He Dies: The Saviour Dies

Good Friday has come. With deep and solemn gait we enter into the presence of the Holy Spirit, who has been our Guide throughout our forty days and forty nights’ mission. On this most awesome, mesmerizing ultimate day of our Lord’s suffering and death, we can hardly lift our eyes to, Look Up, though we are being helped by the Holy Spirit. Such Love is too wonderful for us to behold. Such Grace is too pure for us to breathe.

Stay us and help us, Holy Spirit. Amen!

Today, our banner is the same banner, All my powers to Thee surrender, which was held high on yesterday’s revealing. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that it was an outright, downright evil, for anyone who did not have a tender, yielded heart, to carry such a banner unto Jesus Christ. It was categorically stated that to publish or hold up what was untrue of you, was unadulterated sin and Sovereign, Father God, would never approve of such. To carry such a banner would surely be to have the heart and mind of a Judas. This heart has been described as one which outwardly displays a lofty and admirable banner of service which says, ‘All my powers to Thee surrendered’, but inwardly, in the heart and mind, the complete opposite rules.

Are you, O servant-follower of Jesus, as a Judas? Added to all that was cited yesterday, you heard your Teacher and Master use some very strong language against the self-righteous, the lawfully religious, those who worshipped God with their lips, but their hearts were far from God. You knew that He had power to see into the hearts of all people, for no one, neither human power nor spirit power, was able to deceive Him.

Not only that, but most of all, your Master kept you on His team, as one of His servant-followers to the end. He never treated you differently from the rest. Jesus trusted you, as He did the others, for He sent you out with the pairs, to do His work. When He gave His disciples power to carry His banner in their words and works, was it not Jesus’ works and Jesus’ words? Didn’t He include you, O Judas? Did He not also give you His power and His authority to speak and do exactly as you saw Him doing? Did your Lord, Master and Teacher fail you in these missions?

Now He dies! Jesus dies on the cruel cross. Love dies on an accursed tree. He dies for sinners, but the un-yielded heart cannot accept this free gift of grace. The heart that is stubbornly un-yielded to Jesus, is stubbornly yielded to Satan. It is the heart of every son and daughter of perdition. Be wise, on this Good Friday, of fearful truth. Be alert and hear! These are Jesus’ words in prayer to His Father in heaven, not too long before He gave His mortal life on the cruel cross, for sinners.

While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. John 17: 12. NKJV

Look Up, to Jesus on the cross, O sinner; look up and see the banners before you. Under which banner are you?

What is the condition of your heart? If indeed all your powers have been surrendered to Jesus, then you cannot but publish in your saved life, the Power of the Cross.

With one final Holy Week day left, one-seventh more of the final mile, our only desire is to remain with our Suffering Saviour, the Lamb of God.