He Took Our Curse Upon Him

Galatians 3:12-14Expanded Bible (EXB)

12 The law is not based on faith. ·It says [L Rather; On the contrary], “A person who ·obeys [does; practices] these things will ·live because of[gain life by/in] them [Lev. 18:5].” 13 Christ ·took away [redeemed us from; bought our freedom from] the curse ·the law put on us [L of the law]. ·He changed places with us and put himself under that curse [L …by becoming a curse for us]. [L For; Because] It is written in the Scriptures, “Anyone ·whose body is displayed [L who is hung] on a tree is cursed[Deut. 21:23; C an executed man’s body was hung on a stake or tree for humiliation and warning; Paul here applies it to Christ’s crucifixion as the curse/judgment for our sin].” 14 Christ did this so that God’s blessing promised to Abraham [Gen. 12:2–3] might come through Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. ·Jesus died so that by our believing […so that by faith] we could receive the Spirit that God promised.

Expanded Bible (EXB)

The Expanded Bible, Copyright © 2011 Thomas Nelson Inc. All rights reserved.

"He changed places with us and put Himself under that curse..."

When man was first created, God set him in a Garden.  Everything he needed was in the Garden, including the Tree of Life.  When he sinned, the environment changed.  "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat of the plants of the field.  By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3:17b-19)

Thorns

Adam and Eve were "naked and unashamed" in the Garden of Eden.  There were many plants, including trees.  Except for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, there were no plants in the Garden that would harm them.  Thorns are the result of sin.  Part of the curse was that Adam would have to cull the thorns and plow the ground, and grow his own food.  Briars and thistles would tear at his skin, and require him to be covered in protective clothing.

Now think of Jesus, "one who knew no sin became sin for us." (2 Corinthians 5:21).  When He humbled Himself and allowed Himself to be arrested and tried in a sham trial to be sentenced to death, the Roman soldiers mocked Him--they placed a purple robe upon Him (a color of royalty), and fashioned a crown of thorns to be placed upon His head.  He had already been whipped and was bleeding, and the thorns (the symbol and result of Original Sin) were jammed down onto His head, piercing his brow.  After they had mocked Him, they stripped Him bare and hung Him on a cross.  He was exposed, unprotected from the curse of sin.

Herbs

Back in Genesis 3, when God placed a curse on mankind for Adam's sin, He mentioned plants.  "And you will eat the plants of the field." (Genesis 3:18b).  How is this a curse?  Weren't they already eating fruit from the trees in the Garden?  Aside from having to toil for sustenance (if a man will not work, neither let him eat--2 Thessalonians 3:10), I believe this has a deeper meaning.

The word used for "plants" is also the word used elsewhere in Scripture, translated "herbs".  Men were to eat herbs, some of which were bitter tasting.  You may recall that when God delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt, He commanded them to prepare a Passover Lamb (a lamb without blemish, none of whose bones were to be broken--definitely a Messianic prophecy!) to be eaten with bitter herbs.  The bitter herbs were to remind them of the slavery and bondage in Egypt. The plants most often used today in the Passover meal are horseradish, or Romaine lettuce.

You will recall also that Jesus took the Passover with His disciples, which we now commemorate in Communion, or the Lord's Supper (depending upon your denomination).  John 13:26 describes Jesus taking the bread and dipping it into a broth of bitter herbs and handing it to Judas, who was to betray Him.  Jesus is the Bread of Life.  He was willing to be immersed (or baptized--see Mark 10:38) into the curse of bitterness (the herbs), beginning with the betrayal by Judas and ending with His burial.  

Therefore the bitter herbs in the Passover not only look back to the bondage of slavery that Israel escaped, but also looked forward to the curse of sin under which the Messiah would voluntarily go.

Sweat

"By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food." (Genesis 3:19)  Again, the curse of sin meant that man was destined for work all the days of his life.  This concept of works under law pre-dates the Mosaic Law by some 1500 years, yet it is much the same concept.  If you work faithfully, you will do well.  If you do not, then you abide under the curse.  It is only by God's grace that the curse can be broken.

We can work up a sweat by being active in a warm climate.  The sweat evaporates in the breeze, and cools us off.  Some of us have experienced a sauna (or the interior of a hot car) where no expending of energy is necessary.  The heat produces sweat.  When extreme heat is applied to something, it is sterilized--made clean, sanitized, decontaminated.

Let us look now to Jesus. Just prior to His arrest, he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane--O, that Adam had done the same in the Garden of Eden!  "And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly.  Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground." (Luke 22:44).  The medical condition is called hematidrosis, and it is a real thing--being so extremely anguished that the capillaries surrounding the sweat glands burst and a person literally bleeds through the sweat glands in his skin.  This was the first blood that Jesus shed for our sins.  It was after this that He was flogged, and the crown of thorns was put on His head.  The final drops of blood were spilled as He was crucified.

It is by this blood that we are made clean.  Revelation 1:5 says, "And from Jesus, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.  To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood." (NASB).  Some translations say, "Washed us from our sins by His blood."  We are washed, made clean, and released from the power of sin because of the blood that Jesus shed, beginning in the Garden and ending at the Cross.  On top of all that, He was raised from the dead and now lives in us to perfect His power within our lives.  Hallelujah!

A Boxing Story of Risk vs. Reward

Our actions are all that separate our daydreams from our goals.  --Roy H. Williams

Roy Williams is a business consultant and advertising wizard.  He wrote the following:

As a boxer, Chuck Wepner earned the nickname "The Bayonne Bleeder" because of the punishment he took even while winning.  Tom Donaldson of Inside Boxing writes of him, "Wepner was what one would call 'a catcher,' a fighter who often used his head to block the other guy's punches--not the kind of strategy that leads to long careers.  He constantly pressured his opponent, until he either won or was knocked out.  He never truly cared how many shots he would absorb before landing the telling blow."   

His trainer, Al Braverman, called Wepner "The gutsiest fighter I ever met.  He was in a league of his own.  He didn't care about pain or cuts.  If he got cut or elbowed, he never looked at me or the referee for help.  He was a fighter, in the purest sense of the word." 

Now, when Chuck Wepner knocked out Terry Hinke in Salt Lake City, boxing promoter Don King offered Wepner a title shot against then-heavyweight champion George Foreman.  But before they could fight, Ali defeated Foreman and Wepner found himself scheduled to fight The Great One, Muhammad Ali himself.  On the morning of the fight, Chuck Wepner gave his wife a pink negligee and told her that she would be sleeping with the heavyweight champion of the world.   

Muhammad Ali scored a technical knockout of Wepner with 19 seconds remaining in the fight.  But, there was a moment--one glorious moment in the ninth round when a ham-like paw at Ali's chest knocked the reigning champion off his feet.  Chuck Wepner remembers, "When Ali was down I remember saying to my ring man Al Braverman, 'Start the car.  We're going to the bank.  We're millionaires!'  And Al said to me, 'You better turn around, because he's getting up and he looks pissed off'."   

After the fight, Wepner's wife pulled the negligee out of her purse and asked, "Do I go to Ali's room, or does he come to mine"'   

Now, a struggling writer was watching this fight, and he remembers it well. "I went to the fights and I saw this Chuck Wepner character who was called The Bayonne Bleeder, who was just this fighter of really very, very little skill, you know, kind of like a real American, you know.  A working class stiff who just takes it on the chin and then comes back, just a very symbolic kind of character.  And I thought, 'There it is.  There it is'.  He was fighting Muhammad Ali, who was like, you know, the perfect fighter, and he knocked him down.  And that validated his entire life.  He didn't expect to win.  He knocked him down.  You could never take that away.  I went, 'There, dear God.  Now if I could get that onto the page.'  So I went home and I started writing, and I wrote for three days straight."   

That writer's name was Sylvester Stallone.  Stallone finished his script, and the movie studio offered him an unprecedented $400,000 for his story.  But he refused the money, choosing instead just $20,000, the right to play the part of Rocky in the movie, and a connection to any ongoing profits.  The studio accepted.  Then they offered Chuck Wepner a similar choice: a $70,000 flat fee, or one per cent of the movie's gross profits.  Chuck took the guarantee, a decision that cost him eight million dollars.  Chuck Wepner now lives in Bayonne, New Jersey and works as a liquor salesman.  Sylvester Stallone enjoys a net worth of $275,000,000.   

Stallone believed in Wepner's story.  Wepner didn't believe in Stallone's.

 Friends, God believes in your story, so much that He gave up the guaranteed comforts of heaven to come and fight your battles in the form of a man.  All He wants is your heart, your faith.  Too many people, I fear, take the guarantee of this life, and lose out on the everlasting joy of heaven.  God believes in their story, but they don't believe in His.

Don't Feed The Beast

Here we are approaching mid-February, and already I'm dreading Springtime.  Yes, the longer days and warmer temperatures will be welcome.  So will the budding of the trees and greening of the grass, which is nice--but there's the rub.  

As Spring approaches, we will again be accosted in all media outlets by a demanding redhead calling himself Scott.  Conveniently, he is a spokesman for Scotts, a brand of lawn care products.  Scott the spokesman will be hawking his wares, obnoxiously demanding that the listener "Feed your lawn." As if we didn't get the message the first time, he underscores the message with the tag line "FEED IT!" That over-the-top delivery in the fake Scottish accent just grates on my nerves, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Oh, that I would have the same response to the devil, when he tempts me to feed my fleshly desires. A green lawn does not entice me, at least not enough to do the work necessary to weed-and-feed like a greenskeeper at a golf course.  But I know in my mind that Springtime also means less clothing and more skin showing, if you know what I mean.  I think it was Shakespeare who said, "In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."  I am not a young man any more, and my love for my wife is more mature, less seasonal.  Nevertheless, there is the temptation to gaze upon younger couples of child-bearing age, and long for times past.  The devil is less obnoxious than Scott, but his message is the same:  "Feed your lust.  FEED IT!"

The Bible warns against this mind-set.  Paul said, "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to its lusts." (Romans 13:14).  If we provide for something, we give it sustenance.  A hundred fifty years ago settlers and gold prospectors would gather up provisions on the back of a horse or mule, and set out.  Those provisions would sustain them during their journey, until they reached their desitnation or struck it rich.  So when Paul said, "make no provision for the flesh", he wasn't telling us to go without food or water.  He was telling us not to feed our lusts.  If we starve the beast that is within us, it is easier to overcome it.

When the Pilgrims first came to the New World, their charter made many references to God, using a unique name for Him. The name most frequently used by them was Providence.  One of the original 13 Colonies, Rhode Island, has the name Providence as its capitol.  I like that name.  It reminds us that God provides for us.  As such, we should return our thanks and praise to Him.  He should be our focus, our driving force, our strongest desire.  

Do not be overcome with fleshly desires, brothers.  Surround yourself with strong Christian men who will help you focus on God, and not on the world.  "Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today", so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." (Hebrews 3:13).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go outside and pull up those dandelions in the front yard before they go to seed.