We all are like the rich young ruler who went away sad
because he had great wealth when Jesus said to him to sell everything he had
and to give to the poor and follow him. When our Lord Jesus sees the man
leaving sad, he says to his disciples, “Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom
of God.” Then, the disciples are asking to the master, “Who then can be saved?”
Jesus gives his answer, saying “What is impossible with man is possible with
God.” Now, our Lord Jesus gives the answer how God is going to make what is
impossible possible.
“Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, ‘We are going up
to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of
Man will be fulfilled. He will be delivered over to the Gentiles. They will
mock him, insult him and spit on him; they will flog him and kill him. On the
third day he will rise again.’ The disciples did not understand any of this.
Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking
about.” (Luke 8:31-34)
The way to restore the lost people is for the Son Jesus
Christ to go up to Jerusalem to be condemned to death and crucified on a cross
for the sin of the world. This is the only way, the life, and the truth for
humanity. It is for Jesus to come into the world that he would take up the cross
of sin and death upon his body and be sacrificed as the lamb of God, offering his
holy blood before the Father in the heavenly sanctuary. It is for Jesus to com
into the world that he would be mocked, insulted, spitted on him, flogged and
killed. It is written by the prophets about the Son of Man and everything would
be fulfilled. Why would the Son of Man be suffered much and crucified like a
criminal?
First, everything that is written by the prophets about the
Son of Man must be fulfilled. After Adam fell, the Lord spoke to him and
revealed the restoration plan for humanity. It is written in Genesis 3:15. “And
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and
hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” As it was
prophesied and promised to Abraham, it was the time for the Lord to deliver his
people out of the bondage of Egypt. For that, God sent Moses and called him as
the deliverer. But King Pharaoh stubbornly refused to send his people to
worship the Jehovah God. Consequently, he invited the ten judgment plagues
upon him and the land of Egypt. The tenth plague is to kill all the firstborns
of Egypt from the king to the slaves. However, the Lord commanded Moses to
prepare a special meal for his people, by slaughtering male lambs or goats on
the night of death plague and putting the animal’s blood on the sides and tops
of the doorframes of every house of Israel. The angel of death passed over the
house of Israel where the blood of animals had been sprinkled on the doorframes
as commanded. The animal sacrifice is the symbol of the death of the Son Jesus
Christ. All offerings prescribed by the Lord God written in the Book of
Leviticus requires the blood of animals, which signifies that any worshiper
cannot come God without blood.
“The animals you choose must be year-old males without
defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them
until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of
Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood
and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat
the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire,
along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.” (Exodus 12:5-8)
The Psalmist prophesied the vivid picture of the crucifixion
of the Lord Jesus Christ in Psalm Chapter 22. It starts with the Son’s cry on
the cross in Calvary, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so
far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” (Psalm 22:1) What is
written in the psalm was fulfilled in history as the orphan cry of Jesus was
heard loudly, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” Prophet Isaiah most vividly and
accurately is describing how the Messiah of God would suffer and die and why.
The Prophet beings with a rhetorical question which draws the attention of
hearers, saying “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the
Lord been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1) He continues to describe the Messiah’s pain,
loneliness, being rejected and despised, humiliation, shame, death, and even
the Father’s forsaking as the lamb of God.
“He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of
suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and
bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and
afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our
iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds
we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to
our 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 its shearers is silent, so he did not
open his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:3-7)
God revealed the deep things of him to Prophet Daniel about
seventy ‘sevens,’ the master time schedule for the world set even before the
creation of the world. The prophet was told that the Anointed one would be cut
off. “After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and
will have nothing.” (Daniel 9:26a) This was fulfilled as prophesied in the city
of Jerusalem in the first century that Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross. Prophet
Zechariah tells a remarkable dialogue between the anointed one and the people of
Israel, saying “If someone asks, ‘What are these wounds on your body?’ they
will answer, ‘The wounds I was given at the house of my friends.’” (Zechariah
13:6)
The death of Christ is not the end of story, for Jesus further
says that he would rise again on the third day. He must die for the sin of the
world to redeem the lost humanity, as Apostle Paul puts it in the Epistle to
the Romans. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were
still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his
blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if,
while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his
Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”
(Romans 5:8-10) He did not die in vain but became the eternal propitiation for
those who confess their sins and obey him. How can it be possible for the death
of Christ to reconcile the race with God? It is through his resurrection. He not
only died in our place but also was raised from the dead on the third day
according to the Scriptures.
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first
importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he
was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”
(1 Corinthians 15:3-4)
Therefore, he did not die for himself but for sinners like
all of us. Man has been lost in darkness since the fall of Adam. All mankind is
lost in Adam. Christ died and rose again on the third day to restore the lost
race. Unless restored and reconciled with God in Christ Jesus there is no life,
no truth, no way for man. No matter how man is well established by wealth and
fame and even high morality in the world it is no avail to be reconciled with
God without Christ Jesus crucified. As man is doomed and destined for death, so
does the judgment of God follow. No one can deny the fact that man’s death rate
is 100 percent flat with no exceptions. It is unbelievable and incredible that
God is pleased to crush and bruise him and to put him to grief. Is there such a
father found in the whole world? No father would do it such a thing to his own
son. But God did to his Son Jesus Christ because it is the only way for mankind
to have eternal life. The Father God was pleased to crush the Son, because by
his wounds we are healed.
“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to
grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He
shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.”
(Isaiah 53:10 NKJV)
He was despised and rejected and died because it is
impossible for man to deliver themselves from the powerful illusion and
delusion of untruth. Man does not even know that they are seriously and
critically lost and fallen. Nothing is seen without light. Man is in darkness
and total confusion because they don’t know what they are and why they are and
who they are. How can the blind lead other blind people? Impossible! Man is
desperately in need of light which shines and reveals the real things out of
darkness. Prophet Isaiah has prophesied that people walking in darkness would
see a great light because a light has dawned in the land of sheer darkness.
“Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who
were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of
Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of
the Sea, beyond the Jordan—The people walking in darkness have seen a great
light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” (Isiah
9:1-2)
This is the hope for man and the nations. Jesus
Christ died for us and rose again from the dead on the third day. “God so loved
the world that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,”
says the Scripture (John 3:16). We live now in Christ Jesus is not by natural strength
but by the power of God, the resurrection power of God. “I have been crucified
with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live
in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself
for me.” (Galatians 2:20) We live not according to what the world says any
longer but according to what our Lord Jesus says. It is to follow him who
though he was God became nothing, who was rejected and despised, afflicted and
bruised, crushed and desolated, and who shed his blood and died on a cross, obeying
the Father even to the point of death. We live in him eternal life now and
forever. It is no longer by natural strength and experience even spiritual one,
but by him, wholeheartedly depending on Christ, his power and life, his love
and joy and peace, his mercy and grace. He is ever present in our midst in
work, school, driving, home, and community. We live in him eternal life, so we
reign with him in the heavenly places.
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in
mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is
by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us
with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming
ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his
kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7)
Prayer: Thank Jesus Christ who died for us and in our place
and rose again from the dead on the third day, so we no longer live eternal
life by our natural strength, but by his power and life, his love and peace and
joy, his mercy and grace, eating his body and drinking his blood every moment
of our lives. We no longer listen to the voice of the world but to the voice of
Lord only. In Christ’s name. Amen.
September 15, 2016
© 2015-2016 David
Lee Ministries – All Rights Reserved.
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