FOUNDATIONAL TRUTH

FOUNDATIONAL TRUTH

                If we want to talk about the most rock bottom foundation of the Christian faith it would have to be about the Person of Jesus Christ. What was Jesus role in eternity past? What was His role in the physical creation of this universe that we live in? What did He become in order to save us? What is His role in the present time? What will be His role in the consummation of all things?  What will be His role in the coming millennial kingdom? And what will be His role in the New and eternal creation? And what will be His role when He turns all things back over the Father and God becomes all in all?

                One thing is certain. Jesus Christ is at the center of all meaning and His cross stands in the center of time.

                Einstein described the actions of gravity as a bending of space time. Our sun, because of its size and weight, creates a dent in space time so that whatever comes near to it begins to circle around it. This is best described with the illustration of bowling ball sitting in the middle of a trampoline. The weight of the bowling ball creates a dent in the trampoline so that when you throw a bunch of marbles onto the trampoline, the marbles will begin to circle around the bowling ball and will soon come to rest against the bowling ball.

                This is the same action that keeps our planets circling our sun and God has placed each planet according to its weight and size and speed to maintain the orbit that it holds around our sun. Each of these planets are in precise balance and its orbits mathematically predictable  so accurately that we can send a rocket into space traveling and maybe 25,000 miles per hour for say 10 years and come into an orbit around that planet, say for instance Mars. So in order to reach Mars, that tiny little dot in the night sky, they cannot aim the rocket at where Mars is now, but where it will be 10 years from now when our rocket arrives.

                This little illustration perhaps sheds more light on what Jesus meant when He said: “ And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”

                Jesus on the cross stands at the center of time and He carries enough weight to draw everything… all human history… all of the sins of the world… all of the sickness and death… all of the entropy and decay that our universe is presently subject to. Everything in all of time finds its center at the cross and we may ask how one Man dying on a wooden cross 2000 years ago could carry such weight. But the answer involves who Jesus is.

                If He was not the Creator of all that exists then His weight would not be enough to draw everything in space-time to Himself. It is easy to begin to take the weight of Jesus lightly, when it comes to recognizing His authority over our lives and our world. Nonbelievers scoff at our worship, but the truth is that if Jesus was merely a prophet or a teacher or even a martyr … well… there are thousands of them, but none of them has the weight to draw everything in the universe to him, or to reconcile all things to God, but Paul said in Colossians 1: 19 and 20:

                “For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”

                So nothing less than the fullness of the godhead dwelling in a Man who was both fully God and fully Man, could carry the weight of our redemption and thus draw all things in creation to Himself.

                Jesus is that one and only Person in all of space time with enough weight to become the center of all things and the Savior of all things.

                People may scoff when we tell them that salvation can be achieved by no other than Jesus Christ. They hate us when we say that Jesus cannot be compared with other gods or human philosophies. The fact that Pope Francis, the presumed representative of Christianity, is seeking to create a global religion in which all gods, including Jesus, are treated as equals is a ridiculous notion. You can’t place the Creator of the universe, the Savior of mankind into any known category. Jesus is either who He says He is or He is a nobody… a deluded fraud and as such He fails to be even a good teacher or prophet or martyr. Jesus stands at the center of time and He is either who the Bible says He is or we are without hope in the world… in a planet that is out of control in a thousand different ways and about to self-destruct.

                All of human history is now being drawn into a final cataclysmic showdown of cosmic powers and our only hope is that when all is said and done, Jesus is standing at the end of history… His story.

                The Bible contains the history of mankind’s fall, God’s redemption and our ongoing purposes in eternity future and Jesus Chris tis at the center of it all from Genesis to Revelation. He is the seed of the woman promised in Genesis 3:15. He is the seed that was planted in the center of time, to die and then rise again in order to bring forth an abundant harvest. He is the first fruits of that great harvest to come.

                Since the day that Jesus returned to His Father, He has functioned as our High Priest… applying His blood to our lives. He is the true Lamb of God to which all other animal sacrifices pointed. So He came here in human flesh, born of a virgin, temporarily made lower than the angels, as are we, so that He could taste death for every man. (Hebrews 2:9)

                We know these things to be absolutely true because our bodies have become temples of the Holy Spirit. He operates in our lives doing what human nature alone cannot do. Romans chapter 1 describes to us what we would do if we followed the inclinations of our own hearts and it is not a pretty picture. So our own natural nature is to devolve to something even worse than the animals, for our hearts are wicked beyond belief. It becomes evident in the world where many have rejected the indwelling Holy Spirit to see them following the very pathway described in Romans chapter one and even demanding the right to follow this path in defiance of God… and yet the end thereof is destruction.

                God doesn’t really have to judge us or punish us because all seed produces after its own kind. Whatever we sow, that is what we reap. So if we sow unto the Spirit, we will from the Spirit reap eternal life, but if we sow to the flesh, then we will from the flesh reap death. We can argue with God about this all we want to, but it was built into the fabric of creation. All seed produces after its kind.

                So when we talk about Jesus being the Way, the Truth and the Life, we are saying in essence, that Jesus stands at the center of reality. He is that one seed to whom all of God’s promises were made. When we receive Him we receive that spiritual Seed that bears the fruit of righteousness and eternal life. If we receive the tainted seed of Satan, then we will from that seed  reap destruction and death.

                Each of us determines his own destiny by the seed we choose to plant in our lives. People may talk about God as being the Judge, but really, in the end God simply separates the wheat from the tares, the good seed from the bad seed. But the judgment has been made by us according to the seeds that we have planted.

                Our lesson this week concludes with the fact that if we receive Jesus as our Savior, then we must also accept Him as our Lord. Our lives must become empowered by Him and directed by Him, for if Jesus is who He says He is and who we believe He is, then we cannot have put our lives in better hands.

                Our part is not only to believe and accept that He is worthy to be our Savior, but that He is also worthy to be our Lord and King. We are learning how to walk in agreement with His plans and obedience to His will for in that is life and our eternal destiny.

                Every day we have choices to make between the flesh and the Spirit. We can sow to the Spirit or we can sow to the flesh. One brings a harvest of eternal life and the other brings destruction and death.

                Today Satan is in an all- out war against everything that Christ stands for. He is building a global kingdom in defiance of God even as Nimrod built the first Tower of Babel. Those who follow and worship Satan want to see the followers of Christ wiped off the face of the planet, for in spite of the fact that they claim to embrace all religions, there is one group of people that they cannot tolerate. They are those who are born again, who carry the seed, the very Spirit of Christ within us. We are like flickering candles in otherwise utter darkness and though we may be weak and small at times, even one candle can dispel the utter darkness that would envelope the world like a thick blanket.

                But this Christ in us is the hope of glory and He is well able to keep that which we have committed unto Him against that day. He will get us to the finish line because He has already conquered sin and death and we with Him as long as we remain connected by faith and trust and faithfulness. He created us for purposes that go far beyond this present darkness  and earth has become our training ground for learning to overcome even as He overcame.

                All of creation is waiting in eager expectation for the revealing of the sons of God… after all, all of creation was subjected to futility, entropy and death by Adam’s sin, but Jesus Christ, our new Adam has reversed the curse. Creation itself is waiting anxiously to be set free from its present darkness. Jesus is the light of the world and we are His temples. We carry this light in earthen vessels.

                Let us determine to walk in these perspectives and the purposes of God, for we are His children and we are nearing home. If we will be faithful unto death, He will give us the crown of life and we will yet reign with Him as a kingdom of kings and priests unto our God. This is foundational truth!