What a Savior Wants
Now we see Christ. Not a serpent, but a savior. Not manipulative, but moved by compassion. Not condemningly condescending, but caringly close. He walked among the desperate as a healing doctor. He led the hopeless out of darkness. He gave the common man something glorious and other worldly to believe in.
And when he went to the garden it wasn’t to deceive. He went to the garden to decide. To decide his body would be given for a sacrifice. To decide that you were important to him, your freedom, your joy. To decide that a few hours of agony would be worth an eternity of community with those born into his spiritual kingdom. To decide that hell shouldn’t be your future, but heaven. To decide that his pain would buy you peace; peace that passed all earthly understanding. To decide that a bridge needed to be constructed; one that would stretch over sin’s chasm to the broken hearts, wounded spirits, ravaged souls, and darkened minds. And that bridge would be made of rough hewn timber shaped like a cross. But his cross would help you cross.
It would help you cross from battered living to blessed love. It would help you cross from lonely rejection to loving reception, where embracing arms of your Heavenly Father waits. It is a cross-bridge reddened by a desperate Creator’s passion to save the wanderer. It is a cross-bridge that extends to most desolate places of abuse and bitterness, to remote areas of shame and hidden indignity, to the lowest points of human despair where too many graves hold the unhealed and too many demons feast on the flesh of the weak.
Look again. See the serpent hanging on a branch of deception. See a savior hanging on limbs of deliverance. Hear the serpent whisper lying words to capture a vulnerable soul. Hear the savior whisper words of forgiveness to persecutors and a thief, to set them free, to release them from sin’s web. Watch the serpent manipulate and help bring judgment on those who approached his tree. Then watch the savior minister mercy to everyone who would ever approach the cross. See the serpent use treachery and temptation. Then see a savior use hope and healing words even as he died. One used his tree for death. The other, for life. One hung on a tree with the sole purpose of separating God and man. The other hung on a tree for the soul to have purpose in reunion with God. The serpent used his branch of deception to form a family tree of wickedness, anger, and violence; of sin and death. But the savior used his branch of deliverance, on an old rugged cross, to form a family tree of saints and praisers, of prayer warriors and worshippers.
Played: 188 | Download | Duration: 00:28:30
You had mentioned,"To decide that a few hours of agony would be worth an eternity of community with those born into his spiritual kingdom." and this is the Lords delight. This is the "THAT" which the Lord came to seek and to save that which was lost. Not them or those but that first communion in the Garden before the Fall this was the true Eden yes this is the Lords delight. One agonizing day in comparison to an eternity without a companion? Id have to say that Calvary was Joy compared to the Lords first heart break with Adam, the companion of God. Calvary became the soothing ointment to woo the Fathers bleeding heart and when Jesus went there it was "for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross." Thank you for flowing with the Spirit of God in your writings blessing the fir til fields with Heavens pollens as we listen to the spilled out Word of God through your ministry, Your friend Eddie.
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