Delivered

                When I discovered that I was pregnant with our sixth child a couple of months ago, I spent two days in tears.  My husband knew that I was exhausted, nauseous, and overly-emotional, but he was still somewhat baffled by my response. 

                “You’re a great mom,” he encouraged me, “and you’ve always handled being pregnant pretty well, not to mention labor and delivery.  God’s always provided for us.  He will this time, too.”

                “But I just don’t feel ready to go through this all again,” I wailed.  “I’m already unable to keep up with everything I have to do, and now there are pregnancy aches and pains on top of it!  And I don’t care if I’ve gone through labor and delivery five times before – the thought of going through it again still scares me!”

                Now that I’m through the first trimester, those emotions have waned somewhat.  Yet I think that any woman who’s borne a child can relate to what I was feeling.  Some of those thoughts are driven by sinful selfishness and discontent, no doubt.  But some of those emotions are driven by fear, for a woman sacrifices much when she carries and brings a child into the world.

                When I was young, I was perplexed by the word “deliver” as it is used in reference to a baby being born.  Who, I wondered, was the one delivered?  Was it the long-awaited newborn, just placed in the arms of his parents?  Or was it the mother, now relieved of the burden she had carried and free from labor pains?

                It is the mother, Christ’s mother, Mary, who is delivered in Luke 2:6: “And so it was, that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.”  Mary’s delivery was not only the bringing forth of her firstborn son: Jesus’ birth signaled that the days had been accomplished that she – and all of God’s people – would be delivered from their sins.  The long-expected Messiah had been delivered.

        The inspired writer of the book of Hebrews commentates on this miraculous delivery:

Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.  For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.  (Hebrews 2:15-17).

                Jesus came to deliver us.  In his first public sermon Jesus declared: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to…preach deliverance to the captives” (Luke 4:18).  The verses above and additional Scripture passages teach that Jesus has delivered (and continues to deliver) us from:

-          The devil (see above)

-          Death (2 Cor. 1:9-10)

-          The fear of death (see above)

-          The judgment due us for our sins, i.e. the wrath to come (I Thes. 1:10)

-          The law, the law of sin, the body of this death (Rom. 7)

-          Temptations (2 Pet. 2:9)

               

Jesus also came to be delivered for us.  He was “delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).  “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?  He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (Rom. 8:31-32)

                What should be our response for this great deliverance?  A thankful walk.  Ezra puts it rhetorically in Ezra 9:13-14a: “And after all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, and for our great trespass, seeing that thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve, and hast given us such deliverance as this; should we again break thy commandments, and join in affinity with the people of these abominations?” Paul puts it positively in I Cor. 15: 57-58:  “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

                Praise God – we’ve been delivered!