Focus on His death

The death of our Lord Jesus ChristWhy is the focus on His death?*In another thread this question came up in response to 'that movie'This is a critical point. His death.Could it not be a large part of the problem that we have today? To hurry past this?Please bear with me I am only attempting to express my own out working of what is bearing down on me this morning. I don't want to be misunderstood, this is a good question that begs an answer.In fact I believe it is so important to get a true grasp on this I have started this post.Hoping to gain some wisdom and clarity from our more experienced brethren.* To be clear here is the original reply:https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1261&forum=35Not attempting to wrench this out of context.My apologies in advance.__________________________Is this focus misplaced?Had been listening to T.Austin Sparks yesterday and may I interject here that he is fast becoming another blessed mentor to my grasping at the incredible depth of mystery and awe of our Lord and God.He was discussing the fact that we don't really understand what death is, tried in vain to track down his words from the message. But this should suffice: (The essence highlighted in bold)" The Person Of Christ Illumined By The Cross""But we must step back for a moment. What was the real meaning of the Cross and what did it effect? All we have said about the Person of Christ was true of Him altogether apart from the Cross. For Him the Cross was no necessity. There came a time, however, when He had to be made what He Himself was not. To redeem us, He Who knew no sin had to be made sin in our room. In that hour He was placed in the position of man as the victim of Satan's lie with its darkness. So also was He made to take upon Him the enmity of our fallen state, and in that deep experience, in that REPRESENTATIVE position He lost the consciousness of the Father's love. There remained but the third phase of that responsibility - death. For one terrible, eternal "hour" Christ was separated from - lost union with - His God. "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Matt. 27:46). The mystery is too deep for us, but the fact and the reason are clear and unmistakable. So He died, "He tasted death" - awful death, which is the full and naked consciousness, awareness, realization of utter separation from, and abandonment by, God! But in HIMSELF He was God's sinless Son, and, as such, He could not be holden of death (Acts 2:24). In virtue of His essential sinlessness He survived the wrath which rested upon what He was made for that dark hour. He overcame and destroyed the causes, the ground, the strength and the originator of death. "By weakness and defeatHe won the meed and crown; Trod all our foes beneath His feet,By being trodden down. He hell in hell laid low,Made sin, He sin o'erthrew; Bowed to the grave, destroyed it so, And death by dying slew." It took more than a man to do this. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). Thus in the Cross all the cause and nature of separation from God was destroyed, and in Christ risen that union is perfect FOR US. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). This perfect no-condemnation fellowship with God, made actual by the Holy Spirit taking up residence within us through our believing into Christ, is the possession of those alone - but is surely the birthright of such - who have come to the Cross in realization of separation from God, in deepest longing for restored fellowship with Him, and in acknowledgment that sin is the cause. Thus, looking to Christ crucified as the Author and Perfecter of salvation, they discover that He is more than a man, even man at his greatest. They discover that in Him - and in Him alone - God is found. Then it works the other way. Can we imagine what Saul of Tarsus felt like - he who had believed Jesus of Nazareth to have been but a man and an impostor among men, and to have been executed as a fraud and blasphemer - when he saw on the Damascus road that this Glorified, Exalted One was God's Eternal Son? It needed a time in Arabia to let the implications of that adjust and revolutionize his whole outlook. When we see Whose Cross that was it puts the Cross so far beyond all human ideas of 'dying for ideals,' 'heroic death for a great cause,' and all such lesser and altogether inadequate interpretations of Christ's death. "Ye killed the Prince of Life" (Acts 3:15) was the charge laid at the Jews' door by the Apostles. So we come back to our starting point. It requires the Cross to really see Who Jesus is; and in the seeing of Him truly by the Cross we see how great, wonderful, sacred, and awful is that Cross.No wonder that Satan has ever sought to take from His essential Person and make Him something less! No wonder that he has so persistently sought to strip the Cross of its truest meaning! Let all who do either of these things recognize from whence their inspiration, or blindness, comes, and with whom it is that they - though unintentionally - are in league. Let Christians also realize that all enmity; lack of love, divisions, and strife; all prejudice, suspicion, and spiritual blindness; with all spiritual death, is because the Cross has not been apprehended aright. Somewhere uncrucified flesh is holding the ground. It is impossible to be a truly crucified man or woman and at the same time either have personal interests or be at variance with other children of God, i.e. without love for them. The essential basis of life, light, and love - which is Christ in full manifestation - is the Cross as a working reality in the realm of the old creation, and the Risen Power of Christ in the new. All this is but saying in other words that the Cross of Christ brings us into living union and oneness with God, and if we will but live in the full meaning and value of that union we shall be living epistles of Christ in terms of life, light, and love. Failure in these means failure somewhere, and for some reason, in our fellowship with God in Christ. The measure of our walk with Him will be the measure of these three features of Christ." Full article:http://www.austin-sparks.net/books/tasbk30chap1.htmlSo it is here where I wanted to pause and attempt to grasp a handful of understanding.

”My apologies in advance.”No need for apologies.“Is this focus misplaced?”Absolutely not. In the foreword to the original printing of the book you’re reading, TAS wrote:“From time to time God lays special stress upon matters which are central and basic to the life and witness of the Church, which is the Body of Christ, which matters are in danger of being lost sight of. His method of doing this is sometimes that of laying His hand upon some and taking them in deep places where their only hope of life and ministry is the revelation which He gives them there.”Many men have come to the point where “their ONLY HOPE of life” has been a “fuller revelation” of what the Lord gave them “In the deep places” into which He took them. Some have suspended MINISTRY to others until and unless they got beyond the jargon, the terminology, the Christian catch-phrases and entered into the Reality behind all the words.Paul wrote, “KNOW ye not that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”(Rom.6:3). In “The Normal Christian Life” Watchman Nee shares his decision to stop preaching to others until the Lord showed him the reality of his (Nee’s) own death when the Lord died. In the same book, Nee asks a stabbing question of his readers: “Yes. But do we REALLY know it”.Just a couple other thoughts at this point: Austin-Sparks is a wonderful source (perhaps the best), but to read everything that he wrote about DEATH would take months. I’m reminded of something A.W.Tozer wrote somewhere. A loose paraphrase would be “The best a book can do for anyone is to serve as something like a sign-post on the way to the destination. After the end is reached, the book, like the sign-post is forgotten.” Spend time with God in His word. The Living Word has sent and given us His Spirit to illuminate His written word. George Mueller (orphanage ministry) came to a point in his life where he quit reading everything except the Bible for a time. He wrote that after one month of reading Scripture, meditating on it and praying about it, he learned more than he had previously in years.Specifically in relation to the matter of the necessity of the Lord’s death on the Cross IN ORDER TO destroy the devil who, until then, held the power of death, permit me to suggest the Letter to the Hebrews:“We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me. Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:9-15).“So it is here where I wanted pause and attempt to grasp a handful of understanding.”Glad you did. Roger

Quote:"Spend time with God in His word. The Living Word has sent and given us His Spirit to illuminate His written word. George Mueller (orphanage ministry) came to a point in his life where he quit reading everything except the Bible for a time. He wrote that after one month of reading Scripture, meditating on it and praying about it, he learned more than he had previously in years."I noticed that Greg (wrtbooks) has just posted biographical and autobiographical material on George Mueller's life. Let Mueller speak for himself:"How Do We Get and Keep Our Happiness in God?If happiness in God is “of supreme and paramount importance” because it is the spring of sacrificial love that honors God, then the crucial question becomes how do we get it and keep it?But in what way shall we attain to this settled happiness of soul? How shall we learn to enjoy God? How obtain such an all-sufficient soul-satisfying portion in him as shall enable us to let go the things of this world as vain and worthless in comparison? I answer, This happiness is to be obtained through the study of the Holy Scriptures. God has therein revealed Himself unto us in the face of Jesus Christ.[73]Happiness in God comes from seeing God revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ through the Scriptures. “In them . . . we become acquainted with the character of God. Our eyes are divinely opened to see what a lovely Being God is! And this good, gracious, loving, heavenly Father is ours, our portion for time and for eternity.”[74] Knowing God is the key to being happy in God. The more we know of God, the happier we are. . . . When we became a little acquainted with God . . . our true happiness . . . commenced; and the more we become acquainted with him, the more truly happy we become. What will make us so exceedingly happy in heaven? It will be the fuller knowledge of God.[75]Therefore the most crucial means of fighting for joy in God is to immerse oneself in the Scriptures where we see God in Christ most clearly. When he was 71 years old, Mueller spoke to younger believers:Now in brotherly love and affection I would give a few hints to my younger fellow-believers as to the way in which to keep up spiritual enjoyment. It is absolutely needful in order that happiness in the Lord may continue, that the Scriptures be regularly read. These are God's appointed means for the nourishment of the inner man. . . .Consider it, and ponder over it. . . . Especially we should read regularly through the Scriptures, consecutively, and not pick out here and there a chapter. If we do, we remain spiritual dwarfs. I tell you so affectionately. For the first four years after my conversion I made no progress, because I neglected the Bible. But when I regularly read on through the whole with reference to my own heart and soul, I directly made progress. Then my peace and joy continued more and more. Now I have been doing this for 47 years. I have read through the whole Bible about 100 times and I always find it fresh when I begin again. Thus my peace and joy have increased more and more.[76] He was seventy-one and he would live and read on for another twenty-one years. But he never changed his strategy for satisfaction in God. When he was seventy-six he wrote the same thing he did when he was sixty, “I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord.”[77] And the means stayed the same: I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it. . . . What is the food of the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God; and . . . not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.[78]Which brings us back now the satisfaction of Mueller's soul at the death of his wife, Mary. Remember, he said, “My heart was at rest. I was satisfied with God. And all this springs, as I have often said before, from taking God at his word, believing what he says.” [79]"(The footnotes are found in Greg's post.)By the way, that last statement also belongs under the post "Faith"Roger

Thanks Roger.“From time to time God lays special stress upon matters which are central and basic to the life and witness of the Church, which is the Body of Christ, which matters are in danger of being lost sight of. His method of doing this is sometimes that of laying His hand upon some and taking them in deep places where their only hope of life and ministry is the revelation which He gives them there.”Missed that, interesting...Austin-Sparks is a wonderful source (perhaps the best), but to read everything that he wrote about DEATH would take months. I’m reminded of something A.W.Tozer wrote somewhere. A loose paraphrase would be “The best a book can do for anyone is to serve as something like a sign-post on the way to the destination. After the end is reached, the book, like the sign-post is forgotten.” True. Recall saying something similar to this in regards to thoughts on how much emphesis we spend on 'other books' as opposed to The Book. Though the argument was that all we needed was the Bible, which is of course true ultimately, I think I used the words 'travel guide'.Spend time with God in His word. The Living Word has sent and given us His Spirit to illuminate His written word. George Mueller (orphanage ministry) came to a point in his life where he quit reading everything except the Bible for a time. He wrote that after one month of reading Scripture, meditating on it and praying about it, he learned more than he had previously in years....permit me to suggest the Letter to the Hebrews:Ironic and interesting that you brought these two up. It has become more and more pressing upon me to get into the scriptures and it has been a joy to do so. Have been studying the book of Hebrews for the last week and a half. It's great that in cross referencing you end up exploring various areas throughout the Bible. I also try to discern where the Holy Spirits leading is and the ties that bind what I believe is His direction. For instance lately the two things that keep coming back up are "Jereusalem" and "Zion".Learning what my tendencies are, begining to see where I fail to listen to The Still Small Voice and can go running off in 20 different directions at the same time. A lot of the spill over can be seen here in these posts/replys.Still struggle to give expression through words what is going on in my spirit. Find that through these great saints back of us I can say with them "That's what I am trying to say".But for all that, the examples you provided here as well as in the second reply are what the Lord has been telling me for awhile now.Thanks.

"This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." Hebrews 6:19-20 He being our forerunner shows us the way in which we must follow. Hebrews 9:12, "Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption." He gave His blood, so that we may have His life.In ChristJeff

I'm reminded of something A.W.Tozer wrote somewhere. A loose paraphrase would be "The best a book can do for anyone is to serve as something like a sign-post on the way to the destination. After the end is reached, the book, like the sign-post is forgotten."This quote from Tozer is a great reminder that our focus always needs to be on Jesus, not on a book, or on a message, or on a preacher, but on the One who is all and in all.Here is the the text of the comment you paraphrased and some surrounding context as taken from the preface to The Pursuit of Man;"Perhaps a word of warning would not be amiss here: It is that we beware the common habit of putting confidence in books, as such. It takes a determined effort of the mind to break free from the error of making books and teachers ends in themselves.The worst thing a book can do for a Christian is to leave him with the impression that he has received from it anything really good; the best it can do is to point the way to the Good he is seeking. The function of a good book is to stand like a signpost directing the reader toward the Truth and the Life. That book serves best which early makes itself unnecessary, just as a signpost serves best after it is forgotten, after the traveler has arrived safely at his desired haven. The work of a good book is to incite the reader to moral action, to turn his eyes toward God and urge him forward. beyond that it cannot go."In Christ,Ron