Saturday, March 13, 2010
John 19:30; Luke 23:46 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, "It is finished!" ... "Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit." and yielded up His spirit.
NO ORDINARY DEATH
Truly, this is no ordinary death. This is an earth-shaking event. Literally. It is as though a shudder runs through nature as nature's God is laid low. He who made the earth and came to walk its surface, now is to be laid to rest beneath its sod. Matthew reports and we see, "Jesus ... yielded up His spirit ... and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split."
This is no ordinary death. Nothing else like it ever happened. This event has import for all the people in all the world -- in every age.
+ This is the One to whom Adam and Eve were pointed by God Himself, when He said that Satan would be crushed by a descendant of theirs.
+ This is the One Isaac prefigured when he lay obediently bound upon the altar his father had built.
+ His death was preached by Moses when he lifted up that bronze serpent.
+ His death was described in graphic detail by the prophet Isaiah -- centuries in advance.
This was no ordinary death for this was no ordinary man. "He who stilled the seas and calmed the winds and ruled the powers of nature in His life, could not suffer such a death as this -- and nature itself be silent" (Miller).
This was no ordinary death for the Son of God here died in your place and mine. Suffered not only the separation of the soul from the body -- temporal death. But before that, as He hung there in the darkness, He suffered the separation from the Father which we by our sins deserve. He died for you. He died for me. He died so that from the heart we each could say with Paul the Apostle: "... the Son of God ... loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
