Our Great Temptation

 

 

“From that time Jesus began to point out to His disciples that it was necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem and to suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and to be killed, and to be raised up on the third day. And yet Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You!” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s purposes, but men’s.”” Matthew 16:21 – 23.

 

The things we think are good can be bad, very bad.

 

“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6).

 

Suppose Jesus had heeded Peter’s words and gone along with Peter’s plan to spare Him suffering and death? Where would we be?

 

Look closely at Peter’s words. “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” Peter is both rebuking God and invoking God. In the Name of God Peter is opposing God. In the Name of God Peter is playing the role of Satan.

 

Consider that this passage is preceded by Peter’s glorious confession of Jesus as the Christ. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). This was revealed to Peter by the Father (16:17).

 

One minute Peter is receiving revelation from the Father and confessing that Jesus is the Messiah, the next minute Peter is playing the role of Satan invoking the Name of God.

 

Peter was tempting Jesus and Jesus responds, “You are a stumbling block to Me.” We may think of Jesus’s temptation in the Wilderness (Matthew 3), we may think of Jesus struggling in Gethsemane, but do we think of Jesus facing the temptation that Peter presents Him with in the words, “God forbid!”?

 

The temptation is to spare Himself. The temptation is to think that perhaps the Father has another way, a way other than the Cross. Maybe Peter has special insight, after all the Father has just given him revelation concerning Jesus as the Christ, maybe the Father is giving Peter insight into a way other than the Cross.

 

But Jesus knows the Way of the Father, the Way of the Cross; from before the foundation of the world He has been the Lamb slain, destined to be both Priest and Sacrifice. Jesus loves us too much to love Himself more. Jesus will become a curse for us so that we might be freed from death and live by the life of God. Jesus will be made sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus will “taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9) so that we may “pass out of death into life” (John 5:24).

 

Are we tempted to say to Jesus, “God forbid!”?

 

Is the idea that Jesus must suffer and be rejected by the religious leaders too much for us? Is the thought that Jesus is rejected by the national, political, military, economic, and social powers of this present age too much for us? Have we deceived ourselves into thinking that Jesus can be made palatable to the powers and authorities and peoples of the world – including to our own nation?

 

Let us be clear, “The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). The Gospel is a message of “foolishness” (1 Cor. 1:21); to some it is a stumbling block, to others it is foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23).

 

If we think that the economic and political and national powers of this world, if we think that any system in this world is endorsing Jesus, is following Jesus, is adhering to Jesus, then we are deceived. The Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross bring an end to all things, most especially our egos, our self-centered agendas, our self-glorification, our wars and fightings, our vitriol. The Cross is self-sacrificial, those who follow Christ live cruciform lives – this is not the way of the world, it is not the way of politics or worldly economics or the way of an imperial cult.

 

Nor is it the way of the world’s religion – just as the religious leaders who were supposedly the heirs of Moses engineered the crucifixion of Jesus, so those who are supposedly the heirs of the Gospel often do the opposite but with the identical motive – they seek to keep Jesus off the Cross so that they may keep their lives (and ours!) off the Cross, so that Jesus might not be an offense to them, to us, or to the world.

 

For what follows Jesus’ words, “Get behind Me Satan!”?

 

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every person according to his deeds.”” (Matthew 16:27).

 

In other words, Jesus is saying that just as He is going to the Cross, so we are to go to the Cross (Galatians 2:20). And let us make no mistake, there is shame associated with the Cross of Christ, shame that is repulsive to the world and the powers of the world – shame that offends our religious self-righteousness. Hence the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to “Go outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:13).

 

Our great temptation is to spare ourselves the Cross. It is to avoid the Cross. The temptation of pastors is to spare themselves and their people the Cross, to avoid the call of Jesus that we must deny ourselves, lose our lives, and follow Him. We do not want the Cross to be our way of life, we want success and prestige and comfort and affluence and glittery self-affirming religion to be our way…why we may even fall prey to desiring theological constructs that appeal to our desire for knowledge but avoid the Cross and the Cruciform Life. 

We do not want a Jesus who hangs on a Cross in shame, who eschews the wisdom of the world, who serves the poor, the stranger and immigrant, the unclean, the disenfranchised. We do not want a Jesus who is not a showman.

 

Our great temptation this Holy Week, as it is every week, is to say with Peter, “God forbid it!”

 

“May it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

 

 

 

 

The Cross - Our Way of Life (7)

 

 

“Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Having said this, He breathed His last” (Luke 23:46).

 

We see fellowship restored, our High Priest has offered Himself (Hebrews 9:11 – 10:14), He is both Priest and Sacrifice. We cannot see what transpired when darkness covered the land, but we can see fellowship restored, for the Father has accepted the offering of the Son. Let us always be clear, that on the Cross Jesus was the perfect and complete sacrifice and reconciler, that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor. 5:19).

 

“He [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might be the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). O dear friends, there has never been anything written as precious as this, never anything that so communicates the mystery of the Cross and those dreadful hours when holy darkness covered the land, never anything that comes so close to communicating, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

 

To think that “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son” (Rom. 5:10). To think that “having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life”! (Rom. 5:10).

 

O dear, dear friends, the love of God is overwhelming in its depth, its vastness, its Nature…no wonder Paul writes that he desires us to “know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19).

 

One day you and I will breathe our last. We do not know where we will be, we don’t know the day, we cannot discern the circumstance, we don’t know if the experience will be sudden or prolonged. We don’t know if we will be with friends and family.

 

But we do know two things. We will not be alone, for our Father and Lord Jesus will be with us, as will the blessed Holy Spirit. We also know that we can say, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.”

 

We know this because of God’s Nature, His character (if we can use such a word), His Essence. We know this because Jesus is our perfect and eternal High Priest. We know this because God is love (1 John 4:16).

 

When Jesus says, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit,” He says this not just on His own behalf, but He speaks for us all; He speaks with assurance of His Father’s love so that you and I may speak with assurance of our Father’s love. Does Jesus not teach us to pray, “Our Father”?

 

Paul writes that “We groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven…so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life…Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge” (2 Cor. 5:1 – 5). In other words, we long for that moment when we too will say, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.”

 

As our lives move deeper and deeper into intimacy with God, we sense what Paul was feeling when he wrote, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain…having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better” (Phil. 1:21 – 24).

 

Let us not think that we can be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good, this is foolishness. It is only as we are heavenly minded that we can be of true earthly good, for this world desperately needs to see heaven, to taste heaven, to sense heaven – which is all to experience Jesus. We are citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20), and as citizens of heaven we are called to live. We are children of another world, and as the children of our Father we are to live and we are to die, and dying is but a portal into our eternal home and glorious destiny.

 

One day the Spirit of our Father will call us home; whenever that day is, wherever we may be, whatever the circumstance, it will be a glorious call from the One who loves us beyond measure, from the One who desires us to be with Him and with our brothers and sisters, from the One who has prepared both individual and collective destinies for us – and we will see the Lamb and be enveloped in His glory and love and peace and joy, and every tear will be wiped from our eyes, and there will no longer be any pain…NO PAIN! O hallelujah!

 

And the Name of our God will be written on us, and the Name of the Lamb, and the Name of the Holy City…and O dear friends…O dear dear friends…and we will see His Face! O my, O my, O my…we…you and I…we will see His Face.

 

Now I ask you, how can we not look forward to that day? How can we not long for that glorious day?

 

When Jesus said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit,” He said it for Himself, He said it for you, He said it for me, He said it for us.

 

Let this be our daily prayer of consecration, and our daily prayer of expectation…yes?

 

“Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.”

 

AMEN.

The Cross - Our Way of Life (6)

 

“It is finished!”

 

“And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” (John 19:30).

 

This is, my friends, the watershed of the cosmos, of the ages, of our lives. Before these holy words, before this eternal declaration, this triumphal cry, was proclaimed on earth and in the heavens, you and I had no hope, no ray of sunshine, no possibility of returning to our Father, no remedy for sin and death and wickedness, no expectation that the Sun would arise over the horizon of eternity’s ocean and bring light and life and warmth to our cold dead souls.

 

But now we have the assurance that Jesus Christ has accomplished all on the Cross for us, for His Father; that a holy offering and transaction and healing and redemption has occurred that is beyond our comprehension, but not beyond our experience. Indeed, we are all invited into the experience, into knowing the love of God, the life of God, the mercy and grace of God, the joy of God, the peace of God in Jesus Christ. A Table has been spread and we are invited to live by the Bread of God, the Blood (Life) of God, the essence of God in God the Son, Jesus Christ (John 6:26 – 69).

 

“By this will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time onward until His enemies are made a footstool for His feet. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:10 – 14, NASB).

 

“And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying, “This is the covenant which I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put My laws upon their hearts, and write them on their mind,” He then says, “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will no longer remember.”

 

“Now where there is forgiveness of these things, an offering for sin is no longer required. (Hebrews 10:15 – 18).

 

Do we believe these words, dear friends? Do we believe that Jesus has done all that can be done? Do we believe that Jesus IS all that can be done? Do we believe that we can add nothing to Jesus Christ, nothing to His Person, nothing to His work?

 

Do we realize that “the one who has entered His [God’s} rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His” (Heb. 4:10)?

 

Did not Jesus constantly violate religious notions of the Sabbath in order to demonstrate that He is the true Sabbath? Jesus is our true and lasting rest.

 

Perhaps He challenges us in our own sabbaths? Might it be that most of us have practices or beliefs that we think make us more righteous than those who don’t have those beliefs or engage in those practices? Is it not possible that our distinctive beliefs and practices are sources from which we derive self-righteousness, thinking that God has bestowed a special righteousness on us because of our distinctives?

 

Naturally we would teach against any such notion (or maybe we wouldn’t), which would make the notion all the more dangerous, much like the person who rejoices in his humility.

 

O how I love Paul’s statement that “while we were without strength [while we were helpless!], at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6). We could not help ourselves dear friends; we could not help ourselves then and we cannot help ourselves now – we must trust Jesus Christ for everything. Our righteousness, sanctification, redemption, and wisdom are all found in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:30; Col. 2:1 – 3).

 

We look to the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ for our source of life, our assurance, the ground of our being. Life flows from the Cross, forgiveness streams from the Cross, our old identity is killed on the Cross and we are clothed with the New Person of Jesus Christ (Romans 6; 2 Cor. 5:14 – 21; Gal. 2:20).

 

Our merciful and faithful High Priest is both our priest and sacrifice and His self-offering is completed and perfect – perfecting us in Himself – accepted by the Father, ushering in the “new and living way” into the Holy of Holies, into the koinonia of the Trinity (Heb. 10:19 – 25; John 17).

 

“Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28 – 30).

 

O dear friends, Jesus says to us, “I have done it all. I have paid the price for your sins. I have taken your sinful self into my holy Self and bestowed Myself on yourself to give you a new self, a new identity in Me. I have completed all for you because My Father and I love you and we are bringing you Home to where you belong – in relationship with Us; come Home My daughter, come Home My son, come Home my child.”

 

Is this not a good Day to come Home to Jesus?

 

Is it not a good Day to bring others along with us?