Don’t you love the spring of the year, new life charges on to the grand stage of humanity, with bursting blooms of colorful beauty? The drab grey of melted snow and leafless trees are once again transformed as the landscape becomes glorious at the stroke of God’s perennial brush
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if life could be a habitual spring? We know that season’s area necessity of life, if only for the hibernated to awake again at the singing of the Robins, the cooing of the
Doves and the chirping of our feathered friends. What would it be like without long hot summers to complain about and hard winters to shiver in? We can laugh about this but the people who live on the equator have a set of problems uniquely their own, when it comes to weather. God incorporated in nature the message of resurrection hope and we are right in the big middle of it. I have thought at times we live in the region of the country where spring has a hard time
making up its mind but winter will lose and once again the shift will be apparent for all to see. In each believer, God has instilled the same aspect of hope and also a knowing that God is in control.
Through the years I find myself coming back again and again to Psalms 22, where I can read about the SUFFERING SERVANT, the REDMPTIVE SAVIOR and the SOVEREIGN SON OF GOD. I encourage you to read this for yourself during this Resurrection Season to get a far greater understanding than just that of a preacher on Easter Sunday Morning. Christ death, burial and resurrection is all here, prophesied by David long before the crucifixion took place. Oh the absolute pathos of the opening words of this Psalm, “MY GOD, MY GOD! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?” It is as disturbing as it is abrupt. It is a character that knows and has trust in God who is crying out. I have often felt riveted to the agony in this prayer of desperation. “MY GOD, MY GOD!”
Can you see Jesus deliberately choosing these words to describe His agony on the cross (Matthew 27:46)? What did Jesus have on His mind when he was on the Cross? I think we can see here in this chapter of the Bible He had the fulfillment of His mission on His mind. Jesus is caught between heaven and earth it was at this moment a divine exchange was taking place. “God made Him (JESUS) who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 This is a far cry from, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” to Isaiah foretelling His final hours. This is why Paul could write in 2 Corinthians 5:19: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself at the cross.”
In the scripture we find seven different things that pleased God:
To bruise His Son. “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him” (Isaiah 53:10).
To make all fullness to dwell in Him. “It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness
dwell” (Col. 1:19).
To save them who believe. “It pleased God...to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).
To reveal His Son in the saved ones. “It pleased God....to reveal His Son in me” (Gal. 1:15-16).
To make us His people. “It hath pleased the Lord to make you His people” (1 Sam. 12:22).
To make us one in Christ. “Set the members every one of them in the Body as it hath pleased Him” (1 Cor. 12:18)
To give us a resurrection body. “God gives it a body as it hath pleased Him” (1 Cor. 15:38).
We need to choose the path Paul set before the Church of Colossae:
“That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Colossians 1:10
Wrapped up in the resurrection message is this powerful hope, because He lives we can also live and in so doing we can choose to live in such a manner as to please Him. We are empowered to please Him.
HE IS RISEN, INDEED!!!
God Bless you and yours during this Easter Week, we love you.
Pastor Cleddie and GayNell