But there can be no real joy outside of Christ for one who has once known Christ.

God entreated Jonathan again and again and Jonathan refused to hearken. He was doing what he wanted to do, although there were moments of sparkling mercy, moments in which God pled in special fashion with Jonathan to return to Him. God would speak through a song or in a fleeting time of solitude wherein the wayward son could hear the voice of God deep, deep within his being. Tears of remorse trickled down his cheeks more than once, but there was no gut-wrenching repentance on Jonathan’s part and he hardened his heart and pressed on his willful way. He was wrestling with his God who would go only so far to attain the mastery over His fallen creature. God would soften Jonathan’s heart; in a senseHe would touch Jonathan in the “hollow of his thigh” as He did to Jacob on the memorable night of many centuries ago, but God always stopped just short of coercion.

God bore long with His errant child until love finally broke through the stony heart. Jonathan turned again to his Savior’s loving embrace. The lost sheep knew, once again, the Savior’s peace and joy and the blessed hope he had spurned for so long. Now all is right between his Savior and him and there are no clouds on Jonathan’s horizon. Right? Wrong!

Jonathan is plagued by a confusion of thoughts brought on by the blatant sins of his reckless years. He recalls, too vividly and too often, his continued rejection of Christ and the enormity of the sins into which he had plunged. Jonathan is assured that God has forgiven him, but he has a hard time forgiving himself. But, maybe that is wrong – Jonathan does forgive himself (solely because of Christ’s forgiveness), but the unthinkable extent of his sins still haunts him.

There Is No Such thing as Inherent Righteousness

What Jonathan – and the rest of us who supposedly have “never failed the Lord” – need to do is take a long hard look at the righteousness of Christ and then at our own so-called righteousness and come to a logical conclusion. The conclusion is 1) we simply have no righteousness of our own; we are sow’s ears aspiring to be silk purses when there is no silk (righteousness) in us; 2) there is no veteran follower of Christ who has not failed the Lord in some way at some time, and 3) prodigals and those who have not “officially” strayed from God need the blood and forgiveness of Christ equally. Christ did not shed His life’s blood for the righteous; He did it for sinners, which we all were before we came to Christ. And without that atoning blood we would still all be sinners. Who can boast – and who can be ashamed? We are saved freely and equally by the priceless atoning blood of Jesus Christ.

Then there is a 4^th reason that you or I should cling avidly and ardently to Christ: If either one of us turns back from following the Savior, the other one – you or I – will have one less reason to cling tight to the Lord and thus save himself or herself from causing a spiritual brother or sister to fall on the wayside.

I feel a keen responsibility for you, my brother, my sister, and I wish nothing more for you than your continued salvation and God’s richest blessings on your body and soul. Further than that, if you don’t yet have salvation, I certainly don’t want to stand in your way by my slipshod manner of living. I have been guilty of that sacrilegious sin a time or two in my long sojourn in this life. That is a terrible thing to have gnawing at your conscience. God forbid that it should ever happen again!

My Unusual Journal 71

My Unusual Journal 71

Friday, March 23, 2012, 5:49 PM

We Need Never to Face the Wrath of God

As I have said often, Jesus entered into the agony of hell when His Father abandoned Him to the sins He voluntarily took upon Himself. I'll not attempt to set a time frame for Jesus' stay in hell – there is no time in hell. To the detached observer there may be a start and an ending, but not to the one who is enwrapped in the unrelenting tentacles of hell.

With Jesus, and with Him only, at a certain point there was a cessation of His agony: the sin debt had been paid in full. But this will not be so with anyone else caught in that chamber of horrors. In a sense they will have pushed their way into a place not designed for them. (Mat. 25.41) Once in, there is no way of escape - ever. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Hell will be forevermore. "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever…”  (Rev 14.11)

For the unregenerate sinner hell will be created when grace finally “dies” – it dies or ceases only for the sinner as an individual – and, like the abundant life of the righteous, this hellish death will never cease to be. The unrelenting gnawing pain that is hell will have established squatter's rights within the sinner's own private space to all perpetuity. Everlasting life will have its terrible counterpart in this, the exquisite anguish of everlasting DEATH.

Of the billions of sinners who will be summarily cast into that place of torment, there will not be one who can say he or she has ever suffered so much in their previous existence on earth. I am sure there are some of God’s children who have tried to imagine the terror and unbearable pain of hell in order to more effectively appeal to sinners to avoid it at all costs, but they – I should say we – are only well-intentioned humans limited in our knowledge and capacity to suffer. The closer we come in our imagination to the terrible reality of hell, the less able we are to continue our quest: the torment becomes insufferable and the reality of the situation from which we cannot flee (if only in our imagination) envelops us with unspeakable horror. After my having presumed to even approach this ground that was never intended for those who are rational and saved to traverse, I conclude that the human mind and frame have limits beyond which they will disintegrate into a thousand pieces that can never be made whole again. And these countless pieces, each one, will exist forever in their indescribable torment. We have to relinquish our search for the full reality of the sufferings of hell – for which we give thanks to a gracious God!

But you, my sinner friend for whom I am terribly concerned, you are heading straight for the point of no return. You have not yet set your first footfall on that irreversible downhill slide, so grace is still flowing for you. Please don’t reject the Savior for that one last time that seals your doom. Reverse your course and run quickly to Jesus: He is eagerly waiting for you with His arms opened wide in love. If you come now while grace flows freely for you, you need never to experience the wrath of God.

My Unusual Journal 70

My Unusual Journal 70

Thursday, March 22, 2012, 1:48 PM

All God’s Children Have Two Natures

Any child of God is a study in contrasts. I myself am one very dichotomous (having a dual nature) old man! On the surface I appear to be an emotionless old codger, but within I am, at times, seething with the highest of emotions. This happens often when I am meditating before God or writing a post for my blogs. And of course there can be no other person present with me at such a time; that would make me very self-conscious and dampen any outward sign of emotion. It would be as though I had been in public in my skivvies. Heavens to Betsy! (If you remember that saying, you are older than you care to admit.)

There is more to this duality of nature than I can deal with in this post. Anyone who has been “born again” has a dichotomous makeup. He was bequeathed via his natural birth with what the Scripture refers to as a carnal man or nature that is naturally resistant to the will of God, therefore the person that he is has to be born again, becoming a new creature, one amenable to the will of God. But that is for another post and another time. Let’s turn our attention again to the dual personality some people have, in which neither one of their personalities is naturally rebellious to the will of God.

For example, my stoic or outer person does not actively rebel against God nor does my more volatile inner person. Sometimes I think that only God knows this. Not all my peers understand that I am not required to have a cookie-cutter personality that mimics every other saved person. I am ME and I will continue to be me except where “me” comes into conflict with the will of God.

God is so very good to me. He knows my quirks and oddities, my fortes and foibles. His all-wise and all-seeing eye penetrates my person and focuses on my needs as no one else can; and He is there to give me what I require for my spiritual well-being. No, in my moments of solitude I don’t go through the house shouting and dancing before the Lord – I did not say He works a miracle on my personality – but He softens and mellows me so that He can push and prod my erstwhile balky self into any shape He desires.

When I go out from my session of meditation and/or writing, it is up to me to maintain that flexibility and adaptability as a constant part of my being regardless of my outward appearance. The outward appearance matters little. What matters most is that God will not work with an intractable rock that insists on being “me”; He requires a sensitive, malleable heart. He has softened me; henceforth it is my responsibility, by the continued grace of God, to keep myself sensitive to His will, which has brought me safe thus far and will no doubt take me home.

My Unusual Journal 69



My Unusual Journal 69

Saturday, March 17, 2012, 7:27 PM

Don’t Do ‘Your Own Thing’ Too Long

In the 8^th chapter of Ezekiel God showed Ezekiel in a vision just how idolatrous the Southern Kingdom had become. He revealed to Ezekiel in the vision four separate incidents of blatant idol worship. God had chided with the inhabitants of Judah (the Southern Kingdom) at one time, reproving them for doing what no self-respecting idol worshiper would do. God reminded them that the idolatrous nations around Judah would never leave their own gods for those of another nation, yet Judah had the effrontery to leave their only one real God – the God who had many, many times miraculously led them and fed them and fought for them – to go baying after a passel of gods of wood and stone that couldn’t move or talk or burst themselves out of a wet paper sack!

We have done somewhat the same thing today in principle. We have forsaken the God who brought us to this land of the free – and some of us who were slaves until God freed us from the chains of oppression and bigotry – and we too are wildly chasing after the gods of silver and gold and wood and stone, the material possessions and wealth of this world. In both instances we have turned our backs on the God of our fathers for gods that can never help us when we really need help.

We have a rather fuzzy picture of our God when it comes to grace, which we say will flow forever. First off: This is not true for everyone, and it cannot be true if God is all that we say He is. If God is truly a God of justice and righteousness, he cannot forever endure the sins of a foolish majority of the creatures he created. Neither justice nor righteousness will tolerate such an eternity-long slap in the face of God. The God we – all of mankind – serve is, in addition to being longsuffering and kind, a God of wrath upon those who continually reject what He wants and what He tells us to do.

There are many examples of what an aroused God can and will do when we turn our backs on Him five, twenty, thirty years or as long as God will allow us to crucify Him with impunity. Wisdom or just plain old common sense should tell us that a perfect God will not forever co-exist with an imperfect world full of imperfect and impenitent creatures. That is why there is a day of judgment coming when the cup of the wrath of God will be filled to overflowing and it will splash in fiery judgment on the heads of the adamant, unheeding persons who refuse to heed the love of God and will in fact have none of God.

Are you yet unmoved by the alarming increase of sin and lawlessness all around you? Don’t you care that sin’s long tentacles are enveloping the earth, even reaching into the community of believers and grasping greedily after your brothers and sisters in the Lord? Aren’t you greatly disturbed that those in the Church who you thought would not be affected by the enticements to carnal lusts and worldly glory are, sad to say, letting down their guard? They are dismantling the barriers the Spirit of God Himself has set between His children and the world. This is surely not good. It is wicked and dangerous to reject the one only true God in the midst of a wicked and dangerous people.

The visible church of today is far too similar to the Israelites of Ezekiel’s time. They provoked God once and again with their wanderlust, worshiping one idolatrous abomination after another, never satisfied with what their lusts had already acquired. But God, as He always does prior to judgment, has issued warning after warning to all who will listen, warning us that He will not long spare those who shake their head at God in what is at once a petty and extremely perilous defiance. The prophet Ezekiel received a word from God concerning the idolatrous Israelites of his day. Without much effort we can apply it to believers today. For convenience of study I have divided it into four sections. Please read it carefully.

Chapter 9

A Clear Warning to God’s Faithless Followers (Eze. 9.1-11)

1.

A Command for the Destruction of God’s People! 

The imminent departure of God’s Presence. Verse 9.3* 

 

Eze 9:1  He cried also in mine ears with a loud voice, saying, Cause them that have charge over the city to draw near, even every man with his destroying weapon in his hand.

Eze 9:2  And, behold, six men came from the way of the higher gate, which lieth toward the north, and every man a slaughter weapon in his hand; and one man among them was clothed with linen, with a writer's inkhorn by his side: and they went in, and stood beside the brasen altar.

 

* Eze 9:3  And the glory of the God of Israel was gone up from the cherub, whereupon he was, to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed with linen, which had the writer's inkhorn by his side;

 

2.

God’s People Who Remain Faithful Will be Marked for Salvation

God’s Chosen ones will be they who “sigh and…cry” for the “abominations” committed by their brethren. Verse 9.4*

 

*Eze 9:4  And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.

 

3.

Destruction Falls on the Unfaithful Children of God

Judgment falls on ALL who are not set aside (marked) for salvation. Verses 9.5-8* 

 

*Verses 9.5-8

Eze 9:5  And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity:

Eze 9:6  Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. Then they began at the ancient men which were before the house.

Eze 9:7  And he said unto them, Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain: go ye forth. And they went forth, and slew in the city.

Eze 9:8  And it came to pass, while they were slaying them, and I was left, that I fell upon my face, and cried, and said, Ah Lord GOD! wilt thou destroy all the residue of Israel in thy pouring out of thy fury upon Jerusalem?

 

4.

Grace Will Finally Have Run Its Course for the Those Who Refuse to be Corrected  

God declares “mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity…” V. 9.9-11* 

 

*Verses 9.9-11

Eze 9:9  Then said he unto me, The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness: for they say, The LORD hath forsaken the earth, and the LORD seeth not.

Eze 9:10  And as for me also, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will recompense their way upon their head.

 

Eze 9:11  And, behold, the man clothed with linen, which had the inkhorn by his side, reported the matter, saying, I have done as thou hast commanded me.

 

Verse 11 indicates a completion of all that God had commanded. The obstinate adulterous Israelites – who are symbolic of the same unresponsive persons in the New Testament church – had all been slain and forever silenced in the fury of the judgment they had brought upon themselves.

 

My Unusual Journal 68

My Unusual Journal 68

Monday, March 12, 2012, 11:52 AM

This is the third time, I believe, in a 6-month period that I am speaking to you about Jesus’ hour of Passion. Please bear with me in my obsession. Consider my efforts in this matter to be a labor of love. The present blog is a last-ditch attempt to deliver my heart and mind of a story that is at once appalling and so very beautiful. An apt simile can be found in the school days of my long-gone youth. Telling this story as it should be told is like my writing a beautiful love story on the old blackboards of that day. If I had sufficient writing skill, the theme of never-ending love would strike home slowly as I progressed in writing the saga of love. But if I should apply more pressure on the board and slant the chalk at a certain angle, it would emit a high-pitched squeal that the human ear cannot stand. That is the story of divine love and self-sacrifice. It is so very beautiful as it unfolds, but the pain and untold suffering our Savior of sinners had to endure and the unspeakable agony that produced the story are just about more than our ears can bear to hear or our minds receive.

Jesus, Cruelly Misunderstood by Men and Rejected by the Father

(A synthesis of blogs posted in My Unusual Journals #35 and #39 with additional remarks interspersed for added clarity)

 

I can’t get the following words out of my mind. They are from the song “He Understands, He’ll Say, ‘Well Done.’” To you who have read My Unusual Journals #35 and #39, I had tried to convey the depths of my feelings about the Son of God being thoroughly stripped of dignity and divinity by His enemies. But, in my own analysis of it, I unfortunately failed in my trying. Here are the words again and once again I am totally aghast – appalled and astounded – at this wholly inappropriate scene. It was Homo sapiens, a species created by the love of God before ever the species existed, run amok; it was mankind gone mad:

“Misunderstood, the Savior of sinners,

Hung on the cross;

He was God’s only Son;

Oh! Hear Him calling His Father in heav’n,

‘Not my will, but thine be done.’”

Wait! Wait! There is surely a serious miscarriage of justice in this scenario. The sword of Justice itself has slain the only Holy One in the history of humankind! Sinful men, who were meant to be forbidden access to eternal life, have been granted the same forbidden eternal life while the terrible, avenging sword has slain the sole perfect human ever to be found. The avenging sword has put to death the Ultimate Sacrifice, the sinless Lamb of God! It is certainly an utterly upside-down, egregious travesty of justice!

Jesus was indeed, in a frightening reality for all mankind, misunderstood by His tormentors, who were either unaware or simply did not care that the object of their hatred and contempt was actually the true, only begotten Son of God. Jesus was pure divinity and, ipso facto, He was strict Justice, a justice that would tolerate no deviation from what is right. Jesus the epitome of love is also what would seem to be its antithesis. Justice of itself is not concerned with such things as love and mercy. Justice and righteousness were uncompromising and the soul that deviated from God’s righteous standard in the slightest way must die.

It is rock-solid theological fact: We have all sinned in Adam and we have all sinned many times since entering this life. The uttermost of divine wrath was about to overtake the entire human race. God is in truth a consuming fire. He is God in His righteousness and wrath and strict justice and He can be nothing short of that.

All of humankind, just by being human, was in peril of eternal death, at once unsparing and irreversible. The scythe of Justice does not operate in minute detail, overlooking the “minor” sins and concentrating on the “major” ones. It sees a sin, any sin not covered by the blood of Jesus, and comes in fury on the sinner and its vengeance is horrible. In Scripture, especially the Old Testament, it is clear that Justice has a tendency to come upon men in broad sweeps, justly wrapping all mankind in sin, the one thing God hates with a perfect hatred. God is divine and the creature God had made had dared to go against His will. The race of humankind was facing sure death lasting for unending ages.

“Misunderstood, the Savior of sinners,

Hung on the cross…”

 

Bear in mind this was Almighty God Himself who descended – and in doing so he stripped away the prerogatives of divinity and lowered Himself to man’s estate – to the earth He had made and the creatures on which He lavished His love; but He was horribly misunderstood. Then, compounding what was already blasphemous and making what was already a sacrilege even  more sacrilegious, this Jesus on whom they beat and spat was more than a mere man:

“He was God’s only Son;”

God the Father had seen there was no way to save mankind other than His personally coming down to die for mankind. He fashioned a sinless body in the womb of a virgin and He inhabited that “body” before it was a fully formed entity. He inhabited it from the moment of conception. This body named Jesus was thus God’s Son, His only Son and He (God the Father) loved Him as He loved Himself. The bond between the two was much greater than that between an earthly father and his son. The human son has his father’s DNA in him, but Jesus had the Father Himself within Him! It is one of the many great mysteries of Scripture.

It is an indefinable, intimate relationship, yet the closeness between Jesus and His Father made possible the dreadful change that had to take place for the salvation of mankind. The scenario is heading quickly toward its terrible lowest possible point…

“Oh! Hear Him calling His Father in heav’n…

‘Not my will, but Thine be done.’”

The situation now becomes piteous; it is heart-wrenching. The only Son of God is crying out to His Father, not for deliverance nor for vengeance on His enemies, but only that the Father’s will might be fulfilled in Himself (Jesus). Jesus knew the Father had to leave Him hanging between heaven and earth and be accepted by neither and, as the Father was the Son’s life in both a physical and spiritual sense, the crucial, unbelievable agony of the Son of God was about to be increased exponentially. Hell for sinners will be greater only in duration, but not in intensity. Jesus suffered as no person has suffered before or since. And neither God nor man seemed to care…

And then came what would seem to be the final unsustainable outrage: Jesus’ heavenly Father –not Jesus’ enemies, but His own Father! – actually rejected Jesus and left Him hanging, forsaken and alone, on the cross because of the sins Jesus had voluntarily taken upon Himself. How many further indignities would He suffer, how many more blasphemous insults endure? He would not have to endure many more at the hands of His tormentors as He could not live without His Father. He died a wretched death, BUT – Jesus’ horrendous suffering was not yet finished. Existence for the human Jesus without His Father was a searing, unbearable hell. We cannot tell how many hours Jesus remained in this abominable state. It could not have been beyond His resurrection when He was united again with His Father and knew once more the joy and peace of being one with the Father.

Looking back at the scene, we may not grasp the extreme danger the race of men would have been in if Jesus, in His humanity, had not given His all to save mankind. But when we adjust our focus on the righteousness of God – supreme, unsullied Good to which no human other than Jesus has attained – it throws us into a panic because we too are human and we too have more than once slighted Him and broken His righteous law. We too have crucified the immaculate Lamb of God; we too have pushed a crown of thorns down on His sinless brow and impaled Him on a cross of our own devising. In a lifetime of twenty or more years what have we not done to offend Him; what have we not done to break His heart?

God is not inherently subject to such passions as a broken heart or a grievous hurt; He is God the Creator and Lord of all things. He has however subjected Himself to these emotions in order to save us. If God could not feel what we feel, how could He have compassion on us? If He could not have His heart crushed, how could He reach out in love and deliver us from a fate worse than death? Being God supreme and almighty, He would by nature be above the human conflict, yet all the while Justice and Righteousness would be about their work of killing off all that transgressed or broke God’s law.

At a certain moment in time God chose not to remain cloaked in His invincible divinity. As Jesus Christ, human and vulnerable, He elected to suffer, He voluntarily subjected Himself to the human condition and endured untold agony for the sake of the creature He had loved before the creature existed.

You may have noticed that throughout the Bible the most poignant and significant scenes affecting humanity’s experiences with God often are not given the space or words that we think they should have. These highly significant episodes are described in such a brief, almost casual way that we will miss the important lessons and truths they convey if we do not immerse ourselves in the words and use our imagination, not to make them more important than they are, but to see the high importance they carry, unembellished by the superlatives and soaring rhetoric of the human tongue. 

Yet we need the superlatives and the soaring rhetoric in some instances. Without these aids we cannot transmit these very critical facts or stories from the teacher to the learner. Even with all the verbal skills we have it is yet impossible to convey the critical minutiae of some biblical episodes from one human to another because of our limited language and our limited, carnal minds.

I realize that I personally am restricted to paddling about in the shallows of this great mystery. I cannot at this time launch out into the deep; it would overwhelm me. At my advanced age I am still a novice swimmer who cannot relay effectively to you even the wonders of the little knowledge with which God has blessed me. But I am determined to give it my all – by the wondrous grace of God. I am absolutely nothing without Him.

“If when you give the best of your service,

Telling the world that the Savior is come;

Be not dismayed when men don’t believe you;

He understands; He’ll say, ‘Well done.’

 

“But if you try and fail in your trying,

Hands sore and scarred from the work you’ve begun;

Take up your cross, run quickly to meet Him;

He’ll understand, He’ll say, ‘Well done.’”

My Unusual Journal 67

My Unusual Journal 67

Monday, March 05, 2012, 12:10 AM

The Importance of Time in Our Lives

We live our lives by the day; we also live life by any other increment of time, such as minutes, hours, weeks, etc. For the present day (or minute or hour or whatever) we will focus on the 24-hour period of time, the day, as being our base line. Our day begins graphically with the rising of the sun, if the clouds do not intervene, and it ends in a similarly graphic fashion marked by the setting of the sun. Because of the mini drama in the so-called rising and setting of the sun, we note the passing of the days of our lives more often.

Then there is the position of the sun during the day on which it has risen so dramatically out of its chamber. The varying positions of the sun between sunrise and sunset also draw our attention to the passage of each day – again assuming no clouds hide the sun from our sight. At high noon when the sun should be at its zenith, and allowing for man’s tinkering with the sun’s natural time-telling propensity by unnatural daylight-savings laws (how does one regulate nature?), we know we have roughly another six hours of daylight before the “shadows of the evening steal across the sky.”

Although time is relative in the mind of the individual observer – the sands of time sift through our clutching hands quickly when we need more of it and they sift through our hands oh so slowly when we are anticipating a certain critical/joyous moment such as an always needed payday or – and this eclipses all other anticipated moments – the soon coming of our Lord and our being caught away to meet Him in the air.

It is the tremendous appeal of the coming of the Lord that makes our joyful days even more thrilling and, contrariwise, it makes our dark, dreary days much more bearable. We can endure the dark of night at noontime because of the great hope swelling within us, which hope is imminently coming to birth, that, in the twinkling of an eye, the dark clouds will be no more and the pain and distress we have borne for years will vanish; they will return no more to plague our lives. What a great hope it is and what a glorious day it will be!

When the days are long and wearisome, we may have to lift our own spirits by talking to ourselves about the faithfulness of God as David did. On one occasion he spoke to his troubled inner self,

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.” (Psa 42:5 KJV)

Then, as you reflect on the goodness and mercy of God, you may be troubled, as I was, with my inconsistencies or lack of buckling down and pulling for the long haul. It took me too long to get my act together and face the fact that one day or two do not constitute a faithful life. It may take thousands of days, depending on how long you live. In my case it has surpassed many thousands of days only by the grace of God. But the point is that these many thousands of days were not attained by wishful thinking. No one can wish themselves into a perfect man. I can claim perfection but only through faith in the blood of Jesus.

There were too many instances of selfishness here and there just as there were a few shining examples of my letting the Jesus in me actually live through me. But now all of that is in the past – the good, the bad, the indifferent – and I can do only two things: praise God for His blood that completely washes away ALL my sins of yesteryear and push ahead, determined to "redeem the time" I have left to me. With God it is not What did you do yesterday? but What are you doing for Me today? He is the only Person who can ask that question without seeming to be self-absorbed.

I can see it so clearly now. TODAY is the key. Today is all we have. Yesterday is gone, irretrievable; tomorrow is not yet here. God is saying to me and to you, "Now is the time acceptable." He doesn't want a refurbished yesterday that we cannot change nor does He want a tomorrow in which we can never raise a praise, utter a prayer or do a good deed. TODAY is all we have in which to please God and show Him our love by keeping His commandments. We are saved or lost by what we do in the present moment. To be brutally frank, TODAY is all we have; we should make the most of it.

My Unusual Journal 66

My Unusual Journal 66

Saturday, March 03, 2012, 3:10 PM

Reaching Out to Those Who Are Drifting

The following statement is not arrived at by a scientific poll; it is only my “guestimate.” I would say that of the thousands of preachers there are in the U.S. alone, only one half of them are serious students of the Word of God. And of that half, only half of them (1/4 of the total preachers) are seriously involved in Outreach, that is, bringing the Gospel to all who will listen, saved and unsaved. We cannot afford to be concerned only with our own little group. That’s like preaching to the choir – they already know what we believe. We need to bring what truth we have to as many people as will hear us. This includes everybody saved and unsaved, rich, poor, beggar, the socially elite, white, black, yellow or any color in between.

We all know people we think are saved, including men and women who have assumed the title of “preacher,” but who seem to be drifting with no purpose in life. They are actually sliding slowly backward because the flow of natural life is regressive: by its very nature it flows back to where the follower of Christ came from, away from where he wants to go. If you simply drift with the tide with no set goal in mind, you will surely go backward with the same tide.

We can't ignore these drifters. They are our brothers and sisters, for heaven’s sake! It is incumbent on us to pray effectually, fervently for them. The effectual, fervent prayer will avail much even when we cannot see the results. But be gentle when you talk to them; don't be too quick to lecture them; it may turn them off.

It’s possible that at one time you too were a “saved drifter,” although the name does seem to be a bit of an oxymoron, suggesting two different ideas in the term “saved drifter.” How can anyone be saved and following their Lord while at the same time they are a drifter following nothing worthwhile? But we’ll not quibble over such a minor matter. We have these Christian loiterers – another contradiction of ideas in one term – and what will we do with them?  

As it is with so many areas of life, it is easier to just do nothing, to merely drift where life’s tide will take you, than to expend effort, time and financial resources on something pleasing to God. That last sentence in itself serves as an indictment against all who dillydally in their service to God. I was about to say that we all are giving less than 100% in our Kingdom work, but since I shy away from bold, brash, finality-of-doomsday statements, I won’t say it. I will save the rash statement for myself. I am not consciously holding anything back from my Lord, but I know my many flaws and blemishes and I am certain I can and should do more – whenever God shows me what it is or allows me to discover the unintentional withholding on my own.

Meanwhile I shall not fail to pray for the Church the body of Christ and all its members. That includes those who are on fire for God, those who are moderately aflame and the ones who have no visible fire but are still smoldering, ready to burst into glorious flame with a loving touch from the Master or His many members in the Church. We need to work together with the Master.

 

My Unusual Journal 65

My Unusual Journal 65

Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 6:28 PM

What Does a Leap Year Mean to You?

So today is February 29… Just what does the date mean to the individual? Has God somehow –miraculously maybe – inserted an extra 24 hours into the individual’s brief lifespan? Are those whose birth date is on the 29^th day of February specially blest in that they age only one year in four while we average shmucks are in a relative sprint toward our demise? No, none of the above.

To be very practical about it, the leap year with its extra day on February 29 is of little significance to the average person or to the leap year phenom who arrived here at this planetary way station on the 29^th of February. No matter how men add to or subtract from the calendar, they can neither lengthen nor shorten their allotted days in this life.

As a symbol however it is a useful reminder of that very fact: No matter how men add to or subtract from the calendar (or whatever other mental and mathematical gyrations they go through), they can neither lengthen nor shorten their allotted days in this life. God has assigned to each person their number of days and years – and even seconds and nanoseconds – that neither a healthy lifestyle nor one of debauchery can alter.

For instance, God, who has known from forever what we would do and when and how we would do it, has even foreseen that a man named Joe Thurston would commit suicide at 25 years of age, thus apparently shortening his lifespan considerably. We mortals cite this as some kind of proof that God cannot know how long we will live nor can He know any matters depending on man’s will, which will is capricious and unpredictable.

But God does know and God does foresee all things that happen in His universe. Why do you think that some persons, who had every intention of ending their own life, have been saved at the last second from doing what they firmly meant to do? They could not die because they had not used up their allotted days. It is clear: The will of man and the evil designs of demons cannot thwart the divine will.

In some cases God in mercy seems to spare a sinner’s life so that the sinner can get right with God. But God deals with the sinners of today as He dealt with the obstinate people in the days of the Israelites of old. God remonstrated with them, pled with them and begged them to change their ways so He could bless them. Did their constant backsliding throw a time warp into the machinery of God?

I have said it more than a time or two and I will repeat it here: God’s will is irreversible and He does not “change His mind” for man or devil. What He did when He endured the spiritual prostitution of the Israelites of old and the overflowing sinfulness of today’s generations is what He always knew He would do. He knew He would in mercy plead with men and women so urgently that they would misconstrue mercy for weakness; but His gracious nature will not permit Him summarily to consign sinners to hell after He has been rebuffed by them ten times or a hundred times – grace is limitless.

But while grace is in a sense limitless, it really does finally end in a major and tragic disaster of all time for the sinner when he is cast into hell. Meanwhile grace continues to flow freely for those who trust in the same grace. And, like the source from which it sprang (love), grace will continue to be limitless for those who have come under its comforting flow.

Now that you, whoever you may be, know that God’s piteous pleas for you to come to Him do not derive from weakness or a need for you – He will forever be God with or without you – run quickly to the Savior. If you could see a display of how fast and furious the seconds and milliseconds are racing to the end of your allotted time, you would not hesitate another one of those fleeting seconds; you in turn would be running to the side of the Savior.

My Unusual Journal 64

 

My Unusual Journal 64

Tuesday, February 28, 2012, 3:23 PM

Note: My writing career is marked by struggle. I am forever struggling to convey to my readers what God gives to me. Not that everything I say is that esoteric or “deep”; it is just that I am looking at the Word of God as oftentimes being relatively simple whereas we try to give it more so-called depth so that we can appear to be persons of profound knowledge and wisdom.

In this, post 64 of My Unusual Journal, I have looked at a previous post (#45) in this series and felt it did not fully express what I was trying to say on the matter of True Eternal Security. Therefore I have rewritten it and added to it in an effort to do what God wants me to do: Write the vision [message] and make it plain… so that he may run that readeth it [and proclaim what he has read].”

Please stay with me on this. Don’t reject what I am saying if it seems to veer away from what you believe. Hear me out.

What Is True Eternal Security? (Revised)

We were tainted with sin before we were born. For one of many confirmations of this statement, read Psa 51:5 (NIV): "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me."

As a part of Adam we became sinful with him. Consequently, it would seem that, if we can inherit sin, we can also inherit the righteousness of our forbears, but not so. When Adam was made righteous by the sacrifice of an animal (Gen. 3.21), we did not become righteous with him. Righteousness cannot be inherited. Sin can. A clean vessel can be made unclean by an unclean object's touching it. An unclean vessel cannot be made clean by touching a clean object.

This evokes the illustration that Haggai used in demonstrating how easily a person might be defiled. "If one carries holy flesh in the skirt of his garment," he asked the priests who were experts in the law, "and touches with his skirt bread, or pottage, or wine...or any kind of food, does it [that which he touches] become holy?"

The priests answered, "No."

Haggai then asked them, "If one who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these [the pottage, wine or food], does it become unclean?"

"Yes," they responded. Haggai had made his point. It is easy for a person to become defiled, but he has to make a deliberate effort to cleanse himself. This was true in the day of the Old Covenant and it is true now in this era of the New. But to become sanctified or holy requires contact with the Source of holiness.

A case in point is Jesus’ touching a leper and making him clean. (Mat. 8.1-3) The leper had come into contact with the Source. But we cannot surmise that, because Jesus was God, He did not ever become ceremonially defiled in His life prior to his officially entering into His ministry. Becoming unclean was an involuntary way of life with the Israelite just as becoming physically dirty is an involuntary way of life with any person, Jew or Gentile. Like any other man, Jesus had to wash away physical uncleanness as the occasion demanded. Like any other Jew, He had to go through the ceremonial ritual of cleansing Himself as the occasion demanded.

But on this occasion Jesus could not in any way be defiled by this symbol of sin. It would appear that ceremonial uncleanness was a symbolic matter that Jesus had endured previous to His public ministry for the sake of being human and being a Jew. I assume that during Jesus' life, prior to His full entry into His life's work, He would avoid contact with any unclean thing, including a leper. That was required of the ordinary Jew. But after His baptism and public approval by the Father, it is difficult to imagine His avoiding a leper, the symbol of sinners in general.

Jesus came with the express purpose of healing the sinner, and in so doing He would not shun the doubly cursed leprous sinner. It could in no way besmirch His righteous Self. Further, in this instance we see that Jesus in His divinity could not be considered even ceremonially unclean. On the contrary, He can transfer His wholeness to all who want it. Instead of His receiving uncleanness from the leprous (sinful) man, Jesus imparted His own sinless nature to him. He touched this doomed outcast of society and made him whole and completely sin‑free!

We today are living in the midst of sin. It is all around us and we may occasionally come into contact with an unclean object. It would defile us, so we continually come to our only Source of holiness that He may impart His righteous nature to us. The following Scriptures wrap it up:

"… Jesus, who went before us [into heaven], has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek." (Heb 6:20 NIV)

            Continue the same thought in Heb 7:23-25 (NIV):

"Now there have been many…priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; {24} but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. {25} Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them."

We do not jump in and out of the body of Christ. No sin, if we do not continue in it, will send us hurtling to hell. Christ did not die that we should live in terror of every unwitting misstep we might make. He died to give us life and peace and security. We have that life and peace and security in Him if we do not abuse this grace. To take proper advantage of this wondrous grace when we sin, we must acknowledge our sin, turn from it and trust in His unfailing grace. Christ is our eternal security if we maintain our faith in Him.

“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ…”  (Php 1:6 KJV)

 

It is not possible for any outside force to condemn you to hell. "Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world." (1 John 4.4) Believers are like a tenant that has a lease that cannot be broken by any force of darkness. Even if he or she should do something that is contrary to the terms of the lease, they are not thrown immediately into the street, suddenly homeless and shelterless. They are advised by the Lessor (God) of their violation and allowed to continue their residency under the original terms of the lease.

            God is by no means seeking for a reason to evict us from our place in Christ. It is not consistent with sound logic that God, in the person of Jesus Christ, would suffer such pain and horror of soul for us and then quickly leave us to our sinful selves at every sinful crook of our finger. Remember this: none of us fully knows what Jesus experienced during His hour of Passion; we have not yet plumbed in our minds the extreme suffering He endured for us and we have not yet mentally grasped the unfathomable depths of God’s love for all mankind, saved and unsaved.

The following are traits we so greatly need: 1) If we would only show Him at least a little LOVE (yes, it may be relatively pitiful and weak, but our trust is in HIS righteousness, not ours) as He has shown His love for us, 2) refuse to buckle under the severest of tests and trials, 3) continue to trust in God’s love and power, even when we have failed in this way or that so horribly, 4) we should never give up on God or on our own selves trusting in God.

If we do these minimal things required of us, He will never, never forsake us. As a matter of fact all these requirements can be summed up in this: All He asks of us is that we believe in Him despite the odds that are high against our enduring to the end. If we trust God, He alone will take care of our eternal security.

Forget your shortcomings and sins; deliberately ignore your own intrinsic worthlessness – trust and keep on trusting in the only Person who can never fail. That is all anyone of us can do. That, my friend, is true Eternal Security. True Eternal Security does not encourage you to sin; it is merely there to help you when and if (scratch that: you will sin in some way) you do sin.

True Eternal Security does not falsely assure you that it is completely impossible for you to be lost; it simply says that God will do all He can short of compelling you to have faith in Him. If you persistently, consistently and obstinately refuse to be corrected by God, at long last He will have to let you go. But He is not considering that awful contingency now. God’s best efforts are now directed solely toward taking you to heaven. Work with Him.

God Has Foreseen Our Sins after Grace and Cleansed Them

No one can commit a sin that God did not see before the one who sinned committed it. Would it not stand to reason, then, that the blood of Christ, which flows forever to cleanse sins that are presently uncommitted, cleanses (not merely will cleanse) all of these uncommitted sins? I am not subscribing to Unconditional Eternal Security because I believe this future cleansing is in effect only where the faith of the one who sins does not fail.

This may not give us the gratuitous gift of never ever falling, but it certainly should give all believers a vast sense of security. It makes us know that, when we do unintentionally sin, it is not recorded against us because our High Priest Jesus Christ is continually interceding for us and presenting His own atoning blood to the Father on our behalf. That is how we can testify to living above sin every day. The sinful deed is forgiven before its enactment because the Father foresaw our need and graciously forgave us before we could cry out, “Lord, forgive me!” We need only to trust in the blood of Jesus no matter how great our failure may be. Our difficulty lies not in the “greatness” of the sin we have committed, but in the constancy of our faith in the Rock Christ Jesus.

If we refuse to not believe in the blood of Jesus – “Lord, to whom shall we go?” – and if we maintain our trust in the efficacy of the shed blood of Christ – it is impossible for us ever to lose our salvation.

I can live with that!

My Unusual Journal 63

My Unusual Journal 63

Monday, February 27, 2012, 11:54 AM

‘Predestination’ Is a Cop-out That Judgment Will Reject

“And they’ [the attendant soldiers] crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.” (Mat 27:35 KJV)

This is not predestination; the soldiers were not predestined to do what they did nor are you and I. The Spirit of God sees not only everything in the universe that He created, but everything that occurs in the element of time, which He created. It was God that created the whole space-time continuum, a closely related duo, as the medium in which the universe could exist. Space, which is one-half of the duo, makes it possible for objects to be simultaneous (existing at the same time) yet widely dispersed without piling up in huge mountainous heaps of big and small events in one pinpoint location. Time, the other half of the space-time continuum, makes it possible for any and all events to occur at widely dispersed intervals and not for all events to happen at once (can you imagine what a cosmic traffic jam that would be!) At this stage in man’s odyssey through space and time the two (space and time) are co-dependent: one cannot exist without the other. Eventually time will be relegated to the trash heap of eternity and, since the two entities are so closely bound together, I suspect that space will suffer the same fate, but, please, don’t ask me to expound further on the subject of space-time. I cannot.

Now back to the matter of predestination: As God can see all things in space, so can He see all events that happen within time. God saw from an eternity ago everything that has happened and everything that will happen throughout the duration of time from its inception at the birth of the universe. But that does not make an individual commit a sin or do anything good or bad simply because the individual was predestined by the fact that God saw him, in the beginning of the universe, perform the particular act. What God sees (present tense) from eternity past (if we may use the past tense to describe an eternity that has no past or future) is what you are doing at this moment. If you are on the verge of doing something wrong – or merely thinking on the carnal pleasure that would accrue from doing the wrong – and decide you don’t want God to see that as a part of your future record, don’t do it and don’t even entertain the thought of doing it and God will not see it. You are determining now what God sees from an eternity ago. Your future is in your own hands.

I know you have a dozen questions that are begging for answers. Well, so have I; but God has the habit of giving me just what I need for the moment and then temporarily shutting down the flow of inspiration. Sure, I often don’t understand fully what He has said to me, nevertheless I know He expects me to run with the message and the understanding He has given me. This is what I am doing now: running with what God has deigned to give me. The message – and the partial understanding I have of it – will help me and it will help you if you will have it so. Quit blaming fate or a less than favorable hand with which you were dealt. Accept full responsibility for your thoughts and deeds and ask God to help you to make straight paths for your feet (Heb. 12.13). Grace is helping our infirmities NOW. Use this grace (divine favor) NOW; it is longsuffering and patient and there will be no excuses accepted in the great day of reckoning.

My Unusual Journal 62

My Unusual Journal 62

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

There Are Two Testaments - How Could the Same God Write Both?

We who follow God in this day have noted the difference between the demands laid on the Israelites of old and the believers in Christ of this day. When we take a first cursory glance at the Old Testament Law and the New Testament guidelines and compare the two, they appear to be so very much different from each other. We are made to see apparent differences between the Old and the New Testaments/Covenants that God made with His people. (In this instance, when speaking of the Old Testament [Mosaic] Law, we are not including the Moral Law, also known as the Ten Command­ments, which are a sort of preamble to the Mosaic Law.) The Ten Commandments and the New Covenant can quite well coexist in our way of thinking; they are much alike in what they enjoin the children of God to do. It is the ceremonial law of the Old Covenant that apparently clashes with the NT Law of Christ.

Although the requirements for being a disciple now may seem to be simpler and easier than in the time of the ancient Israelites, we find on taking a second and closer look at what seem to be two laws, that the “law” of today is simply a form that is more refined, more comprehensible to humans and more pleasing to God than the first (Old Testament) law. The Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary refers to the New Covenant as a “purer and more spiritual” form of the Old Testament Law, which it undoubtedly is.

Any law of God, Old or New, necessarily expresses the will of God, and there is only one overall will of God communicated to mankind. This God-to-man communication occurred first in the Mosaic Law and then, centuries later, in the New Testament Law. The latter was the fulfilling of, and an expanding on, the Old Testament Law. To restate: There is only one God and therefore only one law expressing the one will of God. There are, within that one law, a myriad of details covering this or that aspect of our life, service and communication with God. The Old and the New both comprise the one will of God working toward one end: bringing together and perfecting a people for God.

The Law is the Law, whether Old or New, and both Old and New are one, one, ONE in being an expression or displaying of the great God Jehovah. When Moses told the Israelites in his day, “And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the LORD our God, as he hath commanded us” (Deu 6:25 KJV), he was speaking of the old Law that was then in force. You will note, at least in this case, that Moses emphasized only the doing of the Law and not its effect on the heart and mind. But I cannot get into that now.

We in this day are not required to keep the old ceremonial law for two reasons: 1) Jesus fulfilled it in His life and death, and 2) the New Testament Law does not literally demand of us the various sacrificial rites contained in the Old Testament Law. As stated above, Jesus fulfilled them in His own life and death.

The Israelites of old and the Gentiles (all who are not Jews) of today who comprise the great majority of the present day Church, seem to be a mismatch unrelated to each other, but God in His peerless wisdom knew exactly what He was doing. When Jesus arrived on the scene, He pointed out the dissimilarities between the Old and the New Covenants in His Sermon on the Mount. At the conclusion of the Sermon the Scriptures make this note: “…when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (Mat 7:28-29 KJV)

If the people had only known and accepted Jesus for who He really was, the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 1.19, 2.9), they need not have been surprised; Jesus was the human love expression of the Godhead come down to dwell among men as the human Son of God. He was the Creator of all things and the embodiment of the will (law) of God. He was Himself the Law in human form.

You may demur: “Jesus couldn’t be the personification of the Mosaic Law! The Law was harsh and unyielding and the Jesus portrayed by the Bible was a gentle, loving Person.” There are a couple of things you forget, my friend. The old Law had more than a smattering of grace in it; it was a sacerdotal system, that is, it was based on offerings and sacrifices offered by a priest as mediator. The whole system in turn was predicated on the fact that all men are sinful and need to sacrifice for their sins in order to come before the righteous God and holy Creator. In the Old Testament the priests were men who eventually died and had to be replaced. In the New Testament there was only one Priest and He was/is Jesus who lives forever. That is undeniably grace; but admittedly this grace is an island surrounded on all sides by the fear that the worshiper of that day could err in his various rituals and be struck with the judgment of an offended righteous Deity. That is a very sobering thought. But let’s continue this discourse.

Here is the larger picture: The two covenants or laws were representative of God and each emphasized one or the other side, judgmental or soteriological (redemptive). It seems that God wished to stress His love in the New Testament and His wrath and judgment in the Old Testament. But they all – wrath/judgment and love/salvation – are of the same essence of God.

We have shown how the old law had flashes of grace and mercy while calling attention to God’s strict righteousness. On the other side of the coin Jesus, who was love personified, also spoke more than a few times about judgment and the accounting that all men must give for their sins. (Mat. 11.21-24; 23.33) At this point in the schedule of God we cannot have a God who is all love without judgment nor are we left with a God who is all wrath and no love and tender concern for His children. The point is this: we who follow after Christ and righteousness do not from henceforth have to live with the fear that the wrath of God will come crashing from the skies like a thunderbolt – or come insidiously in a deadly disease – to execute punishment on us for our sins. There can be no judgment for sins where there are no sins; and we who believe in Jesus are forever free of sin. When we do sin in this area or that, the blood that Jesus is offering to the Father immediately washes it away and we are freely justified (Heb. 9.24). The sin does not appear on our record and we can continue to live in God's presence, which we could not if there were sin of any kind defiling us. Surely, surely, this is grace unbounded!

Is this too much to ask of your faith in Christ? Think on this: No one can commit a sin that God did not see before the one who sinned committed it. Would it not stand to reason, then, that the blood of Christ, which flows forever to cleanse sins that are presently uncommitted, cleanses (not merely will cleanse) all of these uncommitted sins? I am not presently subscribing to Unconditional Eternal Security because I believe this future cleansing is in effect only where the faith of the one who sins does not fail. This may not give us the gratuitous gift of never ever falling, but it certainly gives all believers a great measure of security. We need only to trust in the blood of Jesus no matter how great our failure may be. Our difficulty lies not in the “greatness” of the sin committed, but in the constancy of the faith in Christ of the one who committed the sin.

If we refuse to not believe – “Lord, to whom shall we go?” – and if we maintain our trust in the efficacy of the shed blood of Christ – it is impossible for us ever to lose our salvation.

 At this point I have not by any means exhausted the mystery of the Old and the New Testaments, but I believe I have accomplished what I set out to do. I have presented to you the one true God of the Bible – of the Old and the New Testament. God is still a God of wrath, but we who believe in Him will never face that wrath. He is also undoubtedly a God of love and salvation, but those who steadfastly refuse to believe in Him will never experience that love and salvation that are both immeasurably great and eternal.

Love and Grace and Deliverance

Love and grace and deliverance... That is quite a combination, and one follows the other as surely as day follows night. Love is preeminent because God is love and nothing comes before Him. Nevertheless, the quality of grace has been around as long as love. Yet love is preeminent, not in length of existence, but in a hierarchical sense. Without love there would be no grace, and without grace there could be no deliverance of any sort for sinful mankind.

We agree, of course, that God has always known all things – every vagrant breeze that has moved gently across the Sahara to soothe a weary traveler’s fevered brow, every word that has ever been spoken or will yet be spoken, every sigh emanating from a broken heart. If God does indeed know all things, grace must have flowed from an eternity ago because God always knew man would sin. Nevertheless, grace still did not spring up of itself. It had its “origin” in the love of God.

There was only one cause for this grace to be generated in the heart of God. The cause was sin, and owing to the continuance of sin and its corollary problems, grace still abounds. Without the sustaining element of grace we would all be dead forever – without hope of resurrection. It is grace that moves God to deliver His believing children from their many troubles. Grace moves Him to rescue them from their many predicaments and dangers.

But there can be no rescue if there is no danger from which to be rescued. As we look at the experiences of the Israelites in their wandering through the desert, we see that God delivered them many times only because they encountered many dangers and needs along the way. God was walking with them even when they could not sense His presence. All they could see with their myopic eyes were the dangers or the massive needs confronting them. But they were not, nor are we, cast into a forlorn, dreary land to survive on their own. As with Israel, God has us there for the positive effects the experience will work in us.

In order to be healed, you have to be sick. To experience God's deliverance from any situation, you first have to be in the trying situation. Both of these premises mean that the God you say does not want you to experience illness or loss, has to let you actually experience illness and loss so that He might heal you. I agree with that assertion and, if it is true, why can we not take it a step further and assume that God could let you get grievously ill or go through an extended period of poverty in order to show His great power in delivering you from those two negative conditions?

Now to get extreme in our imagining, why should we think it a reproach to God's reputation when He lets a saint die while trusting God? To me that shows the power and glory of God as much as an astounding healing or a sudden change from rags to riches in which God turns a sow's ear into a silk purse. Have we forgotten who our God is and how He delights to work in a myriad of ways to show His power and glory? He has absolutely no limits to the ways in which He can operate. Ironically, it seems that we are limited in our faith, thinking that God can only operate in spectacular miracles. We need to take the restraints off God and let Him be what He wants to be when He wants to be and how He wants to be.

When I was a youngster, I remember seeing the saints at our church who were facing hard trials of their faith through illness or financial need or whatever it  might have been – I can recall that these individuals would go up to the altar after service was over and kneel there until an elder could come and pray for them. Some would state what their situation was and some would not. They just kneeled there until a man of God – any man of God, their faith was not in the man, but in God – would come and quietly pray for them. Some were healed and some were not.  Some were delivered from their trying hour quickly and some had to endure for a while until God would rein the adversary in.

As I have said, there were healings, although they were usually not done instantly, but in a few hours or a few days or a few weeks. There was not a great clamor (at least in our church) for instant healing or on-the-spot deliverances such as we hear today. Were those days better than now? Not unless God was greater then than He is today. God is God and He will always be what we have the faith for Him to be. If we really have faith for instant healings or other similar miracles, they will be granted, but God does not always give us that type of faith. We conjure up what we refer to as faith, but what we are actually doing is flying in the face of the will of God. We are demanding instant gratification when He has decreed a long, slow process of healing or deliverance.

As we walk through the burning sand, under the scorching rays of the sun, which seems to be a fireball filling the heavens, God is there despite our lack of sensing Him. He watches over us as a master refiner subjecting the metal to a white-hot fire, purging us of all dross so that in the end we will come forth as pure as gold that has been tried in the fire.

Israel did not get deliverance when there was no opposition. How could they be delivered from nothing? Similarly, miracles, which include various means of deliverance, do not happen for no reason. God doesn’t toy with His awesome power like a kid playing with its toys. God doesn’t have to test Himself to see if He really has all power. He knows it; it is His by the nature of His being God. He will deliver and He will work miracles for us believers in order to show US His invincible might. But, as stated, first there has to be a need for the deliverance, whether the deliverance is miraculous or not.

There are three things that have to come together in your life before God will show His power of deliverance: 1) you will have to know an extremity of some sort; 2) you will have to feel distress generated by the extremity; and 3) you will have to cry out to God from the midst of your distress. When God sees your need, takes note that you are hurting and deigns to hear your urgent cry, He will bestir Himself to work the type of deliverance that is best for you and in the time that coincides with His will.

There are some deliverances for which we have to wait and wait and wait. That is when your faith is tried to the utmost. If you think you have the faith that is “strong” enough for immediate deliverance (because “God doesn’t want me to suffer”), when the deliverance does not come immediately, you are cruelly disappointed.

As a people (please do not ask me to what people I am referring),we gladly accept the health-wealth  point of view because it is what we all want. We are told that a loving God certainly does not want His followers to suffer and to be poor. You have got to be kidding me! It is hard for me to believe that any veteran disciple of Christ could accept such Pablum. There is not one of the biblical heroes of faith who did not encounter adversity of some sort.  Even the most unbelieving psychoanalyst will tell you that a moderate amount of suffering that is endured in the right frame of mind can be beneficial for a person. That makes my point: As children of God – a God who loves us – we can expect that God will in love allow us to suffer in the right amount that will make us grow and prosper spiritually or in any other area of life.

It's all right with you when you have the faith to picture yourself enclosed in a fortress where nothing can break through to hurt you. But can you conceive of a time when God allows adversity to come through just severe and long enough to work some facet of His will in your life?  Can you accept physical affliction as a part of God's will or are you just another Christian who has not matured enough for this advanced point of view?  And then there is the possibility that God will choose to call you home by the very affliction from which you think He should deliver you. Are you mature enough and is your faith strong enough to accept God’s will in the matter?  This is the type of situation that clearly is not a class in Faith 101; it is an advanced study for the serious disciple of Christ

God is a God of love and grace and deliverance and He tempers the fire of affliction and regulates just how long it should last. It usually will not kill us – if it did, would we really want to buck against His will? – and it will not hurt us ultimately. It is like a good old-fashioned spanking administered by a loving parent. The parent knows when to administer the chastisement, how physically severe it should be and how long it should last. And the misbehaving child will not die from the punishment although he hollers to high heaven that he is being killed.

Take your discipline like a good child of God and keep your faith alive and well. Submit to His will, secure in the knowledge that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Bear in mind that God still works miracles of deliverance. Who can say what He has in mind for you?

           

Post Script

Perhaps God is preparing you be a divinely called Intercessor for saints and/or unbelievers who are in dire straits of any kind. Of course all saints are by their very nature intercessors or persons who pray for others in need. But some saints are called by God to be special intercessors. It is their responsibility to take on the extreme cases that defy faith and God and love and submission to the divine will. I confess I am not a “special intercessor” although, like all believers, I am required to intercede fervently for my brothers and sisters and those who are lost in sin. And for that type of praying, we must empathize or “feel” the hurts and needs of our fellow creatures.

I will close with this excerpt from the end of My Unusual Journal 2 (6/14/11:

But it [effectual, fervent prayer] doesn’t come without a price. It hurts – and what did I expect; a foot-stomping glory hallelujah occasion? That may come later when he/she and I (both of us) come out of our grueling test. But even now while I am in the furiously burning fire with my partner in pain, there is a deep down joy and praise for what God has done for my brother and me: my brother now has a colleague who can pray for him the effectual, fervent prayer that he needs – and I, what do I have? I have the sense of fulfillment that comes only from reaching out in love to a fellow creature in their direst hour and enduring the trial of their faith with them. And be assured: The bread I have cast upon the waters will no doubt return to me in my own time of grief and pain. (Ecc 11.1)

And, thank God, it certainly has!

The Evidences of God Are All Around

There is a hope deep within the human psyche that surely there is something more to existence than this. It is not what psychologists would term a rational hope; it is not founded on facts contained in abstruse mathematical calculations or things presently seen. Many a scientific theory has originally been based on mathematical calculations; and in the scientific field it is a very good way to operate. Nevertheless, life does not consist only in materiality -- the things one can perceive by one of the five senses -- nor in a complex interrelationship of numbers.

Purely human logic can give only a certain type of hope. It can predict a future with fewer illnesses and much greater conveniences, but it can never, of itself, foresee a tomorrow that has no pains, no adversities and no sorrows. It can never eliminate the tortured thinking with which some minds are cursed. The power to reason in solely human terms is a severely limited type of reasoning. It never attains the ability to do away with all the negatives of life.

Consider this: the beasts of the field don’t have a hope of a better day. When adversity besets them, they endure it because they know no other way to behave. And they never try to commit suicide. Only a greater intellect does that! Their only reaction to distress and pain is to whine and mope; and eventually they will die like the animals they are. That is all there is to life for them. It’s not what we would call a life. But their limited ability to reason prevents them from giving it a thought. There is a "box" around their minds and they can't think outside of it.

In a sense, a solely humanistic hope takes mankind only a step higher than the beasts. Man has a hope of better things in the materialistic realm, but, other than that, he is no better off than his dog, on which he lavishes so much attention. Man and beast – both have their day in the sun and then are no more. But man, in his allotted time and because of his greater intellect, experiences more grief. His superior brain observes more, ponders more and is more open to malfunctioning than the simple brain of his household pet.

Evidently hope (the loss of which brings on despair) comes only with a higher intellect. But mankind has blighted this bright glow of hope with a perverted type of reasoning. Man with his bulbous brain has concluded that hope of a heavenly tomorrow is irrational. Since it is irrational, there is no hope. Such thinking allows the attendant despair (always waiting at the heels of hope) to rush in to fill the vacuum.

We have to assume, then, that the hope buried in the human consciousness cannot come from any theorized evolution of the brain. Reason, of which dominant man makes his boast, precludes that idea. Reason is cold and based on known facts. Based on what man knows of himself and the world around him, it is unreasonable to have hope of an illusive brighter tomorrow. Human nature cannot sustain such hope. No amount of legislation can alter human nature nor can it change flawed human genes that mold the personality of an individual.

A Reason for Hope

Some persons are born with a load of genetic baggage (garbage) that makes their lives a continual torment. They are incapable of enjoying the bright glow of tomorrow’s hope. The average person uses his “mind” to control all the negative thoughts that arise in his mind, but what do these unfortunates do when the mind itself is malfunctioning?

The one who believes in God, of course, knows, beyond human logic, that there will be a brighter tomorrow. He is confident that this life is not all there is to existence. Note this: the hope of a better future did not come just when the believer was converted. We were all born with a vague sense of the hope, but somewhere along the way, from birth to the amassing of mounds of knowledge, we have managed to kill off the hope. Secular reasoning tells us it is not logical.

We might suppose that a brilliant thinker and scientist would be so impressed with the wonders of the cosmos that he would acknowledge there has to be a God. Therefore there would be reason to hope for a perfect future, as a perfect God will not long endure imperfection in any of His works. We would further assume that this thinker and scientist would become a worshiper of the God who is part of the one same package: God and universe; therefore, no God, no universe. But that would be making assumptions without taking into account the stupidity and arrogance of mankind.

Why stupidity? Because there is such an overwhelming amount of sheerly circumstantial evidence. Legal cases are not usually won on circumstantial evidence alone, but a skilled attorney can win where there is a voluminous amount of such evidence. We have within us and all around us and stretching out to infinity a crushing weight of circumstantial evidence of God’s existence. It is so preponderant that any second-rate lawyer could prove God’s existence before an impartial jury without difficulty. He could do so even without the physical appearance of God Himself.

Why arrogance? Because when man acquires such great knowledge of the universe within, around and above him, by some reverse logic he comes to think of himself as part of the Creator rather than part of the creation. The total package is still the same of God and the universe, and without one there is not the other, but arrogant man foolishly crosses over the boundary between creation (universe) and Creator.

When he, the created being, has unearthed even a small part of the mysteries of the universe, he has begun to get a greater technical knowledge of the One who made the universe. The knowledge is circumscribed and superficial, as any amount of technical data about God would have to be. Yet the creature’s growing familiarity with these things that are above his head, leads him to a relative contempt of all matters pertaining to the divine. He thinks that, by going beyond the universe and immersing himself in the theological, he has become by some magical osmosis one with the Creator. This is sheer stupidity and arrogance and a perilous venture onto very thin ice.

There are some scientists who have bowed before the existence of a Creator, but the majority have stubbornly maintained that they do not know of a Creator. Neither affirming or denying, they are like a bird dog that has chanced into a bevy of quails -- quails all around it -- and gets confused by the massive amount of “evidence.” So the confused dog doesn’t know what to do with all the evidence – the very thing for which it had assiduously been seeking. But man is supposedly more intelligent than a bird dog.

Mankind should realize that every scrap of new information about a medical cure or an astronomical discovery or the ingenious workings of the human brain is affirmation of there being an infinitely more complex Creator behind it all. The very reason in which man makes his boast insists there had to be a Creator who originated and sustains it all. But man stands there claiming no knowledge of a Creator while a whole bevy of “quails” surrounding him gives the lie to his claim.

It seems to me, with my untutored mind, that if there were any credibility to the theory of evolution, and if there were no God powering all of creation, I still would have to believe that some great Force fully intended for mankind to be superior to the animals. When you ponder the differences between man and beast the superiority of man is clear. Was it only by chance? Perhaps it was – if you believe that the sun is in the sky by happenstance and that the rain falls and vegetation grows – all for man’s benefit – by no more than a casual change in Nature’s “mood” or a slight hiccup in the evolutionary process.

For you who still believe there is no evidence of a God, I am trying diligently to be unbiased. To me the evidence is clear and unmistakable. Forget the demands of science for hard evidence, “a smoking gun or a dead body.” We can see the hand of God all around us. His hand is in the tissues and cells of our bodies. It is in this envelope of air that surrounds the earth. The atmosphere, if you will. The atmosphere is a kind of gigantic ecosystem containing all that mankind and the subordinate species need to survive. It is a huge recycling system that needs no input from the outside (except the rays of the sun), but recycles all solids and gases for the continuance of life on the planet.

God’s hand is in the mind with which we reason and conceive ideas. It is in the giant redwoods of California and in the seedling that determinedly pushes its way up through the soil toward the sunlight and air above ground. It is in the conception and birth of every species, particularly that of mankind.

I can’t continue in this vein. I don’t have the space and you would not have the attention span. I’ll conclude with this: There is abundant reason for the hope of a better tomorrow.   You only have to look around you, look above you, look within you – and believe.

 

My Unusual Journal 61

My Unusual Journal

My Unusual Journal 61 - Sunday, February 05, 2012, 4:26 PM

The Wonders of Redemption

“Living He loved me, dying He saved me,

Buried He carried my sins far away;

Rising He justified freely forever,

One day He’s coming, O glorious day!”

 

In this song the major components of Jesus’ mission to earth are broken down or analyzed. Jesus did not come to earth on a whim; God never does anything on a mere fancy, particularly His world (not to say, cosmos-) changing  mission to effect redemption for all men and to bring His entire Creation back into what He had originally intended it to be.  If you have never before seen the love, wisdom and power of God flash forth in its full glory, behold it now as we study the lines of this song:

Living He Loved Me

The life Jesus lived among men was one long pilgrimage of love. Many times the people He loved and wanted to save tried His longsuffering love. Many times they blasphemously denied His divine assignment, twisted His words and rejected Jesus before He ever neared Gethsemane or Calvary, which were the high points of His suffering in this life.

Before Jesus could die for us, He first had to live for us in order to give that sinless life in exchange for our tawdry, ragged ones. But His life was not, in a carnal sense, an endless delight. It is true He had peace and joy from His Father to sustain Him, but so do we, yet our life is not so enjoyable that we are loath to leave it. Furthermore you can discard the notion that Jesus’ life was much like ours: 1) He carried the ghastly knowledge of what lay ahead of him; 2) Jesus was not permitted the companionship of a wife and the joys of a normal family life. He had a family, yes. His twelve closest followers were His family – and they could be a petty, contentious group. Jesus had the responsibility of teaching them, by precept and by living example, what it meant to be children of God. There are at least three examples in Scripture of how they disappointed Him at times. Of course there were many more examples that could not be included. It would not be possible to include every significant instance of the disciples’ petty foibles and prejudices in any one package.

And we must not ignore the teaching in the Law under which Jesus lived that demanded full penalty for any offense against one’s brother: Jesus had to precisely fulfill the penalties imposed on sinful mankind for their offenses against a righteous God. That was an impossible task, but Jesus bared His back to the lash of divine justice – and not once did He complain. It was not fair, it was not a just pin our eyes, but an overwhelming surge of LOVE compelled Him to do it.

Under the Old Testament Law if a man smote his brother so that the brother lost an eye, the guilty party had to have his eye gouged out. It was the same with any part of the body: what the perpetrator did to the victim, the same must be inflicted on the perpetrator.

The Law was a look into the Person of God and, by a close examination of the Law, we see that all the offenses we have committed against God must be inflicted on us – and we would still not have forgiveness of our sins. The penalty would have been paid, but the sin would still be on our record. As we learn in the Law and as the New Testament writer of Hebrews reminds us,

“And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission [of sins].” (Heb 9:22 KJV)

God in the Person of Jesus Christ shed the atoning blood for all mankind.

Dying He Saved Me

It is a remarkable fact that the human Jesus carried full knowledge – at least from the start of His public ministry – that He would 1) suffer much in the Garden of Gethsemane, 2) die in agony on the cross, and 3) know the torments of hell after He died because the Father had rejected Him.

All of it, the pain and agony and death on Calvary, were a fulfilling of the Old Testament Law. In fact the Law was a picture of the awesome duties and the immaculate Person of Jesus.

Buried He Carried My Sins Far Away

In the burial of Jesus we see the hope and promise that our sins were buried deep and completely forgotten as viable marks against us. No more can anyone, man or devil, accuse believers in Christ of the “smallest” of sins: they are all under the blood of Jesus and will never be held against us.

Rising He Justified

“…freely [and] forever.” It is as though we had never sinned in our lives previously and from henceforth!

The redemption of mankind in reality is one astounding, incredible feat that embraces 1) Jesus’ life – living He loved me – 2) His death – dying He saved me – His death symbolizing the death of our sinful nature – 3) buried He carried my sins far away – and 4) His resurrection – rising He justified. The song quoted does not include Jesus’ nativity nor His ascension to His Father, but that is also part of the redemption package. It would be difficult to include a full portrayal of every significant detail of Redemption in any one handy parcel. The glory and love and power would burst the package at the seams.