ESCAPING ENSNAREMENT - The Heritage of Heirs

Jesus exemplified it as He treaded the path of purpose ordained by the father (God Almighty).  We do not fight flesh and blood yet Jesus overcame all on our behalf.

To Escape Ensnarement is to be an embodiment of the Savior - who has all it takes to save from all kinds of snares being that He encountered so much that were fashioned to Ensnare him yet He overcame all of them and is seated today in Heaven in the right hand of God ruling in Heaven and on Earth as God as ordained.

Being that the heir of God: one who is redeemed by the sinless Blood of Jesus; lives, walk and have his being in Jesus (Acts 17: 28) and is also seated with Christ in heavenly places far above principalities and power (Eph. 2:6, Eph. 1: 19-20) and he was redeemed and equipped to be more than conquerors (Rom 8:37), he cannot be ensnared. Moreover, the heir of God was since set free and remains free (Jn. 8:36). All that Jesus suffered to overcome the adversary was for the sake of man whom He has given the privilege of being heir with Him – the man who acknowledges God and Jesus for the painful sacrifices they bore to set man free.

SNARES THAT JESUS OVERCAME FOR US:

1. Satan:  Satan determined to stand on Jesus’ way to stop him from fulfilling the purpose for which the father sent him to the Earth. Satan thought that his schemes and traps would mean anything to the master. Jesus broke through the Pharisees, Sadducee, teachers of the law, scribes, chief priests, Jews and Gentiles who scorned the Truth. They made him suitable to die at their term without knowing that they were in the course designed and approved by the father for the man in the earth – whom Satan used against his Creator. Jesus sailed through God- ordained course and conquered.

2. STRINGENCY (Poverty): Although Jesus was known to be the Son of a carpenter on earth (Joseph) and his birth place the manger reflected the sore stringent state of Mary and Joseph the presence of God that He embodied stripped Him of the spell of poverty. He always had everything and anything He needed per time to reflect His personality as the Saviour and Messiah.

Being that He embodied the blessing, he was fruitful, multiplied and replenished the earth. To break the yoke of unbelief from Peter, Jesus caused the lake (Lake Gennesaret) where Peter was toiling to overflow with fish that Peter caught so much that dazed him unusually (Luke 5), When Jesus needed to feed the multitude who were His congregation for 72 hours (3 days)

In Matt. 15:29-32, He fed 4000 men plus women and children with 7 loaves and a few small fish.  7 basketfuls of broken pieces were picked as leftover.  Jesus the Messiah did not walk or live alone on earth. He had a good company in the disciples and lots of believers whose lives He imparted with the power and blessing He embodied.

Every of His needs were effortlessly met always.  Whether He needed people or things, they were available for Him and He could fulfill destiny and ministry. When He needed money to exemplify a good citizen, a fish produced it.  The person He sent had a line already. (Matt 17:27).

3. SENTENCE OF DEATH: The very people that Jesus came to the earth to save laid charges against their master and sentenced Him to death.  They walked in ignorance - blinded by Satan and could not imagine that the essence of His coming was the freedom of the sinful man (Isa 53:5).

They could not Fathom His realm and the realities/ peculiarity of the person of Jesus - that His death at the Cross would be just a phase in His triumphant mission on earth.

Jesus surrendered Himself at the Cross of Calvary yet they thought they succeeded to kill Him.  At the time appointed for His resurrection, His return to the earth to accomplish His Ministry was effortless (John 2:19, Matt. 27:50, John 19:30; I Cor 15:4, Mark 16:6, I Cor 5:14-15).  At the Resurrection of Jesus, He demonstrated triumph over the adversary who placed a death sentence on the Master just as God ordained.

4. SUFFERINGS (A state of pain and distress):  The man that Jesus came to save was a picture of suffering.  The curse that clutched to him made him helpless and hurting. Being the Saviour of mankind indeed, Jesus used His authority to minister freedom to lots who went to Him to be healed: Matt. 8:16, Matt 14:14; Matt 19:2; Matt 21:14; Matt 12:15.

Although JESUS represents vitality and vigor eternally, multitudes who were in miserable state on earth put Him to task perpetually.  While He walked on earth, He worked at making them well and at His death and resurrection the chains that held them captive broke and the believer in Jesus (even the church and heir of God) had escaped like a bird from the snare (Psalm 124:7).

He took what bound man before to the Cross and man has to suffer no more. Matt 8:17 says “Himself took our infirmities and bare our diseases (ASV.)

The man who was so ensnared to be incapable of productivity now has what it takes to be a true representative of God on earth, the image and likeness of God.  The sufferings he knew in his rebellion state are not to be his experience any more in his redeemed state.  Praise the Lord!

5. SEPULCHRE (Tomb):  The living normally desert the tomb for fear of the unknown but Jesus’ tomb was a duty post for those assigned in vain to watch (Matt 27:62-66). Jesus had proposed that He would arise (escape from the sepulchre back to life after three days; Mat 27:64) and they that constituted the counsel of His adversaries who were no longer ignorant of the peculiar personality that Jesus represented set up a stringent security structure in vain to defeat divine purpose.

The soldiers were both of Roman and Jewish origin (Temple Guard) who were tricked into a task that reduced them to mere men.

The stone at the door of the tomb was a great one that could not be easily rolled. It constituted the major concern of Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome when they were revisiting Jesus’ tomb.  They conversed among themselves “who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb (Matt. 16:3). Not just that the stone was great. It was also sealed.  Yet Jesus came out freely without needing any man’s assistance and none of their security measure could mean any barrier to the person of Jesus and the purpose of God.

6. STING OF DEATH:

The sting of death has no cure.  When it enters the body of a person, irreversible damage occurs.   Jesus represents triumph over every kind of snare.

The Master would have yielded up His Spirit to fulfill a demand for the freedom of mankind yet the Sting of death would have heard instruction that the Body of the Master was not to be touched in anyway. Hence, although he died and was buried, His body was preserved and kept in a perfect form for the three days He spent in the grave.

Jesus remained Lord even in the grave and He needed no man’s help to resurrect.  The words He spoke while alive were commands to everything which behaved well in order not to be guilty of rebelling against the Master’s authority to suffer the consequences.

The Spirit that He yielded up to befit the status of the death (in order to descend beneath the earth to exercise dominion over the forces of death /hell) returned to the body of the Master at the time appointed to charge Him back to life unconditionally and effortlessly.

Hence, we escape Ensnarement with the understanding that ‘if the spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His spirit  that dwelleth in you’ (Rom 8:11).

7. SIN:  The Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart because the wickedness of man was great upon the earth and every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time (Gen. 6:5;6).

Among such people there was a remnant Noah – a righteous man, blameless in his generation.  Noah walked with God.  Hence, he found favour in the eyes of the Lord (Gen. 6:8-9).

Noah liked right in a generation when every creature under the Heavens that had the breath of life was to be destroyed by God because of the violence they caused. In Gen. 6:6;22 his testimonial was matchless: ‘So Noah did everything precisely as God had commanded him’.

In wrath, God destroyed all that did not have to continue on earth with Noah and all he was directed to get into the Ark with.

The man that God created in His image and likeness to take charge of His creation on earth remains God’s core concern all the time. God had sworn not to use flood against his creation another time (Gen 9:11) yet man has not sworn not to offend God another time.

Even after God had paid the priceless cost with the sinless blood of Jesus to afford man the grace to live in righteousness, the son of God is busy copying evil from the man in bondage to live like him (it) instead of looking into the perfect Book of the Law to see Jesus who walked blamelessly through the world of wicked lots who were conscripted into the camp of the adversary of fight God, His purpose and programs.

Man’s greatest snare is sin and God sent Jesus to the earth for man’s freedom from the chain of sins. The adversary sought any occasion to label the Savior as a sinner. The council of the anti-christ (chief priests, scribes, pharisees) sought occasion to judge Him as a sinner but they found none. Jesus in full knowledge of His righteous stand foresaw His triumph over His adversary whom He called ‘the ruler of this world’ (when he still had the authority of man: when man was not yet redeemed). In John 14:30 Jesus said; ‘I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming and he has nothing in me (NKJV). Berean Study Bible says…. And he has no claim in me.’

Hence, the snare of the man – SIN that they thought to use to trap Jesus failed. He came to save the sinful man, whose sins he bore on his body (1 Pt 2:24) and remained sinless thereby escaping being ensnared by sin.

8.  SPACE: This implies the sphere (vacuum) between the earth and the heavens. The Creator knows its form and content more than Science. It is an amazing aspect of creation to man who has spent so much to study it but to God it does not constitute any distance or vacuum to the earth where He made man to live and rule in.

Jesus - the Savior of man came from Heaven (the throne of God) to be born like man (Philippians 2:6-7) for the sake of the man that God needed to save. He defied all odds to be on assignment for God – such that was to cost His life: a horribly painful course (Lk 22:40 -46).

Begin an epitome of love, Jesus could bear all He was subjected to in the course and He accomplished it.  When He used to say He came from His father (John 1:14; John 8:28 -29, John 5:30; John 17:20-23; He was taken for a deceiver being that they knew Him as the son of Joseph and Mary. Moreover, that a time would come when He would not be with them on earth anymore (yet not death) would have equally sounded like an empty talk (Heb 1:2-3).

 At the fullness of time, the Ascension of Jesus happened. The disciples watched Him being taken up in the air (Acts 1:9) as if such was a possibility of the man He represented on earth. He went up till He was totally gone and the force of gravity that resists weight from such height was not effective.

The case of the Master was supernatural. Space could not stand on His way to barrier Him from returning to the father from where He came to the earth.

The son of God did not need wings, ladder or any man’s push to lift into space but manifested as the final authority that every creature or creation yielded to. Hence, what would constitute a snare - to make His return to the father’s throne impossible, He overcome by His marvelous triumph over the force of gravity to ascend His permanent home.  He set the pace for His co-heirs. With Him and the same Spirit that facilitated His ascension, the heir of God can attain his God-ordained destiny if the knows his heritage.  No matter the wideness of the space that exists between his present state and where he aims (as God purposes for him), he is able to sail through mysteriously because with God all things are possible.

Only live in His purpose as His servant and space cannot stand on your way to your throne - where you will glorify God for His awesome works on earth.

9. SUBJECTION:          This is ‘the state of being placed under the power of another; owing allegiance to a particular sovereign or state’.  The Saviour of the world was not born into a void or vacuum but into a society of well-defined authorities of parents, civil authority, religious hierarchies.  All the systems needed loyalty and punishment for rebellion was not what they needed help for.

Right from early, Jesus made His parents to remember that He was not wholly theirs.  Jesus’ parents found Him after He missed from their care for 3 days because rather than following them home after the normal yearly festival, He at 12 years decided to stay behind at Jerusalem in the temple courts sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.  In response to His mother’s enquiry into the basis of His action, He said: ‘why were you searching for me?  Didn’t you know I had to be in my father’s house? Then He returned with then to Nazareth.  For the three days He sat in the temple courts with teacher, he would have realized how earnestly they needed the word/light He represented (Lk 2:41-51).

Hence, he did not spend His time on earth imbibing the wrong teachings of those that satan were using to tighten the chain of captivity on man.  Jesus was emphatic about doing His father’s biddings with the time allocated Him to be on earth.  He did not get Himself unnecessarily consenting to the courses that were not in the core interest of God’s kingdom or involved in serving anyone whose ways negated the Truth and Light He represented.

In His interactions with the people who were adherent to Moses’ laws and known to be descendants of Abraham (who were religious), He affirmed His stand as one from Heaven- who was sent from the father. He did not care to please or mislead anybody who needed to know His stand on Civil government: “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God’ (Mk 12:19).  He knew that God was mindful of the government of Caesar and He did not speak against Caesar or incite rebellion against his government. Hence, the amazing answer he gave them.

Hear the testimony of the Pharisees about Jesus who escaped the snare called subjection. They knew Him as whom He was indeed ‘teacher’ (not like those they knew in the temple courts) because He did not subject Himself to the teachings of those who were in ignorance.  They affirmed, “we know you are honest and seek favour from no one.  Indeed, you are impartial and teach the way of God in accordance with the truth’ (Mk 12:14).

Subjection is yielding to the whims and caprices of those who are not going anywhere because you have no direction of your own. Jesus knew the direction He was ordained by God to tread so He could not become subject of persons who were seeking how to catch Him and make Him their subject -  a victim of their crude leadership.

Hence, know the truth and make your stand for God and what is God’s public so that you would not fall into the trap of wordless lots to your detriment.

Redemption has bestowed you everything to use to escape Ensnarement.  So don’t remain ensnared as if you were not elected into the family of those ‘who are more than conquerors’.

10. SENTIMENTS: This defines an attitude, thought or judgment prompted by feeling. Many fall into the trap of convention / culture and tradition in the world.  They watch what others do and how they do their work or assignment notwithstanding the ignorance such fellows represent. Some drop their assignments to take up and pursue what they were not fashioned/crafted for because they imagine others making good impact at their specific assignment.

Jesus ran a unique course to escape the snare that the world constituted.  He knew what He was sent to the earth to do and He did not joke about it. He invested everything about him at pursing his assignment and purpose while others in the religious path upheld the paths of their patriarchs and prophets (like Abraham & Isaac). He focused on propagating the salvation of the world He came to establish with His sinless blood notwithstanding all those who were wrath with Him. He represented a Shining Light in the midst of darkness and they were incensed against him because they could not comprehend Him. He did not compromise, slow or calm down to avoid hatred and hurts rather He endured all the criticisms, contradictions and opposition the unholy lots meted out to him.

For the fulfilled course He ran on earth in the midst of people who were too sentimental to abdicate the traditional path they were born into to accept the Truth that Jesus preached for the sake of breaking the chains that were on the souls of men for so long.

Jesus became an example to all for His peculiar capacity to escape the ensnarement of Sentiments. In Hebrews 12:2, His uniqueness is portrayed thus: ‘Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him ENDURED the Cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider…as you wish to manifest your status as the heir of God, be careful not to fall into the trap called Sentiments. Let it not be your feeling ruling you to do what is contrary to the faith of God who sent His son to a sentimental world and stood by Him to fulfill divine purpose even to change your status from an ordinary man to an heir of God. Your way of feeling or thinking about something must not be based on the terms of the society but on the Scriptures (truth and light) so that you may graciously escape the ensnarement of Sentiment. Hear the words of the Master, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” As the Heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways (Isa 55:8-9).

The world’s view of foods, drinks (eating and drinking), sleep and sexuality should not define you or be your reflection. Rather depend on the grace of God to reflect spiritual maturity per time without being under any obligation or pressure to please anybody or system. Cheers.