1 Samuel 16:6-13

What do you live for each day? A pay raise? Retirement? Then perhaps you’ve discovered the reality that basing aspirations on getting ahead in this world typically ends in disappointment. People with a misguided sense of direction often wonder why they feel unfulfilled.

Maybe you’ve already realized a goal of saving for the future or moving up the corporate ladder. You give to charity and volunteer at church, but somehow still feel a sense of insignificance or aimlessness. If so, there is a truth you need to hear: God gives each of us life for a very specific reason: to serve Him. Nobody finds inner peace without reconciling this fact. Our society teaches us that pleasure, prosperity, position, and popularity will make us happy–but living in the service of self always leaves an emptiness no earthly reward can fill.

Besides, worldly philosophy won’t stand the test of time. Few of us are going to live even 100 years. So whatever we’ll become in this life, we’re in the process of becoming that right now. Consider David: he was anointed king long before actually assuming the role (1 Sam. 16:12). He spent many years serving the purpose of God in insignificant places while developing into a great man. As his story shows, discovering God’s purpose for your life is the surest path to success.

Our heavenly Father’s purpose for our lives comes from His heart of love–which is perfect. None of us can foretell the great things He has in store for us, but we can trust His plan completely. Surrender to Him today and say, “Not my will, Lord, but Yours be done.”

There was a body on the cross. This was the shocking revelation of a 12 year-old seeing a crucifix for the first time. I was not used to seeing Jesus there—or any body for that matter. The many crosses in my world were empty. But here, visiting a friend’s church, in a denomination different from my own, was a scene I had never fully considered.

In my own Protestant circles I remember hearing the rationale. Holy Week did not end with Jesus on the cross. Good Friday is not the end of the story. Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. And on the third day, he rose again. The story ends in the victory of Easter. The cross is empty because Christ is risen.

In fact, it is true, and as Paul notes, essential, that Christians worship a risen Christ. “[For] if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Even walking through the events of Holy Week—the emotion of the Last Supper, the anguish in Gethsemane, the denials of the disciples, the interrogation of Pilate, and the lonely way to Golgotha—we are well aware that though the cross is coming, so is the empty tomb. The dark story of Good Friday will indeed be answered by the light of Easter morning.

And yet, there is scarcely a theologian I can imagine who would set aside the fathomless mystery of the crucifixion in the interest of a doctrine that “over-shadows” it. The resurrection follows the crucifixion; it does not erase it.  Though the cross has indeed taken away the sting of death, and Christ has truly borne our pain, and the burden of humanity is that we will follow him. Even Christ, who retained the scars of his own crucifixion, told his followers that they, too, would drink the cup from which he drank. The Christian, who considers himself “crucified with Christ,” will surely “take up his cross” and follow him. The good news is that Christ goes with us, even as he went before us, fully tasting humanity in a body like yours and mine.

Thus, far from being an act that undermines the victory of the resurrection, the remembrance of Jesus’s hour of suffering boldly unites us with Christ himself. For it was on the cross that Christ most intimately bound himself to humanity. It was “for this hour” that Christ himself declared that he came. Humanity is, in turn, united to him in his suffering and is near him in our own. Had there not been an actual body on the cross, such mysteries would not be substantive enough to reach us.

Author and undertaker Thomas Lynch describes a related problem as well-meaning onlookers at funerals attempt to console the grief-stricken. Lynch describes how often he hears someone tell the weeping mother or father of the child who died of leukemia or a car accident, “It’s okay, that’s not her, it’s just a shell.”(1) But the suggestion that a dead body is “just” anything, particularly in the early stages of grief, he finds more than problematic. What if, he imagines, we were to use a similar wording to describe our hope in resurrection—namely, that Christ raised “just” a body from the dead. Lynch continues, “What if, rather than crucifixion, he’d opted for suffering low self-esteem for the remission of sins? What if, rather than ‘just a shell,’ he’d raised his personality say, or The Idea of Himself? Do you think they’d have changed the calendar for that? […] Easter was a body and blood thing, no symbols, no euphemisms, no half measures.”(2)

On the cross, we find the one whose self-offering transformed all suffering and forever lifted the finality of death. On the fifty holy days of Easter that follow a dark and Good Friday, we find the very figure of God with us, a body who cried out in a loud voice in the midst of anguish, on the brink of death, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Precisely because the cross was not empty, the coming resurrection is profoundly full.

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

(1) Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (New York: Penguin, 1997), 21.
(2) Ibid.

Morning    “Ye are come to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”     Hebrews 12:24

Reader, have you come to the blood of sprinkling? The question is not whether

you have come to a knowledge of doctrine, or an observance of ceremonies, or to

a certain form of experience, but have you come to the blood of Jesus? The blood

of Jesus is the life of all vital godliness. If you have truly come to Jesus, we

know how you came–the Holy Spirit sweetly brought you there. You came to the

blood of sprinkling with no merits of your own. Guilty, lost, and helpless, you

came to take that blood, and that blood alone, as your everlasting hope. You

came to the cross of Christ, with a trembling and an aching heart; and oh! what

a precious sound it was to you to hear the voice of the blood of

Jesus! The dropping of his blood is as the music of heaven to the penitent sons

of earth. We are full of sin, but the Saviour bids us lift our eyes to him, and

as we gaze upon his streaming wounds, each drop of blood, as it falls, cries,

“It is finished; I have made an end of sin; I have brought in everlasting

righteousness.” Oh! sweet language of the precious blood of Jesus! If you have

come to that blood once, you will come to it constantly. Your life will be

“Looking unto Jesus.” Your whole conduct will be epitomized in this–“To whom

coming.” Not to whom I have come, but to whom I am always coming. If thou hast

ever come to the blood of sprinkling, thou wilt feel thy need of coming to

it every day. He who does not desire to wash in it every day, has never washed

in it at all. The believer ever feels it to be his joy and privilege that there

is still a fountain opened. Past experiences are doubtful food for Christians; a

present coming to Christ alone can give us joy and comfort. This morning let us

sprinkle our door-post fresh with blood, and then feast upon the Lamb, assured

that the destroying angel must pass us by.

Evening    “We would see Jesus.”     John 12:21

Evermore the worldling’s cry is, “Who will show us any good?” He seeks

satisfaction in earthly comforts, enjoyments, and riches. But the quickened

sinner knows of only one good. “O that I knew where I might find Him !” When he

is truly awakened to feel his guilt, if you could pour the gold of India at his

feet, he would say, “Take it away: I want to find Him.” It is a blessed thing

for a man, when he has brought his desires into a focus, so that they all centre

in one object. When he has fifty different desires, his heart resembles a mire

of stagnant water, spread out into a marsh, breeding miasma and pestilence; but

when all his desires are brought into one channel, his heart becomes like

a river of pure water, running swiftly to fertilize the fields. Happy is he who

hath one desire, if that one desire be set on Christ, though it may not yet have

been realized. If Jesus be a soul’s desire, it is a blessed sign of divine work

within. Such a man will never be content with mere ordinances. He will say, “I

want Christ; I must have him–mere ordinances are of no use to me; I want

himself; do not offer me these; you offer me the empty pitcher, while I am dying

of thirst; give me water, or I die. Jesus is my soul’s desire. I would see

Jesus!”

Is this thy condition, my reader, at this moment? Hast thou but one desire, and

is that after Christ? Then thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven. Hast

thou but one wish in thy heart, and that one wish that thou mayst be washed from

all thy sins in Jesus’ blood? Canst thou really say, “I would give all I have to

be a Christian; I would give up everything I have and hope for, if I might but

feel that I have an interest in Christ?” Then, despite all thy fears, be of good

cheer, the Lord loveth thee, and thou shalt come out into daylight soon, and

rejoice in the liberty wherewith Christ makes men free.

So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.

Exodus 17:12

The prayer of Moses was so mighty that everything depended upon it. The petitions of Moses disconcerted the enemy more than the fighting of Joshua. Yet both were needed. In the soul’s conflict, force and fervor, decision and devotion, valor and vehemence must join their forces, and all will be well.

You must wrestle with your sin, but the major part of the wrestling must be done alone in private with God. Prayer like Moses’ holds up the token of the covenant before the Lord. The rod was the emblem of God’s working with Moses, the symbol of God’s government in Israel. Learn, praying saint, to hold up the promise and the oath of God before Him. The Lord cannot deny His own declarations. Hold up the rod of promise, and have what you seek.

Moses grew tired, and then his friends assisted him. Whenever your prayer loses vigor, let faith support one hand, and let holy hope lift up the other, and prayer seating itself upon the stone of Israel, the rock of our salvation, will persevere and prevail. Beware of growing faint in your devotion.

If Moses felt it, who can escape? It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private. It has been observed that while Joshua never grew weary in the fighting, Moses did grow weary in the praying; the more spiritual an exercise, the more difficult it is for flesh and blood to maintain it.

Let us cry, then, for special strength, and may the Spirit of God, who helps our weaknesses as He helped Moses, enable us like him to continue with our steady hands “until the going down of the sun,” until the evening of life is over, until we shall come to the rising of a better sun in the land where prayer is swallowed up in praise.

The family reading plan for April 16, 2012

Ecclesiastes 3 | 1 Timothy 5