Skip to main content

FAITHFUL TO HELP

Hebrews 2:14-18

“Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could He die, and only by dying could He break the power of the devil, who had the power of death.  Only in this way could He set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. We also know that the Son did not come to help angels; He came to help the descendants of Abraham. Therefore, it was necessary for Him to be made in every respect like us, His brothers and sisters, so that He could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then He could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people.  Since He Himself has gone through suffering and testing, He is able to help us when we are being tested.”

Everyone who has ever followed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, Rescuer, Redeemer, and covenant Friend knows the frailty of their own humanity. Before the Lord revealed Himself to us, giving us grace to turn from sin and death and to surrender all we are to live under His gracious rule, we characters were educated and developed in sin. Going our own way was a natural as breathing.

When the Holy Spirit made clear the true condition of our lives, being dead in sin, there was only one singular hope for us. We needed the Holy Spirit to bring about in us a “new birth” that was from heaven, not achieved by human effort. We realized that being spiritually dead and broken, there was no way we could “fix” ourselves. We had to see there was no one more ineffective than a dead man. We desperately needed supernatural help from outside ourselves.

Jesus Christ, being fully human, knows our limitations and weaknesses without ever having sinned. He never internalized nor personalized sin. He alone knows the full-bore power of temptation as He resisted it always to the “nth” degree. His triumph of obedience to the Father out of love took Him to a Roman cross, where in time and in history, He bore the penalty for the sin of the whole of humanity. He alone could break the power of sin, the grave, death, and the devil.

Jesus knows how much we need Him. He is not surprised by our struggles. In fact, He is never disappointed in us because we never surprise Him by what we do amiss. Someone has said that the Lord had already factored in our stupidity when He called us out of death and into life. The Lord knows how to help us when we are tested a little or a lot. We don’t know how He needs to help us and it is folly to think we can advise Him on what we need. He alone knows what we need in times of trial and suffering. We simply need to believe Him and to call out, “Lord Jesus, I am Yours, save me.” That is the prayer martin Luther’s Abbot taught him in a black moment of doubt and fear.

Praying, “Lord, please help!” is a prayer the Lord will never ignore. Trust Him. He really does know you, and is there to help you because you are His disciple and child. He loves you.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  TIMING Years ago, I head an old preacher say, “The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.” That statement is an offense to the culture being worshipped world-wide today. There is a lust for the immediate, as a line from an old movie stated, “Immediate gratification takes too long!” We want faster internet, immediate responses to our texts, mobile orders at the ready when we walk into Starbucks. What we want, we demand to have NOW. We are masters at justifying ourselves. “Well, we’re engaged already and we’re going to get married anyway, so what’s wrong with us living together and being sexually intimate now?” God’s timing in human relationship is not arbitrary, it is protective and covering. Sad to say, even some who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ choose to justify their living in sexual sin now, because they promise that they will one day get married. The context where sexual intimacy finds its true meaning and purpose is in the covenant of marriage. ...
Post a Comment
Read more
 THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory. The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence. Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarc...
Post a Comment
Read more
  WORKING AGAINST ALL HUMANITY 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 “They fail to please God and WORK AGAINST ALL HUMANITY   as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins.” WOW! What a startling statement! St. Paul is making it crystal clear that those who oppose and work to prevent the proclamation of the Gospel are actually “working against ALL HUMANITY.” Why would he write that? It is because the only means of the restoration, reclamation and salvation of humanity is what God has done for all people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the essence of the Gospel: Jesus Christ. To oppose and try to silence the presentation of the Gospel is to work against the reclamation of all humanity. Who would want to work against ALL humanity? Satan is the name by which he is known. He hates ALL humanity because every human being still bears the image of God, albeit that ima...
Post a Comment
Read more