Medals

Medals

8/18/14

It is easy to try and place Jesus into a political category and it does not take long while completing a short internet search that we can find many people doing this, but how many of us know that when we do this we nullify His exact reason for being here on this planet.  Jesus had no physical agenda that was awaiting Him while He was alive even though His birth, death and resurrection signified all of the spiritual reasons as to why He was sent for us.  It is hard to understand a person not having a political agenda especially since it is such a human thing to do, yet Jesus came to the world in the flesh and had only one spiritual agenda, your eternal life and existence.

We all know that medals are a significant piece of history that tells a story.  Medals are usually awards for those who have performed at a higher than expected level than others.  While some medals are ranked higher than others each one has a standard to which a person or group must achieve before it can be awarded to them.  This means that some sort of compliance to a cause must be agreed to by the receiving person in order to be eligible for this medal.  A medal is something that is earned by actions and deeds and while some of these awards are superficial others cost lives and therefore are placed upon a higher pedestal, which warrant further dedication.  A medal is earned by people in order to have their names remembered for their sacrifice even though future generations may not have a clue as to why the medal was given out.  It then becomes superficial in meaning and in face value and usually placed in some box that is stored up in a dirty attic.

Some of you may remember a Christian music group that was popular in the very late 70s and throughout the 80s called “The Imperials”. This group came out with some excellent music that lifted up the name of Jesus and was known all around the world.  In the mid 80s, their lead singer Russ Taft left the group to start his new solo career.  This came as a shock to some but everyone the group knew that it was the correct decision and both sides moved on afterwards.  Mr. Taft immediately found success even though there were some hard feelings by the listeners because his leaving from The Imperials.  It was not long until the Christian music scene was once again filled with both The Imperials and Russ Taft’s music on the airwaves and it seemed like all division was over, which was good for the music scene.

One of the first songs that Mr. Taft wrote for his new album became a huge success and it so happened that the song was also the title of his new album “Medals”.  The song had a wonderful message and a powerful Kingdom statement in it as well, one that should ring loudly in our divisive ears today.  I do not know if Mr. Taft understood just what this song’s words meant but there is no doubt that God had a hand in writing this song and I am so thankful that Mr. Taft was listening to God at that moment in time.  If you are not familiar with the song “Medals” I ask you to find it on the net and listen to the words.  The beat is a little up tempo which was a typical 80s style of beat.  I am going to use some of the lyrics in this article but not all of them so you might wish to listen to the song to understand where the words are coming from.

Many people around the world, especially those who attend church here in the West, like to try and portray Jesus as being a political figure.  We spend countless hours trying to justify His movements and sayings in order to prove that He saw things like we see them.  To be honest, that is totally backwards thinking and should be banned from all people’s minds who claim to be Christians.  It is also a sign that our enemy has infiltrated our church walls enough to spread his lies concerning Jesus’ mission on this earth and it is one that we need to seriously repent of before we take it further and it becomes engrained in our personal doctrines.  Jesus had only one agenda while He was alive on this earth and it was of a spiritual nature, one of spiritual restoration and the re-establishment of the spiritual communication lines between God and man; just as the sacrificial lambs represented in Scriptures.

The first verse of the song states: “He is a man who speaks His mind”.  What an opening line to a song.  This sentence could be a topic for an article by itself but in short it states Jesus’ intent to present God’s authority while He was on earth.  Jesus; authority was always questioned by the religious leaders of His time and it is not hard to understand just how much animosity that setting proved to be against those men.  Jesus never once backed down from their demands and questioning of the Scriptures because Jesus saw right through their hypocritical mannerisms and called them out when they tried to speak against His mission.  The religious leaders had allowed the world to infiltrate their ways and laws enough that they had become comfortable enough to accept this compromise; Jesus said No!  Not one politically religious reason here, in fact He did just the opposite, He challenged the leaders of their acceptance of worldly practices within the walls of the Synagogue.  This poses the question of why did Jesus see their medals and they did not?  No medals here.

The first sentence of this song also meant that Jesus could not have pacified the local people with plain social language.  It cannot be denied that Jesus was a social person for many times we read that He was with the people as He went from place to place.  There is nothing wrong with being social and being around people; however, we also find that Jesus never backed down from telling these people the truth either.  Look at all of the sermons and parables that He used in trying to convey His Father’s message to them.  Also, if Jesus was pacifying their wants and ideas then there would have been no reason for Satan to try and tempt Jesus, for Jesus’ mission would have already been compromised on the spiritual level; which is all that matters.  Jesus had to maintain His spiritual authority when He was on the earth, on all levels.  No Medals here either.

Second verse of the song states: “His answers are you to find”.  This sentence represents another powerful statement that can only come from a complete God.  Have you ever wondered why God would make a statement and word it in such a way that it would take a person time to figure out its meaning?  Ingenious plan don’t you think?  Why would God give a person an answer that forces a person to act in a certain manner?  How could that type of action be consistent with a loving and all powerful God to an unbeliever’s mind, it would seem more like a controlling one.  In the Garden of Eden God gave us dominion over everything and through this statement a Kingdom principle was born. 

This statement gave humans the authority to think, make decisions and choices which means that in order for us to understand God and His ways we must think about what He has done, is doing, and will do in the future, including figuring out what God is saying to His people through godly and biblical references.  So it would be natural for God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit to speak in terms to which we would have to make choices in order to fully understand what they are trying to convey.  Again, no medals here.

The third line of the song states: “Just open your eyes”.  This is one of the so called controversial statements that Jesus referred to while He was on the earth.  From all of the things that Jesus did here it cannot be denied that He was a visual person for He taught through parables.  Have you ever tried to do this?  What eyes was Jesus talking about when He was referring to the times when He mentioned our eyes being opened?  First of all He was referring to our physical eyes and how biased they can become when we have prejudicial opinions about our surroundings.  It is easy for us to get sucked up into the crowd’s opinion and to “go with the flow” so to speak, but how troublesome can this ideology and practice be?  Jesus wanted us to understand what He saw and knew and one of the most important ways for us to do this is to use the wonderful gift of sight that His Father gave to us upon our creation.  So in keeping with His command of course Jesus was meaning for us to use our physical eyes for if we fail to see what is actually occurring around us how then can we expect to see what is going on around us spiritually?

Jesus also meant for us to use our spiritual eyes when He used these words as well.  Being spirit and flesh Himself, Jesus understood that we need to both our spiritual eyes and our physical eyes to be complete in Him.  Jesus cannot be one-sided nor can He only use one aspect of His eyes, so in order for us to completely understand what He said, we must do the same.  This is where some of us get hung up in that we will use our physical eyes and forget that we have spiritual eyes which are almost exploding with information that we need.  If Jesus would have been referring to just the physical eyes then He would have played right into Satan’s hand by formulating an incomplete setting to which we should use our eyes. 

This is hard for some of us to understand but it is imperative that we realize that our physical eyes cannot fully function and in their correct manner, concerning the activities around us, unless our spiritual eyes are focused on its surroundings as well.  Please, stop and think about this concept for a moment and try to understand this concept and how important it is that both sets of eyes are seeing properly.  For if we do not, one of the most important defensive mechanisms that we have against our enemy becomes a detriment and liability instead of an important weapon.  Once again, Jesus presents Himself with no medals here.

A fourth sentence in this song states: “He sees their truth burned down in flames”.  WE all know that fire is hot and we do not even have to actually touch the flames to be burned by them, only get close enough.  God references fire for many things throughout Scriptures but in every time those flames represent a purification process.  One of the more famous pictures of fire in the Bible is when God spoke to Moses through the burning bush.  While this miracle is mind absorbing enough it is almost impossible for us to comprehend that the bush did not burn away.  But this was not God’s purpose at that moment and His reasoning for this was remarkable.  God wanted to make a point with Moses and for him to understand that God could do anything He wished.  It must have been staggering for Moses to stand there and watch a tree catch on fire yet not break down as other wood had when he started a fire.

In our physical world fire is hot and it consumes the very fuel in which it is sourced.  Fire uses things in order to bring purity and when the heat is added to the equation most of the imperfections of that substance are burned up.  When dealing with wood the majority of the time there is nothing left of that wood except for a few ashes and when firer is placed into contact with ore only pure elements remain after its burning.  How many of our tongues produce a fire that would like to consume another person, their belief, or ideas?  This is a common factor in our personalities and we use it freely most of the time.  It was through spiritual truth that Jesus used the fire to squelch the flames of the world.  The truthful words that He used both to the religious leaders and to the people that He spoke to, put out their flaming words of division and allowed them to look at things differently; some chose to do this and some did not.  Again, it was the human who had the choice and was not forced to do so which says that Jesus had no medals here either.

The next to the last line that I am going to talk about is the one that states: “And He will fight for your release”.  Automatically one will ask this question, “release from what?”  It is a legitimate question that everyone should ask because it is the ultimate answer to which Jesus came to this earth.  If we think back to the Old Testament Scriptures and remember the process of killing a lamb for the sins of the people.  Do we actually know sin on a physical plane?  Nope.  We feel the effects of sin and we can see the directions that sin leads us, but the literally physical aspects of sin we really do not see.  If we deliberately tell a lie to someone or about something what physical effect do we have?  Nothing really, until your parents find out about what you did and then your butt will feel the consequences.  So, it would be “natural” for Jesus not to fight for a physical release since that will come in time if warranted; which further reinforces that concept that Jesus came for an entirely different reason concerning your freedom.

The topic of slavery is constantly being thrown around in our world, whether it is through a history book or by someone trying to make an issue of what they think is a raw deal coming down.  Being a slave, in any capacity, represents nothing good about life and the existence of humanity.  Yet we voluntarily allow ourselves to become slaves to this world and the pressures that come along with it.  Our captivity may not be in the physical even though physical slavery is still rampant in the world, and the majority of us have not grasped this concept yet or choose to ignore it and accept it as a part of life.  It is the spiritual slavery that binds our lives in such a manner that if we do not find a way to free ourselves we will die in a dark world that will forever separate us from our Creator.  This freedom is exactly what the innocent lamb provided for the people living in the Old Testament and what Jesus’ mission was while He was on the earth.

While some people physically gained their freedom from Rome, Greece, Nazi Germany, etc. it was through the innocent sacrifice of Jesus that allowed humans to free their spirits from the world and its ruler for eternity.  Jesus chose to walk this earth and fulfill His mission, fully understanding what it meant both in the physical and in the spiritual.  God does not wish to be separated from His children and through His covenant with us He is obligated to provide a perfect sacrifice in order for us to achieve this freedom.  This perfect sacrifice was His Son and only through His Son could our eternal choice be legally justified in God’s eyes.  It is our spiritual freedom that is at stake here and not in the sense of being free to do what it wants, but to have the choice in being free from the chains of this world.  Choice plays the center part here which was demonstrated by God, by Christ and by us, which concludes that Jesus had no medals here either.

If Jesus were on a physical mission then there would have been no reason why He could have not been created by two physical parents. For this reason alone we all should know that His mission was from the spiritual aspects of God and of our lives and not for the physical. One might question of why I could use a song to justify this setting about Jesus.  I can honestly use this song because it follows directly in line with what Jesus portrayed, said and did while His feet walked upon this earth.  Just as an innocent young lamb is used for the sacrifice so was Jesus and it came at the perfect time in human history.

Restoration is not just a physical condition its main purpose is for our spiritual conditioning.  God communicates through the spiritual and when that avenue is broken then He must use the physical in order to grab our attention.  We do not have to see God’s use of the physical in order to understand this concept, plus it would be a lot better for everyone if we found this out before the physical is used.  It is through Jesus’ life and resurrection that allows us to have spiritual freedom again and for us to be spiritually restored in the eyes of God.  God does not come through physical glory but in a spiritual glory that only He can provide through His perfect status. 

Jesus had no earthly or physical medals and through this song and through His own actions proves this fact.  In using one last line of the song “Medals” and it as follows: “We are His medals”.  This is the final proof that Jesus had no earthly medals in that if He had come to the earth in any other manner He would have personally invalidated His claim to the spiritual.  Earthly medals represent a specific physical activity that has a physical agenda.  Jesus’ agenda was spiritual for He knew that our physical lives would eventually wear down and fade away but our eternal lives is just that, eternal.  Our choosing Him as our Savior and accepting God’s Laws into our lives presents ourselves to God as Christ’s medals.  Not as a battle reminder as such but as one who chose Him instead of this world and in spiritual terms that is a huge choice.

Our lives contain two entities one spiritual and one physical.  There is nothing that we can do to make our physical lives immortal, this is a given.  But our spirits are a different story in that that entity within us is the opposite, it shall never die.  So when asked the specific question of which is more important than the obvious answer would be the eternal one.  Therefore, why would Jesus come to the earth and store up physical medals that will only fade away and become useless?  He would not!  He came to this earth to bridge the gap that our choices made between God and us.  Yes, Jesus was a physical person and yes He had a physical message, but it was through the physical that He was allowed to convey the spiritual necessities that we need to have restored.  It is through this Kingdom that we are restored to God, not by the world’s spiritual plane.

The song that I have referenced in this article is a beautiful one in that every line in it I could use for this topic.  I am not going to continue but please if you read the lyrics of this song stop and think about them and try to understand the meaning of each line.  It is a fabulous Kingdom song and should be remembered by every person that loves God and Christ.  I thank Russ Taft for listening to God and penning this song down so many years ago, I just wish I had understood the meaning of those words sooner, but God has His own perfect timing.

If one accepts this choice of Jesus, the reality of true life has an entirely deeper meaning other than just existing or occupying a void in space.  He is a freedom that our spiritual lives crave and need and what the world cannot provide.  A godly restoration is the perfect process to which we can truly feel alive.  It is a spiritual freedom from this place that is guaranteed to spill over into the physical and when this occurs, slavery is no longer an issue and abundant life can be experienced.

DLB