journey onWord with us

Before Friday’s sun set, there was a rush by two to bury the precious One who had just died. Burial on the Sabbath was not an option. There was no plan, but there were two earnest men. Men who followed or sought Jesus secretly. John’s gospel described Joseph of Arimathea, “a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews,” (19:38 – ESV) and Nicodemus as one “who earlier had come to Jesus by night.” (19:39 – ESV) It was Joseph’s plea to Pilate that secured Jesus’ body and Nicodemus’ spices that prepared it for burial. They moved with purpose and great care to honor the burial custom of God’s people and His commandment to keep the Sabbath.

You might be thinking, “But that’s all relative to Crucifixion Day. O, that’s right, the Bible doesn’t say anything about Saturday. So, you’d have to say something about the day before or after the day about which the Bible says nothing.” In reading for today’s writing, I discovered that’s actually not wholly true. At the very end of the chapter just before the chapter that ends the book of Luke, one finds a final sentence in the final verse that for me—until now—had gone unnoticed.

On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.
Luke 23:56b (ESV)

They rested quietly on the Sabbath, as commanded.
Luke 23:56b (MSG)

Perhaps things have not changed for me as fundamentally as the first time I truly noticed Mark 11:11 and the truth that Jesus visited the temple the afternoon before He came to house clean, but the Bible doesn’t say nothing about that specific Sabbath. It tells no story of where Jesus was; it gives no whispers or epics of goings on in the other worldly, but the Bible does say something. The ones who grieved and mourned and ached, honored the Sabbath. In Peter’s excruciating sorrow and shame, he rested. In the deep care and concern for the proper preparation of Jesus’ body (with spices at the ready and no regard for how they’d deal with the huge stone protecting His tomb), the precious women closest to Jesus rested. That’s not nothing. What a meaningful opportunity to join them in that today and wonder about what their rest was like. And join me in using ours to prepare us for the day they didn’t see coming.

“The Man on the middle cross said I could come.” Those soul-gripping, precious words are borrowed from a poignant imagining shared by Allister Begg during a sermon he preached at Baylor University’s inaugural National Preaching Conference in 2019 entitled, “The Message and Power of the Cross.” If you’ve never heard it, run, don’t walk, to watch/listen. Those beautifully imagined words are the essence of the testimony of the repentant “thief.” The one of two who saw Jesus truly that day and entered eternity with nothing more or less than his Savior’s promised permission to come.

Today is all about the Man on the middle cross. It is all about His willing sacrifice in becoming sin in order to pay its price, break its power, and make a way for our rescue and redemption. And yet, sin brought three to that hill far away that day. The two who hung on either side were guilty. They were receiving what they had earned. Their Creator hung between them, wholly innocent and undeserving. He was paying sin’s price in our place.

The criminals were flesh and blood. In the same physical sense, the bread at the sacred meal mere hours before was made by human hands. Yet in the manner the bread was offered as Jesus’ body being broken for us, the two who hung on either side are vivid representations of our two choices—Him or other than Him. The one criminal mocked and rejected. The other, humbled himself in proclaiming Jesus’ innocence and his own guilt. “Remember me,” was all he asked of Jesus.

Jesus answered that criminal’s confess with a certain promise. As was—and is—Jesus’ way, He heard through the words the thief spoke to his wholly believing heart. How can I possibly know that? Jesus’ promise of paradise. The heart of the matter is always a matter of the heart. What had been the matter with that criminal’s heart was forgiven and healed fully in the blink of an eye. The One who was putting sin to death had promised life. The Man on the middle cross was saying he could come.

That beautifully simple sentence is as true for all of us who have believed as it was for the sinner that found himself in Glory the day Jesus died. Nothing more and nothing less than what Jesus did is the only reason we can be in relationship with God here—eternity now—and forever with Him in the eternity to come. O, the thrilling testimony that one criminal has. O, what Jesus did in our place!

It may be a fair assumption that all who’ll read these words have made the heart choice of Him. But if there is even just one who has not yet, know that this writing has also been a praying for your precious heart. Please don’t wait one second more. You don’t have to get things in order, or “get better” to believe in your heart who Jesus is and what He did for you. You don’t have to say specific words. The Bible says, “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9 (HCSB). The thief that deserved death that day spoke his confession and was saved. You can do the same today. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you’d like to talk … or tell us something thrilling!

The Bread of Life would soon be broken for them (and us). In a deeply purposed meal early after sundown in His today, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to His disciples saying, “Take, eat; this is My Body.” (Matthew 26:26b NKJV) That literal bread wasn’t meant to satisfy a hunger, but the Who it represented surely does. That literal bread was given to be a central element in a sacred remembering that invited all people to a table that previously belonged only to God’s chosen people—a people He miraculously delivered from brutal bondage and commanded them and their descendants to remember with the purposed meal Jesus celebrated with them that day.

I could say—and have said—a great deal more about those elements and that meal. But it’s what happened very near after that’s full and vivid in my mind’s eye as I write this year. The day that dawned at sunset would be the most bold and brutal in all of human history. Before the sun set again, the penalty and price of sin would be paid. Half of the plan of rescue and redemption would be complete. “It is finished.” Jesus cried. And, it was.

With all that lay before Him, Jesus chose something that had been at the center of a purposed pattern throughout His earthly life. He chose to go away quietly to be with his Father. At the begin of His purposed walk to the end, Jesus chose prayer. Now, I don’t know about you, but God is still working on my thirst for, and first choice of, prayer. I know I’m not where I used to be, but the words I heard someone speak just a day or so ago spoke the truth of my own heart too many times to count. “I don’t know what else to do. Do you think we should pray?”

For far lesser things I have gone to Jesus second or after all else failed. Jesus never failed in going to his Father first. With all that lay ahead, one might think, how could He not (question mark deliberately omitted). The brutality at the hands of men would be like nothing any other had endured. And that brutality would be nothing by comparison when the time came to become sin and willingly take it to the grave. Take a moment to pause and let that begin to wash over you. He became sin. The sin of all for all time.

The Bread of Life would soon be broken. His precious body and blood willingly offered up for our once and forever redemption and rescue. But first, prayer. May that be our pattern, also, in taking up our cross daily and following Him. But first, prayer.

With a sincere sorry to the woman who seems so central to this particular day in Jesus’ week, I’m choosing instead to draw attention to the truth of two men. There were only ever two sinless men. One was that for what amounted to a handful of breaths in the span of a lifetime. The other would never fail it from birth to death and from out of the grave into the everlasting from whence He came.

God formed the first man from the dust of the ground and filled him with His life-giving breath. God planted a garden and put Adam there, surrounded by beauty our minds couldn’t possibly imagine. In that garden were two prominent trees, one of which would very soon be of particular note to Adam. Very nearly after God placed Adam in the garden and before He saw that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, God issued His very first command:

You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
Genesis 2:16b-17 (ESV)

Tragically, Adam (and Eve) would soon break God’s command and sin entered the world.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned
Romans 5:21 (ESV)

God’s story didn’t stop a chapter or two in. In eternity past there was a knowing. There was always a sinless second. A Man born sinless, who lived sinless and became sin for us in dying in our place. The only One worthy of paying sin’s price. The only One able to defeat sin’s death sentence. Jesus did so by walking out from the tomb. His first exhale breathing life everlasting into us—all of us whose heart believes in Him and what He did.

Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit … The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
I Corinthians 15:45, 47 (ESV)

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
I Corinthians 15:22 (ESV)

Thank you, Jesus, for walking undeterred this week in the direction of the cross, the grave and out from the tomb. Thank you for dying and rising so that I (we) could live, and for going to be with the Father so your Spirit could live within me (us).

I believe God built me with a bent toward the one. Whether it’s speaking, writing, joining, or any number of other things, my sweet spot is an audience of, or presence with, one. So, it will be no surprise, then, from all that can be observed from a jam-packed Tuesday in this week in the life of Jesus, it’s a moment where Jesus stole away to be fully present in observing just one.

I don’t know Jesus’ movements that morning and midday. There is story after story of questions and answers and challenges to and from Jesus. There is an assumption of crowds or groups that surrounded Him from multiple pages that chronicle His Tuesday. But there are a couple of clues from the NKJV reading of Mark’s gospel that have Him, in my mind’s eye, stealing away in this particular moment.

The four verses that end chapter twelve begin with these two words, “Now Jesus.” That seems to suggest some manner of break from the previous. Yes, it could just be a clarification of the spot where He was already sitting, but then there are the first several words that begin the third verse in that passage. “So He called His disciples to Himself…” (v.43a) These two little bits—perhaps influenced by my personal bent—have me imagining a discreet slipping away from where He’d been.

There is another detail anchored in one word that draws me deeper in. The passage’s second verse (42) begins this way, “Then…” From this, I believe it’s right to imagine Jesus arriving at the spot “opposite the treasury” ahead of the poor widow. Why does that make a difference? Because, for me, it exponentially emphasizes the importance, beauty and meaning in that moment. What “Then” speaks to me is Jesus knowing exactly when His beloved daughter would be at the treasury box. And of all the other places He could be and people He could be with, He chose her.

Can you see the warmth and anticipation in Jesus’ heart as he stole away? Can you see His knowing and loving eyes as He found a seat and waited. Can you hear what His voice sounded like when “He called His disciples to Himself…”?  I believe there were childlike qualities in the expressions and emotions of our fully God, fully man Savior. I feel them—with my whole self—in this scene.

The poor widow with the rich heart. The one who gave all in giving two. There’s rich application here. There’s deliberate attention drawn by our Savior to the poor widow, but let’s choose to see our Savior most in this moment. The One “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Philippians 2:6 ESV). The One who would give His all for us, stealing away to find the very best spot from which to wait and watch the one who gave her all to Him.

The day before Tuesday, in this most meaningful of weeks, was a two’s day. What the Bible tells of the activity of this day centers on a tree and a temple, and at the heart of the matter with both was their two-faced truth. I’ve often written about the shocking curse Jesus gave to the fig tree they “happened upon” as they started for Jerusalem the morning after parade day. I’ve written equally about His temple tirade (that understood rightly encompasses a quiet, deliberate visit the day before to take full stock of how God’s house of prayer had been corrupted). What I see uniquely this year is the single sentence that centered on the two-faced ones Jesus was most at odds with during His public ministry. The religious “leaders” who closely resembled the tree that gave the appearance of fruit and the temple that had come to stand a bit too proudly and loudly for something it was never intended to be.

Then the chief priests and the scribes heard it and started looking for a way to destroy Him.
Mark 11:18a

Two-faced. An adjective describing a person, place or thing. Deceitful or hypocritical—its dictionary definition. The sandal that surely fits the aforementioned “leaders,” does it not? I’m currently reading a book (Smoke on the Mountain by Joy Davidman) whose author says this about a hypocrite:

You can usually tell when a hypocrite has been sinning; he denounces that sin in public—and in somebody else. The mere halfhearted sinner may try to wriggle out of his guilt by some verbal quibble; he hasn’t really lied to his wife about how he spent the week end, he just hasn’t told her all the truth. But the real, thoroughgoing, incarnate lie of a Pharisee covers his guilt by trumpeting loudly about his virtue; he comes forward boldly and denounces her for lying to Mrs. Jones about that horrid new hat.

Sound anything like the ones with whom Jesus found himself most at odds? Sound anything like me? The latter is a question I should be quick to accept and engage honestly, lest I think myself to be fundamentally different than the Pharisee (the declaration in Luke 18:11 comes immediately to mind).

What must the disciples have thought about the bold curse of a fig tree mere moments after finishing breakfast and starting out on their way to Jerusalem? And what must the temple goers have thought about the thrashing about of the Man who sat lowly, riding on a small donkey just the day before? Yet, this is how God’s anger responds to deliberate deception—the plain and simple murder of truth. It was a really bad day for the two-faced. It was a profoundly meaningful day for those who turn their eyes upon the only one face of their precious Savior.

He knew it was time. It wasn’t that every other day before was lived on the periphery of His central purpose—every day for our Savior was a purposed and deliberate step in the direction of where He’d now drawn near. Setting out from His home base of Bethany would be His pattern as this week began. A pattern in going and returning from appointments God the Father had set in eternity past. Today, at a purposed pause very near the capital city already abuzz, Jesus gave clear instructions to two. His entry would only be triumphant in its reception. His part would be exceedingly humble. His will was set. His will was his Father’s.

I expect there were ones in the crowd that day who had eyes to see. Although, I feel certain they couldn’t have known how quickly and violently the shouts of “Hosanna!” would turn to “Crucify!” I wonder whether the seeing ones were uneasy about how much of that day didn’t fit with the Jesus they’d experienced. Surely, they wouldn’t have believed His silence was acceptance, nor that His ride into town was meant for either adulation or a coronation.

What seems crystal clear from the biblical account, is how striking the difference was between His will and that of the thirsty throng. “Save us!” they cried. “Save us from hundreds and hundreds of years of brutal torment, exile and oppression!” But the rescue they longed for was from suffering at the hands of flesh and blood oppressors. The rescue Jesus would give, in the sacrifice of his flesh and blood, was from sin and death itself. They longed for a rescue from right now. He was here for a rescue that would be forever, world without end.

Lest we judge the ancients wrongly, can we attest to the moments and seasons of our own lives that are not wholly unlike that day (question mark deliberately omitted). The moments and seasons where we desired or expected Jesus to be or do something that wasn’t His will. In those moments and seasons, what kind of king were we hoping for?

In drawing attention to the two disparate wills, I do not intent to personalize a “lesson.” Walking deliberately through this week should not first—or most—draw attention to applications for our own lives. It should cast the brightest light on the Light of the World and what He deliberately walked through for us. The point is a Person. Our Savior. God With Us. May we find the space and time this week to see Him more. And in the same way He emptied Himself to save us, may we empty ourselves so He can fill us and use us for His will.

As He rode into the city that day, Jesus was not arriving for, He was submitting to. He hadn’t come there for a crown; He had an appointment with a cross … and He wouldn’t be late, and He wouldn’t be deterred. His will was set. His will was his Father’s.

It is my solemn privilege to renew what has been a mostly annual return to writing during a week that has deep meaning to every believer and offers an unfailing hope to all. Why things feel more labored as I sit and ask the Spirit to speak, I honestly cannot say. In one string of moments, ideas flood and a pattern seems clear and good. And then, all at once, nothing. But a nothing that suddenly becomes a something that brings doubt and a wrestle with the things that not so long ago felt right and sure.

And so I let go of a desire for things to feel certain. I let go of a thing that sometimes takes no time at all to subtly and suddenly become mine and not His. Your words, Father. Thank you for this privilege of pushing all else aside and walking intentionally through this week your Son walked intentionally through for us. Thank you to you each and all for your time and intention in reading and walking alongside with me.

In His dying and rising again love,
Mark