We Hear Him

"Or is it true, all that about love and forgiveness, and shed blood, and a Lamb born of a virgin, who could not die because He had not sinned?"

JESUS DIDN’T COME to a stadium nor to a government house nor to a palace. He came from a lineage of kings but was not born of note. The Savior of the world, sent to rescue mankind from their sins, an enormous spiritual moment, a clash of kingdoms, the complete victory over death which held men captive, and the righting of wrongs played out over centuries, did not happen on a stage to an enormous crowd. It was not played out before millions of onlookers. It was not even a nation of importance, a people placed in a landscape with enormous terrain, with a fierce army, and a tremendous naval force. They weren’t known for greatness but for capture. Egypt. Babylon. Rome.

We in modern society are used to things showing up huge, to big screens and big productions, to fan clubs, and internet uproar. Communication is at its easiest. It takes only a few clicks. Word spread mouth-to-mouth in His days and seldom by letters. Letters required hand delivery and time of travel. Travel was not the safest nor the quickest either. For Him to become King of Kings, to be exalted over every royal line, every coup, to be the Master of all in authority, and yet be born in a stable in a tiny town in an unimportant nation goes against everything logical.

And this was not a small plan. Not one man, doing one small task in the annals of time. He didn’t start with a multitude. He had only 12 men who spoke only one dialect, who knew fishing on a small lake, comparatively speaking. He had no rich entourage, no train of wise advisors and armed men, no avid religious crowd to take down His words. Considering the size of what He would perform and the power that would perform it, yet now, He has only 4 gospels. I mean, this was God in the flesh, this was the prophesied Messiah, this was the death that would defeat death, and the Resurrection that would resurrect us. This was Elohim, the Creator who’d formed the earth, who’d separated light from darkness, and formed man from the dust of the ground, being reduced to a criminal’s death on a cross outside the city, mocked by those in His day of which we have only a handful of names.

Most are gone in time forever. Save a Roman who said, “Truly this is the Son of God,” and those 12 who gazed up at Him, we know no names, have no written register. The sky darkened and the earth shook. Men were raised from death and reentered the city. But it’s just words on a page with a scattering of evidence. None of the sky. Some of the temple He’d caused to be built, years before. Except that is gone, too. He prophesied it. No one can prove it. In Egypt we have pyramids built by men, great monoliths erected to death. In China, we have a wall which stretches for miles across mountainous terrain. We find ships buried in the ocean from storms of days past. There are books and manuscripts telling stories of past cultures, more prominent than His.

Then again, there is the Holocaust. Not a celebration of Jewish culture but one which remembers their deaths. There are records of horrors, voices retelling what they survived. And it should be preserved, and it should be remembered. But where in a tiny nation, which only came into being after the Second War which all but eliminated it, is there proof of a Man who walked there and called Himself the Son of God? King David’s name appears in places. King Solomon’s riches are a fable. Jesus of Nazareth is a myth. Darwin existed. He decided we’d all evolved from muck. They named an arch for him, which recently dissolved into the ocean. King Louie is all over France. Queen Elizabeth across England. But Robin Hood came from a book and King Arthur from supposition.

Where between Charlie Brown cartoons and Elivish imagination is there room for a King who lived like a pauper? And why should we study Him? Hear His Words? Regard His miracles? Why call out to Him? Why confess Him as Lord? Why should we stand in a field and stare at the sky, looking for His return? Is He a Jew, an African, a European with a Caucasian nose? Should we study Hebrew, learn the finest parts of Greek? Or is all we need today what we imagine for tomorrow? The Israelites made a calf, too impatient for Moses’ return. They desecrated the temple, too overcome by evil. They crossed the Red Sea. There is some proof of this. They were taken to Babylon. They say this is true. You can stand in Jerusalem and climb the same steps as did David. But split amongst the city are places owned by cultures at odds with each other and alternate versions of a story that we also pick apart into denominations and doctrines.

Should we pray to the Father in Jesus’ name? Should we put Jesus’ name first or last? Does it matter? Is God up there with a switch waiting to rap our knuckles? Or is it all true, all that about love and forgiveness and shed blood and a Lamb born of a virgin, who could not die because He had not sinned? He had to lay down His life. He would take it back up again. What is nonsense to the world and is unnoticed in history, what isn’t remembered or written except in the Good Book and the Torah, can only be known, can only be experienced, in the heart. There lies its power. There reigns its King. There lives His Spirit and the Father who is good to all.

It isn’t there for a history book, nor a government contract. It isn’t there for ancestry, though it contains a good deal of it. It isn’t a recipe, a dash of this, a sprinkle of that, and voila! It isn’t the rebuilding of the temple. The temple is made now in us. We are the altar, made of living stones, and what we know of Him living, Him reigning, and unseen supernatural things, comes only through our faith, a living breathing trust that no man can take away. For to those who know Him, though He is reigning in heavenly places, He speaks continually. We hear Him, and we love Him.

“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” (John 12:32)

READ "God as Man: Resurrection 1."

Image by boris rager from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com