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Did you hear that the Lord God in His infiniteness and Almightiness over rules the evil plans of the wicked in other to bring about that many people should be kept alive! We continue meditating on the great truth of our Lord’s resurrection and its application to our living on earth. Last week we referred to the story of Elie Wiesel who, in his book Night, came to the conclusion that God didn’t care about His universe and, as a result, developed hard and bitter feelings toward the Almighty. How about you? Do you also have that same wrong notion of or about God? How different from the story told by Corrie ten Boom in ‘’The Hiding Place’’. All the pain and suffering of Night are present in Corrie’s gripping story. She, too, saw people murdered, watched her sister die, felt the pain of a whip and sensed all around her the dissolution of virtue. But there is another element present in this issue of how people feel when they are in pains, suffering and difficulty that only a Christian mind can understand –that element is the element of faith and hope. When it comes to faith and hope; many people apply it differently and in varying degree. Time and time again, Corrie refers to the ways in which God turned the evil to good unlike Wiesel who never see anything good in what God does. If you have read the story, you will remember the many miracles that took place, the secret Bible studies, prayer times with other believers, acts of great sacrifice and compassion, and so on which gives people great courage. But Wiesel’s book leads to unyielding despair, but Christ’s book leads to overwhelming hope. This is why it is very essential for us to be very careful of the type and kind of books we read! Never read books like that of Wiesel if you have not waxed strong in spirit and be able as Paul advised Timothy to study and prove himself a servant worthy of dividing the word of truth. What is the reason for this difference in the way many people handles the issue of faith and hope when in pain, suffering and difficulty? It is the resurrection of Jesus Christ that brings about the difference. The resurrection is like a lighthouse in a storm-tossed sea of pain and suffering, beaming out a powerful message of life and hope amid pain, suffering and difficulty. It says, ‘Sin, pain and suffering are not the final answer –God and what God does with pains, suffering and difficulty as exemplified in Lord Jesus death amid the associated pain, suffering and difficulty endured by the Lord gives or is the final answer.’ So it is important that we always have confidence in the confidence of God and this is where faith and hope stems from. God’s Son Jesus Christ overcame everything life threw at Him when He was on earth, and this is what qualified Him to sit once again on the throne of the universe, having Himself endured the deepest agonies of human suffering and pain. As Corrie ten Boom puts it in The Hiding Place: ‘However deep the pit, God’s love has gone deeper still.’ This should be your encouragement when life vicissitude brings pain and suffering home to you!

Did you hear that as a true Christian there are certain standards of life in Christ that you are expected to know and to keep and practice in the way you live your life on earth otherwise you are a hypocrite; and from our verse above, one of them is that you should know, understand, believe and have faith that there is life after death as exemplified in the death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. As we pause on this Easter Sunday to focus on the glorious and marvellous fact of Lord Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. It might seem to some that in drawing attention to the Lord’s resurrection in the midst of this theme ‘’Resurrection Hope’’ on the humanity of Christ, that I am simply paying respect to the day and the frivolous activities that man has associated it with, but believe me, there is much more to the Lord Jesus resurrection than simply paying respect and attention to the day called Easter as celebrated by many today; as many people are carried away by the mere celebration of the day instead of the factual celebration of the miraculous resurrection of Lord Jesus from the dead which is the miracle of the Lord God Almighty in the Person of the Lord Jesus that need to capture the attention, wonder and fear in God of the people of the world than the mere eating and drinking which they have turn the day to be. Easter is a day set aside by Christian as holiday whereby men are taught to celebrate and imbibe the great belief in the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ as was prophesied by the Prophets in the Word of God. Although a holiday of high religious significance in the Christian faith, many traditions associated with Easter date back to pre-Christian, pagan times. Easter marks the anniversary of Lord Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and ascension to heaven –and observing this holiday and celebrating the fact that Lord Jesus actually resurrected from the dead bodily can teach Christians a lot more about faith than bunnies or all the attractions and frivolities associated with the Easter Day activities. Easter arrives at the end of the Holy Week and right after Good Friday which commemorates Lord Jesus crucifixion and death on the cross, the days began to count. Consider what our situation would be like if there were no resurrection from the dead of the body of Lord Jesus Christ. Elie Wiesel, who was a victim of the Holocaust, tells in his book ‘Night’ about an occasion in the concentration camp when he watched a child being hanged. He describes the child as having the face of a sad angel and as, along with others, he watched the brutal spectacle take place, he heard a voice behind him groan, ‘Where is God? Where is He? Where can He be now? Wiesel goes on to say that as a result of the things he witnessed in the concentration camp, he became a pessimist: ‘Can words like hope, happiness and joy ever have meaning again?’ he speculated! I say, ‘Yes, they can.’ Words like hope, happiness and joy can still have meaning in the light of being in Christ! Because it is only when you are in Christ that certain words and things which otherwise will not make sense in the human parlance begin to make sense. And here’s why –Lord Jesus, too, went through a time when He cried, ‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?’ He knew what it was to identify fully with the pain and suffering which sometimes racks our bodies and our souls, but it didn’t end there –it ended in resurrection. That’s the hope the resurrection brings –the hope that sin, pain, suffering and death introduced by Lucifer are not the end. So by the Lord Jesus Christ example we now know that Life is the end –glorious, everlasting, abundant life. The resurrection of Lord Jesus adds another layer to human experience and lets us know that whatever the reasons why God allows pains and suffering, they are beaten and defeated enemies by the Lord. Difficult though it may be to believe, good will come out of pain and suffering when you sincerely and truthfully endure them as Lord Jesus did; though it is hard but it is not impossible. The resurrection is the pledge that it will surely end in praise.

You know that it is only those like our Lord Jesus who have gone and passed through the reality of life with its attended vicissitude and have tested all trials and temptation who knows really how they feel when in human flesh; they are those who can come to the true assistance and help of those who are passing through the same ordeal. I don’t know about you, but the more I contemplate the wonder of God taking on human form, the more I want to throw myself at His feet knowing and realizing that it is only being in His presence and having His indwelling that can see us through life on earth victoriously. Only the God whom we see in Lord Jesus could ever think of doing a thing like this. The poet Browning (1812-1889) put it this way: To herald all that human and Divine In the weary, happy face of Him, half God, Half man, which made the God –part, God the more! I have a little problem with the phrase, ‘half God, half man’, because the merging of the divine and human in Christ cannot be explained in such simplistic or equal terms, but I fully endorse the thought that God, in taking upon Himself the constraints of our humanity in order to teach us the essentials of life on earth, ‘made the God –part, God the more!’ In other words, God never acted more like God than when He became man, He did what we would expect of Him. What if God had not condescended to wear our flesh and enter into or tested our sins and sorrows? Then He would have violated His own principle: As seen in James 4:17 which says, “So any person who knows what is right to do but does not do it, to him it is sin.” You see, there is not one set of principles for God and another for man. The Creator of the universe God Almighty acts on the same principles He requires of us to act on. It was E Stanley Jones who said: ‘By all that God requires of me, I know that He Himself must be.’ Solemnly and reverently I say it: the Almighty God was never so much God as when He became man.

Last week we touched on the thought that only the strong can dare to be weak. Permit me to develop that thought a little further and take you once again to one of my favourite scenes in Scripture –‘Lord Jesus washing the disciples’ feet’. Those who have followed these notes over a period of years will know of my fondness for this passage as I return to it time and time again. Is Lord Jesus actually your Lord, your Teacher and your Master? You know in our Igbo parlance we have the word ‘ndi osu imi’; which is a group of mockers and mischief makers, when they praise you or say a word to your honour, if you are wise you will know that they mean the opposite or they are mocking you. So in the light of that, do you really actually mean and agree that Lord Jesus is your Lord, Teacher and Master? Please think deeply about it! Or are you just mocking Him by professing His Lordship so that He will solve your problem, heal your wound and provide means of livelihood for you since you know He is a Healer and a Provider; which? This is why it is very important that you think about it deeply and not be fooling yourself forgetting that our Lord God is not mocked! Look first at how the sacred Scriptures focus on our Lord’s consciousness of His greatness: ‘....knowing (fully aware) that the Father had put everything into His hands, and that He had come from God and was [now] returning to God’ as seen in verse 3. Notice that before our Lord stooped to wash the disciples’ feet, He had a clear sense of His dignity and status ...He knew who He is and was. He knew that the disciples whose feet He is about to wash are no match or equal to Him; He knew that these people (His disciples) are far below Him; He knew that by right His disciples are the ones who ought to have washed His own feet but because He wants to teach them an important and vital lesson of life, He decided or rather resorted to using that example. If we did not know the events that followed and were asked to complete the next part of the sentence, our minds would probably come up with something like this: ‘...knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God ... He invited the disciples to wash His feet.’ How different is the true text: ‘Jesus, knowing ...that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel ...poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet.’ The consciousness of His greatness was the secret of His humility, for, as you see, only the great can afford to stoop without any sense of be littleness. A famous Indian swami is reported to wash his feet in milk and then pass the milk around to his disciples to sip in a kind of pseudo- communion service. How different from the Saviour who washed His disciples’ feet. Christians worship at the feet of a God who washes their feet. Do you understand that? Christians worship at the feet of a Lord God who washed their feet! Think about that!

Have you heard that? Lord Jesus Christ; God Himself was humiliated, does this statement strike your mind and make you feel who then are you to feel bad when you are humiliated, if God Himself was humiliated when He was on earth in human form and know that it is a part of man’s attitude to humiliate a person that doesn’t deserve to be humiliated! Last week we saw how men, through the ages, in manufacturing gods out of their imaginations, made them always appear to be victorious and strong in other to cover their weaknesses and sterileness. There was never to be a sign of weakness because that would betray their earthliness. How different from the picture of the One true God presented to us in the Scriptures. There we are told, as in our text for today, that the Creator of the universe took upon Himself the form of a Servant and was made in the likeness of men. Only the strong can dare to become weak, and so strong was our Creator that He subjected Himself to the constraints of our humanity. Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher of a bygone age, put it like this: ‘For God to become a man was more humiliation than for an angel to become a worm.’ Do you get that; and do you really understand this statement? Why did He do it; that is why did God have to take the form of man or a servant? There are many reasons, but look at what the great writer Dorothy Sayers has to say about it in ‘The Greatest Drama Ever Staged’: ‘.... for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is ...limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death ...He had honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted of Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation ...’ God; Lord Jesus Christ tested and passed through all of these in other to demonstrate to man that there is nothing He God has subjected man to pass through with joy and happiness that He God has not passed through and tested. Because God came and put Himself in our condition, He now fully understands our condition. How amazing! I don’t know about you, but a God who gave Himself to me in this way is a God who can have my heart; trust any day. Can you say so for yourself?