Daily Archives: April 4, 2013

But Peter…

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BUT PETER…

“They left the tomb and broke the news of all this to the Eleven and the rest. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women kept telling these things to the apostles, but the apostles didn’t believe a word of it; thought they were making it up.

“But Peter jumped to his feet and ran to the tomb. He stooped to look in and saw a few grave clothes, that’s all. He walked away puzzled, shaking his head.” Luke 24:9-13 (The Message).

Poor Peter! His mind must have been in torment. Put yourself in his shoes. A few days before, he had said something to a few strangers that would change his life forever. In the heat of a terrifying moment, unprepared because he would not heed his Master’s warning, he had vehemently denied the one to whom he had pledged lifelong loyalty, and whom he had recognised and confessed as the Messiah.

And now He was dead. He would never have the opportunity to express his sorrow and regret for what he had done. The look in Jesus’ eyes when He had caught Peter’s eye as the cock crowed, would haunt him forever. The anguish in his heart was unbearable. He had not slept since then. He was afraid to close his eyes because of the flashbacks of all the horrifying scenes of that day.

And now the women come with a story that He was not in the tomb. Something about the stone rolled from the entrance; about shining men inside the tomb; about their incomprehensible words – “He’s not here. He has risen!”, about grave clothes left as though the body had simply evaporated! It all sounded like fairy stories to him but how he yearned that it would be true.

He wanted to believe them. He wanted to wake up and find that it was all a bad dream. He joined the others in pooh-poohing their story; (after all, they were only women, and women were not permitted to testify in a court of law. They were discredited as unreliable witnesses), but in his heart of hearts he wanted it to be true.

He couldn’t just sit there, wishing and hoping. He had to find out for himself what had happened. Had the authorities removed Jesus’ body to stop any rumours of a resurrection? Had Joseph taken Him for burial to an unknown tomb?

What Peter saw was just as puzzling to him as it was to the women. They had told the truth. The tomb was open. The body was missing. There were no angels, but the grave clothes were not just lying in a heap as though tossed aside by a careless grave robber. If someone had stolen His body, why would they have left the shroud? None of it made sense to Peter. He walked away in a daze, his heart as heavy as lead.

With masterful brushstrokes, Luke paints a picture of mystery and intrigue. Jesus was not there. Everything pointed to a very unusual event, but where was He? The women saw the tomb and the grave clothes and the angels, but no Jesus. Peter saw the tomb and the grave clothes but no Jesus?

Only one thing could change this mysterious situation – Jesus Himself! But He did not show up. He left them to stew in their confusion and unbelief for a while. They had to come to terms with the situation before He could reveal Himself to them and convince them that He was alive so that every other word He spoke would be embedded in their souls and shape their lives forever, and compel them to testify that He had risen from the dead.

The entire success of His mission to earth stands on this one fact – He was crucified but He is alive. We can trust Him and stake our lives on Him and what He told us because He beat death and He is here now with His offer of eternal life for those who stake their lives on him.

Consider Your Verdict

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CONSIDER YOUR VERDICT

“Then they all took Jesus to Pilate and began to bring up charges against Him. ‘We found this man undermining our law and order, forbidding taxes to be paid to Caesar, setting Himself up as Messiah-king.’

“Pilate asked Him, ‘Is this true that you’re ‘King of the Jews’?’

“‘These are your words, not mine,’ Jesus replied.

“Pilate told the high priests and accompanying crowd, ‘I find nothing wrong here. He seems harmless enough to me.'” Luke 23:1-4 (The Message).

Pilate had no idea, when he opened his eyes that morning, that for him it was judgment day. A routine day, a few more Jewish prisoners to sentence; he’d done it all before. It was an unpleasant part of his role as governor and he did it with indifference. Judah had always been a troublesome province and he was quite glad to sentence a few more rabble-rousers to death.

But this man seemed different. He didn’t have the same insolent attitude. His face wore an expression of serenity, an eerie calm that disturbed him. There was none of the bravado that aroused his rage and gave him a feeling of sadistic pleasure to see condemned prisoners walking towards the execution site, backs bent under the heavy load of the crossbeam.

The mob that crowded the courtyard was in ferment. Led by the high priests, they were yelling out the charge, ‘Treason! He calls Himself ‘King of the Jews’! He’s inciting rebellion!’

Pilate looked at Jesus. Flanked by two soldiers, hands tied so tightly behind his back that dried blood stained His wrists and hands, He stood unmoved, looking steadily into his eyes, almost challenging him to consider his own verdict. ‘Pilate, you decide whether I am guilty or not guilty.’

Just as the Jewish leaders were put on trial that day, so was Pilate. He was a man to be most pitied. He had an unpleasant job to do in Jerusalem. It was Passover and the city was filled with volatile Jews from all over Israel. Although the Jewish leaders had not planned it this way to avoid a riot, Jesus had inadvertently fallen into their hands at this inopportune time through the conniving of Judas.

But it was the Father’s time. Jesus had to fulfil the role of Passover lamb, to be sacrificed for the sin of the world at the precise moment when the high priest spilt the blood of the first lamb in Jerusalem.

Pilate still had to face his own responsibility in this drama. He had the final say regarding Jesus’ guilt or innocence. He alone decided whether He lived or died. His honest verdict, even after a perfunctory examination of the prisoner was, ‘Not guilty.’ It was glaringly obvious that the charges against Jesus were trumped up.

In true “Jesus” fashion, He turned the question back on Pilate. ‘It’s not my responsibility to tell you. It’s your responsibility to make your own decision. On that rests your own fate.’ Pilate’s verdict was ‘not guilty’, but that was not the end of the story. The deciding factor would be what he would do about it.

Cry For Yourselves

Christian Life, , ,

CRY FOR YOURSELVES

“As they led Him off, they made Simon, a man from Cyrene, who happened to be coming in from the countryside, carry the cross behind Him. A huge crowd of people followed along with women weeping and carrying on. At one point Jesus turned to the women and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t cry for me. Cry for yourselves and for your children. The time is coming when they’ll say, ‘Lucky the women who never conceived! Lucky the wombs that never gave birth! Lucky the breasts that never gave milk!’ Then they’ll start calling on the mountains, ‘Fall down on us!’ calling to the hills, ‘Cover us up!’ If people do this to a live, green tree, can you imagine what they’ll do with dead wood?'” Luke 23:26-31 (The Message).

Small talk between Jesus and the women! He’s on His last journey through the city. Exhausted and weakened by the long, sleepless night, the terrible beating He had received from the Roman soldiers, the gruelling trips through the city to Pilate, to Herod and back to Pilate, the incessant chanting and needling by the crowd, He was too weak to carry the crossbar which would support His battered body soon to be suspended on it.

Anyone else in that situation would have had no thought for the people around him. He would have been too preoccupied with his own suffering and what lay ahead to be bothered with the onlookers. Not Jesus!

He was acutely aware of the implications of what they were doing to Him. The women were not. They did not understand the reason for His dying. They saw only a bloodied Jesus, perhaps dear to them because of a loved one released from pain or sickness because of His compassion, perhaps His own beloved following of women among them.

Jesus was moved by their wailing. He understood their sorrow but He also knew something of which they were unaware. He painfully turned towards them. ‘Dear women,’ He said, ‘Don’t cry for me. My suffering is short-lived and has a purpose. Cry for yourselves because what they are doing to me today had far-reaching implications. In three days’ time I will be alive again. But your suffering will have just begun. It will be so terrible that you will wish you had never been born.’

What did Jesus know that prompted these words? Their representatives had judged Him that day but their judgment had decided their own. In the span of one generation they would cease to exist as a nation. Many thousands would be slaughtered in the city until their blood ran like a river in the streets. Their “indestructible” temple would be torn down, its stones scattered like pebbles, its gold and treasures plundered, and the city taken over by Gentiles for almost two thousand years.

They had rejected their Messiah and refused to acknowledge who He was. They had shut their ears to His message and their eyes to His love. They had seen but refused to comprehend His glory, His perfect mirror image of the Father. They thought they knew better and killed Him rather than admit they were wrong. Most of all, they were too comfortable in their greed and in their power over the people to think about their future. So they turned justice upside down and declared Him guilty and, by implication, themselves innocent.

The anguish in the heart of Jesus for these women was far greater than their anguish for Him. The outcome for Him was everything He and the Father had planned – resurrection and return to the Father, and reconciliation that would bring His alienated sons and daughters back to Himself.

But the way back to the Father is to believe and receive His offer of forgiveness and restoration. ‘Your sin did this to me, but my death will set you free from the debt you owe me if you accept what I did for you and return to the Father.’

Drugged By Grief

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DRUGGED BY GRIEF

“He got up from prayer, went back to the disciples and found them asleep, drugged by grief. He said, ‘What business do you have sleeping? Get up. Pray that you won’t give in to temptation.'” Luke 22:45-46 (The Message).

Even in the midst of His own ordeal, Jesus was teaching His disciples (and us) a powerful life lesson. The words “drugged by grief” in this paraphrase capture the truth He both modelled and communicated to His disciples.

The disciples were in the grip of a “drug” that paralysed their will and robbed them of their ability to know what to do in this predicament. Instead of preparing for the unknown by submitting themselves to the Father and receiving His strength to resist the devil (James 4:7), they copped out by sleeping.

Unlike them, Jesus used the situation to prepare Himself so that, when the temple guards swooped down on Him, He was not taken unawares. He was equipped, through His “reverent submission” (Hebrews 5:8), to accept the entire cross event without resistance or retaliation according to His Father’s will.

Emotions are a powerful and truthful gauge of the thoughts and interpretations of our life experiences. As we have followed Jesus through the Gospel of Luke, we have recognised that His perspective was always God-centred. Time and again He had to correct His disciples’ misunderstanding of their experiences by bringing them back to a God-awareness which gave them a proper understanding of what was happening.

Because they had filtered out of their minds Jesus’ warning that He was going to be arrested and crucified, but that He would rise again, the disciples were caught up in paralysing sorrow. The only way they could handle it was to sleep it off, perhaps hoping that, when they woke up, it would have only been a nightmare!

If we grasp this principle, it will save us from unnecessary emotional pain and enable us to live in the inner rest that kept Jesus from falling apart in His time of severe testing. Jesus is our supreme example but there are others in Scripture who exhibited the same attitude to their suffering and came out on top.

Joseph stands out as an Old Testament character that recognised God’s hand in his circumstances, refused to become bitter, gave excellent service to his master in spite of his suffering and emerged a winner because he trusted God instead of collapsing into self-pity. Likewise Daniel centred on God and served Him in Babylon, probably the worst pagan environment of his day. No threats or manipulation could move him from his purpose to obey God, no matter what.

Our emotions are the clue to what we are thinking. If we view our situation as hopeless, we feel despair. We become depressed and our depression becomes the drug that paralyses our desire and ability to do live normal lives. Depressed people are so self-absorbed that they shut out the world and retreat into a prison of hopelessness which is the perfect environment for the devil to sow his seeds of self-destruction.

What is the antidote to emotional “drug abuse”? Jesus said, “Pray!” What must we pray? The Apostle Paul gives us the answer in Philippians 4:6-7. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

The key is not that you pray but what you pray. In this instance to “present” implies to reveal – come clean with God about what is really in your heart – anxiety and all its accompanying emotions. Expose them and give them to God, and He will replace them with peace that does not make sense to anyone else but you.

Had the disciples done that, they would have been released from their emotional drugs and in their right minds to face their situation and not give way to fear. God steps in with the grace to go through when we expose to Him what is really going on inside.

Forgiven

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FORGIVEN!

“Two others, both criminals, were taken along with him for execution.

“When they got to the place called Skull Hill, they crucified Him, along with the criminals, one on His right, the other on His left.

“Jesus prayed, ‘Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.’

“Dividing up His clothes, they drew dice for them. The people stood there staring at Jesus and the ringleaders made faces, taunting, ‘He saved others. Let’s see Him save Himself. The Messiah of God — ha! The Chosen — ha!'” Luke 23:32-35 (The Message).

Luke’s story has very little detail. It’s almost as though he deliberately pulled the curtain on Jesus’ suffering. He was sensitive and discreet about his descriptions, writing only about those things which related to the character of Jesus and the fulfilment of prophecy — although he didn’t mention that fact in his story. He was writing about the Son of God, not a sensational tabloid account of a criminal’s last hours. Even Jesus’ criminal companions come in for the same kindly discretion.

Right in the middle of this tragic event there stands a shining light of hope for all of them; soldiers, perpetrators, unfeeling crowd, and even the two guilty men hanging on their crosses beside Him. One sentence echoes down through time, embracing everyone, from the first pair who set the ball rolling to every other person who has lived, and will live, to perpetuate the first pair’s rebellion against their Creator.

“‘Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.'”

Jesus encapsulated in His prayer the reason for this heinous deed, the responsibility for which sits squarely on the shoulders of every person who has lived. “They do not know what they are doing.” He extended forgiveness, then, to all of us now, since we have no idea of the implications of our stubborn rebellion against God.

Do you know how far-reaching one act of selfishness can be in your life? One careless word, one lie, one act of treachery or betrayal, one night of lust, one stolen kiss, one impulsive decision, can ruin a life, a family and even an entire community in a split second. We are left with a lifetime to regret what we did in a moment.

The spilt blood of Jesus speaks up for you even in the situations that leave you helpless and condemned. You did not know what you were doing! That does not excuse your behaviour. Jesus’ sacrifice does not remove the responsibility for our sin. He paid the debt by giving His life for ours, blood for blood, so that the Father’s justice would be fully satisfied.

The implications of Jesus’ gift are huge. Not only has the debt of our sin been paid but also the debt of those who have sinned against us. We no longer have the right to punish those who owe us because it is illegal to punish a person twice for the same sin.

This makes the sin of unforgiveness unforgiveable. It would be morally wrong for God to clear our debt if we refuse to clear the debt of someone who owes us. That makes unforgiveness an “unpardonable” sin which can take even a believer into eternal separation from God.

Jesus lived out His own teaching in the midst of His cruellest suffering. He was innocent, yet He forgave those who were responsible for putting Him there. He was there because He chose to be there, willingly submitting to His Father’s will. There was no other way to reconcile God’s wayward sons and daughters to Himself.

Jesus does not expect us to do what He did not do first. He taught us and showed how by His own impeccable choice to obey the Father to His last breath. He led the way and calls us to follow. In that there is life!