Shalom, Boker-Tov,

Today is Palm Sunday. Next week, we will celebrate the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins on Good Friday almost two thousand years ago and then, on Sunday we will rejoice at His resurrection when He conquered Death and came back alive on Easter Sunday. What a tremendously joyous occasion to celebrate.

Our Lord Jesus need not come to this world and do what He did by dying for our sins. Mankind deserves what we got when Adam sinned against God in the Garden of Eden. And if Jesus had chosen to remain in Heaven, we could not blame Him for that. But praise be to God, He did come and He did die on the Cross for your sins and mine.

For God to create, all He needed to do was to speak and it was done; but for Him to save us from our sins, He had to bleed and die on our behalf to pay that price demanded by the holy Laws of God. That is the righteous standard of His holiness. And for God to bleed and die for us, He had to come as a human being. There is no other way. Such humility for the Creator God to take on a lowly form of a human being and to submit Himself to the limitations of our human form, to go through life as one of us and finally to fulfill that very law which He Himself instituted for eternity.

The apostle Paul described it very aptly in Philippians 2: 5 - 11: -
5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal to God,
7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bond-servant, and coming in the likeness of men.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in Heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Paul likened the human Jesus to the position of a bondservant. In fact, the bondservant and the slave are no different. Both belong to the master and their lives are at the master's disposal. They do not have any more rights but their main task and responsibility was to serve and please their master.

God gave the children of Israel the Ten Commandments when they were at the foot of Mt Sinai and this was recorded for us in Exodus 20: 1 - 17. It was as if God was unwilling to give them the Law but did so because of the pride of the people for they boasted that they can do everything that God demanded of them. And it was immediately after giving them the Law that the Holy Spirit inspired Moses to record a beautiful passage of scriptures about servant-hood in Exodus 21: 1 - 6.
1 Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them:
2 If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing.
3 If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.
4 If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.
5 But if the servant plainly says, "I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go free,"
6 then his master shall bring him to the judges. He shall also bring him to the door, or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.

The Hebrew servant is obligated, under the law, to serve his master for six years and in the seventh year, he is free to go. All the debts he owed will be considered settled and the servant can start a new life as a free man after that. What he brought in with him as a servant will be his and he goes out with those things that he brought in. But whatever the master had given him ( wife and children during those six years he was a servant ) must remain in the master's house and he cannot bring them out with him because they belonged to the master. The servant only gets to use and enjoy them during his years of servant-hood.

Jesus became a Servant for our sake and He served the Master faithfully while He was on the earth. He taught the people the ways of the Father and He healed the sick, raised two persons back to life and made the lame to walk, the blind to see. He fed the hungry and He restored relationships. Had Jesus decided to go back to Heaven without dying for the sins of the world, He would be justified because He served out His years of servant-hood.

No, my friend; praise God Jesus did not do that. In fact, He loved the Master so much that He wanted to stay as a Servant forever. He would not want to leave the Master's side but wanted to be where the Mater is. The Master also promised Him a wife and children. In anticipation, Jesus loves His Wife, the Church, and His children, you and I, even before He saw the end product. He trusted that what God would give Him would be the best.

And so, the compelling love that He had for the Father God, the agape love He had for the Bride and His doting love for each one of us was sufficient reason for Him to go to the Master and to tell Him that He wants to serve Him forever. And the Master took Jesus outside and taking an awl, made a mark on His body to remind Him of that promise of eternal service. Those marks of the nails on His hands and the hole on the side of His body will be the only human markings on the eternal body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and they will be the distinguishing marks that set Him apart from us.

For the wife and the children, the marks will become a permanent mark of His unselfish love for us. Whenever we are faced with difficult situations in life, let us learn to pause and 'look' at those marks on His body and be reminded that Jesus went through everything for us because He loves us so and there is no way we can be alone. Such comfort we have in the blessed assurance of the love of Jesus.

My friends, Jesus' love for each one of us is unconditional and it is free - not that it did not cost anything but that we do not have to pay for it. It is a free gift for us, sent specially with love all the way from Heaven. Have you appropriated the love of Jesus into your life and invited Him into your heart? Why not take a few moments to do just that and pray this prayer.

"Our Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the love You have for us in sending us Your Son, the Son that You love. Your One and Only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, into this world to die for our sins. Thank you that Jesus became a curse for me on the cross so that I am now forever righteous in Your presence.
Lord Jesus, I receive You into my heart. Thank you that I am now a child of God and am forever forgiven, eternally blessed, highly favored, deeply loved and completed protected because of Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross.
Thank you and I ask all these things in the mighty and precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

If you have prayed that prayer for the first time please tell a friend who is a Believer and please get in touch with a local church. The local church is like your home where you can receive nourishment for your body and your soul. It is a place where Believers meet to encourage one another, learn from one another and build each other up in the faith. It is also the place where you will be able to get corporate feeding of God's Word. All of us need to be fed with the good food that comes from the Word of God.

If you have yet to receive the Lord Jesus into your life, and if you are staying in Singapore, then let me take this opportunity to invite you personally to New Creation Church. We meet every Sunday at The Rock, 3rd floor between Suntec Towers 3 & 4. There are a total of 4 services each Sunday - 09:00 AM, 11:15 AM, 02:00 PM & 04:15 PM. They are all identical - choose to attend one and you will be greatly blessed.

For this coming Easter Sunday, the services will not be held at Suntec but will be held in Hall 3 of the Singapore Expo and the time for the services will be 09:00 AM and 11:15 AM and there will be a special Easter drama. So see you in church.

The Lord blesses you and keeps you,
The Lord makes His face shine upon you and be gracious to you and all your loved ones,
The Lord lifts up His countenance upon you and gives you His shalom peace.
Numbers 6: 24 - 26

Shavrou-tov Shalom,
Andrew L W Lee

Dated : 25 March 2002