Sabbath Sacrifice

Darkness covered the land from about the sixth hour until the ninth hour, it says. Voices were stilled, quiet descended only yesterday. Today, the Son of Man is dead. I’ve called this Sabbath Sacrifice because it was unlawful to touch or prepare a dead body on the day of Sabbath in the Jewish faith. Thus, Christ was laid in a tomb unwashed and unpreserved. A borrowed tomb, as he was unable even to afford a burial plot of his own. So perished the great Son of Man. A day of darkness indeed.

If any among you have seen the play or the movie “Amadeus”, you will recognize the analogy I’m about to draw. The final scene in the movie is the shrouded body of Mozart dumped unceremoniously into the grave of a pauper, shoveled over with a careless spill of lime and some dark earth. It helps to remember the life he lived in preparation for that scene, and on the Saturday of death in the Easter event it helps, too, to remember the life of Christ in the darkened tomb that haunts our inner vision. So as we meditate on Christ’s burial this day, focus on His life, focus on His accomplishment in both life and death. And in that meditation, bear one thing in mind, because that’s where I’m going to start: Christ, before he died, while praying in Gethsemane, spoke these words according to John:

“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one”. (John 17:20-22)

Christ prayed not just for those whom he loved, his disciples, but also for those who would come to love Him through the words that they bore. One of the most transcendent prayers of glory in the Bible, prayed for all of those who have been redeemed in Him.

I wrote last time about the contemporaneous nature of Christ’s sacrifice, and tonight (still Saturday as I write this), I want to speak about that in greater detail, preparing you for part three, which is the resurrection miracle and the gift of re-presentation.

The sacrifice Christ made for us, that God made for His children, was and is in love. In Philippians 2, Paul writes these words:

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:4-11)

Which resonate in the pronouncement of Isaiah 52:13-53:12:

“Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you- his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind- so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard, they understand.
Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows; and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes, we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. by oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.”

That’s a lot of Bible, but the content boils down to this (in three separate books by three different authors at three different times, no less): Jesus is the man of sorrows, who bore all of our suffering, all of our guilt, all of our wounds, that God might be glorified in Him. So as we turn again to the death of sin in the death of Christ, turn to it again with these thoughts.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Warrior – Fathers and Sons III

I Chronicles 22:8
“But the word of the Lord came to me, saying “you have shed much blood and waged great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me on the earth.”

I say that the Lord did not want a house built in violence, but a house built in peace, that it might truly become a house of prayer for all nations. Our God is not a God simply of sacrifice, but a God of great tenderness also. Solomon was to build the temple in peace-time, to honour the Lord as God among the Israelites when they could truly worship him. It is not beneficial to the Christian to wage war always, because God is then not glorified fully. Although we are no strangers to adversity, we are not meant to be in a perpetual season of strife.

David was a man of conquests as well as a man after God’s own heart. Let us not forget that David slew Goliath, and earned the respect of Israel in this way. He was and remained a warrior for God. By the Lord’s strength and by his grace and providence, David was enabled as a man of action.

Here, in the larger passage, we can see the playing out of a new dynamic – If a man’s father is a warrior, then his son, by the Lord’s will, may be a man of peace. Let us not dismiss the call to be a warrior, however, because if we are men of peace, then we are also men of inaction, and incapability.

The Lord, too, is honouring David’s sacrifices to bless his son. Look further. Verse 9:
“Behold, a son shall be born to you who shall be a man of rest. I will give him rest from all his surrounding enemies. For his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days.” Praise God for offering balance when it is needed. By the cost of the father’s sacrifice is the measure of the son judged, and I would encourage men of integrity to take heed of this.

Next time: Jesus said “the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise…”

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Freedom – Representatives Series IV

It is in obedience that we are free.

Transgression is freedom given false expression. It is self-will towards the actualization of alternative codes of conduct. Essentially, it asserts the self above others.

Disobedience is actually enslavement, because we are acting to benefit ourselves by breaking the codes that others have imposed upon us. We are thus captured by the need to be our own people.

Let’s look at some Bible for a minute, so you can see what I mean.

Romans 6:15-23
“What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I ams speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

What’s the importance here, you might ask? Why do I need to think about where I’m ‘free’, how I define it, and what it means to me?

Because we all have prisons. We all look at the world, no matter where we stand in relation to Christ and no matter how successful we might be, as somewhere that can’t contain our ambitions. Or as something from which we need to escape, through drugs, alcohol, parties, or by any means necessary.

Not to put too simple a strain on it, but what is it we feel we need to escape from, whether in the mind or in the body? And what in the Hell is going on?

Stop and think about this for a minute. Biblically, Christ died to free us from sin. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”(Galatians 5:1). Obviously, He had to set us free from something. His life, lived in obedience, was in fact a life that was lived towards freedom. But those many who deny Christ’s life as the expression of obedience unto freedom…

are still trying to escape from slavery.

Those who do not understand the message of the Bible are still aware of its practical working out in their lives, because they still feel the need to escape from the nameless things that surround them, and so turn to self-sufficiency.

And this hits the heart of Christians, too. Many of us are imprisoned by work, or by service, or simply because we are still living on our own terms, trying to accomplish everything by our strength and by our will.

But ultimately, there are still two things remaining. Freedom, and enslavement.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.