2020-09-11
Good Morning Dear Ones,
A sure sign of maturity in an individual is his willingness to take responsibility for his own actions. When people are followers of a person they respect and love and suddenly, that person is taken away from his daily interaction, those left behind grieve. Each person grieves in his own way. Can you imagine being Christ’s disciple and arriving at the tomb, only to find the stone rolled back and the linens in which His body was wrapped, folded neatly on an empty bench? Mary Magdelene started to cry at the door to the empty tomb. “They have taken my Lord away. I do not know where they have put Him.” She was referring to the two angels who did this. Mary was confused when Jesus appeared, asking her why she was crying. She thought He was the gardener. Jesus said, “Mary!” She suddenly recognized His voice and reached out toward Him, exclaiming “Rabboni!” [Hebrew: teacher]. “Do not hold on to Me, as I have not yet gone back to My Father. Tell the others God is My Father, yours, and theirs.” So, she did [JN 20: 1-18].
Not realizing that his actions in denying Who Christ was three times as the cock crowed was God’s will, Peter must have been filled with guilt as he looked back at the train of events which had transpired-Christ’s betrayal by Judas Iscariot, His arrest, the series of kangaroo courts He had been through, and finally His crucifixion. John, who loved Jesus as his best Friend and Leader, probably felt empty and without direction in his own grieving. He would now take on the responsibility of caring for Mary, Jesus’ mother, as Jesus had requested. He would concern himself with her needs at a time like this. Jesus had been only 33 years old when His physical life was taken from him-much too young to die.
An overarching truth is that Christ didn’t lay blame on any other person for what had happened to Him. He knew what the Father’s will was and was dedicated to fulfilling it. He could trust that the Father never made any decision or took any action that wasn’t righteous and in mankind’s best eternal interests. Despite Christ’s age being young in His earthly incarnation, His thoughts and actions were mature. I have no way to even imagine if such a truth occurred to any of those people who were Christ’s followers, particularly at such an emotionally and spiritually difficult time as this was.
In last week’s devotion, I referred to the greatest pain Christ had in this entire series of events, distress even greater than the physical pain of being crucified. It was the pain of His temporary separation from the Father. MT 27: 45-46, “At noon the whole country was covered with darkness, which lasted for three hours. At about 3 PM, Jesus (on the cross) cried out with a loud shout, “Eli Eli lema sabachthani?” [Aramaic for “My God, my God, why did You abandon Me?”]. When we look at RO 8: 38-39 and HE 13: 5, both essentially tell us nothing can separate us from the love of God; He will never abandon us. In view of what was happening to Jesus, He justified in asking the question in MT 27: 45-46. In this crucifixion, the Father allowed this temporary separation by not telling the Son all the details but only the goal of the sacrifice He would make. Also, in view of Christ’s devotion to the Father, as seen in His words in JN 14: 9 and 11, we can’t conceive of the emotional and spiritual pain Christ was having. While on first inspection, the messages in these citations would seem not to be logically consistent, we must understand that the Father’s wisdom in decision-making can only be understood completely by understanding supernatural and intangible wisdom in them. This is wisdom no human has; it can only be explained by God’s will that we have faith. Remember: HE 11: 1. “Faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.”
PRAYER: O Lord, when Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, was created, You made Him perfect. His most mature and difficult decision was to obey Your will, as revealed in LK 22: 42, “Father, if You will take this cup of suffering away from Me… Not My will but Your will be done.” He knew His personal sacrifice would open the way of salvation for believing mankind. His Atonement for our sins would be the once for all perfect propitiation [sin sacrifice]. Father, from HE 9: 12, we know that Christ entered the heavenly Holy of Holies, offering His own blood, so that salvation and eternal forgiveness could come to us, who believe in Him. It was no longer necessary to offer the blood of animals for this purpose. While Yom Kippur [the Jewish Day of Atonement] could offer forgiveness for one year only and had to be repeated every year, Christ’s blood offered on the cross would give us forgiveness forever! We bow before You in utter reverence and awe to offer You praise and thanks for making Your wisdom available to us through Christ and the Holy Spirit in us. You are a wise, loyal, and loving God! It is in Christ’s name that we pray, Amen.
NEXT WEEK: Our mature and loving Lord Jesus demonstrates the gifts of the Holy Spirit in His own existence and relationship with us. Through a discussion next week of these things, we will begin to see some of the ramifications of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. In only two circumstances am I aware of times when the Son was not told all the details by the Father. They are: 1) when Christ explained to His disciples that “only the Father knows the time I will return” [MT 24: 36] and 2) what the Father planned to do about how long the Son would be separated from Him during His sacrifice on the cross]. Certainly, it made sense that Christ demonstrated so much grief, sadness, sweating blood, and wishing the disciples would hold His hand through this suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane that last night before events overtook Him. I endeavor to write this series of devotions about a subject that matters tremendously to us all-the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as outlined in GA 5: 22-23. Each of these gifts were unknown as important intangibles in our lives before Christ came to earth to bring them to us. I don’t envy the Father for the tremendous task of civilizing mankind that He is doing. It would be wrong to say that no one before Christ’s Atonement behaved with one or more of the gifts, but the Holy Spirit hadn’t inhabited souls in serial fashion, and their importance wasn’t really well understood beforehand. Mankind are still sinners, and greatly in need of Basic Inner Training Before Leaving Earth. Read the first letter in each of those words and it spells BIBLE. Praise and thanks be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2020. All Rights Reserved.
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