The periods of pain and suffering, much of the time, flowed from a lack of understanding about the righteousness of God.
Fear was a big problem in my life:
"Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." (Isaiah 41: 10)
The key element for overcoming fear, or anything else, is righteousness.
That one word escaped my attention time and again.
Yet Jesus made His righteousness the preeminent element for all other gifts:
"33But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
"34Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Matthew 6: 33-34)
The Cross is God's forever signal to us, the testimony that He is our God and sees us through all our hurts and upsets:
"10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)
"I am a God to You." Wow!
"All shall know me" - instead of us trying to know Him, He will cause us to know Him. Wow!
Why?
"Because I will be merciful (i.e. will pay for) their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities I will remember no more."
No one had told me any of this. Not even in churches. Arrgh!
Why does God not remember our sins anymore? Because He remembered all of them in His Son at the Cross:
"38Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: 39And by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." (Acts 13: 38-39)
And also
"And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;" (Colossians 2: 13)
and
"1There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. " (Romans 8: 1-4)
God condemned sin in the flesh, and thus the righteousness of the law was fulfilled for us and in us.
All through the Cross!
Noah constructed the ark, a picture of Jesus our Savior, from the tree:
"Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch." (Genesis 6: 14)
When the Israelites complained about the bitter waters, Moses threw in the tree, which healed the waters:
"24And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? 25And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them, 26And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee." (Exodus 15: 24-26)
When the Israelites were bitten by the snakes, they looked to a bronze serpent on a tree:
"And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." (Numbers 21: 9)
When David's son rebelled against him, a tree stopped him and made him an easy target:
"9And Absalom met the servants of David. And Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth; and the mule that was under him went away. 10And a certain man saw it, and told Joab, and said, Behold, I saw Absalom hanged in an oak." (2 Samuel 18: 9-10)
The Cross is the answer to every problem you face, the signal, the standard under which you can rest, just as Abraham did when he ate with the Holy Trinity in his tent. (Genesis 18)
The Cross speaks of full justification before God, and for that reason we are more than conquerors (Romans 8: 37)!
No comments:
Post a Comment