TD Jakes - We Are the Body
I love the holidays, any kind of holiday, thanksgiving, I'll make up a holiday. I love holidays 'cause you have great food, and you have great fun. People come over. I like to entertain and have a good time. Fourth of July is one of those times. I recognize the greatness of this country, and we come over, and we have food, and we have cookouts. We have activities, and it's fun, and my wife and I have hosted all kinds of families and all kinds of friends, and our kids will bring people we don't even know, and we're feeding everybody, strangers.
I don't know whether they're serial killers, but I feed 'em. If they come in there and they're hungry, I feed 'em, and we relish all of the things that stand behind this country, and although I'm thankful, I also have to realize that what we are celebrating is not my liberty because, as an African-American, we were not freed when they were freed, and I have to understand that, and be able to embrace that, and be able to celebrate something that my ancestors had to wait hundreds of years to really enter into.
I'm reminded of the hardships that they went through and what they had to endure and what happened to them, and we are, finally, in this country, starting to recognize that we all enjoyed the liberty, but it didn't all happen on the same day, and we can celebrate each other's liberty even though they came at different times, and that does not negate the greatness of this country or the power of who we are as a people. It is just honest. It's as honest as marriage is that sometimes both of you are not equally in love at the same time. It's as honest as parenting is, you love them all, but there's one child that drives you absolutely crazy, and that doesn't mean that you're not a good parent. It's just being honest. We like nice, neat, pretty little stories, but that's not the way it goes.
Dr. King was right when he said, "No one is free until we all are free," and then we really enjoy freedom. Suffering must never be wasted because freedom is a bloody business. Freedom is a bloody business. The women winning the right to vote was a bloody business. Freedom for people of color was a bloody business. Freedom to come to this country was a bloody business. It was with warfare and suffering and struggle, and freedom from my sins was a bloody business. There was no way to redeem me without Christ going to the cross and bleeding for me because freedom is always a bloody business. God redeems because crushing is not the end.
Jesus went to the cross because crushing is not the end. He knew he was paying the bill that was necessary to be paid for, for emancipation, and any time you want liberty bad enough, you gotta be willing to pay the price to get it because it won't go on sale, and nobody will ever give it to you. You've got to be able to March for it, fight for it, protest for it, work for it, be nailed to a tree for it. Freedom is always a bloody business. Surrender your sufferings to the master vintner because you understand that he will guide you through the process when the process is painful. I heard one of the civil rights leaders say that, when you March, you ought to sing, and what an oxymoron between hoses and dogs and singing, but singing balances the suffering, and God comforts us as we pay the price to be free. I wanna seek out the sufferers.
Well, when I was in West Virginia, let me tell ya something, when I was in West Virginia, I have a story. I came over the hill. I was driving my car back then. It was maybe 1981 or so, and I was driving my 1979 silver anniversary trans am, and I came over top of the hill, vroom, vroom, vroom. I came over the hill, and when I turned over the hill, there was a guy on the side of the road, and he'd been in a wreck, and there was blood up against the window, and I pulled my car off to the side of the road, and I ran over to him, and I said to the man, "Should I call the police"? And he said, "No, call an ambulance". And I felt so stupid because suddenly I realized he didn't care about who was right or wrong. He just wanted to get better.
And sometimes we're so engrossed on who is right and who is wrong that we call the police when we need to call the ambulance because it doesn't matter who's right, and it doesn't matter who's wrong. It matters that we get better. Do you hear what I'm saying to you? It matters that we get better. It matters that we survive. It matters that we overcome. It matters that we send our kids to school because we are training the doctors that are gonna take care of us in our old age, and so, if we don't have a great education system, then we're gonna weaken our ability to survive the vicissitudes of life. We are training the next generation of thinkers. This is important, because, at our most vulnerable stage, we will only be as strong as what we put in our children.
Do you hear what I'm saying to you? And when you are in a wreck, you don't care what color the paramedic is. You don't care whether you could spell his name or pronounce his name or whether he came from this country or from another country. If you've ever been in a wreck and been hurt bad enough, anybody that jumps off of that ambulance and comes over to you with the bed and puts oxygen over your face, you are so happy to see them, you don't know what in the world to do. You don't say, "Oh, I don't want oxygen from you 'cause you came from another country," or "You look different than me," or "I don't think you're legitimate," or "You're a woman and you may", I don't care what you are, "Put the oxygen right here, okay? Put it right here".
Do not judge people. Don't rush to judge people. Don't rush to judge them for helping you because your help may come from somebody you didn't expect. God may send your help in a form, that's why Jesus taught on the good Samaritan because he was trying to get the legalistic pharisees and Sadducees to understand that it may not be a pharisee or a Sadducee that comes to rescue you. It may be a Samaritan, and in Jesus' days, they didn't like the Samaritans, and Jesus wanted them to understand that God doesn't promise to help you through the people that you approve. So the priest came by, and he looked at him and then walked away and didn't do anything for him.
And the Levite came by, and he walked, and he looked at him, and he still didn't, the priest and the Levite were related to them, and you would've thought that the help would've come from somebody like you. The point of telling them that the good Samaritan came over and got down off of his beast and put him on the beast and poured him the oil and the wine is to let you know is that you don't get to pick the flavor of your help. Are you hearing what I'm saying to you? That God will use whoever he will.
And sometimes he uses people that you wouldn't expect to broaden your mind-set to open up, that God may use somebody who votes differently, who dresses differently, who walks differently, who talks differently, so that you'll be broad enough to understand that God works through all kinds of people and that God may work through the jawbone of an ass, or God may use a Rahab, a harlot, to harbor the spies to get you out of the crisis that you're in or that God might turn around and use a gentile to deliver a Jew, that God might turn around and use a woman to bring the news that he is risen from the dead, that God might turn around and use somebody that your theology doesn't agree with because God does not submit to your thinking.
God is God. And at the end of the day, what makes us all common is that what we all have in common is that we all suffer, and we all grieve, and we all get hungry, and we all get tired, and we all face disappointment, and I wonder why we can't do this together? If we all suffer, and if we all have been crushed and if Jesus died for us all, then why can't we do this together?
When Jesus, at the last supper, pours wine into a cup and hands it to his disciples, and he says, "Take and drink," he does not say that it's wine. He says, "This is blood". Will you still drink? When he breaks bread, he says, "This is my body". Will you still eat? When he hands them the cup and offers it up to them, he says the New Testament is in his blood because God has always included blood in the plan of deliverance. From the book of Genesis, when Adam fell and got into a dilemma he couldn't get himself out of and tried to dress himself, like we often try to dress ourself to right our wrongs and fix our mistakes as if we could do it without God, the Bible says that he dressed himself with fig leaves and hid amongst the trees, and he was trying to be like the trees, hiding amongst the trees, and it makes me think of the blind man who said, "I'm not quite there yet 'cause I see men walking as trees".
Adam was the first man who tried to act like a tree, but Jesus called him out. He called him out from the trees, and he called him out from the fig leaves because he knew that there was nothing in the tree that could redeem him, and there was nothing in the leaf that could redeem him because neither the tree nor the leaf had any blood in it, so he said, "Stand and wait right here. I'll go show you what it cost to be delivered". "And the voice of the Lord walked through the cool of the garden," and he found an innocent animal, and the reason the innocent animal was eligible is because he had the price of redemption running through his veins, and that is blood. No plant can bleed. And he bled out so that Adam might live.
And Jesus becomes a seamstress or a tailor, if you please, and he makes a suit for Adam to wear, and it's the first fur coat. Yeah, and so there he is with bloody coats of skin and blood running down his legs, understanding that the life that he now lives in the flesh, he only lives because of the blood of the animal. This is how God introduces us in the introduction, the prologue, of this lifelong dialogue that he's having with humanity about how he is redeeming us with blood, "For without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin". So when he starts talking about crushing grapes, he's really talking about blood because, to him, wine is blood, and blood is wine. Oh, my God.
Now watch this: his sons come along, trying to imitate their parents, and each one of them made some reference to their father's reaction. All Cain did wrong was what Adam did first. He offers up to God the fruit of the ground. He offers up to God that which he had worked, and by works shall no man be saved, but Abel offers up to him a firstling, an animal, something that has blood, because Abel has caught on to the receipt of salvation, his blood. And when he offers up blood, God receives his sacrifice, and Cain is angry because he's jealous. Have you ever been jealous? He was jealous, and God said, "Why has thy countenance fallen? If thou doest not well, will I not receive you"?
In other words, "If you do what Abel did, you can get what Abel got. I am not a respecter of persons. I am a respecter of principles, and the principle is blood, and why in the world, Cain, would you not be willing to slay an animal, but you were willing to murder your brother"? Why do we give up the easy thing and do the hard thing? It would've been easier to offer up the animal. Instead, he goes out there, and he murders his brother, and then God comes down and says, "I hear the voice of thy brother's blood crying up to me out of the ground," and that's when I found out that the blood can talk, because God said, "I hear the voice of thy brother's blood crying up to me out of the ground..."
And not only did I learn that the blood can talk, I also learned that God can hear the blood, and that God understands the language of the blood, and I understand that the blood is pleading my case right now and that it's pleading my redemption right now and that God can hear the cry of the blood of his son crying up, "Give him life," when I deserve death. Jesus's blood was the blood that spoke up for me. When hell opened up to take me in, the blood of Jesus opened its mouth and spoke out for me and demanded my deliverance, and that is why I plead the blood. That is why I plead the blood. And every time I have communion, when I lift up the cup, I'm not lifting up grape juice or wine, I'm lifting up the blood. And God said, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you".
He staggered up the cobblestone streets of Jerusalem, stumbling like a drunkard, but he was not drunk. He was weighted down with a cross too heavy for he alone to carry, but I'm not sure that it is the weight of the cross that made it heavy, but the weight of our sins had made it so heavy that, had it not been for Simon of Cyrene, he wouldn't have finished his mission. And had he not said, "Yes," in the Garden of Gethsemane, he would not have finished his mission, and had he not humbled himself and became a lamb instead of a lion, he would not have finished his mission. And he sought revenge on his attackers, he would not have finished his mission. But with the humility of an innocent lamb, Jesus lays down and becomes obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and he hung his head, and for his bride, he died.
What a shocking contrast between the last man Adam and the first man Adam, because, when the first man Adam was faced with the sins of his bride, he didn't carry them, he didn't correct them, and he didn't die for her. He partook of her sins and died with her. So Adam died with his bride, and Jesus died for his bride. Him dying for his bride broke the curse. Adam could have done it, but he didn't. So Jesus is called the last man Adam because he reversed the curse by dying for his bride. "What greater love hath any man than this, that he lay down his life"? There is no question about love if you lay down your life. I am loved, you are loved, we are loved, you are loved, they are loved, your children are loved.
How do I know I'm loved? I know I'm loved by how much you were willing to pay for me. The ultimate sacrifice. When God got ready to show how much you were worth, he gave his son. Then how can you have low self-esteem? How can you devalue what he has valued, when he paid the price that redeemed you from your sin? Funny, out of the side of Adam, God brought Eve, and out of the side of Jesus, God brought the church. When the Roman soldier pierced him in his side and out of his side came blood and water, the New Testament was in his blood. That was you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you. And just as surely as Eve came from the side of Adam, the church comes from the side of Jesus. What is more intimate than that, to be begotten by God? The first birth was done by a man.
I don't know whether it was a c-section or a y-section, but it was done by a man. Adam birthed Eve, and Eve birthed Cain and Abel and Seth, and so the world began. And when God got ready to do it over again, he took Jesus into labor. And when he took Jesus into labor, he reached in him and pulled us from him, that we might be the bride of Christ. And I know it was real because, when he died, the veil in the temple was ripped from the top to the bottom. Just like the veil in a woman's body has to be ripped to give birth, the veil in the temple being ripped gives indication to the fact that God is in labor, and the glory is about to be revealed. And the water coming out of his side is when the water broke, and when the water broke, the church evolved, and the message began, and that is what this is all about. It hurts to be fruitful, and if you don't endure the crushing, you will never have the wine. "It is finished".