e183 From Sorrowed Soul to Ascended Savior (the power of grieving our sin nature to rise with Jesus)

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd. 

Season 3 Episode 183  From Sorrowed Soul to Ascended Savior (the power of grieving our sin nature to rise with Jesus)

Here’s the gist, human. When was the last time you felt the kind of sorrow that overtook your soul? A flooding sorrow that filled every crevice of your heart, a rising pressure, the suffocating weight of sadness, a tragic suffering for what has come or is about to come, a fear that engulfs your spirit, a non-negotiable reckoning within your gut, so deep, such a feeling of hopelessness, an ending, a loss, a terminal feeling in a heart that hope has vacated, a churning stomach nauseous with defeat, a thousand veins in shock, paralyzed, pumping sadness through your core, a human tragedy that only you must feel, that your spirit has completely lost its way, confusing north with south, east with west, an all-consuming fire that is frantic, breathless, spiritless. When you feel this sorrow, no matter how unending that grief-laden moment, that time is, someone had it worse. 

Someone who was bound to the cross.

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host.

A Sorrow That Overtakes Your Soul

When you feel this sorrow, the grief of losing someone, of losing a pet, of losing a relationship, of losing respect, of losing, losing losing, that loser season, those moments on replay, that you wake up to, fall asleep to, unwillingly, that no matter how deep, no matter how dark it seems, no matter how unending that grief-laden moment is, the this-is-taking-forever length of it, someone had it worse. Someone who was bound to the cross.

Matthew 26:36-46

Gethsemane

36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. 41 “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

42 He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.

In his gospel, Luke describes Jesus at this moment: “being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. (Luke 22:44)

And John goes on. 

45 Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. 

He tells them this:

46 Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”

This passage is blown wide open for me this year. Consider this.

A soul overwhelmed by sorrow. 

Sweat like drops of blood.

An affirmation that the hour has come.

The Son of Man in the hands of sinners.

And paradoxically, the command to rise. 

A command to face the cross. With Jesus. Because of Jesus.

The invitation Jesus gave Peter, James and John is the same for me, the same for you human. That we enter into his soulful prayers, that we stand, we watch, we embrace his soul, the soul of the Son of Man in the deep of his divine sorrow.

This is when we first rise. We open our eyes, from such a deep, devastating sinners’ sleep, we each hear Jesus waking us up, to face our sin, and submit to what the cross brings us. A confession of our sin nature. We are sinners. A submission to this truth: Jesus died at the hands of our sin. 

My sin. Your sin. 

The Divine Sorrow of the Son of Man

I am flushed with gratitude for an exacting God. A sovereign God. The divine grief, the deepest point of the grief Jesus bore, has a specific time, and marked place in the timeline of humanity, created by a timeless God. 

A time within the timelessness of God’s story.

Mark 15:34

34 And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”)

I am reading a collection of sermons by A.W. Tozer on the Gospel of John. His characterization of how Jesus grieved has made a permanent mark on my soul.  

Here’s an excerpt from And He Dwelt Among Us, Chapter 5, pg 91

Tozer writes, he preaches, “It was the man who cried, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” It was Mary’s son who cried. It was the body God gave Him. It was the Lamb about to die. It was the sacrifice that cried. It was the human Jesus; it was the Son of man that cried. But the ancient and timeless deity was never separated…. 

The eternal Father never turned His back on the eternal Word, for He was always in the bosom of the Father. But the eternal Father turned his back upon the Son—the Son of man, the sacrifice of the Lamb to be slain—and in the blind terror and pain of it all, the sacrifice, the Lamb temporarily became sin for us and knew Himself forsaken. And God dumped all that vast bubbling, boiling, seething, dirty, slimy mess of human sin on the soul of His Son and then backed away.” 

My heart is astounded by Tozer’s perspective. That when Jesus took on our sins as a man, he was separated from his Father’s presence. He had to be. Because Jesus held our sin. This was the only hope humanity had. That he, a man, the lamb, would die to manifest the divine justice of his Heavenly Father. God. It has been described that what Jesus felt was the hopeless desolation that only sin produces. The deserted condition, the loneliness, abandonment from the Father, a Father who cannot be in the presence of sin. Tozer affirms that the godhead remains unified, though the Son of man, the human side of Jesus had to bear the weight of his Father’s divine judgement. 

Jesus bore the desolation for every sin within humanity. How does one man do that? If I could ever, and I have my doubts that it is even possible, but if I could ever fully grasp this on earth, this is where my humility lives. 

At the center of his suffering for me. 

3:00pm, the Friday before he is resurrected. That I am depleted of all justification, all earthly gain, yet aspiring to walk with him, that I have nothing if not his soul overwhelmed in sorrow. The Son of man reaching for a Father who cannot embrace him in this moment. This Son must carry all sin. 

Yet, the Son of man’s heart turns toward his Father’s face. He does not lose sight of his origin, and the divine power of the faithfulness of his Father. 

Luke 23:46

46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” 

When he had said this, he breathed his last.

Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit and Ascends

When Jesus was resurrected, he did not ascend to the right hand of his Father for about 40 days. In what is recorded as his final earthly conversation before he ascended, he tells his disciples of the gift they will receive, the Holy Spirit. 

Acts 1: 6-9

6 Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

9 After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

This scripture says he was taken up. I imagine if I saw this I would be staring at that cloud for a long time. I would be going back and forth in my mind between the open tomb entrance and that cloud. And his face that I had just seen, his voice that I had just heard, minutes ago. Promising a Holy Spirit.

What? 

Our Sorrowful Sin Nature is Buried With Jesus

We cannot settle for logical earthly proof of Jesus ascending. It will never be enough. We cannot defend our witness on an earthly plane. So when we invite others to join us in celebrating that empty tomb, the cloud, and his rising—I envision seeing the bottoms of his feet as he rises above me—well, we have to trust Jesus, in the same way Peter, James and John trusted him when he told them to rise and witness his delivery to the sins of humanity. 

It’s a heart thing. The apostle Paul gives the Romans, and all of us a theological truth that is grounded in the divine trauma of being crucified to the eternal triumph of being resurrected. 

Romans 6:4-11

4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

A Transformative Life – From Sorrowful to Saved

Jesus was taken up by his Heavenly Father. The intimacy with which we hold on to this promise is overwhelming. God’s love, Jesus’ sacrifice is overflowing. Like the sorrow that overwhelmed the soul of Jesus Christ in that garden. 

It is crazy to think that in the beginning man walked with God in his garden. Then his Son, the Son of man, pleaded for a different fate, but accepted his Father’s Will in a garden. This is redemption.

Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians that when we are taken up, that this is a transformative process. That we are moving toward a spirit life that encourages us to commit our spirit to him, day over day, and finally eternally.

Philippians 3:20-21

20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

While there are many scriptures that speak to this transformation, this process of participating in the salvation and redemption Jesus brings me, brings you, human, is a truth that transcends, an eternal path. From sorrowful to saved. When we get this, when we grieve over our sin nature, and hear Jesus say “Rise” we can rise toward his nature, through Holy Spirit. 

And rejoice with two words: Sing Hosannah.