Life of Christ #1 – What It Really Means to Follow Jesus | True Biblical Discipleship

I stop and talk about this because it’s the first time it’s been brought up. The Lord cast out the demon from the man, and I think that perhaps the most interesting thing that we need to look at in this whole passage is this verse: He took upon Himself our infirmities and removed our diseases. To stop and realize that on the cross of Jesus Christ, the things that He absorbed into His being… There was an incident, I believe it took place in East Texas, in which some boys came out in early springtime, as we did in East Texas frequently, and went out to the creek, to the pond, or to the river, whichever was nearest you, and this group of boys took all their clothes off. This was just an East Texas thing we did for fun: go swimming. This particular young man dove into the water, screamed, and sank, and nobody else went in. Adults were called, the boys were told not to get near the water, and they discovered the problem. They finally had to dynamite the water, and when eventually they were able to bring the boy’s body out, there were something like a dozen water moccasins affixed to the boy’s body. It had been infested. The water had been infested with water moccasins in early spring, perhaps hundreds of them breeding there. He died instantly of enormous injections from all those water moccasins.

Now, that’s a grisly story to tell, but I tell it in the light of the cross of Christ, that there was injected into Him so much. What went on inside Him, He received the totality of the fall upon His cross. Our sin, my sin, your sin, the whole world and power of darkness, the demons, the dark spirits, the world system; the war between the Jews and the Gentiles was all cast in Him. My sickness and my infirmity, my illness, and the Lord Jesus healed in Galilee based on something that would take place a few years later in time and space. But again, I come back to this Lord outside of time and space. He journeyed outside of time and space, took His place beyond the resurrection, and healed outside of time and space. He healed by an event that had not taken place. He did it by being outside of time and space. He healed them by this enormous injection that took place inside His body on the cross. My sin, my illness, was on him on the cross. Beyond the cross, He healed before the cross. I can’t explain that. I can’t understand that. But I accept it.

The dark spirits seem to have known something about who He was at that moment. They did not understand perhaps from whence He drew his power, and perhaps He did not draw His power as God in eternity past, but perhaps he drew his power over them by what He would be about three years from now when He died on the cross, took them into His being, and rose triumphantly over them. He was Lord of those spirits, and what we see here is this whole passage of His healing in Galilee and people coming to Him night and day. I see my Lord drawing His power to do these things because He is a Lord who has also conquered time and geography; time and space have ceased.

I’m going to quote Einstein now to help us understand this a little better. Einstein, and you’ll forgive me for my illustrations tonight, stepped off a train and was faced with a battery of reporters who asked him, “Please, Mr. Einstein, will you explain relativity in a few simple words?” This is what he said. He said, “I want you to imagine the universe full of matter. And of course, there is dimension to it. It has time, and it has space.” He said, “Now then, imagine the universe with all the matter, all the material elements of it removed. You would probably then imagine that the time and the space were still there.” But he said that wouldn’t be true, because time and space depend on physical matter. Energy and matter are one. Light, time, space, and the material world are tied to physical matter. And to tell you what’s been happening in the last few years, scientists are butting their heads against a paradoxical wall because they can’t figure out what’s holding this universe together. There’s a tremendous debate going on about this. Well, I know what’s holding the universe together. Jesus Christ is holding this universe together by his power.

Now, if you can recognize that God is the author of matter, He created the seen universe; in doing so, He created time and space, but they are His creations. If you can imagine that your God existed before matter, then He existed before time and space; therefore, you have to recognize that He is outside of time and space. He can journey through time and space, and He is Lord of time and space, and He can make time and space do His bidding. Then you can understand this passage of scripture. He is making time, space, and matter do His bidding. He has journeyed beyond it to take his rightful place as Lord of it. And then He journeys back again as Lord and victor beyond the cross. He comes back into time and space, and is seen; nonetheless, some portion of Him is standing beyond it so that He can act within it as victor, Lord, and Master.