Day 43

Matthew 26:1-16
Mark 14:1-11

On Wednesday of the Holy Week there was a dinner in Bethany. I don’t know who all was at the dinner, but I do know the names of seventeen people who were there: Simon the Leper (the host), Simon Peter, James and John the sons of Zebedee, Andrew, Philip, Matthew Levi, Nathanael Bartholomew, Thomas Didymus, James Alpheus, Lebbaeus Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas Iscariot, Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary, and the guest of honor, Jesus of Nazareth.

I also know that everyone of these people had been blessed by Jesus. I think it’s safe to say that Simon was no more a leper thanks to Jesus, the twelve disciples had the awesome priviledge of being called by Jesus to be apostles, Lazarus had been raised from the dead and Martha and Mary had been given their beloved brother back from the grave. And yet I get the feeling that those at the dinner had adopted a sort of casual familiarity toward Jesus…all except for Mary. Mary was incapable of being casual toward Jesus. She was the One Thing Woman whose entire life had its orbit around Jesus.

While Jesus was at the table, something compelled her to do something extravagant, something irrational, something far exceeding what is called for. Mary was as sensible as anyone else and she knew that what she was about to do was an unbounded extravagance, but she couldn’t help it. She was obsessed with doing this thing. She ran back to her house and got one of her most valuable possessions — an alabaster flask containing a pound of pure oil of spikenard. Spikenard is a root that grows only in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal and was very expensive. In fact this bottle of fragrant oil was worth about $15,000. Fifteen thousand dollars! What could be done with $15,000? What objects could be obtained or what charitable causes could be funded with $15,000? But Mary was only thinking about One Thing.

She hurried back to Simon’s home where she broke — not opened, mind you, but broke — the alabaster flask and poured the entire contents upon Jesus’ head.

“And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.”

And the criticism began…

“Why this waste?”

“What was the purpose of this excessive extravagance?”

“This oil could have been sold and given to the poor.”

“FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!!”

“Don’t you care about the poor?”

“If you really knew what is important you wouldn’t be wasting God’s money on such things.”

“You just don’t have any common sense; you need to become more practical.”

“It’s a sin to waste things, you know.”

And then Jesus spoke up…

“LEAVE HER ALONE! STOP CRITICIZING HER!”

“She has anointed my body for burial.”

Silence.

Judas had been the ringleader of the criticism, yet others had joined in. (Be careful of being influenced by others to heap criticism on those who are doing something for the Lord. You never know what kind of spirit may be behind it.)

Jesus’ rebuke had silenced them. I assume most of them were chastised by Jesus’ rebuke and adjusted their attitude, but Judas did not. Judas’ anger at Jesus’ defense of Mary’s extravagance was the final catalyst for betrayal.

“She has anointed My body for burial.”

Did anyone really hear those words? I don’t think so. But later they remembered them.

Within 36 hours Jesus would be in the throes of His passion. Spikenard is a very powerful fragrance and its scent will linger for days. When Jesus was sweating blood in Gethsemane, when Jesus was being scourged at Gabbatha, when Jesus was suffering at Golgotha, did He smell the scent of the spikenard and did it bring even the slightest measure of comfort to Him? I like to think so.

Jesus said wherever the gospel is preached, what Mary has done will be told as a memorial to her. I’m preaching the gospel on the internet coming up on midnight Wednesday morning…and I have just set up a memorial to Mary of Bethany.

May we be more like her. May we anoint Jesus with the precious oil of our prayers, our tears, our devotion, our worship. May we “waste” our lives on the One who poured out His life for us.

Amen.

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At noon today in the Upper Room we will have an hour long “Anointing the Christ” prayer and worship service. We have anointed the Upper Room with oil of spikenard that you might catch the scent of extravagant devotion to Christ.

Day 42

Luke 20 & 21

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A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
Martin Luther

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.

As I was with Jesus today, I found myself thinking about this great hymn by Martin Luther. I’ll tell you why in a moment.

On Tuesday of the Holy Week Jesus taught publicly in the temple and then later privately on the Mount of Olives. The common denominator of Luke 20 and 21 is conflict; both the mood and the theme of Jesus’ teaching is one of conflict. Luke 20 opens with this…

“Now it happened on one of those days as He taught the people in the temple and preached the gospel, that the chief priests and the scribes, together with the elders, confronted Him.”

All of Luke 20 is a conflict between Jesus and the Jewish religious hierarchy. Jesus tells them that soon they will no longer be the keepers of the Lord’s vineyard and they reply, “God forbid!” Then the Pharisees and the Sadducees take their respective turns in unsuccessfully trying to trip up Jesus with trick questions. The chapter closes with Jesus point-blank telling the people to beware of the scribes who are doomed to a greater condemnation.

At the beginning of chapter 21 it seems as though the disciples want to innocently distract Jesus from all of the conflict by drawing His attention to the marvelous buildings of the temple complex. But Jesus will have none of it and curtly tells them that the buildings are doomed to destruction and foretold the signs that would indicate the eminent destruction of Jerusalem. These things came to pass forty years later.

In His Olivet discourse Jesus weaves together prophecy concerning the difficult times pertaining to the destruction of Jerusalem (which happen in A.D. 70) and the difficult times that will accompany the last days. I am convinced that the events of May 14, 1948 (Israel becoming a modern nation) and June 5, 1967 (Jerusalem returning to Jewish control) are important prophetic signs indicating that we are living in the last days before the return of Christ. These days are destined to be days of great Kingdom advance amidst tremendous difficulty and conflict.

The prophetic theme of the Kingdom advancing admist danger and conflict is what drew my mind to Martin Luther’s great hymn. (One of the greatest hymns ever written — the only other two I would place in the same category would be “Amazing Grace” and “Holy, Holy, Holy”.)

Martin Luther was no stranger to conflict. From the moment he nailed his “95 Thesis” to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517, he was embroiled in tremendous conflict and danger as he labored to liberate the Christian world from the oppression of dead religious tradition. Martin Luther was undoubtedly one of the most courageous men in history.

“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” was the battle cry of the Reformation and I think there is no greater hymn for encouraging those who are fighting the Lord’s battle in a “world with devils filled.” Read Luke 21 one more time and then read “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and you’ll see what I mean.

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Here’s something that stood out to me in Luke 21 this morning.

“They will put some of you to death…But not a hair of your head shall be lost.” –Jesus (Luke 21:16, 18)

“Some of you will be killed, but not a hair of your head will be lost.” Hmm? At first that might seem a bit contradictory. But when you remember that your destiny lies in the eternal Kingdom of Jesus Christ, and not in this temporal life, it begins to make sense. If you stay faithful to Jesus Christ, no matter what any man or devil may do to you, it cannot touch your eternal destiny in Jesus Christ. That’s really encouraging!

A mighty fortress is our God!

BZ

Day 41

Matthew 21:18-46
Mark 11:20-33
John 12:20-50

Jesus is on an inevitable collision course with the Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus was always merciful toward the tax collectors and harlots who came to Him; He was their friend. But Jesus was always harsh with the religious hypocrites and hucksters who oppressed and manipulated people with their legalism and corrupted the sacred ideals of worship with the base motives of profit; He was their enemy.

The Cleansing of the Temple

It appears that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice. John records Jesus cleansing the Temple at the beginning of His ministry. Matthew, Mark and Luke record Jesus cleansing the Temple during the final week of His ministry. Matthew and Luke simply report that Jesus cleansed the Temple following His triumphal entry, but Mark makes it clear that is was on the following day — Monday.

During the week leading up to the crucifixion, Jesus was staying in Bethany (probably with Mary, Martha and Lazarus) and would journey each day into the city of Jerusalem to minister. It’s a walk of no more than thirty minutes. On Sunday Jesus arrived in Bethany from Jericho, it was probably in the afternoon. That day He made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem; then He returned to Bethany to spend the night. On Monday morning Jesus and His disciples headed back into the city. On His way to the city Jesus saw a fig tree. (There are still fig trees on this road today!) Jesus looked for fruit, found none, cursed the fig tree and soon it withered away. Jesus then continued into Jerusalem, cleansed the Temple spoke some very pointed parables directed at the Pharisees. The Pharisees knew that Jesus had spoken against them and they wanted to arrest Him on the spot, but they had to bide their time. They didn’t dare attempt to arrest Jesus in the temple during the day lest there be a riot.

The fruitless fig tree which Jesus cursed and subsequently withered away is a picture of the corrupted religion of the temple worship controlled by the Pharisees and Sadducees. What had once contained the life of God, no longer bore spiritual fruit and within forty years the temple itself would be destroyed (as Jesus will prophecy the next day on the Mount of Olives). Instead Jesus said to the chief priests, “The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.” This kingdom nation is not a political entity, but the community of committed followers of Jesus Christ from ever nation, tribe and tongue.

On this Monday of the final week, some Greeks who were in Jerusalem for the Passover sought an audience with Jesus. When Philip and Andrew informed Jesus of their request, Jesus at first seemed to ignore it and spoke of His impending death as a grain of wheat falling into the ground that it might produce much grain. But a little bit later Jesus says, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”

Here’s what’s happening: Greeks (Gentiles) want to meet with Jesus, but Jesus is focused on His impending death in less than four days. He knows that if He is lifted on the cross (and in the subsequent preaching of the message of cross), not only will these Greeks become the salvation fruit of death, but millions and millions of Gentiles wherever the gospel is preached will be saved. Jesus was focused on the big picture. The big picture of saving the world. That’s as big as the picture gets.

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“The Gospel of Judas”

Some people have asked me about the documentary on “The Gospel of Judas” which was shown on the National Geographic Channel Sunday night and has been endlessly hyped in the media. So, a few comments…

First of all, this late second century document is neither a gospel nor written by Judas. It is a Gnostic text written about 150 years after the resurrection which attempts to cast Judas in a new light by asserting, contrary to the canonical gospels, that Judas was Jesus’ closest disciple and the only one who really understood His teaching. Furthermore, this Gnostic document claims that Jesus asked Judas to betray Him and Judas did so out of loyalty to Jesus. The so-called “Gospel of Judas” gives us a “new and improved” Judas and presents Jesus as somewhat manipulative and a teacher of Gnostic thought.

OK. A little bit on the Gnostics. They were early Christian era heretics who taught that Jesus did not come in the flesh and that the way to salvation was through secret knowledge, not the redemptive work of Christ. The Gnostics were fond of recasting Biblical “villains” in a positive light; e.g. Cain, Esau, the Sodomites, and, now we learn, Judas.

The Apostle John, who lived long enough to see the rise of the Gnostic heresy, directed much of his apostolic writings against Gnosticism. John specifically called the Gnostics antichrists (see 1 John 2:18-23, 1 John 4:3 and 2 John 1:7). Later the early church fathers (notably Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian) waged a great theological war with the Gnostics to rescue Christianity from the influence of the Gnostic heretics.

The importance of the so-called “Gospel of Judas” (discovered some 50 years ago in Egypt) is that it sheds light on the Gnostics and their heresies. But it has nothing to do with the historical Jesus. As Collin Hansen of Christianity Today put it, “This new text tells us nothing more about Jesus’ relationship with Judas than does Jesus Christ Superstar.”

The media hype of the “Gospel of Judas” and the popularity of Dan Brown’s book and soon to be movie, The Da Vinci Code is absolutely the spirit of antichrist at work in the 21st Century. In recent years there has been a resurgence of Gnostic ideas in both popular culture and the pseudo-academic world. The first century apostles and the early church father’s had to contend diligently for the faith during the first five centuries of Christianity. Now in the 21st century we must do the same.

For those of you who would be interested in a serious academic critique of Elain Pagels’ Beyond Belief (the book that the NGC program was based on), I would refer you to this critical response by Matthew Goss. Print this out for the know-it-all at work who thinks “The Gospel of Judas” somehow reveals a grand conspiracy to conceal the “truth.” Intellectual attacks on Christianity usually aren’t intellectual. That is a secret most academic skeptics don’t want you to know…but I’m letting the cat out of the bag.

Jesus is Lord!

BZ

Day 40

Matthew 21:1-11
Mark 11:1-11
Luke 19:28-44
John 12:12-19

Introduction to the Holy Week

For the next eight days we will be following Jesus through the most climactic events of His life. The events of the Holy Week — Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday — are so important, that even though they only cover eight days, fully one third of the Gospel accounts are dedicated to recording these events. Our objective during this week is to be with Jesus every step of the way. We will wave the palms and shout hosanna as He makes His triumphal entry. We will sit at His feet as He gives His final teaching in the Temple and on the Mount of Olives. We will watch as Mary anoints Him for burial at Bethany. We will sit with Him at the table in the upper room for the last supper, and we will be a silent witness to His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.

When all of His disciples flee, we will stay with Him and follow Him to the house of Caiaphas. We will walk with Him along the Via Dolorosa to the place called Calvary. We will listen to His words from the cross, watch Him take His last breath and behold His lifeless body upon the tree. We will watch as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus take His body from the cross and place it in the tomb. We will enter into the wrenching sorrow of utter hopelessness as the stone is rolled into place and seals the Son of God in a cold, dark tomb. And we will wait. We will wait for Sunday. And when it comes we will be overwhelmed with joy from the greatest fact in history: Jesus is alive!

In his masterpiece, The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton put it this way:

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener, God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

So let us prepare ourselves to walk with Jesus through the Holy Week and discover the unparalleled drama of the greatest story ever told. The week will begin with the happy shouts of hosanna!, but will end with the horrifying cries of crucify Him! But that end is not the end, for on Sunday a new week and a new world will dawn as we hear the astounding announcement of the angel: He is not here, for He is risen!

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Day 40 of our journey together. Forty days is a big deal in the Bible. Often after forty days something big happens. That’s what I’m expecting…something big.

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The Triumphal Entry. I always think of it as one of the most joyful events in the gospels…yet Jesus wept during it. Why did He weep? Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they missed the day of their visitation. A missed visitation has consequences: within forty years Jerusalem would be destroyed. Jesus wept over Jerusalem’s impending doom.

Nevertheless it was a triumphal entry. A king coming to claim His kingdom. The coronation would be on Friday. But this triumphal entry was different as would be the coronation. This king rode a donkey’s colt, not a white stallion. And on Friday the king’s crown would not be made of gold, but of thorns.

Jesus came in the way of humility and won His Kingdom on a cross. What a mystery. Among those who did recognize the King were blind beggars whom He had healed like Bartimaeus and rich and powerful elites like Nicodemus. Did Bartimaeus and Nicodemus stand side by side and shout, Hosanna! together? Many missed their visitation, but not all did. Some knew that God was up to something. Among those who knew something divine was happening, a movement would be born a week later that would change the world.

CROSS…MYSTERY…ECLECTIC…COMMUNITY…REVOLUTION.

Day 39

John 20 & 21

John gives us some of the same reports of the resurrection as Matthew, Mark and Luke; e.g. the women at the tomb seeing angels and later meeting the risen Lord, and Jesus appearing to the disciples in the evening. But John, as is his wont, also gives us things no other gospel writer reports; most notably a detailed account of a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus in Galilee. I call this episode, “Breakfast with Jesus.”

The “breakfast with Jesus” encounter centers around Peter. I think Peter had mixed emotions after the resurrection. Of course Peter was glad that Jesus was alive, but don’t forget that on the night of Jesus’ betrayal, Peter had failed miserably. Peter and John and followed Jesus after His arrest to the house of Caiaphas…John following closely and Peter lagging further behind. Because John came from a prominent family which was well known to the high priest, he was able to gain admittance into the courtyard. John then made a request on Peter’s behalf, and he also was allowed into the courtyard. And that’s where it happened. The denial. Not once, not twice, but three times…and with an oath…Peter denied Christ.

Remember that John was there when Peter’s courage failed and was a witness to what happened. Even as an old man John remembered certain aspects of that night in vivid detail. John remembered that is was cold. Most April nights in Jerusalem are cold — often in the forties or colder. And John remembers there was a fire built in the courtyard — a fire of coals. It’s one word in Greek: anthrakia. This is only used twice in the New Testament and it means a bed of hot coals. The kind of fire that is good to warm yourself by on a cold night. And it was while Peter stood around the hot fire of coals on a cold night that he three times denied Jesus.

And the rooster crowed.

And Peter went out and wept bitterly.

Yes, Jesus was alive…but where did Peter stand with Him. Peter wasn’t sure. As Jesus had instructed them, the disciples had left Jerusalem and returned to Galilee. To do what? Who knows? They were just waiting…something Peter was never very good at. Finally Peter couldn’t stand it and said, “I’m going fishing.”

So Peter and six other fishermen/apostles spent the night fishing. Peter was a successful professional fisherman, so this didn’t happen very often, but that night they caught nothing. Nada, nunca, zip, zilch. It had happened once before. Three years earlier on the night before Jesus called Peter to be His disciple. Deja vu.

In the morning there’s a man on the shore asking if they have any fish. No. He gives some advise and they catch 153 big ones! John says, “It’s the Lord!” And Peter swims to Jesus (I wonder if he thought, “One time I walked on water to be with Jesus.”?). When they had hauled the catch ashore, Jesus called them to breakfast and when they came they found…a fire of coals. An anthrakia. That bed of coals. Jesus had recreated the scene of the crime. I’m quite sure that Peter ate his breakfast with a troubled mind.

After breakfast there was a conversation between Jesus and Peter. It went like this.*

* This is an interpretive and dramatized paraphrase of their conversation. It will help you catch an often overlooked, but very important element in their conversation. Though most English translations use the word “love” six times in their conversation, there are actually two different Greek words used in their conversation (agapao twice, phileo four times) and they have different meanings.

Jesus: Simon son of Jonah, do you really have a greater love for Me than the rest of these disciples do?

Peter: Lord, You know I’m your friend.

Jesus: Feed My sheep.

Jesus: Simon son of Jonah, do you have unfailing love for Me?

Peter: Lord, You know I’m your friend.

Jesus: Take care of My sheep.

Jesus: Simon son of Jonah, are you my friend?

Peter: (Very upset) Lord, You know everything and You know I’m your friend!

Jesus: Feed My sheep.

(Jesus and Peter talk some more)

Jesus: Follow Me.

Do you say what Jesus did? Three times Peter had denied Jesus (after boasting that the others might, but he never would). So three times Jesus made Peter profess His friendship. Peter couldn’t claim to have unfailing love for Jesus — because he had failed — but Peter could honestly confess that he was a friend of Jesus. And this was enough. Jesus restored Peter and than repeated His original call: “Follow Me.”

The call remains the same…even when we fail.

Thank you, Jesus.

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This completes our journey through the gospels. Tomorrow we enter our Holy Week journey with Jesus. I’m very excited about it! It will be life changing…I guarantee!

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. See you in church. Come ready to shout HOSANNA (yashana).

BZ

Day 38

John 18 & 19

What is truth?

This was Pilate’s cynical question of Jesus. I know it was cynical because Pilate didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, Pilate turned around, walked out of the Praetorium and told the chief priests, “I find no fault in him at all.”

But Pilate knew there was truth. The truth is just what Pilate told the chief priests: There is no fault in Jesus.

Pilate assumed there was truth whether he admitted it or not. He was a judge and he was adjudicating the case of Jesus of Nazareth; Pilate acknowledged there are such things as fault and innocence, which presumes the reality of truth. Three times Pilate told Jesus’ accusers, “I find no fault in Him.” And at the end of the trial Pilate protested his own innocence by washing his hands and saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just man.”

Do you see it? When it suited him Pilate could pretend that truth was elusive and maybe non-existent, but he also used words like “fault” and “innocent” and “just” — all of which presume the reality of truth. People do this all the time. They shrug their shoulders and quip, “What is truth?” But then they protest their own innocence and assign fault when it suits them. They are not being honest with themselves.

That was Pilate’s biggest problem — he wasn’t honest with himself. Jesus had told Pilate, “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” For those who are honest with themselves, the words of Jesus always ring true. As we examine the life of Jesus we find no fault in Him. We know that Jesus is a just and true man. But if we are not honest with ourselves, we play a dangerous game of self-deception. “What is truth?” And walk away from Jesus.

Pilate died of suicide.

Self-deception can create such inner incongruence that we can’t stand to live with ourselves.

Salvation begins first with honesty. We must admit that, not only is Jesus without fault, but that we are not innocent. We must be honest with ourselves; we must face the truth and admit that we are not innocent no matter how much we wash our hands and protest that we are. I imagine Pilate in hell forever washing his hands, forever protesting his innocence and forever lying to himself. An eternal suicide from which there is no escape.

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Jesus dead on the cross.

In John chapter 19 Jesus dies at verse 30. Jesus is taken down from the cross at verse 40. In verses 31-39 Jesus is dead on the cross. The events of these nine verses involve two requests of Pilate and two trips between Calvary and the Antonia Fortress. These events would have taken at the very least an hour, and maybe more.

For at least an hour the body of the Son of God was dead upon the cross. Force yourself to look upon this sight. It is holy and profane, beautiful and ugly, all at the same time. This is a great and sacred mystery to meditate upon. Jesus dead on the cross. What had happened? Jesus had absorbed this sin of the world into His own body on the tree — and it killed Him. Jesus took the bullet.

Oswald Chamber calls this the collision of God and sin.

The Collision of God and Sin

“Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.” (1 Peter 2:24).

The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of God’s judgment on sin. Never associate the idea of martyrdom with the Cross of Christ. It was the supreme triumph, and it shook the very foundations of hell. There is nothing in time or eternity more absolutely certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross — He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right-standing relationship with God. He made redemption the foundation of human life; that is, He made a way for every person to have fellowship with God.

The Cross was not something that happened to Jesus — He came to die; the Cross was His purpose in coming. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The incarnation of Christ would have no meaning without the Cross. Beware of separating “God was manifested in the flesh” from “He made Him to be sin for us” (1 Timothy 3:16; 2 Corinthians 5:21). The purpose of the incarnation was redemption. God came in the flesh to take sin away, not to accomplish something for Himself. The Cross is the central event in time and eternity, and the answer to all the problems of both.

The Cross is not the cross of a man, but the Cross of God, and it can never be fully comprehended through human experience. The Cross is God exhibiting His nature. It is the gate through which any and every individual can enter into oneness with God. But it is not a gate we pass right through; it is one where we abide in the life that is found there.

The heart of salvation is the Cross of Christ. The reason salvation is so easy to obtain is that it cost God so much. The Cross was the place where God and sinful man merged with a tremendous collision and where the way to life was opened. But all the cost and pain of the collision was absorbed by the heart of God.

–Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

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I’m spending the day getting ready for tonight’s message…

The Devout and Supernatural Life

This is an important word in preparation for the coming Holy Week.

I hope you can be with me in church tonight.

Blessings,

BZ

Day 37

John 16 & 17

We are in the Upper Room. It’s a cool spring night and there’s a chill in the air. The room is lit by flickering lamps. It’s getting late and we feel a little bit tired. Judas left about an hour ago. We don’t know why he left, but with his departure the mood in the room changed. Since Judas left Jesus has begun to talk more. He has been speaking very seriously and very deeply about several things; like a helper coming whom He calls the Spirit of Truth and a sorrow that is coming which will be turned into joy. One of the disciples speaks up and says,

“Now we are sure that You know all things, and have no need that anyone should question You. By this we believe that you came forth from God.”

But Jesus’ response is less than enthusiastic,

“Do you now believe?”

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It’s easy to get overconfident about our faith. We hear a good sermon on faith, we get pumped up about believing God and we’re sure we’ve finally got this faith thing down. Yeah, down to a science. But the problem is it’s not a science. It’s a life. The Bible doesn’t say the just shall know by faith, but the just shall live by faith. Abraham’s faith, David’s faith, Peter’s faith, Paul’s faith was a life of faith that they lived — not an inert doctrine of faith they merely adhered to. Your faith is not validated until you’ve lived it through the fire.

The disciples in the Upper Room asserting they believed would indeed come to really believe, but it wouldn’t be until after they spectacularly failed. Yet the occasional spectacular faith failure is part of the learning process in the authentic life of faith. So be slow to assert how strong your faith is because you know something or heard something or read something — wait until you lived something. This is the real faith.

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John chapter 17 is known as Jesus’ high priestly prayer.

One of the great insights from this majestic and mystical prayer is the eternal love between the Father and the Son and Jesus’ knowledge of His eternal pre-incarnate existence with the Father. Consider verses 5 and 24…

And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

The Son is the divine Word who was with the Father in eternity past and through whom God created all things. The Second Person of the Trinity is the Wisdom referred to in Proverbs 8. Read this passage and understand it as the Eternal Son mysteriously describing His relationship with the Father in eternity and active with Him in creation (Proverbs 8:22-30)…

The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
I have been established from everlasting,
From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills, I was brought forth;
While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields,
Or the primal dust of the world.
When He prepared the heavens, I was there,
When He drew a circle on the face of the deep,
When He established the clouds above,
When He strengthened the fountains of the deep,
When He assigned to the sea its limit,
So that the waters would not transgress His command,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth,
Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him.

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Something funny and sad happened yesterday.

The doorbell rang. I answered it. A man and his daughter were standing there with Bibles in hand. When he looked at me he seemed a bit startled.

Him: “Hello, my name is so and so and we are from the Jehovah’s Witnesses…and you’re, you’re Pastor Zahnd.”

(the poor soul looking very nervous)

Me: “Sir, I perceive you are a prophet.”

(laughter)

We had an interesting conversation about the deity of Jesus (me believing it, him not).

I was very polite to him, and if I can say so, I even went sort of easy on him. Not because I have any sympathy for JW’s and their Jesus-is-not-God-and-nobody-is-saved-but-us-and-we’re-going- to-get-to-heaven-by-knocking-on-doors-and-annoying-people false religion, but because his daughter was there and I didn’t have the heart to embarrass him in front of her. I did give them some things to think about. Like I said, it was funny and sad. May God open their hearts to the truth.

Day 36

John 14 & 15

John 14 and 15 are a treasury of some of the most cherished words of Jesus. Consider what precious gems are found in these two famous chapters:

The promise of a place prepared in heaven.
In my Father’s house are many mansions…I go to prepare a place for you.

The promise of another Helper — the Holy Spirit.
I will pray the father and He will give you another Helper that He may abide with you forever.

The Promise of perfect peace.
Peace I leave you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

The call to abide in the vine and bear fruit.
I am the true vine. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me.

The new commandment of the new covenant.
This is My command, that you love one another as I have loved you.

The greatest love of all.
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends.

These words have brought immeasurable comfort to countless Christians for two thousand years. When Pope John Paul II lay dying a year ago, he asked that these chapters from the Gospel of John be read to him. Millions of Christians through the centuries have done the same.

When Jesus spoke these words in the Upper Room, He was a dying man, and He knew it. Jesus knew that before the sun would set again He would be dead on a cross; so He speaks with the urgency of a dying man. These words of transcendent truth come rushing out of Him as He tries to pack each moment of His final meeting with His disciples before His death with meaning.

What stands out the most to me from Jesus’ “last will and testament” is the exchange He has with Thomas. Jesus is telling His disciples that He is going to prepare them a place and that they know where He is going and they know the way to get there. When Thomas protests that they don’t know the way, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

These words belong to the category of words that can only be spoken by Jesus without them sounding like unmitigated egotism or sheer lunacy. Try to place these words in the mouth of any other great sage or leader and see how it comes across. Could Plato or Lincoln or Gandhi utter such words? Of course not. Muhammad could claim to be a prophet and Buddha could claim to know a way, but they could not dare to make the audacious claim of being the Way, the Truth and the Life. That these words “fit” in the mouth of Jesus — and only Jesus — is another testimony to the fact that He is the only begotten Son of God.

Day 35

John 11-13

Is the raising of Lazarus (four days dead!) Jesus’ greatest miracle? Maybe. Walking on water, calming the storm, feeding the multitudes would also be contenders. But if the raising of Lazarus is not definitively Jesus’ greatest miracle, it is definitely His most emotional miracle. I see emotions in Jesus in this miracle that I don’t see when He raised the widow of Nain’s son and Jairus’s daughter. And when Jesus exercised dominion over the elements, He seemed almost nonchalant about it. But there’s nothing nonchalant in Jesus’ demeanor in the raising of Lazarus. Instead, Jesus is troubled, He groans, He cries — in a word, Jesus is upset. I’m not sure we’ve seen this side of Jesus before.

Why was Jesus upset? Was it because Lazarus , Martha and Mary were His friends? Surely that must be part of it. On the other hand, Jesus knew what He was going to do days before He arrived in Bethany. He knew He was going to resurrect Lazarus and turn their mourning into dancing. So something deeper must have been going on. I think Jesus wept for the billions of times people gather at a grave and shed bitter tears. Jesus fully entered into the greatest sorrows of the human race.

This is why Jesus came: That death might not be eternally the victor and the grave might not be forever cruel. As a token of the victory that was to be, Jesus called Lazarus back to the land of the living.

And the crowd went wild.

But the Pharisees reacted to the news of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead with this astonishingly hard-hearted response: “If we let Him go on like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.” The Pharisees were never interested in finding the Messiah, they just wanted preserve their petty little positions. Pathetic.

But then something strange…

Without knowing what he was doing, the high priest, Caiaphas, from the anointing incumbent upon his office, began to prophesy, “You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people.”

With John chapter 12 we enter the final week before the Crucifixion.

In Bethany Jesus is at a meal where Lazarus, Martha and Mary are present. Lazarus had been buried for four days before he was recalled to life. Lazarus had just returned from death. Jesus was headed resolutely toward death. At the meal Mary anointed Jesus for His impending burial. Like Caiaphas, she too was unwittingly prophetic.

May the lament of the Pharisees in John 12:19 be an unwitting prophecy of what we will see in these last days: “Look, the world has gone after Him.”

Jesus intentionally prophesied by what death He would die when He said, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.” And if we will left up the gospel message of Jesus and Him crucified, He will draw people to Himself.

Much of John 13 centers around the drama of Judas’ betrayal.

When Judas entered willfully into the black hole of damning hypocrisy by sharing a covenant meal with Jesus while intending to betray Him, he unwittingly fulfilled the prophecy of Psalm 41:7…

Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted
Who ate my bread,
Has lifted up his heel against me.

At that moment Satan entered Judas.

And then these chilling words…

“Having received the piece of bread, he then went out immediately.
And it was night.”

Indeed it was. Judas had departed into a dark night from which he would never return.

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Song in my head today…

Lone Pilgrim
by B.F. White and Adger M. Pace

I came to the place where the lone pilgrim lay,
And pensively stood by his tomb,
When in a low whisper I heard something say:
How sweetly I sleep here alone.

The tempest may howl and the loud thunder roar
And gathering storms may arise,
But calm is my feeling, at rest is my soul,
The tears are all wiped from my eyes.

The cause of my Master compelled me from home,
No kindred or relative nigh.
I met the contagion and sank to the tomb,
My soul flew to mansions on high.

Go tell my companion and children most dear
To weep not for me now I’m gone.
The same hand that led me through seas most severe
Has kindly assisted me home.

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I’m really looking forward to the Delirious? concert at Word of Life tonight.

I hope to see you there.

Death conquered though we slumber,
Seven is the perfect number.

BZ