November 2002

Christ:
The Landscape of Life

Part Thirty-seven

“LO and BEHOLD”

“Guarding our garments” (B)

Eccl 9:8 exhorts, “Let your garments always be white (be pure); never let your head lack Anointing Oil (of joy, Isa 61:3; and gladness, Heb 1:9).” What are our “garments”? God gives “The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness”! (Isa 61:3) Heb 3544 defines “heaviness”: “To be feeble, obscure, darkish, growing dim, smoking”; from 3543, “To be weak, despondent, waxed dull, fallen, faint, and utterly restrained.” So men cannot praise God until He removes the “spirit of heaviness” that enfeebles, obscures. darkens, weakens, dulls and restrains us. Mt 26:41 says when Jesus told His disciples to watch and pray at Gethsemane He said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak!” Gk 772 defines “weak”: “More feeble, impotent, sick, without strength!”

“In Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate there was a pool which, in the Hebrew language, was called, Bethesda [Gk 964 meaning, “House of Kindness”] with five porches in which there lay a great multitude of impotent folk- some blind, some crippled, some withered- who waited for the moving (bubbling up as a geyser or spa) of the waters. ...One particular man there had been infirmed for 38 years! [In Scripture numerics, 38 = slavery] Jesus saw the man and knew he had been lying there for a long time. He asked him, ‘Do you want to be made whole?’ But the impotent man answered, ‘Sir, I have no helper to lower me into the pool whenever the waters are stirred up; and whenever I try to lower myself, someone else steps ahead of me. So Jesus said, *RISE! TAKE UP YOUR BED AND WALK!’ And immediately- which was on the Sabbath Day- the man was made whole and he did take up his bed and walked!” When some Jews saw the healed man carrying his bed on the Sabbath, they called it a breach of Law. He said that a man had healed him and told him to take up his bed and walk; but when they asked who was the Man, he didn’t know His name; and as he looked around for Jesus, He had quietly slipped away . “Then later Jesus found the healed man in the temple and told him, ‘BEHOLD, YOU ARE MADE WHOLE, NOW GO, SIN NO MORE- LEST SOMETHING WORSE HAPPENS TO YOU!’ The man went and told the Jews that Jesus had made him whole! So thereafter they persecuted and sought to kill the Lord for doing these things on the Sabbath Day. But Jesus told them, ‘My Father still works even now; so I, Myself, must work!!’ The Jews tried even more to kill Him; since Jesus not only healed on the Sabbath; but He also called God His Father- making Him equal with God!’ But Jesus said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, ‘The Son can do nothing of Himself! He does only what He sees the Father do! Whatever the Father does, the Son does also!”(Jn 5:3-19)

*Gk 1453 translates “rise”:“To rouse from: sleep, sitting, lying down, obscurity, inactivity, ruins, non-existence, disease; and be risen from death!” [This root is used when the angel outside Christ’s tomb told Mary Magdalene “He is not here, for He is risen just as He said!” Mt 28:6] It also means: “awake”. Ro 13:11-12, “It is high time to AWAKE FROM SLEEP! Our Salvation is nearer than when we first believed! The night is far spent; the Day is at hand; so let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the Armor of Light!!” Eph 5:14 says,“AWAKE, O, SLEEPER! ARISE FROM THE DEAD and Christ shall give you Light!” This refers to the “deep sleep” that God cast upon the first Adam in Gen 2:21. This shows us it was a“Spirit of heaviness” that prevented the natural man from praising God and since “God inhabits the praises of His people” (Ps 22:3) His Spirit could not indwell the first earthy Adam! And that is why Ro 5:6 says,

“When we were yet without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly!”

When Jesus Christ heals all men from the debilitating impotence and feeble weakness of the “Spirit of heaviness”, the whole earth shall be clothed in His beautiful “garment of praise”!

[TO BE CONTINUED]