1 John 3:19-24

Have guilty feelings created a wall that prevents you from receiving God’s unconditional love? Perhaps you still haven’t accepted His forgiveness for something you’ve done in the past. Until you do, you will continue to deprive yourself of the divine love He wants you to experience.

Or maybe the problem is that you carry around a false sense of guilt–you don’t know why you feel ashamed, but you do. The Holy Spirit clearly convicts us of sin so we can repent and be free. But a pervasive, vague sense of guilt with no specific cause comes from the Devil. Ask God to cleanse you of it. Jesus died for you so that you could be free!

Another source of guilt is legalistic teaching. Many people have been taught a distorted version of the gospel and think, I’ll never measure up. That’s the kind of message the religious leaders of Jesus’ time communicated: Unless you do this, God won’t accept you; if you do that, you’ll go to hell. Pharisaical living involves trying to earn the Lord’s acceptance through your own power–righteous deed by righteous deed. Since no one can please Him this way, attempting to do so leads to bondage. Jesus came to liberate us from this slavery. It’s time to let His grace and love cleanse you from any shame weighing you down.

The Bible says that when you are set free by Christ, your freedom is complete (John 8:36). Reject Satan’s lie that you are separated from the liberty found in Jesus’ love. Then ask the Lord to help you walk in the truth. You can again experience the joy of unhindered fellowship with your Savior

In churches all over the world this Sunday, children will march among the aisles with palm branches, a commemoration of the first jubilant Palm Sunday. The palm branch is a symbol of triumph, waved in ancient times to welcome royalty and extol the victorious. Palms were also used to cover the paths of those worthy of honor and distinction. All four of the gospel writers report that Jesus was given such a tribute. Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a colt, and he was greeted as King. The crowds laid branches and garments on the streets in front of him. An audience of applauders led him into the city and followed after him with chants of blessing and shouts of kingship.

Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!
The King of Israel!

Hosanna in the highest!

The triumph of Palm Sunday is not lost on the young. Long before I could see it’s strange place in the passion narrative, I loved celebrating this story as a child. It was a day in church set apart from others. In a place where we were commonly asked to sit still, we suddenly had permission to cheer and march and draw attention.

But like many stories in childhood that grow complicated as the chapters continue, Palm Sunday is far more than a triumphant recollection of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem.  The convicting irony of the holiday Christians celebrate strikes with each cheer of victory, for we reenact a scene that dramatically changed in a matter of days. In less time than it takes to plan a king’s coronation, cheers of “Hosanna!” became shouts of crucifixion. The honor that was extended with palms and praises was taken back shortly after it was placed before him. The troubling reality to the triumph of Palm Sunday is that we now know the defeat of the cross is yet to come.

But it is also more than this. With Palm Sunday comes the arrival of holy week in all its darkness, in all its blinding mystery. Would I have been with the marching crowd that cheered him as king only to cheer again as he was marched to Golgotha? What I long to imagine was a fickle crowd—an illustration of the power of “mobthink,” or a sign of a hard-hearted people—only reminds me of my own vacillations with the Son of God. How easily our declarations that he is Lord become denials of his existence with the turn of mood or fortune. How readily hands waving in praise and celebration become fists raised at the heavens in pain or hardship. Like a palm laid down and taken back again, honor bestowed on Sunday can easily be abandoned by Wednesday.

Such are the thoughts my adult mind carries through the story in which I once took only delight. With palms in our hands, we carry the burden of awareness that Jesus himself carried through that first crowd. Though we might suspect or even recognize a Messianic figure before us, we will turn from him. Though we might labor to follow his ways, we will fall short and take back whatever intentions we once laid at his feet. Riding through the streets of Jerusalem, Jesus knew then what he knows now: This honor will be abandoned, the praises will cease, and these branches will be trampled to dust. The cross will still come.

How fitting, then, that in many churches the remains of Palm Sunday literally become the ashes of Ash Wednesday. The palms are burned and the ashes collected. Then on Ash Wednesday services the following year, the ashes are used to mark foreheads with the sign of the cross, the reminder of our humanity, the beginning of another journey toward the mysterious gift of the cross.

This week Christians invite the world to remember the one who comes into the midst of a fickle humanity—duplicity, defeat, violence, injustice, pain, and all. He comes near to good and bad intentions, near the ashes of what was meant to be honor, and the ruins of attempts on our own. Despite oscillating thoughts, despite sin we cannot leave, he invites us into a different story of defeat. The Son has made his triumphal entry. He comes to bring us to the cross, to the one sacrifice that takes away the world’s pain.

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

Morning    “With his stripes we are healed.”

Isaiah 53:5

Pilate delivered our Lord to the lictors to be scourged. The Roman scourge was a

most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of the sinews of oxen, and

sharp bones were inter-twisted every here and there among the sinews; so that

every time the lash came down these pieces of bone inflicted fearful laceration,

and tore off the flesh from the bone. The Saviour was, no doubt, bound to the

column, and thus beaten. He had been beaten before; but this of the Roman

lictors was probably the most severe of his flagellations. My soul, stand here

and weep over his poor stricken body.

Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon him without tears, as he stands before you

the mirror of agonizing love? He is at once fair as the lily for innocence, and

red as the rose with the crimson of his own blood. As we feel the sure and

blessed healing which his stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at

once with love and grief? If ever we have loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must

feel that affection glowing now within our bosoms.

“See how the patient Jesus stands,

Insulted in his lowest case!

Sinners have bound the Almighty’s hands,

And spit in their Creator’s face.

With thorns his temples gor’d and gash’d

Send streams of blood from every part;

His back’s with knotted scourges lash’d.

But sharper scourges tear his heart.”

We would fain go to our chambers and weep; but since our business calls us away,

we will first pray our Beloved to print the image of his bleeding self upon the

tablets of our hearts all the day, and at nightfall we will return to commune

with him, and sorrow that our sin should have cost him so dear.

 

Evening    “And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the

rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven,

and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts

of the field by night.”

2 Samuel 21:10

If the love of a woman to her slain sons could make her prolong her mournful

vigil for so long a period, shall we weary of considering the sufferings of our

blessed Lord? She drove away the birds of prey, and shall not we chase from our

meditations those worldly and sinful thoughts which defile both our minds and

the sacred themes upon which we are occupied? Away, ye birds of evil wing! Leave

ye the sacrifice alone! She bore the heats of summer, the night dews and the

rains, unsheltered and alone. Sleep was chased from her weeping eyes: her heart

was too full for slumber. Behold how she loved her children! Shall Rizpah thus

endure, and shall we start at the first little inconvenience or

trial? Are we such cowards that we cannot bear to suffer with our Lord? She

chased away even the wild beasts, with courage unusual in her sex, and will not

we be ready to encounter every foe for Jesus’ sake? These her children were

slain by other hands than hers, and yet she wept and watched: what ought we to

do who have by our sins crucified our Lord? Our obligations are boundless, our

love should be fervent and our repentance thorough. To watch with Jesus should

be our business, to protect his honour our occupation, to abide by his cross our

solace. Those ghastly corpses might well have affrighted Rizpah, especially by

night, but in our Lord, at whose cross-foot we are sitting, there is

nothing revolting, but everything attractive. Never was living beauty so

enchanting as a dying Saviour. Jesus, we will watch with thee yet awhile, and do

thou graciously unveil thyself to us; then shall we not sit beneath sackcloth,

but in a royal pavilion.

 

Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord!

Lamentations 3:40

The wife who fondly loves her absent husband longs for his return; a long protracted separation from him is a semi-death to her spirit. And so it is with souls who love the Savior much; they need to see His face; they cannot bear that He should be away, thus depriving them of communion with Him. A reproaching glance, an uplifted finger will be grievous to loving children who fear to offend their tender father and are only happy in his smile.

Beloved, it was so once this way with you. A text of Scripture, a threatening, a touch of the rod of affliction, and you went to your Father’s feet, crying, “Let me know why you contend against me.” Is that still the case? Or are you content to follow Jesus from a distance? Can you contemplate broken communion with Christ without being alarmed? Can you bear to have your Beloved walking contrary to you, because you walk contrary to Him? Have your sins separated between you and your God, and is your heart at rest?

Let me affectionately warn you, for it is a grievous thing when we can live contentedly without the present enjoyment of the Savior’s face. Let us work to feel what an evil thing this is–little love to our own dying Savior, little joy in His company, little time with the Beloved! Hold a true Lent in your souls, while you sorrow over your hardness of heart. Do not stop at sorrow! Remember where you first received salvation. Go at once to the cross. There, and there only, can you get your spirit quickened. No matter how hard, how insensible, how dead we may have become, let us go again in all the rags and poverty and defilement of our natural condition. Let us clasp that cross, let us look into those languid eyes, let us bathe in that fountain filled with blood–this will bring back to us our first love; this will restore the simplicity of our faith and the tenderness of our heart.

The family reading plan for March 30, 2012

Proverbs 17 | Philippians 4