November 22, 2024 -- Hebrews 5:7-8 -- Submitted to Jesus, Guided by the Spirit

While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God. 8 Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.
Hebrews 5:7-8 ESV
 
Jesus is the Savior of ruined, broken sinners precisely because He too was fully human. Now, those of you who know something about the Bible might inwardly protest, but it was rigged, He is fully God as well. Yes, He is fully God and He is fully, perfectly human. It was not rigged. In His humanity, He was born, lived, suffered, rejoiced; basically, He experienced the range of human emotions and experiences, joys and trials that are common to all people.
 
You might think, why turn to Jesus? How can He help me? He knows hurt. He knows rejection. He offered prayers and pleadings with loud cries and tears to God. In the Old Testament book Isaiah, which foretold of the coming of Jesus and His life, it is stated “it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10 ESV). He is called “the Suffering Servant”. The point is that Jesus will endure more than any other human past, present, or future ever could. He, in complete reliance on the Holy Spirit, withstood every temptation and suffering and trial and rejection and pain and taunt and betrayal, and put His confidence in the Father. Every time. Always.
 
When you and I decide to submit our lives to the care of God as he guides us, we are not putting ourselves into the hands of some distant, cold, unfeeling deity. No way! We cry out to Jesus. Jesus Who knows how hard it is to be human and how much one must rely on the Holy Spirit. He never once failed at anything. But He walked among people who constantly failed, who were in dire need of a Savior, and as He was confirmed in obedience through what He suffered, He also grew in compassion and love for the people He had come to save. Think of the loneliness He must have experienced as the only, truly holy person. No one could understand Him, all would be confronted with His goodness and their own sinfulness would be all the more fully exposed. The Father’s decision to save sinners (His decision made before anything was created or existed) was Jesus’s purpose in coming to this planet. He would identify with people, intimately coming to know the weaknesses of being human. At the cross He became the sacrifice to which all the Old Testament pointed: the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.
 
When we submit our thoughts and actions, our plans and goals to God, He guides us by His Spirit so that we will be strengthened by the Holy Spirit to walk in the pathway of Jesus. When we endure suffering for His Name’s sake, this new life is confirmed in us. When we fail and are by His tender kindness renewed in the Father’s love, we grow in our dedication to Him. When we see how others around us fail, we are tempted to be brutal in our response to them but united to Jesus, we know perfectly well the weakness of our own human flesh. And, submitting ourselves to our Father, we pray for those who betray us, for those who seem to be our enemies, that we will more fully know and that they will come to know the power of Jesus, Who in His humanity, perfectly followed every command of His Father.
 
Father in heaven, You are glorious in majesty and profoundly patient in Your dealings with us, wayward and inconsistent people. We are rebellious. We fail. We sin. Thank You for Jesus, Who knows the weakness of humanity and simultaneously the strength of the Spirit. Send the Spirit to evermore fully live in us so that we will both be fully submitted to You and also follow the Word by which You guide us. Amen.
 
https://youtu.be/9zGbdg1YCYY?si=vDo5qSrZnPPmABTo “Afflicted Saint, to Christ Draw Near”
 

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