THE STEADFAST LOVE OF THE LORD NEVER CEASES

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, great is Thy faithfulness.

Amen.

THANKSGIVING FOR  THE WEEK GONE BY

The Lord provides for His people. He guides them in the path He set for them from before the beginning of the world.

His mercy is abundant towards those who are humble before Him because God  cannot despise a contrite heart.

Give thanks to Him for the life He has granted us and the faith that  He has provided for us to believe in Him for it is through this seed of faith that we can be saved.

THE EXELLENCIES AND PERFECTION  OF CHRIST - 3

A perfect, infinite, eternal, sinless, righteous person suffered the death of the worst possible mortal sinner. 

What could the result of such an imbalanced  transaction be?

Jesus was the best possible man. His life was flawless by the measure of the strictest of law systems. He served the poor selflessly. He spent His days going about His  Father's business. He healed the sick of all manner of diseases and injuries. He brought truth to the ears of men; the very words of life. He even raised people from the dead.

At his trials in the Roman courts, no crime could be found to have been committed by Him. Though accusers came forward, they contradicted themselves and the Roman judge could find not fault in Him by the standard of the laws on earth.

Nevertheless, for political expediency on both the Roman side and the Israel side, Jesus was condemned to be executed by crucifixion.

The death He suffered was the punishment usually meted out to the worst possible criminals. These were the men who had led people astray with  frauds that destroyed their lives and who had maimed others  and who had even murdered the innocent. They were the ones  who merited the penalty of crucifixion.

The greatest possible imbalance was staged when Jesus, the perfect Son of God, was executed as though He were an evil murderer.

After His death on the cross came the judgment in the courts of the spirit realm.  The accusers assembled to find fault with the one who died in order to justify His execution and His descent into hell.

In the same way Jesus could not be convicted of a crime by the Roman court, Jesus was found faultless in the spiritual court. No accusation could stand against Him by the world of spirits who have access to more knowledge than the knowledge of men. No secret fault could be found  in Him and His perfection in His obedience to God the Father was his vindication and His victory.  He routed the accusing powers and authorities, disarming them and making them a public spectacle. 

Jesus  came humbly to the earth as a person completely undistinguishable from other men. He was born in the small irrelevant village of Bethlehem. His birth place was a stable where animals are kept at night.  He lived a life of lowly service even to the last day of His life on earth.

This humble man then emerged into His  full majestic glory. His absolute authority in heaven and earth was firmly and permanently established.

In a thundering demonstration of power, the King Jesus descended into the hellish headquarters of the powers of darkness a strode into the chambers where men's souls were imprisoned.

He proclaimed the good news to the captives in hell and rose up with those who believed in Him from the abode of the dead and raised them from the grave as the first fruits of His own resurrection.

This very Jesus was seen by many witnesses after His resurrection around Jerusalem and after forty days of meeting people and teaching them many things, He visibly ascended into heaven where He was gloriously coroneted  as the supreme monarch of heaven and earth. He was seated at the right hand of God the Father which is the highest administrative authority in all creation.

He has the power to save men from their appointments with death and destruction. Men know that their own reckless and sinful lives speak condemnation against them.  Their hearts warn them that there will be a recompense for their deeds. 

What they don't have is the knowledge that the great King shed His blood to ransom them from the partnership with darkness that they forged with their rebellious lives. His blood speaks the same words He spoke on the cross as He died, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do".

His blood speaks forgiveness and pardon for sin and as the great Lord, Jesus confers this forgiveness and pardon to any who would believe in Him and those who believe that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins.

Any person has the privilege to receive God's forgiveness and pardon. Any person who hears the good news of what Jesus has done for us  by His death and sincerely trusts in it will be given the right to become a child of God.

If you have even a modicum of belief in your heart that this Jesus described here did indeed die to pay for your sins, then do not resist the opportunity to reach out to the Lord Jesus  and ask Him for His forgiveness and His pardon. 

You will be changed into a child of God and translated from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light which is the Kingdom of our God.

THE EXELLENCIES AND PERFECTION  OF CHRIST - 2

The person Jesus Christ is the exact representation of God the Father who is the creator of the universe.  In fact, Jesus is the eternal Son of God by whom and through whom and for whom the entire universe was created.

Abraham, the great patriarch of Israel, had been chosen to launch the nation that would course through history to prepare a context and backdrop against which this man's life would play out before men to demonstrate the nature of the God at whose command all things that are sprang into being.

In this dusty land adjacent to the Mediterranean sea, a peculiar man suddenly emerged. A man who was diametrically opposite from all men in all of History through all time. This man had no house, no property except the clothes He wore as he walked to and fro across the ancient homeland of the descendants of Abraham announcing the good news of the Kingdom of God.

He spoke of the words of the prophets which foretold His arrival as the savior of all of Abraham's descendants and indeed the saviour of all mankind. At his word, astonishing miracles of healing and wonders were performed before the poor and rich alike in the society that sought for signs.

Humble and approachable, He interacted easily with people from all strata of the society He served. Wherever He went, he mixed scintillating proofs of his mastery over nature and over demonic powers  with social exchanges with friends, strangers, religious leaders and His group of hand-picked  followers. 

He both astonished people and endeared Himself  to them as He regaled them with home-grown parables about farmers and soldiers and wheat and sparrows and wine and bread and seeds and water and friendship and loyalty and service and duty and love. He seemed to have come from another universe with the power to command storms to cease and desist but at the same time, he spoke with such familiarity with everyday life, he seemed to be the next door neighbor. 

Jesus was a startling anomaly among men but how much of an anomaly would remain veiled until the last days of His life. 

The society He was serving began to resist His presence as the words He spoke challenged the status quo.  Plots were hatched to arrest Him and kill Him so as to preserve the delicate balance that the leaders of the day had established under the rule of the Romans.

Knowing of these plots, Jesus began to prepare Himself for the event of His capture and when He had completed His final lessons to His disciples, He deliberately placed Himself within reach of the authorities so that they could arrest Him.  

Here is where the anomalous nature of Jesus  starts its exponential divergence from the rest of mankind. 

Consider his  capacities: He could command natural forces to do what He willed. He could walk on water and presumably on anything else.  He could make people fall to the ground under the force of His personality. He stated that all authority in heaven and earth had been  given to Him which means He had the power to command powerful angelic forces to intervene on His behalf. He had the power to extricate Himself from any fate decide on by men.

It was with these God powers that He went into the custody of the Roman authorities. The Roman empire was a regime that maintained its power with a harsh brutality and it was within this inhuman system that Jesus was detained. He was alone as all His friends abandoned Him to his fate. Such was the reputation of the Roman empire that even the most steadfast man would scramble to get away from its soldiers. Jesus however, identified Himself to the soldiers and surrendered with no resistance while even the strongest men buckled in fear as the theory of a Roman arrest became a stark reality at 3:00 AM.

The brutality began immediately with a guard striking Him in the face. As he awaited the various mock trials He was subjected to, the soldiers pulled out His beard, mocked Him, spat on Him and hit Him repeatedly on the head with sticks.  

The book of Psalms looks forward into time to describe Jesus as having "set His face as flint" while He unwaveringly endured the mistreatment and the knowledge of the  upcoming flogging and crucifixion that would culminate in His death.

After hours of being dragged around from court to court, a political remedy imagined by the Roman Procurator Pontius Pilate was decided on and it was to have Jesus flogged. 

Flogging is a Roman punishment using a bone and metal tipped flagellant to whip the back and legs of a prisoner. This punishment is hard to survive on its own. The blood loss and pain it inflicts on its subject can cause unconsciousness and  heart attacks and other bodily reactions to the extreme trauma.

He must have been trembling in shock as his body tried to generate heat as the core temperature dropped but having endured this trial, Jesus was still unwavering. He remained placid and subjugated completely concealing the primal power He retained at His disposal through all these events. 

After political wrangling between the Romans and the leaders of Jerusalem concluded, Jesus was sentenced to death by crucifixion. He had just endured what is already nearly a death sentence and now, in a fatally weakened  state, was lead out of the city of Jerusalem to be crucified.

The process is easily one of the most brutal things ever done to human beings. With His back raw and bleeding from the flogging, He was laid on a wooden cross.  His arms were stretched out across a transverse plank on either side of Him and His wrists were nailed to the wood with heavy spikes.  His feet were spiked to the support post and then, once secured to the structure, He was lifted up and the cross was dropped into a post hole.

Jesus was now dying. He had been brought to the state of shock already and now was in the horrifically painful position of hanging by His limbs from spikes that were punched through His nerves and cartilage and bone.

Remember, Jesus is the singular anomaly completely different from all humans. He had the power the whole time to stop the process. He had the power to completly bring all of human life to an abrupt halt. He had the power to spirit Himself away and never be seen again. 

He had all power but He did not waver. He obeyed the command of His father right to the point of death and there was nothing in heaven or on earth or under the earth that could make him change from the course that His Father had set for Him.

Jesus was publically exhibiting the absolute perfection of the Almighty God. Being the Son of the Most High God, He is the exact representation of God. The moral perfection of the God the Father is exactly replicated into the Son. The Father could entrust this frightening undertaking to His Son who He knew was so perfect that he would see the command through to the point of enduring a long excruciating death at the hands of the very people He was sent to save. 

The people Jesus spent His life serving and teaching and healing were the same people who were calling for His death and mocking Him.     

It is for these people (including us) that He gave His life for and He would not waver from the task. This is nature of Jesus: Complete and exact fidelity to the Word of God His Father. 

If Jesus had failed to see through His own crucifixion to completion, the effects of this break between the Father and the Son would have been a catastrophe of an immeasurable scope. It is impossible to describe what that would have meant for us, for all existence  and for God Himself and so I will not attempt to do so but the Father, with perfect knowledge, placed the whole undertaking into the hands of the Son and knew He could not fail. 

This man Jesus  stands far above us all. In the high galaxy of stars, His is the brightest, the purest, the most beautiful.

He is Lord and God. He is King and Master.  He is the Supreme King of Zion. He is the mighty and Majestic Lord of hosts.

By the death He willing subjected Himself to,  He earned the right to save men and to rescue them from their fate of destruction.

His demand of those of us who sense our desperate need to be saved by Him is that we simply believe in Him and believe that He died for us and that His majestic act of dying for our sins has given Him the power to redeem us.

Do this:  Act on the gift of faith that He has given you. The seed of faith in your heart to believe in Him is a gift given freely to you. Accept the gift and believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved.

THE EXELLENCIES AND PERFECTION  OF CHRIST

There is a continuum against which we can measure the willingness of a person to commit sins or violate their principles.

At one end of the spectrum is the occasion where a  person, out of sheer pleasure of doing what is wrong, does evil things and does so frequently.  An example of such a case is where a sociopathic killer, for no reason other than his own amusement, tortures and kills other human beings.  Such people do exist but mercifully, not is large numbers. 

Not far up the scale on our scale would be those who pillage and plunder the live of other people to enrich themselves. They are willing to gain material benefits at the expense of other people's lives and livelihoods. There are a considerable number of  people who would be willing to to operate at this level.

Further up the spectrum are those who do heinous things but less out of pleasure and more out of perceived necessity. An example of such a scenario would be one where a person commits vicious crimes such as armed robbery to gain the means of paying off a gambling debt. Further up the scale in the representing a lessor crime would be those who steal food because they are starving. These are the types of scenarios that are seen to be inner city crime and crimes that propagate in areas that are held in poverty.

As we move further up the scale, we run into people who commit small infractions to achieve minor gain. Those who are filling out an insurance claim and overstate the damage to gain some advantage are this category.  A fairly large number of people fit into this group who commit small crimes of opportunity that indirectly inflict mild injuries on others. In this large category are found the people who would do no crimes unless an opportunity availed itself and then only if the risk of suffering a consequence were small.

Further up are the people who would not commit a crime even if they were hungry and needed food.  These people are morally stable people in that they would not be compelled by their own impulses or by their own needs to commit crimes of any kind.

Moving along, we run into a rarer type of person. These are people who would not commit a crime even if they had an opportunity to become extremely rich by the commission of the crime. Close to this set are people who would not commit a crime even if there was no clear victim of the crime but the crime were committed, would gain the person a significant benefit. An example of such a scenario would be the case were  the person found an ancient gold coin in an ancient cave. Such a person would not claim the coin as their own but rather, would submit the ancient relic to antiquities officials for study and exhibition. The risk of consequence for claiming such an artifact for ones self is low but the guiding principles of the person causes them to surrender their find for the benefit of all other people. 

Into the very rare people types are those who would not commit a crime even if a gun were held to their head and their life were threated. They would rather die than commit a crime or violate their conscience. Imagine a person who was being blackmailed with the threat of death if they did not give the secret code to the bank vaults they were responsible for.

 A person below on the spectrum would reason that their lives were more valuable than the jewelry belonging  to privileged people in the vaults and would divulge the code however, the people in this category would see their duty to safeguard the vault as their sacred duty and would rather die that forfeit the role they are entrusted with.

Now we are into the category of people to which almost no human beings belong to. This group contains those people who would refuse to reveal the secret code to a bank vault to safeguard the jewels of the privileged owners even though the owners of those precious jewels has vociferously fought to get him fired and have his life ruined because they thought he was an inferior person. If we were to run into a trustee who was willing to uphold his sacred honor to protect the baubles of the very same people who are trying to destroy him, we would be in very rare company. 

Now  to the end of the scale to  which only one person has ever attained on this earth.  

A person, absolutely innocent of all wrong doing, willingly gave himself over to Roman authorities who sought to arrest Him. He surrendered himself fully understanding that he would be brutally tortured and killed in a slow agonizing horror. He was punched, spat on and flogged. He was then subjected to execution by crucifixion where His hand and feet were was nailed with spiked to an upright post. While there, He was naked and exposed to the elements for hours.  His vital functions started failing as he hung by the nails that pinned his hands and his feet to the wooden planks.

Bracingly,  this person, all the way to the point where He gave up His spirit and died, had the power to halt all the violence against Him. With a single word, He could have opted out of the unimaginable pain and horror. But the person, Jesus of Nazareth, was of a moral perfection to such a degree that He would not commit a violation of the command that God had given Him. He would not, even for a single moment of reprieve, contravene the word of God His Father. He would rather have undertaken to be tortured and murdered than commit a single small infraction against His God and Father.

The awe-inspiring thing about this sacrifice of His own life is that Jesus did it for the rest of us. He suffered torment and the horror of death on a cross so that the rest of us, who are way down the spectrum, could be saved from damnation that our moral failures incur. He himself had no such damnation accrued to Him because he was perfect. We, however, have earned damnation  from our youth to the present time and in fact would continue earning damnation as long as we had the strength to do so.

We are so morally deficient that we regularly contravene moral imperatives without a second thought. We commit sins of lust, greed, violence, theft, dishonor, deception,  envy and all the varied forms of perversion and evil. This is what we all do and we instinctively know that our conduct is demeaning and objectionable and that is why we often try to do these things in secret or anonymously.  We know we are in a dire state and so we often try to curb our impulses but we find we are powerless to change the pattern of our lives. We end up resigning ourselves to our natures and our fate and either justify our actions or give up looking for an exit strategy.

What we should know is that we do have an exit. 

The singular person of Jesus, the Son of God, exhibited a perfect life on earth and proved for once and for all that He is the perfect and excellent Son of God having lived his entire life at the far end of the spectrum where no other person has ever existed.

His absolutely perfect moral life demonstrated the absolute perfect nature of God and earned Him the right to be Lord and King over all the realms of heaven and earth. 

By His own authority, He provided for us an exit from our sinful lives by conferring salvation to us to save us from our moral deficit.

By believing in the fact that Jesus died for us and that he died to pay our ransom to free us from the kingdom of darkness, we are translated into His kingdom of light where moral perfection is given to us as a gift which gives us the off-ramp from our route to darkness and onto the path of righteousness. 

The Lord and King Jesus gives us his perfect righteousness in place of our fallen unrighteousness and from then on, an adventure into the astonishing life with God begins.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.

THE LORD IS RAISING A REMNANT

The Lord has set aside a people who are chosen for His purposes. Many are called but few are chosen.

A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people who should show for the praises of him who has called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light.  

Praise Him whose Kingdom is eternal and of it there will be no end.

Thanks be to the Lord who is our Adonai.  He is our governor, our master and our king,

Amen.

HE IS RISEN

On the cross, forsaken, the Lord gave up His Spirit and He dropped His head forward and He died.

The Lord, who had walked the length and breadth of Israel preaching and teaching about the kingdom of God, healing the sick and freeing people from demons, had been rejected by Israel and condemned to a brutal and horrifying death.

He was alone. The second person of the trinity was isolated.  A trial by powers and principalities was undertaken to test if there was any fault in the Son of Man.

There was not a single flaw that could be found for the Son of Man who encapsulates the absolute perfection of  the Godhead and no accusation could be made against Him. He said to them, "If you have a case against Me, bring it". None was brought.

The Lord Jesus then preached the gospel to the captives in hell and led those who accepted the gift of salvation out of hell and they rose out of their graves and ascended with Him.

On the third day, He rose from the dead. As Isaiah the prophet said, He gave gifts to be distributed among the men who would believe in Him. This distribution of his mantles of gifts was a continuation of the distribution of His clothing at the foot of the cross when the Roman soldiers distributed His garments and drew lots for His mantle.

The Lord had risen indeed. Jesus, dead for three days, rose again from the dead. The grave that held him could not longer bear the death of a righteous man. The power of resurrection raised Jesus from the dead and he walked among His people for forty days. He showed them many things and then, standing on the Mount of Olives, the majestic King of Glory ascended into heaven in the sight of His disciples. 

He was received into the heaven and there He was seated at the right hand of God the Father. He was  made Lord and Christ for his perfect life and absolute obedience to God even unto death on a cross.

As for us, the King of Glory invites us into His kingdom of  righteousness and those who accept the Lordship of the King and Christ are given the gift of salvation and are welcomed into the family of God and are given the right to become sons of God.

Praise the Lord who has the power to raise His people from the dead which he demonstrated by His own resurrection and ascension.