The Offense Of The Cross

 

The Offense Of The Cross

Jeremiah 34

Galatians 4:22 – 5:11

Luke 15:11 – 32

 

     Free!  Free!  How can it be free?  Giving God’s revealed nature, this should come as no shock.  This world, on the other hand, demands payment to secure freedom.  It is in Her great whoredom that she reduces the cost of a man’s soul to pilfering gold.  Our God values differently.

     His beef with Israel in Jeremiah’s time was that even in distress, they could not get it right.  Was not God the giver of life, freedom, and enablement?  Did He purposely organize the Israeli machine under a covenant to grind upon the wheels of slavery?  Hadn’t they witnessed His great deliverance from Pharoah’s hand?  Yet they remained the captors even of themselves.  To free, then enslave again, made no sense and God let them know through the mouth of Jeremiah.

     Galatians talks of further bondage.  Sarah and Hagar.  Two dichotomous vents breathing heat to the sky.  One in the expelliarmus forcing of Abraham’s hand of the first born.  The other in victim mentality nearly imploding under a hot sun of rejection.  The first is God’s allegorical picture of free by faith.  Hagar, however, gets the stick as His example of works righteousness.  What’s the dif?  Attitude.

     The F-16 is defined by its attitude.  Pitch, roll, and yaw.  Is it upside-down, right-side up, or standing on end in the mud at the end of the runway?  Attitude in a jet aircraft means all. Gotta keep the intake fed.  Starving a General Dynamic’s engine means throwing JP-8 out the tail without burner thrust.  We prized ourselves in being “Boys of the Air” versus “Grunts on the Ground.” 

     Sarah, in the least, didn’t consider herself an Egyptian grunt far away from God’s promises.  The slave was second class, right?  “Throw her out Abe!”  And she was expelled.  Paul raises Cain years later as the circumcision tries to creep in on his herd of turtles once liberated by sound doctrine.  God refers to the entire conundrum as a past lesson useful for our present.

     Faith is the only substance which God can hold in His just hand to balance a soul in justification.  Faith, not works, propels the person to A+ on God’s rule list.  The prodigal son came to his bean on this one.  Convinced of his father’s goodness, he made the trek back to free food land.  He came back in faith.  The other crabby son thought he was better because he had checked all the boxes.  He did not understand his father’s heart.

     It is the will of God that He justify ALL by faith.  We are the ones making the choices.  Will we impose slavery upon ourselves by checking the boxes of legality or will we enjoy the freedom of faith?  Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  If God accepts our brother or sister, shall we not accept them with all their differences? Peer pressure, pigeon-holing, and downright prejudice threatens our unity.  The offense of the cross means all are the same in His eyes.  All have approached Him in the name of His son.  And for this reason, He reminds us it is by a free gift and not of our own.  For it is not of works that man may boast.  God Himself justifies.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Church Picture

  The Church Picture 2 Samiuel 6: 20  “ Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, How glorious was the king of Israel to day, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself! 21  And David said unto Michal, It was before the  Lord , which chose me before thy father, and before all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the  Lord , over Israel: therefore will I play before the  Lord . 22  And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight: and of the maidservants which thou hast spoken of, of them shall I be had in honour. ” Revelation 4: 10  “ The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 11  Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive ...
Read more

Infectious Disease

  Infectious Disease      I watch network T.V., the free kind over the airwaves.   It is inundated with self-help medicine commercials.   I think of Sky-ri-zee .   Perhaps this is the concoction for clearer skin.   What wouldn’t an Aaronic priest have given for this special med?   “Got a blemish?   Come closer, son.   Looks like the onset of leprosy.   Go away.   Two pills in the mouth and come back in seven.”   Much of Leviticus would have to be rewritten.   The red heifer sacrifice could be summed up with a cream.   “Touched a dead body?   Rub this on the contact area.   Go away.   Come back tomorrow.”      But what if pills don’t work?   Adam would have O.D.’d on the blue and reds seeking to forget the fall. Thankfully the neighborhood drug store was not on his corner.   He heard vaguely of a savior to come.   God said it was in his genes.   ...
Read more

God's Successive Revelations

  God’s Successive Revelations Search Me diligently, and I will reveal Myself to you.      Yah, that sound like something God would say.   I understand He revealed the Trinity to us.   I plead ignorance in Church history.   Some theologians, perhaps 400 A.D. came upon this gem that we hold true today.   The idea of the rapture is new on the Church radar.   Late 1800’s?      What if God revealed His truth to His people in time?   Surely, Solomon was the wisest man in his day, but did he know about Pentecost?   Daniel, the far seer, was only shown glimpses.   What did he know of Peter and miracles in the temple?   A certain king discovered God’s truth again and that made for a reformation, but what did he know of the beast standing in the sea?   God gives insight in His time.      I have trained seven children.   As young  children, I did not flood them with...
Read more