To Encourage You

2 Samuel 18:29 (NIV) “Is the young man Absalom safe?”

In the verse above, we read King David’s anxious inquiry about his son Absalom.  It was a question he asked two different messengers when they came to him to tell him that the rebellion that Absalom had led against him had been squelched.  This was good news for the king and his kingdom in one sense, yet at the same time bad news for the king, for as he learned in the answer to his question, the war had cost him the life of his own son.  It is because Absalom had positioned himself as a rebel that he had died the death that he did.  And in this we have a glorious antitype.

You see, Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, was willing to die in your place and bear the curse for your sin, in order that it could be well with YOU, i.e., that YOU would be safe?  Unlike Absalom, Jesus was not a rebel against His Father.  Rather, Jesus was completely submissive to Him.  If He hadn’t been, then it wouldn’t have been possible for anyone else in the history of mankind to be safe. Philippians 2:6-8 tells us the incredible truth that “(Jesus) though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” 

Do you hear that? Jesus was obedient to His Father to the fullest extent possible as He gave His life on the cross.  And it was all because “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17).  Indeed, Jesus proclaimed that the very reason that He had come into the world was “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).

You see, the King of kings’ greatest concern about you and me is whether or not we are safe.  He cares so much about our salvation that He was willing to sacrifice His Son on the cross to make that salvation possible. Incredibly, we are told that this wasn’t done reluctantly.  He didn’t have any misgivings about what He had done.  Isaiah 53:10 makes the astonishing statement that “it was the will of the Lord to crush” His own Son.  And Jesus, likewise, gave His life willingly. In the prophetic Psalm 16 which was written hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, we have these thoughts of the eternal Son as He looked down the corridors of time to his incarnation: “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight . . . Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.  You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” All the while Jesus knew full well that this “path of life” and this “fullness of joy” would come only by way of the cross.  Indeed, we are told in Hebrews 12:1 that we are to “(look) to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” 

So, what about you? Are you looking unto Jesus? Have you placed your faith in this One Who gave up every shred of His own personal safety so that you and I could be saved?  You see, that’s the heart cry of the King who gave His life for us, i.e., “Is (put your name here) safe?” What a tragedy if you are not, in the face of everything has been done for you to make you totally safe for all eternity.