Jesus – Page 7 – LOVE | ACCEPT

Psalm 54 He Has Delivered Me

Strangers are attacking me; ruthless men seek my life – men without regard for God. (v3)

To varying degrees, every Christian can identify with the sentiment behind that verse. We have been attacked, persecuted, teased, goaded, etc. in countless ways by people who do not know God and even by those who do. We wonder why He allows this. Have we done something to deserve it? Are we being punished in some way?

Perhaps we forget the words of the Lord in John 16:33: “In this world you will have have trouble.” It doesn’t console us much but we are better off when we memorize the entire verse which reads;

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

One thought we should always consider with regard to our current troubles is the way in which they fit into the larger plan of the kingdom. We may never see or know (in this life) this effect that our troubles have within God’s larger plan. It may be that our struggles and the way in which we face them will move another to seek the Lord or, even longer term, may set up bigger things that we will never see. Contrary to the worldly demand to know everything, we must simply trust in God and His Kingdom plan.

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Day Six in the School of Prayer

“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!” (Matthew 7:9-11)

How much more indeed! Often we are willing to settle for simple material gifts when the Father wants to give us so much more. The cursory handling of the verses from the Sermon on the Mount leads to the idea that our material needs—food, clothing, shelter—are to be the core of our prayers as we see the human father gives sustenance rather than danger and damage. The Saints are further led astray by reading into this passage a ‘blank check’ from Heaven in the implicit promise of good gifts. The best gift, Murray points out, is nothing material. It is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and His control over our life and living in this world. This is the gift we should earnestly be seeking, trusting in God to take care of all of the things He already knows we need.

Jesus teaches in our lesson today to lift our eyes and hearts above our immediate circumstances to see how much more life the Father has for us when we open our connection to the Vine. The Spirit is our connection and the gift we receive upon belief that enables the life-giving nectar of the Vine to flow into our empty souls.

The Atonement as Divine Healing

The Suffering and Glory of the Servant

See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.

Just as there were many who were appalled at him— his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness— so will he sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him.

For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand.

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12)

The Healing view of Atonement roots itself in this passage from Isaiah and the scriptures that orbit around it that see the atoning work of Christ in terms of the restoration of Shalom to the whole of God’s people. God the Healer is not satisfied to only redeem humankind from their sinful separation from His holiness, He also intended the atonement to restore the physical ailments that result from our corruption of the world. Shalom, the well being, wholeness, and peace that were characteristic of the newborn world is what God envisions for His redeemed. Jesus models the Physician through His healing and teaching ministry and initiates our restoration to Shalom through His sacrifice.

The Healing paradigm is a minority view that is often subsumed under other more dominant theological positions. Many are able to accept atonement for sin but demur at the idea of including physical ailments. Proponents say that the other views are too narrow in their scope; God had a much more comprehensive restoration in mind in reconciling humanity to Himself. They embrace a holistic view of the predicament of mankind that describes us as sin-sick and the sickness is comprised of both a spiritual and a physical component and this dual-corruption infects our economic, political, social and environment systems. Restoration is needed: Have you rejected Judah completely? Do you despise Zion? Why have you afflicted us so that we cannot be healed? W hoped for peace but no good has come, for a time of healing but there is only terror. O Lord we acknowledge our wickedness and the guilt of our fathers, we have indeed sinned against you. (Jer 14:19-20). Holistic healing of body and soul is in view in light of the biblical affirmation of the connection between sin, sickness, and well-being.

The theology of this view can be examined by a systematic approach to the Scriptures but the outline of this school of thought is most easily understood by outlining the Suffering Servant passage. I won’t approach this line by line but rather, thought by thought.

52:13 The Savior/Healer will be lifted up and exalted. Jesus as the Physician was lifted up on the Cross and exalted in His resurrection.
52:15 He will cleanse the nation and His mission and atoning actions will be seen by all.
53:3 The Savior will be despised of men and will be a man of sorrows. Note that the Hebrew word used for sorrows includes physical and mental pain.
53:4 The Savior took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. In view is the recognition that disease is often a result of sinful living as a consequence of Original Sin.
53:5 The Savior was pierced for our transgressions (sin) and crushed for our iniquities (evil). The punishment visited upon Him resulted in our Shalom and healed our infirmities. Note the impression of holistic redemption inferred from this verse.
53:10 The guilt offering was the Lord himself; substitution is in view here.
53:11 This singular sacrifice of the the Savior brought the satisfaction that so many animal, etc. sacrifices had not in the past.
53:12 The Savior bore the sin on behalf of many and now He stands as the intercessor for transgressors.

We can refer to Malachi for a summary:

But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. (Mal 4:2)

Conclusion

The healing view of the atonement attracts adherents on two fronts. First, the believer can be assured of the forgiveness of their sin and that they can reconciled in their relationship with God. Second, with holistic healing in view, humankind can be certain that God desires good for us; He desires Shalom. Though the believer’s life will be fraught with travail and struggle, the notion that ultimately there will be Shalom provides the necessary encouragement to persevere. Though the outline in this article was developed around an outline in Isaiah, the healing ministry of Jesus is found throughout the Gospels (note that fully one third of Mark is devoted to healing). The atonement brought by Christ solves our most fundamental plight as the corrupted children of the Garden. We are reconciled (Rom 5:10-11), our sins are forgiven never to be held against us (2 Cor 5:18-19) and we have an intercessor (Rom 8:34). The additional benefit that must not be overlooked is the satisfaction of our holistic need for physical and mental healing by this same act. Much like the paralytic man in Matthew 9, humanity is forgiven and given a hand up from our ailments.

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Day Five in the School of Prayer

[In which we follow the Andrew Murray classic With Christ in the School of Prayer]

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

On the mountainside, the Lord urges us to pray with confidence, assured that the Father hears our prayers and answers them. There are three answers that we are taught to expect as we embark upon our prayer life: Yes, No, or Not Yet. Jesus teaches that we are to be persistent in our prayer, petitioning the Father until we receive an answer. Ask, seek, and knock and the Lord promises it will be answered.

Our petitions must be properly formed. James 4:3 says “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” This is why we sit at the feet of Jesus in the school of prayer, to learn to pray properly for the things of the kingdom first and foremost and trusting in God for all else. It is up to us to take the lessons to heart.

Murray concludes

Let us no make the feeble experiences of our unbelief the measure of what our faith may expect. let us seek, not only just in our seasons of prayer, but at all times, to hold fast the joyful assurances: man’s prayer on earth and God’s answer in heaven are meant for each other. Let us trust Jesus to teach us so to pray that the answer can come. he will do it, if hold fast the word he gives today: “Ask, and ye shall receive.”

School of Prayer Day Four

[In which we follow the Andrew Murray classic With Christ in the School of Prayer]

This then, is how you should pray: (Mt 6:9)

Because of the new fashion in which He wants His disciples to pray, the Lord offers a model for our emulation. Jesus offers the prayer as a framework through which our own hearts are to poured and our priorities aligned. It was not meant to be simply copied, though that was not prohibited. It is our model, used to teach us how our own prayers are to be formed and it contains ideas new to the first disciples that were stunning in how they change our approach to the throne.

“Our Father in heaven,”…We may take this entreaty for granted having learned this from an early age but, to fully grasp the depth of this adoration we must be mindful that the disciples had never before considered God as their Father. This revelation links us inextricably with the Lord in the household of God—he is our father and the Father of the Son. All that follows in prayer, our trust for provision, our pleas for protection, our expression of confidence, everything is now in the context of the personal. God is not an abstract concept that sits distant from us and deigns to address our words. He is our loving and merciful Father in whom we seek to live our life.

Murray closes with this,

Children of God! It is thus Jesus would have us pray to the Father in heaven. O let His Name, and Kingdom, and Will, have the first place in our love; His providing, and pardoning, and keeping love will be our sure portion. So the prayer will lead us up to the true child-life: the Father all to the child, the Father all for the child. We shall understand how Father and child, the Thine and the Our, are all one, and how the heart that begins its prayer with the God-devoted Thine, will have the power in faith to speak out the Our too. Such prayer will, indeed, be the fellowship and interchange of love, always bring us back in trust and worship to Him who is not only the Beginning but the End.

School of Prayer Day Three

[In which we follow the Andrew Murray classic With Christ in the School of Prayer]

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Mt 6:6)

Why does the Lord send us to a secret place to pray? If we read the verse above in its context we find that Jesus wants our prayers to be pure, to be lifted to God’s ears alone rather than simply spouted for show. He wants us to realize the intimacy of the act of prayer. Praying is our time of intimate communion with our Heavenly Father not to be shared with or divided by the outside influences that swirl around us at all times. By entering our prayer closet and closing the door behind us, we are shutting out the world both figuratively and literally. We are alone with God and our beating heart.

Jesus also telegraphs to us His understanding of our fallen nature. He knows that we will either pray for the admiration of those around us in our worst state or we will be constrained by the fear of the crowd’s judgment in our least. The privacy of our closet removes the inhibition that clouds true prayer and the joy of nestling in the Father’s presence, allowing its great comfort and security to wash over us and releasing the prayer of our hearts more than that of our heads.

School of Prayer Day Two

[In which we follow the Andrew Murray classic With Christ in the School of Prayer]

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” (Jn 4:23-24)

Jesus spoke these words to the Samaritan woman at the well, lovingly teaching her the New Way of things. Worship is not constrained by time or place as so much of our Western culture has come to believe. Proper and worthy worship must be aligned with God’s nature which is spirit. It is also in truth, which, in the gospel of John is closely aligned with Jesus (cf 14:6). It will only be through Jesus that we learn to properly worship and pray as a part of that worship.

The Samaritan woman cannot immediately grasp what she is being told and are not automatically able to approach the throne in prayer properly. We need the Spirit through whom Christ will instruct us. He has not left us simply with a set of instructions to follow in the Bible but the Lord has also provided us with a paraclete, a helper who will guide our practice. When we have received this gift is when we are able to pray in spirit and truth, or at least, to begin to.

The Penal Substitution View of Atonement

The dominant view of the Atonement among modern Evangelicals is the Penal Substitution view. Simply defined, this view says that God the Father, because of His immeasurable love for humanity, sent His Son to die to satisfy the demands of his justice. In doing so, Jesus Christ took the place of sinful humanity and once and for all was the atonement for all our sins. There are several key elements that support this theory but at its core is the notion that sin results in the just penalty of death (Rom 6:23) and that, in love, Christ died in our place (Rom 5:8). His death took the penalty for our sin (Rom 3:25-26) satisfying the demands of the Father’s justice.

Historical Development of the View

Early church fathers such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Athtanasius included the idea of vicarious sacrifice in their understanding of the atonement but it was Augustine who synthesized the various themes into a comprehensive view of the Atonement. The penal substitution view became fully developed with the Protestant Reformers starting with Luther and then Calvin who formalized the ideas of Augustine into a cohesive whole.

We can use Calvin’s structure to understand the different aspects of vicarious sacrifice as he organized the idea through the use of three key theological concepts. Propitiation portrays Christ’s work in its Godward aspect. Through His sacrifice as our substitute Christ satisfied the demands of a just God: “The meaning, therefore, is, that God, to whom we were hateful through sin, was appeased by the death of his Son, and made propitious to us.” (Ref Rom 5:11 Calvin, Institutes II, xvii, 3). The idea of redemption encapsulates the humanward focus of Christ’s work on the Cross. (“Death held us under its yoke, but he in our place delivered himself into its power, that he might exempt us from it. This the Apostle means when he says, “that he tasted death for every man,”” (Heb. 2:9) ibid, II, xvi, 7). Lastly, to speak of reconciliation is to bring into view both the Godward and humanward aspects of Christ’s work. His death and resurrection serves to reconcile those who were previously separated by enmity and unholiness. (“These words (1 John 4:10) clearly demonstrate that God, in order to remove any obstacle to his love towards us, appointed the method of reconciliation in Christ.”, ibid II, xvii, 2).

Calvin also made a significant contribution to the understanding of atonement through his exegesis of Christ’s mediatorial work in the three offices of prophet, king, and priest. (cf. Institutes II 15:1-6) As prophet, Jesus proclaimed the grace of God and He assists the Church in her proclamation of the gospel message. Jesus the King rules over, guides, and protects the Church and as Priest, He expiated her sins by His sacrifice and even now intercedes on her behalf. We must remember that Calvin’s use of Church represents the New Testament view of the Church as the whole body of redeemed believers and not the organization itself. To those outside of the Church, he represents these three offices in name only.

The Necessity of Sacrifice

The violence of this view of atonement has been a challenge to theologians through the centuries and many, especially in modern times, have tried to posit alternative theories that move away from the theory. Why sacrifice was needed by God is necessary to understand in order to grasp penal substitution and this section will outline the conditions that form the answer. First, one must accept the sinfulness of humanity and how seriously God considers that sin. All humanity is sinful and in rebellion toward God (Rom 3:23). How seriously does God view our repeated failures, regardless of severity? Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden for one sin because His standard is perfection. James 2:11 reminds us that we are evaluated in the same light; a single sin brands us as a lawbreaker (cf Gal 3:10). Humanity requires atonement because of our sin and the fact that it makes us the enemies of God.

Cannot God simply forget about sin? To answer this question requires that we view sin correctly, as an affront to the very character of God. Our sin is not impersonal. The requirements of holiness are not externally imposed. Rather, the norms of the law express God’s character, the beauty and holiness of His person. Because sin violates God’s law (1 John 3:4) it is so heinous because it is personal rebellion against the person of God. To restate this idea, your sin is a personal attack against the person of God, not just an infraction against an arbitrary set of rules that He composed. The personal nature of sin defiles the holiness of God and it requires retribution. His judgment of sin represents His personal anger at sin (Jer 2:13) and human rejection of His lordship.

Sin, by its personal nature, must be atoned for by sacrifice. Therefore, if humanity is to be redeemed there must be a penal substitute if we are to avoid the punishment our sin invites. Into this world, God sent Jesus Christ to be the sacrifice that would take on our sins (Isa 53, cf. Lev 16:21-22 to view the substitution in practice.) Only the appropriate sacrifice is acceptable to the Holy demands of justice and Christ alone fulfills that requirement (Rom 3:25-26) and removes the curse of sin (Gal 3:10-14). Through His sacrifice believers are redeemed (Mk 10:45).

Conclusion

Penal substitution does not represent all that needs to be said about atonement but it is often seen as the foundation of all other theories of atonement because it focuses its attention Godward. It seeks to explain how human beings are reconciled to God and the reasons for the initial discord. God is holy and righteous and must judge the rebellion of those who sin against His Lordship. His love desires to redeem them but his justice requires payment of the appropriate penalty. Christ is the only appropriate substitute unless we are to stand for judgment on our own merits.

With Christ in the School of Prayer

We are not naturally inclined to the spiritual discipline of prayer. We are able to develop a habit of speaking prayer forms as we hear them from others but the deep communion of a conversation with God. It is something that we must be taught to do properly just as the first disciples were when they said to the Lord “teach us to pray.” South African pastor Andrew Murray left us with a classic primer with which to guide our training in the discipline. With Christ in the School of Prayer was first published in 1885 and has served the Church since as a basic training manual in how to pray and it will do the same for us as we develop our strength in the discipline.

One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” Luke 11:1

As we have seen we delve into the Scriptures, Jesus was The master of prayer. His communion with the Father, unimpeded by sin as our is, was full and deep and perfect. Where prayer before His ministry was to the majestic God of Israel, now the disciples would have been hearing Jesus address God much more personally, as the Father. They also knew the connection between the power of His ministry and His secret prayer life and they desired this same relationship for their own lives. We, like the disciples, begin our own discipline by petitioning Christ to be our teacher as well.

And so we begin, “Lord, teach us to pray…”

The Day of the Risen Lord

In a couple of hours, the sun will rise above believers huddled in the cold mountain air. We will be seeking hope, a new day in which lives of promise are once again lived. Many non-believers and cultural Christians will be among us this morning and we have a singular opportunity to show them something that they may not see the remainder of the church year, the lives of truly transformed followers of Christ. Just as Elisha told the King that he was about to see a miraculous outpouring that reversed a famine (2 Kings 7:2), there was doubt. Those who see us celebrating this day may look favorably on us for a moment, but there will still be doubt in their minds the other 51 weeks between now and next Easter. As the Lord rose and showed the world beyond a doubt that there was hope in Him, today is the day in which we should all decide that every moment from here on out will be devoted to showing the hope that lies within us. We must not wait until the last day to discover that God looked upon His Church as a modern Sardis.

He is Risen!