Psalm 25:4-5

When you’re facing a decision, whether big or small, it is important to wait upon God for His direction and timing. And though it may sound paradoxical, there are three ways that we can take an active role in the process while we wait.

First, we should examine our heart, asking the Holy Spirit to expose any wrongs. If He brings something to light, it is important to take care of that sin immediately–by confessing, repenting, and doing whatever’s needed to correct the situation. At times we push this task aside because the impending decision seems like our main concern. Yet we cannot hear from God or receive His full blessing until we deal with transgression.

Second, when seeking direction, we should listen patiently and attentively for the Lord to give the go-ahead. It can be difficult to wait, especially when emotions or logic lead us to favor one choice.

Third, the answer to our prayer at times requires our involvement. For instance, when people tell me they’re out of work and trusting God to provide, I always want to know if they are actively looking for a job. Some are not; they are simply praying. We have responsibility not only to present God with requests and seek His guidance but also to be active in the process. Waiting on God is not an excuse to be lazy.

Prayer is a beautiful privilege that the heavenly Father gives to His children. He desires to lead us into a life of abundance. We should take an active part in seeking His will and listening for His voice. As we follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we will experience all that the Lord has for us

One of the unique qualities of the Christian story is that it is presented in the voices of four different witnesses. During the season of Lent, I have been looking specifically at the different tellings of the events that led Jesus to the cross. The differences in each testimony offer an interesting glimpse of how personalities differ in their observing and experience of the world, as well as a potent reminder that the story of Jesus is not a flat and static conveying of information but a story as alive as the one who was tortured at the hands of the powers of this world.

For instance, as one theologian observes, Matthew’s passion narrative and greater gospel presents “the way of the humiliated Christ.”(1) In my reading of Matthew, I find the interplay between power and control an interesting dynamic on which the writer has chosen to focus. Over and above the shared motif of Mark, Matthew seems to add a dimension of inquiry about power and along with it, the hint that all is not as it seems: Who wants control? Who thinks they’re in control? Who is really in control? Roy Harrisville compares it to the paradox and reversal at the heart of Jesus’s ministry, the passion itself enacting “truths earlier hidden in the predictions and parables.”(2)

Thus, where Mark’s decisive crowd before Pilate yells, “Crucify him” (15:13 and again in 14b) and Luke’s crowd similarly, if more emphatically in the Greek, yells, “Crucify, crucify him!” (23:21), Matthew’s crowd twice yells, “Let him be crucified” (27:22b and 23b). There is a hint of a distancing of responsibility. The crowds indeed want the crucifying done, but done to him by someone else. Luke seems to further draw the distinction of choice and control, adding of his crowd, “And they were urgent, demanding with loud cries that he should be crucified. And their voices prevailed” (23:23).

Matthew’s account seems at first passive in the “who” of the act of crucifying, a crowd calling for death at a distance. Later Pilate, too, wants to distance himself from this responsibility, adding a hand-washing scene unique to Matthew’s narrative. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” says Pilate, “see to it yourselves” (27:24). The people, preferring control over the risk of release, answer, “His blood be on us and on our children” (27:25).

Matthew’s interplay of power and control is made all the more potent now phrased in terms of blood. Like Jesus’s many parables with their jarring sense of mysterion (mystery that is not hidden, but revealed), Matthew seems to suggest there is one in control indeed, but it is not the one who seems to be holding the power. The image of Christ’s blood upon this blind—though professing to see—crowd and their children is chilling. For unknowingly, they have declared the very thing the humiliated servant has set out to do.

Harrisville illustrates this all the more profoundly in his commentary on Matthew’s telling of the Last Supper and the curious words of Jesus about the “blood of the covenant,” now explained in the passion narrative before us:

“The statement about the ‘blood of the covenant’ (26:28) will have its explanation in subsequent events, in Judas’s confession (‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood’ [27:24]), in Pilate’s avowal of innocence (‘I am innocent of this man’s blood’ [27:4]), and in the people’s accepting responsibility for Jesus’s death (‘his blood be on us and on our children!’ [27:25]). All these will be the ‘many’ for whose forgiveness the blood of the covenant is poured out.”(3)

The story of Jesus as he moves toward the cross, told through eyes that remind us he has come for a world of unique individuals, is a story of power and weakness that turns our common assumptions and experience on its head. Like the parables, the way of the humiliated Christ confounds us, approaching in power, though hidden in the unlikely gift of a servant.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

 (1) Roy Harrisville, Fracture: The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the Biblical Writers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 147.
(2) Ibid., 158.
(3) Ibid., 159.

March 19 Morning  “My beloved.”

Song of Solomon 2:8

This was a golden name which the ancient Church in her most joyous moments was

wont to give to the Anointed of the Lord. When the time of the singing of birds

was come, and the voice of the turtle was heard in her land, her love-note was

sweeter than either, as she sang, “My beloved is mine and I am his: he feedeth

among the lilies.” Ever in her song of songs doth she call him by that

delightful name, “My beloved!” Even in the long winter, when idolatry had

withered the garden of the Lord, her prophets found space to lay aside the

burden of the Lord for a little season, and to say, as Esaias did, “Now will I

sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard.” Though the

saints had never seen his face, though as yet he was not made flesh, nor had

dwelt among us, nor had man beheld his glory, yet he was the consolation of

Israel, the hope and joy of all the chosen, the “beloved” of all those who were

upright before the Most High. We, in the summer days of the Church, are also

wont to speak of Christ as the best beloved of our soul, and to feel that he is

very precious, the “chiefest among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.” So

true is it that the Church loves Jesus, and claims him as her beloved, that the

apostle dares to defy the whole universe to separate her from the love of

Christ, and declares that neither persecutions, distress, affliction,

peril, or the sword have been able to do it; nay, he joyously boasts, “In all

these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”

O that we knew more of thee, thou ever precious one!

“My sole possession is thy love;

In earth beneath, or heaven above,

I have no other store;

And though with fervent suit I pray,

And importune thee day by day,

I ask thee nothing more.”

 

Evening “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church.”

Ephesians 5:25

What a golden example Christ gives to his disciples! Few masters could venture

to say, “If you would practise my teaching, imitate my life;” but as the life of

Jesus is the exact transcript of perfect virtue, he can point to himself as the

paragon of holiness, as well as the teacher of it. The Christian should take

nothing short of Christ for his model. Under no circumstances ought we to be

content unless we reflect the grace which was in him. As a husband, the

Christian is to look upon the portrait of Christ Jesus, and he is to paint

according to that copy. The true Christian is to be such a husband as Christ was

to his church. The love of a husband is special. The Lord Jesus cherishes for

the church a peculiar affection, which is set upon her above the rest of

mankind: “I pray for them, I pray not for the world.” The elect church is the

favourite of heaven, the treasure of Christ, the crown of his head, the bracelet

of his arm, the breastplate of his heart, the very centre and core of his love.

A husband should love his wife with a constant love, for thus Jesus loves his

church. He does not vary in his affection. He may change in his display of

affection, but the affection itself is still the same. A husband should love his

wife with an enduring love, for nothing “shall be able to separate us from the

love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” A true husband loves his

wife with a hearty love, fervent and intense. It is not mere lip-service. Ah!

beloved, what more could Christ have done in proof of his love than he has done?

Jesus has a delighted love towards his spouse: He prizes her affection, and

delights in her with sweet complacence. Believer, you wonder at Jesus’ love; you

admire it–are you imitating it? In your domestic relationships is the rule and

measure of your love–“even as Christ loved the church?”

 

And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over.

Ruth 2:14

Whenever we are privileged to eat the bread that Jesus gives, we are, like Ruth, satisfied with a full and sweet provision. When Jesus is the host, no guest goes empty from the table. Our head is satisfied with the precious truth that Christ reveals; our heart is content with Jesus as the altogether lovely object of affection; our hope is satisfied, for who do we have in heaven but Jesus? And our desire is fulfilled, for what more can we wish for than to “gain Christ and be found in him”?2 Jesus fills our conscience until it is at perfect peace, our judgment with persuasion of the certainty of His teachings, our memory with recollections of what He has done, and our imagination with the prospects of what He is still to do.

As Ruth was “satisfied,” so is it with us. We have drunk deeply; we have thought that we could take in all of Christ; but when we have done our best, we have had to leave a vast remainder. We have sat at the table of the Lord’s love and said, “Nothing but the infinite can ever satisfy me; I am such a great sinner that I must have infinite merit to wash my sin away.” But we have had our sin removed and found that there was merit to spare; we have had our hunger relieved at the feast of sacred love and found that there was an abundance of spiritual food remaining. There are certain sweet things in the Word of God that we have not enjoyed yet, and that we are obliged to leave for a while; for we are like the disciples to whom Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”3

Yes, there are graces to which we have not attained, places of fellowship nearer to Christ that we have not reached, and heights of communion that our feet have not climbed. At every banquet of love there are many baskets left.

2 Philippians 3:9 3 John 16:12

The family reading plan for March 19, 2012

Proverbs 6 | Galatians 5