Jesus and the Battle

So I am writing this paper, for a Biblical studies class (I attend a Free Methodist University and this is a required course). Today I am looking at the New Testament commentary and it really hits me, the commentator says that, of course the Jews in Jesus time are looking for a military leader, in their Messiah, one who will lead them out of Roman oppression, but instead they get someone who heals the sick and raises the dead.

Yes, ok.

Then it all comes together in my mind. God creates the heavens and the earth, it is all very orderly. He sets limits for the waters and the land. He tells man that he is giving to him all the plants to eat but one. It is all very orderly and organized, peaceful and harmonious. God is very laissez faire with man. They all get along.

Then man and woman blow it, God sets more guidelines, organizes the beginnings, at least, of a plan to get man out of this mess. God tries to give some pointers to man, for instance, when he warns Cain that his attitude is leading to trouble. Trouble happens anyways. Entropy is starting to occur in relationships, they started out organized and are getting out of control.

Man gets into more and more trouble(as sparks fly upward man is born to trouble~Job 5:7). God takes the controls off the waters and lets them flood the earth. Then God tries again to start a new relationship with man. He tries to lend more order. Man is told not to shed the blood of men, and animals who shed human blood are put under the same restrictions. God also allows man to eat flesh, for the first time. God sets some other food guidelines, probably for protection from diseases is my guess.

All this time, man needs no leader but God. When God makes His covenant with Abraham, He still deals directly with men and women with no special leadership. As God moves into a relationship with Moses He adds a lot more order and recommends a hierarchy of relationships.

Eventually the people, much to God's great disappointment, demand a King. What I see is that God has been trying all this time to cultivate a relationship with mankind. By demanding a King they are saying that they want an earthly representative instead of God. God allows them to have Kings that disappoint.

Now David pleased God, not because he was sinless, but because of His faith in God's love for Him. His sin was far greater than Saul's, and yet Saul,when confronted about his sin just hung his head, he seemed to have no faith in God's love and forgiveness. David, who sinned in such a dramatic and horrible way, truly repented and expected God to receive his repentance, he seemed to know more about God's character, God's love nature.

By the time we get to Jesus time in the Bible, the Kings have failed God over and over, until Jeremiah prophecies,

³¹ "The time is coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.

³² It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to ^[d] them, ^[e] "
declares the LORD.

³³ "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time," declares the LORD.
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

³⁴ No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares the LORD.
"For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more."~(chapter 31)

Jesus came to restore Israel and teach people how to fellowship with the Father. He shows us by His very presence among us how highly God regards us. He proves God's love and compassion over and over. The tears He sheds for Lazarus, in the shortest verse in the Bible, are an example of His loving heart. I think he wept, not only because Lazarus had died, but that all men must die. Those tears were shed for all of us, for that broken Eden, that shattered paradise. Those tears were wept for the loss of relationship with the Father.

Later when faced with taking on all of our sins, Jesus weeps so hard blood mingles with His tears. I think that He looks at us and knows what our sins do to us, the pain they cause to us and to each other. Lastly I believe He wept in Gethsemane because as He accepted the our guilt He accepted the separation and rejection of the Father, for the first time in His incarnate existance. His separation from the Father without the comfort of the Holy Spirit must have been the most horrible loneliness ever felt by a human being. He knew that in His complete Humanness He was destined for Hell and only He can fully know what that really means. And in His destitution He knows that though He will conquer death and hell, He must leave behind those who cannot.

Well some of this will go into my paper, it needs refining. But these are my thoughts today.

I feel more like cold ash today than a spark............