The Sin Factor

The miracle of the Cross is not sublime!  There is a mistaken teaching that has been passed around for hundreds of years that when Jesus Christ was crucified, he magically erased our sins, blotted them out as it were like divine suds.  That is not the case at all.  He bore our sins; took them into His own body and they putrefied within Him, sucked the life out of Him, and each one added to His misery.  Why is the Church so reluctant to see sin as the monstrosity it is?  Each sin we commit today adds to the shame and horror of the crucifixion Jesus endured two thousand years ago.  Only God could do this; bear sins committed tomorrow and not just the ones of yesterday.  As we sin and sin unthinkingly, we strike Jesus ourselves with the whip, drive the stake deeper in through his feet, take the rod and break it more ferociously upon his back and sides.  The sins of today are not nothing; they pry out of Christ's body more blood and break His heart even worse.  We may be free of real guilt but that does not mean Christ is.  He bears them all, the sins of yesterday as well as the ones of today and at some point, won't we just stop it?  Won't we fiercely reject the notion that we can sin freely and easily, and it doesn't matter?  John the Apostle says we don't have to keep sinning willy-nilly; we can put an end to it...not because we are evolving into righteousness, but because the Holy Spirit lives in us and empowers righteousness.  We are such fundamentalists when it comes to getting our garbage sorted among the various recycling options, but do we give the same care to the very sin that brought this mess upon us?  Pray with ferocious determination that God would keep you from temptation.  The Christian who comprehends the horror of sins will begin to loath the points where they invade the soul.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV

In Just A Few Hours

Luke 24:1 NIV

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.

What Could Happen In A Few Hours?

When our son was four years old, I decided as the good father that I was, that it was time to take the training wheels off his bike.  This is of course a rite of passage for most of the world’s population, as important as promoting into middle school and going out on the first date.  Now I am certain that if Mary Jo was home at the time, I might not have gotten past getting the first training wheel off our son’s bike but she wasn’t and so like all good fathers who love their children I took charge of helping our son spread his wings and fly, We went out to the back of a nearby middle school where there was an acre of asphalt and basketball courts.  I got our boy up on his little bike, steadied him as he established his balance with his feet on the pedals and hands on the handlebars, said a brief prayer and then pushed him off into the adult world.  I cheered him on as he wobbled away from me, furiously trying to maintain his equilibrium, veering left, then to the right, but steadily moving forward.  There were perhaps sixteen large metal poles holding the basketball rims and backboards in place spread out over at least an acre of land.  Not one of them was shrouded in mist; none of them were hidden behind sheets, painted with special colors that camouflaged them.  Each was like the Eiffel tower standing boldly by itself, far from its matching partner, a giant mountain of metal and immovability and yet as my little boy pushed off with the enthusiasm of Christopher Columbus looking for the passageway to the Orient, he somehow not only did not avoid the basketball pole, like a bee drawn to a flower, he pedaled straight at one.  Silently he crashed into the basketball pole and there he lay crumpled on the ground.  Like a good dad, I ran to him, checked for any major structural damage to his body and comforted my son in the same way any true father would.  “Son”, I said.  “You did great!  Do you want to try again?”  He got up, dusted himself off, climbed on his bike and with a push from me, off he went again.

Now here is where I was dumfounded and could not grasp what I saw.  Why did my son, with perfectly good eyesight not notice the giant metal poles out in the middle of the wide open spaces?  How did he miss the danger before him and why didn’t he do anything to avoid running into one of them?  Yet I must admit this to you.  I also have run into my fair share of basketball poles and did nothing to avoid them.  I have failed and because of pride or an unwillingness to look at the facts have ruined parts of my life.  I have made bad decisions, thought I knew what I was doing and was wrong.  I have hurt others by what I have said, made others suffer for my mistakes and plenty of times blamed someone else for my failures.  Are you immune to failure or have you had your fair share of losses?  Have you sinned?  Do you know when you are wrong or are you like me, you tend to cover up your mistakes or ignore them?  How bad is bad when it comes to you, how seriously should you take your sins, your moral mistakes, your rebellious acts against God?  What should you make of your failures, your shortcomings, the difficulties you cause others and yourself?  Let us look at Easter and how what Jesus did two thousand years ago impacts your life.

When it comes to what we have done wrong, our own sin, we have a giant blind spot.  We make too little of it and do not realize just how destructive our sins are, the potency of their evil. The Bible has this to say about your mistakes and moral failures.   Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey — whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6:16-17 NIV) We see our violations of God’s law as silly little misdemeanors that were not intended to harm anyone.  Everything from a little lie we tell to a short adventure into porn, we laugh away as no big deal.  And yet God clearly does not see what we call shortcomings as insignificant at all.  What it took for Him to eradicate sin from His people is a clear indication of just how really horrific our sinning is and the devastating effect it has on the universe.

Look closely at what Jesus had to suffer to get rid of your sin.  Can you see the flesh being ripped from Him as the whip tears at His back, across His chest, along His legs?  Do you hear the beating His face took as he was pummeled by the guards?  Have you noticed the blood dripping down His face from the crown of one inch thorns shredding His scalp and forehead?  Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the face. ohn 19:1-3 NIV) What about the force of the nails driven into His feet and wrists, the writhing pain He suffered as He hung on the Cross hour after hour, the ridicule He suffered as strangers laughed at His naked body hung up for all to see?  What did it cost God to take those insignificant, trivial, unnoticeable sins out of you and make you free of them?  Do those sins really seem like nothing?  Are they as unimportant as you have pretended for Christ Himself to be tortured like that, beaten like that, and ripped apart like that?  It took just a few hours for God to take our sins from us but the cost of that transaction was unbearable pain for God Himself.

I think there is one more aspect to Easter we would do well to consider.  Not only are your sins horrific and devastating for you and others, this matter of what you should think of your troubles and failures must be considered.  So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.  Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. (Matthew 28:8-9 NIV)  Ponder for a moment what sort of shock Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, Thomas and the others must have felt when they saw Jesus alive after they had watched Him shattered by pain and die.  Is there any sort of comparison we can make to it?  He was dead; everyone at the foot of the Cross, from the soldiers to the disciples to the women who watched Him be crucified, knew He was dead.  The body was a wreckage of death.  Can you picture how wide their eyes were, how violently their heart beat in their chests, how numb they were to all other sounds, all other movements, all other smells when they looked upon Jesus alive and knew beyond doubt He really was alive?  What thoughts of previous failure went through their heads, what disappointments and trials of life did they consider as they gazed upon His wondrous resurrected body?  Did any memory or plan stand in the way of just seeing Him, staring at Him, being mesmerized by Him?  Did they fuss about what they would have for dinner, complain about the back pain they suffered, get irritated by the long wait they endured as Jesus remained dead?  No sight could have been more spellbinding, no event more entrancing than just this one matter, Jesus standing before them raised from death and fully and magnificently alive before them.  Ponder this for a moment; that what we see with the disciples is just a hint at the emotions you will encounter when you too take your place among the saints who see Jesus standing before them the first time.  You too will soon enough, like the disciples be gripped by the most stupendous joy a person could ever possess and it is not that far off.

Have you ever noticed the connection the Scripture makes between the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus?  Over and over the Bible points out that it was on the third day after He died that Jesus was raised from the dead.  When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men.  They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life." And the disciples were filled with grief. (Matthew 17:22-23 NIV)   .  God gave a number to it, a very specific number to connect the two parts of the salvation equation.  Crucifixion plus resurrection after three days equals salvation.  It is not four days and it isn’t two days either.  It is the third day that everything comes together for God’s people.  No crucifixion and there isn’t the removal of Sin from us.  Without resurrection there isn’t any life to our holiness.  They must be joined as one and they cannot be separated for your eternal life to begin—crucifixion and resurrection.  The two are joined into one outcome on a particular day and no other day, the third day.  The third day…it is where all our hope rests; where your hope rests.

Keep this in mind when you think about your life right now.  Our LORD does not initiate a crucifixion without a resurrection in mind.  Yes, you have troubles, you do have hardships.  You may wonder why He lets them happen.  Why this sadness, this frustration, this failure?  I cannot say why you have faced what you have and perhaps you cannot either.  I do not know how it will all work out for you, how this trial you face will go.  It is hard maybe for you to see how your dreams can still come to pass; how your suffering can be removed, but you must see this, look squarely at this.  You have not come to the end of the matter; it is only the first day, maybe the second but it is not yet day three.  For you it is Friday or maybe Saturday.  The dread of things is still upon the wind, the troubles you face are still in the air.  Death is before you, troubles and heartache and pain and discouragement have still remained and it seems late in the game, too late for anything much to change, for any good to come of this but it is the second day.  You have not yet reached the third day.  It is Saturday, perhaps even Saturday evening but remember, God does not initiate a crucifixion without a resurrection.  Sunday will come; it is nearly here in fact. Yes, you wonder like Job with all his troubles why it is so tough, so hard.  Like Jesus’ mother, His disciples, His friends, you don’t know why Friday has to be so bad and why there is so much pain and defeat on Friday. That is because you have first day thoughts, first day emotions, first day worries, first day fears; it is still the night for a universe awaiting the dawn.  Friday has come and Saturday stands for now, but there is one more day left and then everything will change for you. There is hope in Friday, hope in Saturday because...Sunday is on its way.  All death will come to life.  All troubles shall be cast aside with the dawn of the third day.  And you will see that day!

Surprise Ending

John 21:21 NIV

When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"

Are You Surprised By How Things Have Gone?

I like a story with surprising twists and turns.  Whether it is a book or a movie, I want it to have some unpredictability to it. I have recently been reading To Kill A Mockingbird.  It has been fifty years since I read it the first time and I had forgotten enough of the storyline to be caught off guard by parts of the book.  Yet based on popularity alone, it seems that most Americans want their stories to go as predicted.  The cute couple eventually gets together, the villain is caught, the aliens are destroyed, the good guys survive and win in the end.  Every once in a while a La La Land comes along that catches me by surprise but generally like most, I want stories to end the way I expect them to end.  There is comfort in predictability.  I get Campbell’s Tomato Soup because I know how it will taste and it is good enough for me.  That is why I choose Gala apples and vanilla ice cream.  I know what I will find when I bite into it.

When I was young and studying chemistry I was surprised to discover that electrons did not revolve around the nucleus in simple and predictable orbitals.  New information threw the old pictures of atomic structures out of whack.  It turned out that electrons move about chaotically.  One can never predict where a given electron will be.  It might be within a certain area but its action is irrational and chaotic and you cannot even know where it is when you try to find it.  Many philosophers describe the universe in a similar way.  There is chaos and unpredictability to it.  “The universe is irrational without any intelligence behind it”, they contend.    Some people are comfortable with that notion.  They like the idea that nothing is certain or trustworthy.

When it comes to Christianity, the majority of church people believe there is one place of certainty and predictability.  It is God.  They speak of Him in ways that a mathematician speaks of her field.   We want our God to be predictable, mathematically determinable.  If we do this, God does that.  When this happens, it is because God has this in mind.  God is stable.  He goes this way or that but always in a logical and understandable process.   We want God to be reasonable and sensible to us.  There must be formulas that he follows, certain equations that determine His actions.  No one would design a god who can’t be counted on to run smoothly, to make His payments and provide His dividends.  The world has its eye on a mathematical God.  Do you?

Job and his friends were certain that God was bound up in rules and obligations…that there were formulas they could use to predict his actions.  What makes the book of Job so disorienting is that all the main characters discovered the Lord was not programmable.  He did not give Job an easy life because Job was honest, moral and generous.  Job’s friends knew God had to behave in certain ways and when He didn’t, they decided something must have been wrong with Job.  Like the jurists in To Kill A Mockingbird who could not recalibrate when the evidence went against their determinations, Job’s friends could not comprehend that God would put Job through so much pain and suffering it Job was not a bad man.  They thought God was mathematical when He isn’t.

Jonah had the same problem.  He had in mind a mathematical God when he heard God tell him to go to Nineveh and preach judgment to the people there.  Jonah did not expect that kind of job.  The Lord was predictable to him.  A terrible and cruel people like the Assyrians would be burnt to a crisp by God.  They didn’t need any warnings…just fire from heaven.  Yet that was not what happened.  God gave the Ninevites a chance to repent, they took it and God mercifully gave the Assyrians the opportunity to try again.  That did not fit Jonah’s God formula and he fell into a deep depression over his miscalculations.

Consider the strange case of Josiah, one of the last kings of Judah.  He was young when he became king, just eight years old.  His grandfather was perhaps the cruelest and most ungodly king Judah ever had.  Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end — besides the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord.   As for the other events of Manasseh's reign, and all he did, including the sin he committed, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?   (2 Kings 21:16-18 NIV)  His father was no better a king and after two years of reigning, the people were so fed up with him that he was assassinated.  That left Josiah as next in line.  After eighteen years being king, Josiah ordered that the Temple of God be cleaned and restored.  For nearly sixty years it had been a center of pagan worship and it fell into ruin.  Josiah though loved the Lord and when a book of the Law was found in the wreckage, Josiah turned his life over to God and dedicated himself to following Him wholeheartedly.  Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.  He went up to the temple of the Lord with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets — all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord.  The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord-to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.  (2 Kings 23:1-3 NIV)

How would God treat such a man as this, let alone a king like him?  It would seem that God would do with him as he did with Josiah’s great-grandfather who also was faithful to the Lord.  When faced with a great international threat and insurmountable odds, the Lord intervened on Hezekiah’s behalf and wrecked the army that came against him and the people.  That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!  (2 Kings 19:35 NIV)  Plug in the variables, use your God formula and you have your answer for how things will go.  When the Egyptians formed a great army and posed a threat to Josiah’s kingdom, Josiah pulled together all his fighting forces and went up against the Egyptians in battle.  Everything would turn out fine he probably told his wife and kids as he left to go battle the Egyptians.  His generals he reassured that if they fought hard, the Lord would bring them victory.  Everything fit the God formula.  Good king.  Growing faith among the people!  What could go wrong?

While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo.  (2 Kings 23:29 NIV)  So what do you make of that?  What should any good Christian brother or sister just trying to follow Jesus faithfully make of it?  How does that fit into the mathematics of God?   Even the Apostle Peter wanted to know what algebraic equation to use when trying to calculate the Lord’s plans for him.  As he and the other apostles were meeting with Jesus on the shore of Galilee after Christ rose from the dead following His crucifixion, the Lord revealed to Peter what would come of him.  “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."  (John 21:18 NIV)

This  was in fact Jesus’ way of telling Peter how Peter would die.  That certainly didn’t fit into the equation Peter had of how God would deal with him and it must have thrown him.  It would have thrown you.  He then asked the Lord about the Apostle John, "Lord, what about him?"  (John 21:21 NIV)  He wanted to recalculate God with a better equation.  He thought He knew and understood God but now He realized he didn’t.  Christ’s reply took it all out of the realm of mathematics.  Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."(John 21:22 NIV)  In other words, “Don’t try to predict what I will do.”  “Don’t think I can be understood with a calculator.”  The Lord is not bound by the rules of physics or logic.  His actions are not determined by what you think is best.  He does as He pleases whenever He wants.  He is absolutely free. 

There is only one way to think along God’s lines.  There is only this law through which He operates.  It is the Law of Love.  Not your love.  Not my love.  Pure, undefiled love is how you see into God.  John the Apostle, who knew Jesus as well as anyone has made this clear when He stated,  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  (1 John 4:7-8 NIV)  The only way to get into God’s mind is to love His people.  You are as confused about Him as a rock in a creek bed if you do not love.  Love is the map to His personality, it is the glasses through which we understand His actions.  The lowest of minds can think along the lines of Jesus if love is at play but the great intellects of the world are at a complete loss to comprehend even the smallest thing of God without love.  How can you understand God and know what He is doing with you?  Stare with fixed attention upon Jesus crucified, His hands riveted to the horizontal beam with rough iron nails, His feet fixed to the vertical wooden beam with another nail and the blood drops oozing down from his head.  That is how you understand what He is doing with you.  Watch Him as He dies to take from you your sin.  Gaze upon Him as He dies to give you a new and perfect life.  That is how you figure Him out.  It is love through and through that decides for Christ what He will do at any moment.  It is love that determines His actions.  Take heed to this.  The only ones who get a grasp on God and understand His ways are those who love and invest with love in the lives of others.  Let this be the way you think about all you see of God and hear about Him.  Let it be your rule of thumb whenever you look for what the Lord may be doing with you.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. (1 John 4:16 NIV)  It may be a surprise ending when it comes to what happens next for you but you can be certain of this.  It will be because God loves you and died to save you from your sin.

Natural Disasters

Genesis 12:10 NIV

 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

What Should You Think About The Natural Disasters In Our World?

Recently we have had a slew of wildfires in our state that have devastated parts of Northern California.  Before that massive hurricanes struck the Caribbean.  In Spain also are terrifying wildfires.  Malaria continues to plague the tropical parts of our world.  A large earthquake struck Mexico just a few months ago and despite all the technology at our disposal, natural disasters are not preventable.  They come with fury and increasing frequency.  What is a Christian response to the natural order that often reveals the chaos a sin soaked universe generates?  Can a theology of natural disasters be developed that will help us understand what God is doing in this world?

There are a large number of natural disasters described in the Bible.  Some are clearly attributed to God and His judgment upon people.  The flood of Noah’s time was caused by God because of the wickedness of all the people of the world.   The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.  So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth — men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air — for I am grieved that I have made them."  But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:6-8 NIV)  God’s anger with the rebellion of Korah who issued a call for Moses to be removed as leader of Israel resulted in a giant sinkhole that engulfed Korah and his entire clan.  As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their households and all Korah's men and all their possessions.  They went down alive into the grave, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community. (Numbers 16:31-33 NIV)  When the Assyrians attempted to conquer Jerusalem, the Lord sent a plague that decimated their huge army.  That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!  So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. (2 Kings 19:35-36 NIV)

This certainly does not exhaust the list of times in the Bible God is said to bring about a natural disaster because He decided to punish large and small groups of people.  Yet many times no explanation is given as to why certain natural disasters occurred.  Famines forced both Abraham and much later his son Isaac and then later still Jacob his grandson to leave Palestine and move to Egypt to avoid starvation.  A great storm pummeled the ship the Apostle Paul was on and forced everyone on board to swim for their lives when the violence of the waves broke the boat apart.  Both the prophets Amos and Zechariah mention a great earthquake that hit Israel during the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah.  However, no commentary is given as to why it took place.   The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa — what he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel. (Amos 1: 1 NIV) Volcanoes blew their stack, earthquakes struck, devastating floods took place and plagues raged through cities during the time the Scriptures were being written but the Bible is silent about the vast majority of these natural disasters.  Great and terrifying storms struck several times as Jesus and the disciples tried to make it across the Sea of Galilee by boat but Jesus never gave a reason why they took place.

Jesus made two striking statements regarding the horrific sorts of circumstances people face.  The first came in response to the speculation that was taking place regarding two prominent tragedies that were being widely discussed in Jerusalem.  Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.  Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.  Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? (Luke 13:1-4 NIV)  Jews, just like people all over the world, are prone to speculate that some sort of karma or vengeance of God brings about tragic disasters.  Those who are struck down somehow had it coming.  Christ though poured a bucket of cold water on all such fire starting.  Sinning is universal and the comparative evaluation of sins is mere guesswork for us.  We cannot draw a straight line between sinning and the tragic events of life.    Christ does say next however that any natural disaster should lead all those who hear of it to repent themselves of their own sins!  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." (Luke 13:5 NIV)  That is a strange twist on the longstanding karma theology.  A natural disaster or tragic event does not at all point out the sins of those who suffered from the tragedy but rather serves as God’s mirror so that we face our own sins and turn from them immediately.

Jesus’ second statement regarding tragic events came as a result of a question one of his disciples asked Him.  A man born blind was spotted by the group and Christ was asked, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2 NIV)  Jesus gave a most fascinating answer.  "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. (John 9:3 NIV)  The effect of this reply is to flip on its ear everything we normally think about tragic events.  The pagan world looks at disasters and wonders what went wrong.  What was so bad about all those people that they were punished?  Christ tells us to never speculate about what sort of sins led to the crushing blows people face.  He invites us instead to look about and watch for how God will reveal Himself to us when something that seems bad happens.  Natural disasters are a mirror that reflects back to us our sins and also a window that makes it possible for us to see God doing something marvelous.  Imagine the man born blind barking at God for his blindness when all along God had a plan for making that blindness a way of letting the world see how good and lovely Christ is.  The Lord insists that when you see something that you assume is bad, prepare yourself for God in His love to meet you.

There are three common reactions to God opening up the window to see Him when a natural disaster strikes.  The first is to ask Him why He did it.  This of course is almost always an accusation that God is evil or vindictive.  The second reaction is to question why He did not do a better job of protecting people from evil.  It takes God off the hook as far as making bad things happen but challenges His authority in this universe.  Who really is in charge?  If God can’t prevent evil, then someone or something else must be making all the calls in life.  Karma…  Luck... Satan…  The third reaction is to wonder what God might do to salvage things.  In other words, all eyes should be on how the Lord will make a bad situation somehow turn out all right.  Some might call this the Pollyanna approach but let us consider two Scriptures that shed light on what we know about the tragic events that take place in life.

In of all places, the book of Lamentations gives us the first of two principles to consider when it comes to disasters and tragic events.  Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? (Lamentations 3:38 NIV)  In other words, nothing comes to us that God has not decreed.  Whether we call it a tragedy or a blessing, God decides what will transpire.  He oversees everything that happens to us and is the gateway through which every circumstance must pass.  Whether it is God’s use of the Babylonians to wreck Jerusalem or the decree of the Persian ruler Cyrus that permitted the Jews to return to Israel, it is the Lord who is in charge.  Listen carefully to God’s insistence when He spoke to the Israelites just before they entered the Promised Land.  "See now that I myself am He!  There is no god besides me.  I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.” (Deuteronomy 32:39 NIV)  If the ultimate events in time are life and death, then the Lord God Almighty who calls Himself YHWH controls what happens at the highest levels of existence.

A second principle often goes overlooked when it comes to disasters and tragedies and at the risk of seeming to minimize the pain and sorrow such events bring, it is the overriding principle of all of life.  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 NIV)  In any and every situation, God makes everything turn out well for those who have put their hope in Him.  Even those who give their lives for the sake of Christ will find that God will make things right and good for them.  Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat.  For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water.  And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." (Revelation 7:16-17 NIV)

Not everyone will believe that God is able to transform the worst calamities in history into blessings for those who suffered from them.  It seems like an impossible dream that our Lord could take even the most horrific of tragedies and rework them altogether into joy and happiness!  Yet the Cross and Resurrection is our measure of what God can do for us if we trust Him.  Listen to Mary Magdalene weeping as unbeknownst to her she comes across Christ having been raised from the dead.  Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.  They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"  "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw   Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.  "Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"  Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." (John 20:10-15 NIV)

That is how every one of us is on this side of a tragedy or disaster.  We see it all from the perspective of death and suffering but are mostly ignorant or oblivious to how transforming the life of God is.  In just a moment, Mary Magdalene went from great despair to ecstatic joy solely because she found that Jesus was alive; alive having been dead.  Jesus said to her, "Mary."  She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).  Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" (John 20:16-17 NIV) Disaster turned into victory…the greatest in the history of mankind.  It takes trust to believe that God will make every disaster a triumph of life over death for those who put their hope in Christ to save them.  We must trust something.  We can trust that a bad and painful turn is just that, bad and painful or that it will be transformed by Christ into a good and wonderful that will make the bad and painful fade from memory.  Trust is up to you.  Life is up to God.

Too Far Down the Road

Jonah 1:11 NIV

 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, "What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?"

Have You Gone Too Far?

Recently I had to take a rental car back after a trip to Los Angeles.  I needed to return it to the San Jose airport which is about a twenty minute drive from my home.  Before that though I discovered from my son that my wife’s car needed to be taken to the mechanic so after dropping it off, I headed to the airport.  No one in my family could drive my car because it is a manual transmission and it was in the church parking lot.  So it was up to my son to bring my wife to the airport to come get me.  For an hour I waited for them to arrive.  Growing frustrated, I called my wife to find out what had happened to them, only to discover that the hood of my son’s car had flown open while they were driving on the freeway and because they could not figure out how to reattach the hood, they were driving slowly back home, praying the hood would not bounce back up onto the windshield again while they were in traffic.  So what was I to do?  It was easy, I would just call one of my friends to come get me but I only had the numbers of three people in my phone who I thought I could ask.  One by one I called each of them and every time, the person I called did not take the call.  So now what was I supposed to do?  The normal answer would be, “Just solve the problem!”

What is your typical response to a difficult problem?  Do you just figure out what to do? Do you make the best of things and not worry about the outcome?  Are you a fretter?  Do you try to find an expert and get advice?  Do you just quit when you aren’t sure what to do?  How do you respond psychologically to the problems in life?  Are you most likely to take charge of the issue at hand or pretend as if nothing is wrong?  It is true that each situation is different and sometimes we react one way and other times another way.  Yet we must admit that we probably have a default setting when it comes to challenging situations; a way of approaching them that is our usual pattern.  What is going to be suggested today is that we can go too far in how we solve matters and when we do so we can be left psychologically exhausted.

What is meant by “psychologically exhausted”?  This is the state when we find it nearly impossible because of the lack of internal resources to cope emotionally in our preferred manner.  For example, rather than feeling relaxed and peaceful, you can’t hold back your anger, depression despair, anxiety and bitterness or even lust or moral limits.  Like someone who is so tired from driving that she cannot keep from falling asleep at the wheel, certain types of situations become too big for you to handle the way you wish you could or would.  You blow up at someone you really do love.  You develop a headache because of anxiety levels you have reached.  You lie or act in ways morally incompatibly with your values or you give in to an addiction you thought you were past or don’t show the sort of integrity you think you should or believe you ought to maintain.  There is a cause of psychological exhaustion that is actually quite simple.  We try to do God’s work and it is too much for us to handle.

Here is a way of illustrating this that you may have experienced personally or at least have known of happening.  A person who is not a skilled swimmer wades out into the ocean and suddenly a wave unexpectedly swells and sweeps that person off his feet and he is caught in the undertow.  Flailing wildly, the person tries desperately to get his head above the water so he can get his breath.  His heart is pounding, his mind is racing in desperation and his eyes are frantically searching for the surface.  If he does survive, he is left exhausted and even traumatized.  Spiritually it is like that for you when you are not careful.  If you take away from God the work He alone is supposed to be doing, you respond psychologically in similar ways to the panting and traumatized swimmer.  We see examples of this mistake often in scripture.

There is a strange detail in the account of Jesus’ crucifixion that although curious, rings true to human nature.  Christ was hung on a cross and on either side of him two criminals were also nailed to crosses.  Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.  When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals — one on his right, the other on his left…One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!" (Luke 23:32-33, 39 NIV)  Isn’t this odd?  One of the two men suffering the same fate as Jesus, convulsing in terrible agony used that time to curse and mock Jesus.  His psychological pain was also great and the way he managed it was by insulting Jesus.  What had Jesus done to hurt this man?  How had he earned the fellow’s wrath?  Of course our Lord hadn’t done anything to warrant the insults and rage.  This was the case of someone dealing with a circumstance much too big for him to handle.  The terrors of impending death, the grief of a life wasted, the regrets of pain he caused others to suffer was crashing down upon him and he was trying to cope with all this on his own.  Unwilling to turn to God to carry him through his pain, he was left, like a drowning man unable to swim, without the psychological capacity to handle what he was facing and so the psychological reaction was to become angry with someone who actually loved him.

We see something similar in the Old Testament.  Unable to have children but determined to figure out some way to provide a child for her husband, Sarah, without turning to God for help and counsel, convinced her husband to take her servant girl and try to father a child through her.  We know how well this went.  Abraham was successful and the slave Hagar eventually gave birth to his son.  It was not quite as easy as Sarah imagined seeing her servant pregnant with a child her husband fathered.  When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.  Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me."  "Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. (Genesis 16:4-6 NIV)  Clearly Sarah’s jealousy was egged on by Hagar but Sarah’s plan worked perfectly except that she was not equipped psychologically to live with the consequences of her actions.  Rather than turn to God for help regarding her seeming infertility, she figured out things on her own and the result was she became psychologically exhausted trying to do God’s work.

Jeremiah 2 gives us rich insight into the difficulties we face solving all our problems without God.  "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)  The two sins are clearly to God evil and deadly.  The people quit turning to God for help and then developed their own strategies for solving their problems.  We have come to think as they did that getting along on your own is somehow noble and courageous.  But it is just the opposite.  It is foolish and ruinous.  On your own, all you have are the psychological skills you have acquired in life.  Some have quite a few and can manage well for a while without God.  Some have been so damaged by the hardships they have faced that they have almost nothing in them to keep their anger and depression and bitterness and jealousy at bay. Why do we see suicide and drug abuse and violence and crippling depression?  Without God carrying you through the troubles of life, you may or may not have the psychological strength to protect you and keep you at peace so you turn to your own brokenness to see you through.  There is however another option to independent living.

Consider the fascinating case study of Daniel who as a believer in God, prayed three times a day.  When a law was instituted that demanded no one would be allowed to pray to anyone other than the king for the next thirty days, Daniel coolly opened up the shutters covering his windows and quite publically continued praying to the Lord.  When he was caught and brought before the king, even though the king, who was desperate to try and save him from his own law, fretted in despair, Daniel seemingly did not have a care in the world and without comment bravely faced his sentence of being thrown into a pit with ravenous lions.  When the king heard this, he was greatly distressed; he was determined to rescue Daniel and made every effort until sundown to save him.  Then the men went as a group to the king and said to him, "Remember, O king, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed."  So the king gave the order, and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lions' den. The king said to Daniel, "May your God, whom you serve continually, rescue you!" (Daniel 6:14-16 NIV)  Where did Daniel get his courage and peace to see him through his trials?  He went directly to God.

Jesus’ famous promise to give his people peace is almost universally misunderstood in one important detail.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. (John 14:27 NIV)  Jesus is not offering to give you a reason to have peace.  He is pledging that the peace He possesses Himself will be inserted into you when you accept it from Him. Regardless of what you have learned or not learned in life, of however many self-help books you have read or not read and however much confidence or despair is in you, God’s peace will take over and put calmness in your heart.  Christ did not die on the cross in order to give you strategies for having peace in your life.   That would leave you with the same failure rates of all other men or women who have tried to work out their problems on their own.  He died so that you might have his own personality working inside you regardless of what you face each and every day.  Stop trying to figure everything out on your own.  Let God work out things in you so that whatever challenges you face can be worked out through you.

An Aching World

Psalm 49: 20 NIV

A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish.

What Do You Possess?

Last week I was in a high school class and I asked the students what particular strengths they possessed.  One mentioned that he was good at connecting with people, that he had the ability to look them in the eye and pay attention to them.  The rest of the class was either dumbfounded by the question or too shy to answer.  One young man, who I had gotten to know a bit had a strong speaking voice and I told him I saw that in him.  Several students gave examples of how his powerful voice would benefit him.  I asked another young man what a strength of his was and he could not give me an answer.  He could not think of a single talent or skill set that he possessed that was of any value.  In fact, he insisted that he was not good at anything.  Now I realize that the setting might have made it difficult for him to admit what he saw as something good about himself but it struck me what a tragedy it was for a person to have nothing to claim as a personal strength.  Perhaps there are many others who cannot come up with personal qualities that would benefit themselves or others.

Is it possible that you too really don’t know who you are, don’t know what lies within you that could be considered great or even spectacular.  What really are the strengths you possess?  Recently it was mentioned just how broken we are in places we aren’t even aware exists.  We don’t know the depths at which sin has damaged us.  Our heart is so vast and unexplored by us that we cannot really know what destruction our heart has incurred.  Yet there is another side to this discussion that must be considered and that is what sort of power we possess in Christ.  Are we certain we know what has been given us by God and the value of what we have?

Psalm 49: 20 declares the great loss there is to us if we possess riches that we don’t know we have.  A man who has riches without understanding is like the beasts that perish.  There is a witlessness to us when we are not aware of what great possessions are ours.  It is like we are as dumb as an ox if we have never noticed the wealth we own.  Consider the immensity of the claim found in Colossians 1: 27.  To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (NIV)  The implication is that when Christ becomes a part of us, joined to us as a “new creation”, there are great riches abiding within us and it must be acknowledged that the vast majority of Christians have no idea what those riches are.  Is it possible that we live in nearly complete ignorance of what runs deep within us?

One of the most fascinating aspects to the relationship between Christ and the Father is the approach the Father took to the treatment Jesus received at the hands of those who despised Him. It was always the same.  Not everyone thought Jesus was a great man sent by God.  Many thought He was either a lunatic or possessed by demons.  Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat.  When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."  And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons." (Mark 3:20-22 NIV)  How did the Father respond to this unfair criticism?  He did not do anything.  He let their hurtful comments go unaddressed.  The Father simply let our Lord absorb them without shielding Him from the blows.

At Jesus’ most vulnerable point when it seemed like the entire world turned on Him, the Father refused to defend Christ.  Without a bit of evidence to convict Him, the religious leaders tried their best to come up with some way of having Jesus put to death but the Father did not send a single person Christ’s way to help Him.  The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death.  But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward. (Matthew 26:59 NIV)   When Christ faced the terrors of Roman brutality, the Father left Him alone.  Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.  The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe  and went up to him again and again, saying, "Hail, king of the Jews!" And they struck him in the face. (John 19:1-3 NIV)  To the very end, the Father did nothing to ease our Lord’s suffering or humiliation.  Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him.  They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him,  and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said.  They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.  After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. (Matthew 27:27-31 NIV)

How can we account for the Father’s total neglect of the Son in His horrific trials? What did He have to gain by His response to the Son?  Whatever supernatural signs the Father did to support His Son’s work were never associated with His suffering or humiliations.  The Son was left, if we can be so almost heretical sounding in this, without the resources of the Father to help Him with all He suffered.  He was in a sense “on His own.”  The great force of our Lord’s own personality faced the worst that Satan and the World could throw at Him and yet without a hint of bitterness, self-pity or lust for revenge, He endured it all.  The Father offered nothing supernatural at all to the Son for His endurance; He left it up to the power of the perfect Son of Man’s own will to love without hatred and persevere without quitting.

This must be processed thoroughly.  Jesus had within Himself the power to love the most hateful sinner, endure the most demeaning criticism without having to despise the critic or try to defend Himself against the unfair charges.  He was able to face any seeming defeat without becoming at all discouraged.  Whatever else we might contemplate regarding everything Jesus suffered to bring an end to Sin in the World, we must also consider just how much strength was contained within the scope of His personality to face it fully without hatred or despair!  It all reached a crescendo when He cried out from the Cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. (Luke 23:34 NIV)

If we simply take a step back from the primary work of Christ in bringing salvation to humanity on the cross, there is a secondary effect that we must see.  Think about the immensity of this statement regarding the state of mind of our Savior just before He was crucified.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2 NIV) Our Lord, by what He suffered and how He responded to His suffering, revealed what is possible within the human personality when it is joined to that of Christ.  If you have been born again, you have Christ in you and all He has within Himself to face any difficulty or trial, you also possess by Him being a part of you.  The problem, and this is a most troubling problem, is that you most likely don’t even realize what our Lord places within you when He joins Himself to you.  It takes a great crisis, a tremendous force of evil for you to see what it is you have in Christ.

When the Apostles faced the greatest trial of their lives, the arrest and crucifixion of Christ, they failed miserably.  They were cowardly, self-pitying and without faith.  How could they ever know just what power they held within themselves with Christ a part of them if all they had to assess it was how they acted during the last days of His life.  God gave them an opportunity to discover it in a way most of us would try our best to avoid.  After they had been boldly preaching about Christ, the Jewish priest and leaders of the Jewish religious community rounded up the Apostles.  They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.  Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ. (Acts 5:40-42 NIV) How would they have responded to this horrid beating before Christ and His courage and joy had become a part of them?  Most likely in the same they did to Christ being arrested.  They would have felt sorry for themselves and quit preaching.  Not now though, not with Jesus and all His strength and courage and love a part of them.  Instead, they were happy the Lord found them worthy to be humiliated because they lived with Christ.

What we must face squarely is this supernatural strength of character to peacefully find joy and the ability to forgive even when faced with brutal, beastly treatment.  The effect of this supernatural response to terrible circumstances may not be immediately seen but that does not mean it will not work eventually in the hearts of those without Christ who witness it firsthand.  Without the sheer weight of the cruelty faced by Christ it might never have been known just how much power was contained in the heart of Christ.  Anything less than this great show of force could have been disregarded because it was no more miraculous than the work of a Gandhi or Socrates.  This response of Jesus and then of the Apostles to terrible difficulties and brutal treatment was as wondrous a miracle for those present as the parting of the Red Sea for it showed just what a real person has inside when Christ is living within.  There are monumental trials Christian people face and they are sometimes horrific and God does not deny just how terrifying and difficult they are.  But our Lord lets Satan initiate them for this one purpose.  In them the power of God is revealed in its full glory.  Those who could never forgive true evil, who could never love hateful people, who could not on their own be courageous in such circumstances are courageous and joyful because of Christ within and that is seen for what it is; a true miracle of God.  You cannot know the full extent of God’s power in you until you face overwhelming circumstances.  You will not know just how great the love of Christ is within you if you never encounter someone you cannot love on your own.  Who would have known what our Lord could do if He never was crucified and your friends and family might not know just how great and wonderful Christ in you is if you do not encounter a hardship only Christ in you can overcome and in that hardship have supernatural joy in the midst of it!

Perception

Jeremiah 1:11 NIV

 The word of the Lord came to me: "What do you see, Jeremiah?"

"I see the branch of an almond tree," I replied.

Are You Certain of What You See?

The very first time Mary Jo and I went out together, I borrowed a friend’s car and took her to the Robert E. Lee Theater.   This was a two story movie theater and it was the fanciest in New Orleans.  The movie we saw was quite memorable…it was the four hour “Reds”…and yes, it felt more like eight hours.  I more than made up for the terrible movie choice by getting Mary Jo nachos.  She had never before had nachos and so I felt like I had brought her to the Eiffel Tower or taken her on a camel ride through Morocco.  The nachos even had jalapeño slices on it.  Now for a year and a half we did these same sorts of things…I took her places, paid for the meal or the movie…just the two of us and we had fun together.  She didn’t go with any other guys to movies or restaurants or festivals during this time and I didn’t go with any other girls.  Imagine my surprise after a year and a half of this exclusive attention we gave to each other my discovery that Mary Jo did not think we were dating.  I kind of wondered what she thought we had been doing all this time…going on field trips…creating a review of restaurants…baby-sitting each other?  I thought, and call me “crazy”, that we had been dating the past year.  So here we were, two sane adults, experiencing the very same events and engaging in conversations together over a very long period of time, having completely different views of what we had been doing this whole time.

What is fascinating about perception is that it is a function of reality that is really real.  A wind really does blow a pine cone off a tree.  A bank really does charge you a fee for bouncing a check.  Your wife really does say, “I love you” and your boss really does warn you of potential lay-offs.  The car in front of you actually stopped and you did hit it and your mom told you that if you did not clean up your room, she would take your IPad away from you.  Really real things happen all around us but sometimes it is more important for us and for others our perception of those real things rather than the real things themselves.  One man commits suicide when his girlfriend breaks up with him but another man whose girlfriend breaks up with him finds someone else to date.  One child cries when a bully punches him but another child swings back and laughs about it afterward.  A mother frets anxiously about her son coming home late from a party; another falls asleep peacefully before he gets back.  Perception is not always reality but the two go hand in hand in determining the reality of many outcomes in life.

There is in the ancient writings of the prophet Habakkuk a case study on perception.  As the Babylonian armies began their approach toward Jerusalem it became clear to all Judea that the invasion could not be stopped.  Judah’s armies had no answer for the Babylonian juggernaut.  Destruction of Jerusalem seemed inevitable; slavery, rape and even death a real possibility for anyone still alive when the Babylonians finally overran the city.  Habakkuk faced the hard cold reality of invasion with not a hint of fluffy optimism.  His prayer to God was simple and direct.  Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet… (Habakkuk 3:17-18 NIV)  As Habakkuk writes, nothing is settled.  The invasion hasn’t begun.  The walls of Jerusalem are still intact.  The farms and ranches continue to provide food for everyone.  Yet…Habakkuk added in the space between what seemed to be coming and what was there before him.  This was where reality met perception for Habakkuk and we face it too.  How we respond to “yet” is critical to the reality that we have as it was for Habakkuk.  The “yet” for Habakkuk was, “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Habakkuk 3:18 NIV)  This was the way Habakkuk saw things.  If everything falls apart and it goes from bad to worse, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.  Perception was unbending in the circumstance…crops failed or not, sheep in the pen or taken, grapes sweet and luscious or shriveled and hard, Habakkuk would see it all as “God is my Savior…I will love Him.”

In the book of Daniel is a second case study of perception.  A few years later, after Babylon had conquered Jerusalem and brought a number of the Jews back to Babylon with them, some of the captives because of their special abilities were given significant government jobs.  Three of them, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego faced a terrible dilemma just as they really got started in their careers.  The king enacted a law that whenever a traveling band came to your town and began to play, if anyone refused to worship the ninety foot gold portable idol they brought with them, those people would be thrown into a blazing furnace.  The reality was that this idol was before the three Jewish young men, the music was playing and the furnace was stoked and available for anyone refusing to worship the golden idol.  Perception of the reality was voiced by the three men who faced squarely their fate even as they refused to bow in worship to the idol. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.  If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.  But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Daniel 3:16-18 NIV)  The adjustment in thinking the three men made to the reality of the furnace and the king’s fury and the idol was simple.  Our hope is in God regardless of how things turn and we will not worship idols.  That was the perception they all had of the situation they faced.  This was how they looked at the idol and the furnace and the angry king.

The third case study we shall examine took place in a secret place where Jesus was with his disciples.  He told them exactly what to expect soon.  And he said, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life." (Luke 9: 22 NIV)  Now we must take these two parts of the reality separately.  The first is that Jesus was telling the disciples that the religious leaders were going to reject him outright and because of this, He would have to be killed.  This had to be terribly disconcerting to them, perhaps even depressing.  And of course that is what happened.  Jesus was crucified and the disciples had to face it.  Reality was the end of dreams, broken plans and the loss of a beloved friend.  All of this Jesus told them to expect and they had it.  The death of Jesus came and it was real dying.  So what were they to do?  What perception of this were they to form of Jesus being dead?  How were they to view Christ crucified; which was very different than Christ healing and Christ teaching and Christ eating with them and potentially taking over the nation of Israel as her king?

Jesus told the Disciples two things.  He would die and He would be raised from the dead.  Those two were interconnected at every point.  The Disciples would have taken these two parts as completely different matters, at least during the three days when Jesus was dead but not raised from the dead.  Since then though, the two are never separated from one another.  The crucified Christ is reality and the raised Christ is reality and both determine perception in every single circumstance.  When the Disciples saw a bright future filled with success and happiness, Jesus saw Himself crucified.  When the Disciples saw all hope dashed and their lives crushed, Jesus saw Himself raised from the dead.  We can either perceive things as the Disciples did or see all we face as Jesus saw things.  What do I mean by that?

When Christ died, He took the Sin of mankind into His body and it was crucified with Him when He died.  The Apostle Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV)  In Hebrews we find a similar statement.  But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:26 NIV)  The death of Christ did away with Sin because Sin died with Him when He died.  When this happened we became free to see things from God’s point of view.  Before, Sin corrupted our thinking and made us Satan’s fool, but, after the Cross when we are made right with God through the cross of Christ Sin is worked out of us and we can think with God’s mind and understand things.  Sin does not direct our thinking!  The Cross meant victory!  The Disciples thought it was defeat.  We with Sin see trials and troubles and hardship and unfair circumstances.  With Christ and our Sin taken from us, we see God working everything out for our good, we see our lives being put together in a perfect way.  We see strength of character building and holiness developing and love growing pure and true.  With Sin out of the way, we can reinterpret everything so we see things as they are and not as they seem.

With the Cross came resurrection.  Peter says this of the resurrection’s effect on us.  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (1 Peter 1:3-4 NIV)  The Resurrection is the most astounding event in the history of mankind because it was the power of God revealed in Jesus Christ.  If there is one enemy of us all, if there is any unifying force that we cannot break, it is death and with the Resurrection, death is broken and the operating system of every one of us is hope.  Hope rises above every problem we face.  If death is a shattered enemy, then what is unemployment in God’s hands…what is disease…what is divorce…what is infertility…what is injury or insult or persecution…what is failure…what is disappointment…what is rejection when it is in God’s hands?  Resurrection is the creator of hope at every point in life…hope is the bright dawn and it casts no shadows because it is built by the Resurrection of Christ and that is reality.  When Jesus Christ rose from the dead and He really did rise…over five hundred different people in many different places saw Him alive…He made hope the reality for every single situation we face.  Hope is not in resurrection, it rises from the Resurrection and we can hope and have real hope because hope is not a dream of something that could happen.  It really is what is happening because the resurrection of Christ really occurred in history and the resurrection is working through every circumstance we encounter wherever we go and whatever we face.