Choice of will

My Yahoo homepage had for today’s top headline a story on the “state of mind” of the 33 Chilean miners trapped deep inside a copper mine since an August 5 landslide.
One paragraph read, “Another (miner) displays what psychiatrists have said is a key trait to keeping the men motivated and optimistic — a sense that they have a role in their own destinies.”

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At the elderly house, I frequently lead a twice-weekly meeting called “God Quest,” in which residents and employees alike discuss their differing views on who God really is and what He expects from us, etc., etc.

One resident who has a degree from Loyola in theology insists that Jesus Christ was His own man separate from the God of the Old Testament and that His mission was to spread a different message. In his mind, Christ was like a radical-revolutionary-flower-child-beatnik-hippie from the ’60s.

It irks this resident that I point out how Christ Himself constantly made it clear He was “attached at the hip” to the same God of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc.

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In John 5:19, Jesus Christ answers the Jews ready to kill him for making Himself equal to God with, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”

As Jordan explains, “He’s entirely relinquished everything that was calculated to stand in the way of accomplishing the will of His Father. And those are almost outlandish statements.

“He says in verse 30, ‘I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.’

“Listen, Jesus Christ was God, you understand. He could have done anything He wanted to do and it would have never contradicted the will of His Father because they’re one in essence and being.

“But He has made a choice. Because of the great love He has for the Father, the plan for His life wasn’t his own. He lived in a fellowship with this invisible Father that no (other) man could see so closely. I mean, He lived in such close intimate fellowship with God the Father He could actually say, ‘What I SEE the Father do.’

“You say, ‘How did He see it?!’ Hebrews 11:1 answers that: ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ He lived in the reality of confidence in His Father to the place that He SAW it!

“It’s not unheard of. Moses, in Hebrews 11 says, ‘as seeing him who was invisible.’ Well, how do you see something you can’t see? Faith!”

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“Jesus Christ is saying, ‘I value and cherish my Father’s plan so much I couldn’t even imagine being separated from it.’ He had absolute complete total faith in His Father. In John 6:38 he says, ‘For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.’

“Why’d He come? He didn’t come on an excursion just to please himself. He came for the express purpose not to do his own will but the will of Him that sent him. When He prayed in that garden, ‘Not my will but thine be done,’ that’s the whole tenor—THAT’S what He trusted.

John 7:16 says, ‘Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.’ He’s saying, ‘I’m not teaching you what I made up. I’m teaching you the will of the one who sent me.’

In John 8:26, Christ says, ‘I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.’ In chapter 15:15, He goes on, ‘Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.’

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Christ confirms in John 8:29, “And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.”

Jordan says, “Underline that word alone. You see the Father was always there. And Christ’s life was an unqualified success in the sight of God. He said, ‘I do always.’ His choice was ALWAYS to do the will of His Father.

“He says in John 9:4, ‘I must work the works of him that sent me.’ His life was impelled by the necessity of the obedience of love. Chapter 12: 49-50 says, ‘For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.
[50] And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.’

“He spake by the authority of His Father. And the words that He spoke, the works that he did . . . ”

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Christ says in John 14:10 says, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”

Jordan says, “That’s what it is to worship God in the Spirit. That’s what it is to have Christ as your life. These are not religious clichés. Sometime we use them that way maybe. Sometimes you get to trafficking in unfelt truth but they weren’t for Him.

Philip is one who didn’t get that. Christ said, ‘If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father,’ but Philip said, ‘We’ve been with you all this time and who you talking about?’

“You know, everybody has a bad day. Philip had a few. Don’t get all mad at Philip. You’ve had a bad day like that, haven’t you?

Christ said in verse 24, ‘He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.’

“What Jesus Christ is doing is demonstrating the supreme absolute value of the way He cherished His Father. And He did it by putting His faith in the Father’s word so that the things He did in His life were what the Father gave Him to do.

“From John 17, we know that the disciples were sent out with the same commission as Christ received from the Father: To go live exactly the way He lived.”