Oh Happy Day!




Calvary, as important as it is for believers, has become obsured by communion. However, because of a basic misunderstanding of one of Paul's teachings, communion has become about our sin rather than Calvary. I want to invite you to see Calvary as Jesus described it.

"As the serpent was lifted up in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up," Jesus said. So let's move our eyes off of Golgotha for a minute and go back to the desert where God's people were being killed left, right and center by deadly snakes. God told Moses to get a pole, put one of the serpents on the top and raise it up over the people, commanding them to look upon the serpent on the pole. God's instruction was to "look and live!", and when they looked at the snake on the pole they were healed from the deadly poison.

Can you imagine, you are writhing in the pain of certain death and suddenly you look up at a brass snake and you are instantly healed and whole? As they moved from astonishment to belief the
doomed people started jumping up and down, shouting with joy; dancing, grabbing others and twirling in circles.  They found loved ones and others still groveling in pain on the ground and began pointing upward and shouting, "LOOK! LOOK! LIVE! LIVE!"

Jesus said Calvary is just as the snake rescue of the Israelites in the desert. How can that be? What did the people see when they looked up from their suffering and death in the wilderness?  THEY SAW WHAT HAD BIT THEM-the snake lifted high above them. The snake was brass, a symbol of judgement. God's goal at Calvary was not for us to look up at Jesus's suffering and go into mourning, grief and self-incrimination. God goal was for us to look at Calvary and see death judged!  We are meant to look at Calvary and see everything that brings us mental, emotional, physical and spiritual death, laid upon the physical body of Jesus Christ and judged by God, without power to kill any longer.

 The Catholic Church first began the tradition of  making Good Friday a day of mourning and that earthly, sorrowful view of The Cross has been taught to believers now for two thousand years, but I'm telling you-while Jesus bore our sin in His body, we are not asked to see the crucifixion in the flesh, but rather in the Spirit.  God wants you to look at The Cross and see that everything that means to destroy you there, judged in Jesus' physical body. Revelation of all sin there, on Jesus, brings life to you!

Jesus suffered for 6 hours, as a woman suffers labor to birth a child, Jesus birthed us, through the water and blood from His side, reborn, free from sin. We are not to mourn His suffering at Easter any more than our children are asked to mourn the labor of their mother on their birthday. If our earthly birth brings joy, how much more our spiritual birth!!

We must remember that Passover (the foreshadowing of Calvary) was only a day of suffering for the Egyptians!  The Hebrews were joyfully free from their oppressors!  The day of the crucifixion is that  day for us in The Spirit!  We should be dancing at the foot of the cross, shouting "LOOK! Our sin is up there. Everything that has tried to destroy us is up there! We're free!!  God loves us. God is not angry at us! God has rescued us!"  LOOK, everyone, look and LIVE!

I'm tellin' you If you do the "Happy" dance on Good Friday, God will be looking upon you with a huge smile thinking, "You SO get me!!"



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