Verily Verily - I Tell You The Truth

 

There are 77 times recorded in the King James Bible where Jesus begins with saying "Verily" or "Verily, verily" and this means "I tell you the truth" and then He goes on to speak of that truth. There are 30 incidents in Matthew.  There are 15 times in the book of Mark. There are 8 in Luke and there are 24 times in John.  

Over and over throughout His ministry and life He would start by telling the people; 

"This is the truth I am speaking."

"Hear this truth."

"I am telling you the truth."

"What I am about to say is the truth."

Over and over He wanted to make the truth very plain to all people.  Even the thief dying on his cross along side of Jesus received the truth from Jesus.

Luke 23:43 (KJV) And Jesus said unto him, 

Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

The sinner on the cross received the truth from God the Son.  The Savior of all who call upon His name and believe He is who He said He is!  Jesus told the thief that today, this day, your body will die but your spirit will go with me into paradise, the perfect garden, Eden, the park, the place of perfection I have created for you, my chosen one.  Jesus prefaced this statement with the word "Verily" to express that it is truth! The undeniable and full truth of what He does for those who believe in who He is, those He loves and whom He has chosen to be with Him in a perfect place of life after this worldly life in this fallen world.  The gift of salvation, the saving of our souls forever!

This world is not the place the Father created for His people.  He had a perfect place planned with nothing but perfection for His people.  This place became tainted with sin  when the evil one became disobedient, fell from grace and was cast out of the place of perfection and onto this world where he enticed mankind to also sin causing death to our bodies. Here on the earth we were born into we each must make a choice to hear the Lord's words of truth and accept them or hear them and deny them.

John 6:47 (KJV)

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.

Every single time Jesus spoke the word "Verily" He was saying Amen, So be it, this is truth, truth what I am saying, believe what I tell you, believe what I say, this is verified, this is established, this is sure, this is true.  

John 14:6 (KJV) - Jesus saith unto him, 

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

God Made Man

 'Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person. '
Genesis 2:7

I love the word of God.  There is so much deep inside of the verses set before us and there are times He will lead us to search the meaning.  Today I fell on this beautiful scripture that records the first man the God created.

These words came to Moses from the Father and were recorded.  Moses would have used a Hebrew form of language and most of the words have more than one meaning.  I wanted to study the words dust and ground that the first man was formed from and see what the Holy Spirit might reveal.

The first man is whom we call Adam because the Hebrew words for man is adam, pronounced awdawm.  The meaning of awdawm is ruddy (having a redness), human, the species of mankind, person, man.  The word awdawm is derived from the other Hebrew word adam, pronounced awdam, which means to show blood, turn rosy, ruddy, red.  From these words we can understand that the verse says  "Then the Lord God made adam", a man with red blood.  

This adam, man, was made from the "dust of the ground". The Hebrew word dust is aphar, pronounced awfar, meaning dust (powder, gray) ashes, clay, earth, ground.  The word gray puzzled me.  Why would the color gray be a part of the meaning of the word dust?  Because dust is gray and has no life.  It is dry and barren of life. Ashes are the same being nothing but a gray powder. 

Moving to the word ground, it is the Hebrew word adamah, pronounced adawmaw.  Adamah means soil, earth, land, ground but is derived from a second Hebrew word adam, pronounced awdam, having the meaning of blood, red.

God the Father took some of the dry, lifeless gray dust, a pile of ashes, from the earth He had just created the week before and formed man, adam in the Hebrew language.  Then the miraculous happened. The Father breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of His man.   The soil, the earth, the ground, the gray dust He had gathered became blood red, ruddy, and the dust was gray and lifeless no longer.

When Father God breathed life into the nostrils of the adam he became a living soul.  Adam had become a living, breathing, blood red, person, body, life, a single individual man.  What was moments before, only gray lifeless dust, been changed into a red blooded soul breathing life.  The Father had made the perfect adam from His new earthly creation.  He had made this adam in His image to share all this creation with and specifically placed adam into a garden He had made to the east of where He had created adam in a place He called Eden. I love that the word Eden means fenced, delicate, delightful, pleasurable garden.  The Father had made the perfect home for His man, His Adam.

The Final Week

Easter is the season we remember the death of Jesus and celebrate his resurrection from the grave!  This year I felt the need to understand His final week, what He did and why He did it.

Being a Gentile and not a Jew I have little knowledge of the traditions of the Jews for Passover.  I know the Passover story and that the Jewish people have honored and celebrated their exile from Egypt for centuries.  I was not aware of all of the traditions and rituals performed.  This is a brief summery of the week long Passover Festival.  This year, 2022, the Jewish Passover begins today, April 14th and lasts until April 23rd. Back in the time of Jesus and with the Jewish calendar being different from the modern calendar,  when he entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey colt  it has been determined by going back on the Jewish calendar that it most likely a Monday.  Christianity today calls it Palm Sunday and celebrate it the week before Easter Sunday. Regardless of the actual day of our calendar week, on the day Jesus rode into the city in April 33 AD it was the day the Jewish people would have chosen their unblemished, sacrificial Passover lamb which would be killed for the Passover meal 4 days later.  Jewish tradition was the sacrificial lamb would be seen for 4 days prior to it's killing.  Jesus came into Jerusalem on the specific day as the Jewish sacrificial lamb but they did not understand this. 

Luke 19:41-42 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.

For the next 3 days after His entrance into the city He went in and cleared the temple of the money changers and taught in the temple.  He was openly showing Himself exactly the way the Jewish people were instructed to show their lamb of choice for the Passover sacrifice.  No one at the time understood the actions and timing as they aligned with Jewish Passover traditions.  Each evening He left Jerusalem and spent the night with friends outside of the city until Thursday night.  

The night of the Passover meal, the Last Supper as Christians call it, was on Thursday night and after that meal they went to the Garden of Gethsemane where Judas betrayed Him.  The arrest and trials took place during the night because the Jewish Sabbath would begin the next day, Friday, at sundown.  The Jews were not allowed to do anything during the Sabbath so the religious leaders were on a time crunch to do their evil deed of killing Jesus.  Sundown was coming so the push was on.  The crucifixion took place on Friday which is why Christians honor Good Friday.  Late Friday afternoon after His death and  before sundown they placed Him in the tomb. On the third day He rose from the grave and showed Himself to the women and apostles. 

He was alive.