The Most Beautiful Word You Can Hear From Jesus

 

 

“She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!”” (John 20:14 – 16).

 

O to hear Jesus speak our name! To hear Him speak my name to me, for you to hear Him speak your name to you. Mary’s eyes did not know that she was looking at Jesus, she thought Him to be a gardener. But her ears! Her ears! She knew His voice!

 

How her heart leapt. How her face beamed. How her pulse quickened. How a fountain of joy and delight welled up within her soul. It was as if she, herself, was coming out of a tomb, a tomb of despair, of grief, of confusion, of a broken heart. While an angel rolled away the stone of the tomb where the body of Jesus lay, Jesus rolled away the stone of grief and despair from Mary’s heart.

 

Does not Jesus say in John 10:3 – 4 that the Shepherd of the sheep “calls His own sheep by name…and the sheep follow Him because they know His voice”?

 

O dear, dear friends. The most beautiful word you or I will ever hear from the lips of Jesus Christ is when He calls us by our name. He calls us by our name because He knows us and loves us and draws us to Himself. He calls us by name because we are His sisters and brothers (ought we not to know the names of our siblings?). He calls us by name because for the “joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame.”

 

O beloved, you are the joy set before Him, I am the joy set before Him, we are His joy and delight. Just as we love to hear Him speak our name, so He loves to speak our name – for we love to utter the names of those we love and who can fathom the love of Jesus for you, for me, for us?

 

 Can you hear the joy in His voice as He says, “Mary”? Can you hear the laughter, the delight, the glory? If we love to surprise people with good things and good news, how much more did Jesus love to surprise Mary with the Resurrection! Now my friends…there is indeed a surprise…and what a waste it would be if Jesus did not enjoy it!

 

Listen…listen ever so quietly…can you hear Him? Can you hear Jesus speaking to you? Can you hear Jesus saying your name?

 

When you do, you will realize that it is the most beautiful word that you will ever hear from His lips.

 

Listen.

Barabbas or Jesus?

 

 

“They cried out all together, saying, “Away with this man, and release for us Barabbas!” (He was one who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection made in the city, and for murder.)” Luke 23:18 – 19.

 

“The chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to put Jesus to death.” Matthew 27:20.

 

From Palm Sunday to Good Friday is less than a week, we can measure the days. Can we measure the chasm between shouting, “Hosanna. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” and then crying out, “Crucify Him! Give us Barabbas and crucify Jesus!”? Can we plumb the depths of this chasm…the depths of our own souls?

 

How is it conceivable that the crowds who were shouting “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday and rolling out the red carpet for Jesus to enter Jerusalem, within less than a week were ushering Jesus out of Jerusalem onto the blood red way of the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha?

 

And what shall we say of the priests and elders? These holy men were, on the one hand, preparing to celebrate Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and on the other hand were lying and scheming to ensure the murder of Jesus.

 

These leaders of the people were inciting the people to cry, “Give us Barabbas! Crucify Jesus!” The religious and civil leaders were teaching the people to choose between the Lamb of God and a murderer and insurrectionist – they were calling the people to choose death over life, murder over peace, hate over love.

 

Pilate saw the insanity. Do we?

 

The challenge of celebrating Palm Sunday is to look in the mirror on Good Friday. Those who were shouting “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday were crying out, “Give us Barabbas and crucify Jesus!” on Good Friday.

 

When we choose insurrection, we reject the Lamb of God. When we justify insurrection, we align ourselves with Satan. Jesus tells us that Satan is a murderer.

 

The chief priests and elders taught the people to cry, “Give us Barabbas and crucify Jesus!” on one of the holiest days of the year, Passover. How is this possible? How could they not see what they were doing?

 

Jesus says that “My Kingdom is not of this world.”

 

We say, “We have no king but Caesar.”

 

The spirit of Barabbas, the spirit of insurrection, is the spirit of the “man of lawlessness” (2 Thess. 3:3).

 

“Another horn, a little one, came up among them, and three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots before it; and behold, this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth uttering great boasts” (Daniel 7:8).

 

“He will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law, and they will be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time” (Daniel 7:25).

 

“Out of one of them came forth a rather small horn which grew exceedingly great…It grew up to the host of heaven and caused some of the host and some of the stars to fall to the earth, and it trampled them down. It even magnified itself to be equal with the Commander of the host; and it removed the regular sacrifice from Him, and the place of His sanctuary was thrown down…and it will fling truth to the ground and perform its will and prosper” (Daniel 8:9 – 13).

 

“A king will arise, insolent and skilled in intrigue, his power will be mighty, but not by his own power, and he will destroy to an extraordinary degree and prosper and perform his will; He will destroy mighty men and the holy people, and through his shrewdness he will cause deceit to succeed by his influence; and he will magnify himself in his heart, and he will destroy many while they are at ease, he will even oppose the Prince of Princes, but he will be broken without human agency” (Daniel 8:23 – 25).

 

“Then the king will do as he pleases, and he will exalt himself above every god and will speak monstrous things against the God of gods…” (Daniel 11:36).

 

“Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God (2 Thess. 2:3 – 4).

 

“There was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies…and he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme His name and His tabernacle, that is, those who dwell in heaven” (Revelation 13:5 – 6).

 

I am puzzled how professing Christians can cry, “Give us Barabbas,” ignoring the fact that to do so is to also cry, “Crucify Jesus!”

 

On the Feast of Passover the religious leaders led their people to crucify Jesus by the hands of the Romans. The same thing can happen with professing Christians.

 

All but a few worshipped the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 3). Do we seriously think things are different today?

 

Can we not hear Jesus saying, “My Kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36)?

 

Perhaps the only real question on Good Friday is whether the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ is enough for us, whether He is our All in all. Perhaps the question is whether we belong to Jesus, and only to Jesus.

 

Yes, I think that is it.

 

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).