The Surrender of Jesus – Surrendered moment

February 15, 2018February 18, 2018

Jesus Changed His Mind

“After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.’ For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, ‘My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.’ After saying this, he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private.”’ John 7:1-10. ESV.

This passage has blown my mind in several ways.

First, we see that Jesus’s half-brothers have murderous intentions by challenging Him to go up to the Feast of Booths (also called the Festival of Tabernacles) in Judea, because the Jews there were seeking to kill Him. The sarcastic and derisive challenge issued by Jesus’s own brothers hides a thinly veiled desire that Jesus would be publicly humiliated, or worse, by going there! In the least, we see the brothers are hating Jesus, and are jealous of Him at this time. Remember that Jesus said hating your brother is like murder in your heart.

The spirit of their challenge reminds me of Joseph’s half-brothers, and how they want to kill him because of their jealousy, and how they mock him before actually taking action against him. Joseph, is, in this way, a “type” of Christ. Joseph’s brothers wanted to kill him to save themselves in various petty ways, not realizing that Joseph would subsequently be used to accomplish a greater salvation than anyone could imagine, which included all of Egypt and Israel.
Their actions against him, (they were going to murder him, but Reuben intervened and the brothers ended up selling Joseph into slavery, and then they lied to their father, Jacob, about Joseph being killed by a wild animal), made him “dead” to their father, which allowed them to go on with their lives without him. Joseph was seen to be “resurrected” when the brothers traveled to Egypt to get food during the famine, for Joseph had risen to a position of second to Pharoah by interpreting Pharoah’s dream. God had revealed through Joseph a plan to provide for all the people, during the seven year famine prophesied in the dream, through the storage of seven years’ worth of abundant harvests that preceded it.

The brothers were shocked at the eventual discovery of Joseph’s “resurrection” and glorified position, and were immediately alarmed at the depth of their guilt, and the power of Joseph to pass judgment on them, even though Joseph reassured them of His forgiveness. And Jacob enjoyed renewed fellowship with his son after Joseph had purchased salvation for all Israel—the sons of Jacob and their families.

In the same way, our sin brought about the need for the Son’s physical body to be sacrificed to death, in order to accomplish a salvation that we are powerless to secure for ourselves. For a time, Jesus was considered “dead” by His Father, when the sin of the world was upon Him, and the hatred, and murderous intention of mankind, was allowed to kill His human body. Jesus was physically resurrected and revealed to His brothers, and all mankind, as the second person of the Trinity, after purchasing the salvation of all believers on the cross. And fellowship was restored with the Father, after being broken for our sake.

There are other parallels between Jesus and Joseph, (how Joseph was falsely accused and taken into custody, for instance), but I just wanted to plumb the depths of the hearts of Jesus’s half brothers within this short account in John 7, through illumination of the “types” in the Old Testament account of Joseph.
The second mind-blowing realization is that Jesus seems to change His mind later about going to the feast, or it seems that He deliberately misleads His brothers by saying that He is not going up to this feast.

The Feast of Booths, or Sukkot, is a seven-day feast in remembrance of the 40 years of wandering in the desert during the Exodus from Egypt. During that time, the Israelites moved from place to place, following the pillar of cloud that indicated the presence and will of God to stay put or to pack up and go. Since the Israelites had to be ready to move at a moment’s notice, their ephemeral dwellings were light wooden structures covered with branches or palm fronds. These “booths,” then, could be quickly constructed or dismantled to suit the will of the Lord. I will come back to this important idea in a moment.

Jesus could very well have known that He would later be going up to the feast, and so was telling the truth about not going up to “this feast,” today. The festival is seven days long, with feasting each day. Perhaps Jesus’s words convey the truth that He was not going up to this feast on this day, but leaves room for Him to go to tomorrow’s feast, or one of the other feasts, later in the week.

This doesn’t really square with how the feast is represented in a later verse, where the whole week is presented as “the feast.” “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.’” (John 7:37. ESV. Italics mine). This verse refers to the whole week as “the feast,” and does not distinctly describe the sub-feast on the last day. Otherwise, it would have said, “At the feast on the last and greatest day…”

If Jesus is speaking in a specious manner in John 7:8, then we would have to admit that He is delivering an impression to His brothers that would later be proved false. He knew that they were suggesting He should go up to the Feast, (any time), and He says that He is not going up. His appearance at the feast, then, would make it appear to His brothers that either He lied, or changed His mind. We know, however, that Jesus cannot lie.

We can observe from Jesus’s statement, in John 7:6, “my time has not yet fully come,” that the Father has made Him aware that “now” is not the time to go to the feast. I believe that Jesus spoke the words matching what the Father gave Him to know. Since Jesus does not speak in half-truths, as Satan does, I’m inclined to believe that Jesus only knew “not now.” If He had known that He would eventually be going, He could have avoided the charge of lying or making a specious statement to say that He isn’t going “yet,” instead of “I am not going up to this feast.”

What we can say definitely here is that Jesus’s mind was made up about one thing. His mind was constantly set upon following the Father. If the Father says, “No, do not go up to this feast,” then Jesus expresses that He will not go up to this feast. If the Father later says, “Now, go up to this feast, and go privately,” then Jesus goes up to the feast, and in a way that He will not seek to be known until the proper time. With such an interpretation of the event, we may rule out that Jesus lied about not going.

Jesus appears to all the world to have changed His mind, when, in fact, His mind is made up, and His allegiance is to the Father’s whim and will. This desire manifests throughout His life as spontaneity, as the Father’s instructions are immediate, and freshly updating, within the mind of Christ.

Jesus constantly lives out the idea behind the Festival of the Booths, and it is poetic how this question of going up to the feast actually demonstrates the meaning of the Festival! Jesus was led by the Father to decline the invitation initially, and then led by the Father to accept the invitation privately, at a later time.

When He did go, he went incognito, led by the Father. Though He went clothed in such a manner as not to be recognized, He subsequently reveals Himself and begins to preach publicly, “About the middle of the feast” (John 7:14. ESV). Jesus changed in intention from blending into the crowd to standing out. Did Jesus change His mind, or was He expressing the flexibility of obedience to the Father in a life lesson about the Booths?

Jesus was responsive to the move of the Father, obedient down to every moment. He did not build a solid paneled house in one spot, settle down, and set out strong roots into a place. Instead, Jesus moved from place to place, traveling in such a way as to follow His Father (in the “pillar of cloud” or “pillar of fire,” to use the Exodus 13 idioms).

When He replied to His brothers’ invitation to go up to the feast, He responded with the words given Him by the Father. He did not build an estate upon the idea of not going up to the feast, however. If He had, He might have reasoned with the Father, when the Father gave a new command to go down to the feast, that He had already stated that He was not going up to the feast, and that going to the feast would then cast doubt upon His word. Knowing that His brothers would think Him a liar under such circumstances, He might have contended with the Father, that He should not go to the feast in order to appear to remain true to His word because, after all, He must live up to being “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

This is a very good point, and one that seems to elevate Truth to the highest place. It is hard to find fault with such an idea, and I wonder if Jesus did have just such a conversation with the Father, similar to His questions in Gethsemane?

On the other hand, while seemingly elevating Truth, such an argument is formed around maintaining the appearance of truth from man’s perspective.
Jesus constructs and dismantles His booth moment by moment, according to the desire of the Father, regardless of what mankind may think or say about His structure or His vacillating modes. He is unafraid of criticism from man for following the immediate and precise instructions of the Father. We see this later in the matter of the cross. Jesus was ultimately unconcerned that His death on the cross would make it appear that He is weak and an imposter.
So, what lesson can we draw from the Festival of the Booths? There is a multitude, I am sure, and I’m not writing here a comprehensive survey of lessons to be drawn from a very rich tradition. I am merely pointing out that Jesus lives in constant obedience to the Father, even when others would censure Him for His words or actions. We are merely men and women, however, and our imperfect interpretations of God’s leading, moment by moment, require continual adjustments and updates. If we feel that we have received a leading from God—good! We should act upon the leading, but remain open to Him for fresh instruction—and even be willing to reverse ourselves at a later time—ready to dismantle our plans and understanding should God give us updated orders.

We may look to the world to be foolish. We may look to the world to be hypocritical. Our actions will invite censure. We will be persecuted.
In every way, when we live out the Festival of Booths in our lives as Jesus did, God is honored in our hearts, and glorified in the world. Through continual adjustments, we can endeavor to allow the course of our lives to be shaped and altered by the whim of the Spirit, Who leads us to stop and build, or to get up, dismantle, and move on. As we consciously throw aside our concealing habit in mid-feast and stand up in Christ, He reveals Himself to the world in our thoughts, words, and actions, and the world will hate us.

The special days, in which our lives are an open invitation and a demonstration of the “rivers of living water” flowing from within, will be the greatest days in our lives, not because of our own accomplishments, but because the Spirit makes a way in the desert and moves us hither and yon, all the while revealing that a promised land has already been entered through a sweet fellowship with Jesus. Though we may feel that we are in a small, insecure, and uncomfortable booth in the desert, and long for a spacious, secure, and luxurious eternal dwelling, we have living water to drink and Heavenly manna to eat, and may luxuriate even now within the personal and powerful presence of the Lord.

No matter where we are or what circumstances befall us, we have an open invitation to luxuriate in the company of Jesus and the fellowship of His sufferings. The booth is a palace, and Jesus, our brother, is GOD HIMSELF, THE KING OF KINGS, and LORD of LORDS!!!

February 13, 2018February 14, 2018

Why Does Jesus Have to Ask?

In pondering the prayer of Jesus in John 17, I am amazed anew that Jesus would ask the Father anything. Why does Jesus ask? Does He need to ask, or is He just doing it for our benefit, so that we can grasp a proper pattern for living? It is tempting to think that the Father is so dominant, that the Son is the passive slave, only. I find myself wondering why I should pray for a certain result, when God already has His purposes, and can see all sides of every situation that are hidden from me? God is God, and I’m not, and I’m learning to be contented with Him, no matter the circumstances. But if I think of myself as a passive slave, and let God do what He will through me, then my feelings, opinions, and desires don’t really matter, and my prayer adds nothing of value.

Since Jesus asked for certain results, there is something deeper going on than a master-to-slave relationship. When the Son asks the Father something in prayer, or when He talks about asking, He expresses a proper Father/Son relationship. Remember Matthew 26:53, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and Peter struck Malchus with his sword? “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” NIV 1984. As mentioned before, Jesus operated from within His humanity in constant surrender to the Father. But there is another aspect to this asking that must come to light.

Jesus is here indicating that, in the case of a momentary inclination to do something spontaneous, His protocol is to call on His Father—that He would engage the Father—and be given something in response… in this case, twelve legions of angels. We marveled before that Jesus would even “stoop” to using angels rather than the power of the Spirit.

(Perhaps mention of the large number of angels is something that is easier for man to understand, in terms of raw power, than something more difficult to quantify, such as the power of the Holy Spirit. Maybe Jesus used angels in the example to show that God the Father could overawe any force that man could muster).

Jesus is saying that if He wanted something, He would ask the Father. This is the pattern He upheld in His prayer at Gethsamane, where he asked if there could be another way than the imminent cup of suffering and crucifixion. This pattern is upheld when Jesus asked for the Father to unify all who would come to believe in Him, in John 17.

The Devil himself recognized and challenged this pattern in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. If you review Matthew 4:1-11, you will see that Satan wanted Jesus to act on His own volition apart from asking the Father.

In recognizing this pattern of asking, we are not merely trying to pick out principles and procedures to follow so that we can “do what Jesus did.” Instead, we are trying to understand why Jesus did this or that so that our own actions and intentions can be informed from a fuller knowledge of what our Savior is like, and what God is calling us to do in the moment.

The biggest message from this is that the Son engaged the Father, and there was fellowship and a sense of doing things together. Satan does not want us to engage the Lord, but to reason our way out of our situations.

Remember that “the Son can do nothing by Himself…” John 5:19. The Son can ask the Father to accomplish something that He wants done, however. In doing so, in asking, Jesus brings glory to the Father, confirming His pre-eminence, power, and authority, and He looks to the Father for everything. When Jesus asks the Father, He is perfectly willing for the Father to say “No,” when Jesus would prefer a “Yes,” and has set His heart to honor His Father by submitting to the decision of the Father. (Gethsemane).

I believe this is why Jesus asks, because He is bringing the Father glory and properly counting all things as proceeding from the Father. Ephesians 4:6… “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

If we do not engage God by asking Him, are we not robbing Him of the glory that is His alone? If we say, “God will do as He pleases,” and so we do not bother to ask, are we not discounting the pleasure He takes in us, and downplaying God’s attentiveness to our needs or desires? Inasmuch as there is glory in our acknowledgment that God is in sovereign control, there is somehow more glory in our engaging God Himself in conversation. And God loves to give answers to those who seek Him and love His company.

An angel from the Lord was sent to Daniel, in response to his prayer, in Daniel 9:23. “As soon as you began to pray, an answer was given, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed…”

Asking is the exercise and action of our faith. If we don’t ask, our faith will atrophy. If we don’t ask, we will not look for Him to move, which reveals sinful beliefs in our hearts that God is hard of hearing, hard-hearted, or too weak to act. If we don’t ask, we declare to the world that we doubt the worth of asking God for anything.

James 4: 2,3. “You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

Let us then not fail to ask, but also, with hearts of thanksgiving, consider that God values our thoughts, and loves it when we ask Him, because it shows our orientation toward Him, and dependence on Him for everything. We may not get the answers we are looking for, in the way that we expect, but the glory of the King is acknowledged in the asking. God’s people will demonstrate their reliance on Him in everything, by asking Him to do the work that we know is only possible through Him.

February 12, 2018February 13, 2018

What Did Jesus DO? “WDJD” – PART 2

It is written:

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21. NIV 1984.

How could the Holy One, Jesus, actually BE sin? We know from this verse that He was considered “SIN” by the Father. Sin, in many places in scripture is equated with darkness. In 1 John 1:5, it says,

“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

It goes on to say that there is no fellowship between the light and the darkness. So we see that, for however short or long, perhaps only for a moment, the Father broke fellowship with the Son. We might be tempted to think that this was no big deal, because we think in finite terms, and we measure the meaning of a moment to be very little. Many moments will pass before you finish reading this sentence, in fact, and it seems almost trivial to skip a moment or lose a moment in time.

We tend to measure the value of a moment by what was accomplished in that moment, and we really don’t see much happening in most of our moments. You might be having difficulty reading these sentences because you are growing tired, and experience as I do sometimes a “checking out” of the brain, where your brain pauses in understanding while your eyes continue to move over the page. After many moments, sometimes I realize that I have no idea what I just read, and have to start all over again at the last sentence I remember!

If you fell asleep for a few seconds while sitting there in your chair reading this message, and upon regaining consciousness you have the sense that everything around you is the same, you would count those missed moments as inconsequential… unimportant. You can just go back to the previous paragraph and “recapture” the missed moment. But if you fell asleep while driving your car down a highway, and woke just a moment too late to avoid a head-on collision, then by virtue of the consequences enacted within that moment, you would count those missed moments as having great import and everlasting value.

You can’t recapture that moment, which is, of course, the reality of every moment–it can only be lived once. Every moment has tremendous value, and is irrecoverable, or irrevocable, once lived.

God is not limited in His experience of moments like we are, and in fact, He knows the worth of every moment because He lives in every cranny of existence at once and understands all things completely. Every moment is an eternity to God, and every eternity is a moment. What God accomplishes in every single moment is beyond calculation, and His work in every moment holds infinite and everlasting value. This idea is hinted at in 2 Peter 3:8…

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” NIV 1984.

Do you know how many billions of processes are occurring in your body each second so that you can continue to live? You are just a single person. Now think how many concurrent processes are sustaining every human being at this moment. Expand your thinking to take in the processes that must also be ongoing for every living animal, and do not forget all the plant life, and the microbial activity that supports the whole system. Finally, consider the subatomic work that is taking place at every single moment so that elements may hold together, suns and stars may burn and give light, planets may orbit, and galaxies may coexist.

No one understands the true value of a moment like God does. Since He is everywhere at once, His experience of, and work within, a single moment is boundless. Does this give you a deeper appreciation of time, and of the mere moment? Let’s reevaluate the moment when the Father broke fellowship with the Son:

The break in fellowship between the Father and Son was absolute, since there was silence between them, as long as the Son was counted as darkness. The Father erected a momentary and infinite wall between Himself and the Son, so that the infinite wall of sin that separates man from God could be thrown down like the walls of Jericho. If the value of a moment could be measured in terms of what was accomplished within it, this moment is singularly priceless in all of eternity.

How long did it last—this break in fellowship? We might be tempted to think that when Jesus said, “It is finished,” that the Father was on speaking terms again with the Son. Shortly thereafter, Jesus said, “Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.” Luke 23:46. ESV.

I can’t make any conclusion about the length of time that fellowship was broken within the Godhead, but two things are certain. One is that the Son was fully submitted to the Father’s will even in this: that He waited for the Father to decide when fellowship would be restored. How do we know this? I would point again to the times before the cross when Jesus said He always did the will of His Father.

So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; He has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases Him.” John 8:28. NIV 1984. (Italics and boldness, mine).

(It is interesting to note that when Jesus says here that the Father has not left Him alone, it is before the crucifixion)…

The second certain thing is this: the homecoming and return to fellowship carried with it a sweetness and joy of a restored fellowship that was broken only for the noblest of purposes, a celebration of the Son with His victory over sin and death and final proof of His submission to the Father in everything, and exultation in the finished work of God at the cross that the LORD Himself had never experienced before. It was a moment that Jesus had eagerly looked forward to:

Hebrews 12:2. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” NIV 1984. (Italics mine).

Think of all the hero movies and the dramatic moments when the foe has been vanquished, and the victor turns to receive his praise or medal or reward…the swelling music… the victory celebrations—they are puny and hollow compared to the celebration of the completed redemption of believing mankind!

The vain imaginations of the human heart and mind cannot conceive what an incredible shockwave resounded in the heavens at the return of the Son to sit down at the right hand of the throne of God after completing the sacrifice to end all sacrifices! Oh, I wish I could have seen it!!!! There is no dramatic music that could be written or scored to match the tumultuous ecstasy at the restoration of harmony within the Godhead, and the ascension of the Son Victorious to the throne. There are not writers in the world who could pen dialogue worthy of The Welcome of the Son back to the arms of the Father. No locking of eyes could ever say as much as the eyes of Father, Son, and Spirit in the pleasure of restored fellowship and the only worthy work of salvation that will ever be esteemed.

Much is made of the second coming of Christ, and rightly so. I can’t wait to see that moment, as well! (I know that it has its own glory and eternal significance and worth, and God Himself makes EVERY moment of eternity priceless simply because the LORD, the Living God, LIVES and REIGNS at ALL times)!!! The Second Coming seems to my fallen heart more of a denouement than a climax, however, when I consider the work at the cross. In my limited eyesight, I am tempted to think that the work on the cross is THE defining moment of eternity. It is the moment that is most representative of Who God IS. It is the displayed answer to the question, “Who is I AM?”

I AM is the one who created Heaven and Earth, and the people He loves so dearly that He would give up His rights for a time to suffer as one of them at their hands so that He could save the very ones who once spit in His face.

I AM is the one who paid a price He didn’t have to, that was too expensive for all of humanity or angelkind to afford, so that He could show loving kindness and mercy to His enemies.

Hallelujah! WHAT A SAVIOR!!! What a FRIEND!!! What a CHAMPION!!! Is there anyone like OUR GOD? HE did not even consider His own rights something to be grasped tightly in a righteous and iron grip, but He opened His hands and allowed His beloved creatures to nail iron spikes into them. He did not resist their torture and their scorn, when instead He could have rightly BROKEN OUT against them.

But He was careful and gentle with us, though we had murderous thoughts in our hearts, and the intention to kill our GOD. Through mercy and grace at the cross, God has offered peace to His enemies and forgiveness.

How can anyone complain about this I AM? He is undeniably WONDERFUL. And if anyone maintains that He is not, some day they will see Him and all that HE IS, and their own mouths will proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord. And it will be their own knees that bow down before Him. But it will be a sad day for them, who did not recognize the Lord during their lifetimes.

JESUS now has the Name Above Every Name and was exalted by the Father to the highest place, because He surrendered every moment to the Father and ALWAYS did what the Father directed, even though the Father, for a time, DID leave Him “alone” for our sake…

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:5-11.

And so perhaps the most valuable moment in eternity (in terms of what God accomplished within it) is defined by what was given up for us… the one moment in eternity when the Father was not speaking to the Son. Ironically, this holy moment of surrender and silence speaks, more poignantly and powerfully than any other, of the extent of God’s love, mercy, and grace to you and me… that the Godhead would break fellowship internally to secure our own fellowship with Him, “whosoever believeth.” John 3:16.

February 12, 2018March 1, 2018

What Did Jesus DO? “WDJD” – PART 1

Our God did the unthinkable: He accepted limitation and pain and suffering just by taking on human flesh! One of the three persons of the infinite Godhead stuffed Himself into a finite human body, and not only that, but He chose to start as a human embryo… to go the whole distance of human experience and suffer total human helplessness and limitation, and, eventually, to endure the worst physical and spiritual torture ever inflicted. As we look more closely at what is called the “Incarnation,” Jesus taking on human flesh, and what God accomplishes through it, we see that one of the defining features of the Son is complete and constant surrender to the will of the Father. We also see that surrender is something that everyone can do, irregardless of circumstance and life station.

In Bible Study this week, one of my friends was commenting on how Jesus, as he dealt in person with everyone, knew everything about everyone everywhere. My friend expressed what seems like common sense, that Jesus always knew exactly what to say and do from His omniscient vantage point. This idea could lead us to think that everything was easy for Jesus, because, after all, He is God. I wonder, if we allow ourselves to think along these lines, if we may begin to downplay the unceasing surrender of the Son? And if we believe that surrender was somehow easier for the Son because He held onto traits like Immortality, Omniscience, and Omnipotence, then we might consider the kind of surrender He demonstrated and the spiritual assets He held as something impossible for us to live out, and assume that miracles are completely out of the question for us. Looking for other treasure, we might completely miss the abundance that Jesus sought and bought in relationship with the Father, and ignore the source of power that Jesus Himself relied upon, the Holy Spirit…

We generally try to make choices to avoid pain and suffering. The thought of sustaining a bodily injury, like the loss of a leg, or one of our senses, like hearing, or eyesight, is scary. Even our sense of taste informs our existence in so many important (and wonderful) ways, it is difficult to imagine life without it. As we consider the condescension of the Son into a body of flesh, it is good to recall the glory from which He came, and compare it to our own starting point, a healthy human body.

To think that He who can see all things… in fact, the One in which all things hold together—

[“For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” Col. 1:16-17. NIV 1984.]

–would accept the limitation of the poor eyesight afforded by two human eyeballs… is amazing. His infinite vision was not only limited by the physical apparatus of the eyeball, (the human eyeball isn’t able to discern detail even as well as the eyeball of a hawk), but those comparatively weak eyeballs are set to rotate within a head that has to turn in order to interpret even part of the surrounding environment. Objects that are nearby obscure the awareness of other objects (near or far) that are behind them.

Human eyes don’t see well in dark places, either. To go from seeing everything at once, as Jesus did, (and now does again), to seeing only a small patch of surroundings, is like you and me making sense of our surroundings looking only through a straw. The constraint of physical human vision Jesus accepted was almost infinite, compared to seeing everything.

Jesus, who could hear every thought and word of every brain and voice, accepted the limitation of the audio range and distortion of the sound waves that the human ear can take in. Imagine if you were given special earplugs that filtered out all noise beyond a range of 36 inches from the ear. You would suffer greatly from the loss of distant hearing. Jesus gave it up willingly, and the reduction of divine hearing to the constraint of human earshot was almost infinite.

Jesus, the Living Word…

[“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” Hebrews 1:3. NIV 1984. Italics mine.] The New King James Version has it, “and upholding all things by the word of His power.”

…chose not only to limit His voice to a vocal range that could be produced by a human throat, but also to throttle His communication with mankind for years within the cries and coos of an infant and the babbling, garbled speech of a toddler.

How can we understand the condescension of Jesus’s spoken language in order to relate to mankind? Perhaps if we were to limit our spoken communication through the sound apparatus of a cricket, we might begin to understand what that is like. It makes a nice comforting sound on a lazy summer evening, but doesn’t come close to capturing the range of emotions and expression that we might want to communicate. (However, if we are sent to crickets, we will be understood better than if we go into the grass speaking dog language).

By the Father’s will, the Son accepted a nervous system like yours and mine, capable of feeling intense pain, knowing that very fabric of nerves would some day be assailed in every way, and deliver an excruciating combination of signals to His brain that His tissues were being tortured and marred beyond a physical body’s healing capabilities. Every human sense was going to be attacked viciously and unmercifully so that a death sentence would be realized in every molecule of His flesh.

This part of Jesus’s suffering we understand, at least in concept, and a few of us have experienced the pain of brutality and torture, but none of us has been attacked by the sin of the entire human race through all human history—past, present, and future. Some of us have been subjected to the violence and sin of a hate-filled mob, but in the case of our Savior, He was brutalized at the same time by the will of the Father, receiving within Himself the complete spiritual penalty for the collective rebellious rot of human rejection and selfishness.

The Father was unmerciful to His own Son so that He can extend completed mercy to mankind!!!

What a stench humanity has made itself in the nostrils of God! When the Father poured the whole stinking cup of sin onto the the sacrificial lamb, it covered the lamb in such an offensive display that the Father had to turn away in repulsion. If the Father ever turned to vomit, it was surely at this time!

In Galatians 5:11, we are told of the “offense of the cross.” In Galatians 3:13, we see that the Savior was actually made a curse… “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'” NIV 1984.

The moment this happened, the Father did what He had never done before, and would never repeat again… He broke off fellowship with the Son. We know because of the puzzling, anguished question Jesus launched into the air with a few of His last labored breaths under the full crushing weight of humanity’s sin, and just moments from the death of the body that was broken for us:

“About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46. NIV 1984.

THIS is the ultimate expression of the full cost that was paid for the penalty of sin which we have each incurred. The physical punishment of the body through torture and crucifixion serves as a shocking and astounding symbol for us because the wounds and physical pain can be understood and measured in human terms, but it does not come close to expressing the true spiritual cost and pain that was endured for us. Jesus gave up fellowship with the Father for a time in order to guarantee fellowship in eternity for those who will accept it.

There is a part of the Apostle’s Creed which says, “He” (Christ) “descended into hell.” The case could be made that the moment most apropos to this phrase is when the Father forsook the fellowship of the Son. (The most defining feature of the Hell that will be prepared for the devil and all those who reject Christ is that God will not be there. Separation from God and others will be the most torturous aspect of eternity future in Hell. A place from which God will withdraw completely is incomprehensible, since God is omnipresent. Perhaps God will not limit Himself or His extents, but rather remove in the hellbound soul any ability to sense or appreciate His presence? I do not pretend to know).

I can’t pretend to know how the Father and the Spirit withdrew from the Son, but I suppose it was a continuation of human limitation within the Son beyond physical death where the Father allowed Jesus to experience the abandonment that we all deserve. Jesus tasted the second death so that many of us would not have to.

Hebrews 2:9, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” NIV 1984.

And so the storm cloud or eclipse that obscured the sun on that day at the cross, which darkened the earth at the time, was only a hint of what was going on in the Godhead. To Be Continued in What Did Jesus Do? “WDJD”- PART 2.