God's Way

• Printable Version - Share on Facebook - Posted by Jeffrey Smith December 28, 2015 - Filed in Devotional - #Devotional  #Christian Devotional  #  #  #  - 1,940 views

  2nd Samuel 14:14-Like water spilled on the ground that can never be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways that a banished person may not remain estranged from Him.
  Isaiah 59:2- But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
  John 19:28- Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, I am thirsty.
  John 19:34- Instead one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.

  Jesus is our ground. When we pour ourselves out on Him and die to ourselves, we become reborn in eternal salvation, never to become estranged to our Father again. We are fully recovered. Once we were dead in our transgressions, and we were separated from our Father through our own actions, but through the plan of our Father, He sent Jesus to assure us of this truth. Jesus cries out, "I am thirsty", and while His physical body may have desired something to drink, what He was thirsty for is to make the dead alive, and to bridge the lost and separated, back to the Father. He drank in the bitterness of our hurts, and what is more, it was vinegar that He drank on the sponge that was lifted up to His face on a stalk of the Hyssop plant. Vinegar is what is formed from the rotting of fruit. Fruit is an important image in the word. It speaks of what is produced by true followers of God,( what is produced from our hands, our works see Matthew 7:15-17), and if it sits around too long it will ferment leaving a bitter tasting drink that may look like water, but is nothing like water. That is what the law does, it rots away good fruit because through the law sin and transgression is recognizable and separates us from our perfect Father. The sponge holds in the vinegar and so Jesus extracts the vinegar from the sponge. It is also important to note that a sponge in most cases looks like a human brain and that is what gets infected by the law. We can become so caught up with a polluted mind, that our hearts suffer, and we are condemned. The hyssop stalk is the base, and the hyssop was used in the old testament to cleanse lepers and to remove mold ( Leviticus 14). Hyssop was also used as the tool to place the blood of lambs around the door at passover (Exodus 12:22). This was to make sure that death would pass over the houses of the Israelites. You see in this combination, Jesus drinks in our sin, our transgression, our bitterness, our diseases, (more specifically the ones that separate us from God and from others) formed from our rotten fruit, and out from Him flows rivers of living water. The blood and water that comes out of Him at His death covers the earth and everyone on it. The difference between water we spill on the ground that can never be recovered like we see in 2nd Samuel, and this Living Water, is that out of that spilling from Jesus, we have a wellspring of new life out of His death. It is by Jesus' death that He recovered all life eternally. We have this assurance, that while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us. Jesus acts as our filter, our liver that takes in garbage and produces potable living water that we can drink in and be restored and refreshed.
  It is important to point out that while it was for all people, Jesus' sentence was carried out by the Romans, and so these symbols and signs would not have come from the Pharisee's who knew the law and the prophecies. Why is that important? Because there is no way that a Roman would be involved with some fulfillment of a prophecy. There is no other way for this to happen then at the hands of God Himself who ordained this through His plan to draw us in, and not separate us from Him. There can be no other explanation than the full-on devised plan of the Lord to keep His children cleansed from any disease or sin that would disqualify them form His presence.
  If you are suffering from any affliction and the liar wants you to believe it is due to something you did, take up hope and be washed in the living water. Be reminded of the Living Water that flows through you. You have been washed by Him. You and I are clean despite what we are being led to believe. There is one thing in this life that is absolutely true, and that is that through Jesus Christ we can never be separated from the love of God. The more we recognize His love in us, the more we believe Jesus, the healthier, the more prosperous, the more we will produce fresh ripe fruit. We will have rivers of Living Water flowing through us (John 7:38). Believe that every single word and action Jesus said and did was all to fulfill God our Father's way, in which a banished person may not remain estranged from Him. We are no longer strangers, and so in that we must seek to have a deeper relationship with Him in all things. In Jesus name Amen.