The Vicars Husband

[Day 197]

Matthew 27.19;25

While Pilate was sitting on the judge’s bench, his wife sent word to him, ’Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for today I’ve suffered terribly in a dream because of Him!’ … All the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’

I saw a thing on the internet recently.  The world famous and brilliant violinist, Joshua Bell, takes out his violin and starts playing in a tube station in Washington DC during rush hour.  As he plays, crowds of people rush past paying no attention at all.  Only one person stops and listens.  She realises who he is and recognises that listening to him is worth waiting for.

Much of the run up to Good Friday is about recognition.  Some people recognise who Jesus is – like Simon of Cyrene or the centurion as Jesus dies.  Others fail to – like the scheming priests and elders, the vicious soldiers or cruel Herod.

In these verses, Pilate’s wife recognises that Jesus is a righteous man.  She sees something of who Jesus is.

But the crowd, baying for Jesus’ blood, simply doesn’t recognise who He is, and demand the death of an innocent man.

There is such a lesson in here for today.  And not just for the busy non-Christians who don’t recognise who Jesus is.

It’s also for Christians who do recognise who Jesus is but who choose not to stop and wait and enjoy being in His presence, listening to Him, being transported by Him away from the things of the world to the reality of heaven itself.

Even, or especially in the busy-ness of our lives, we need to be prepared to stop and wait and recognise the Lord at work and to enjoy seeing our lives and the lives of others being transformed.

What is God saying?

I believe that God is saying: 

Where is God at work?

[Day 196]

John 18.22

When Jesus had said these things, one of the temple police standing by slapped Jesus, saying, ‘Is that the way you answer the high priest?’

I’m sure that the temple policeman thought that he was doing the right thing.  After all, here was a man daring to insult the very core of the Jewish faith.  He probably thought that Jesus ought to show more respect to the status quo of religion. 

Why, he probably reasoned, doesn’t this man recognise the great status of the high priest and submit before his authority?

What, of course, is deeply ironic, is that the policeman doesn’t recognise that Jesus is not just on the same level as the high priest, but He is the One who created the whole cosmos.

But despite His immense power, Jesus allows Himself to be ridiculed, slapped, beaten up and crucified. 

Why?  Well, Jesus recognised exactly who the high priest was – and that salvation for the Jews and for all of humanity could never come from a mere human being, however well connected or high up the greasy priestly pole he was. 

He knew that He, the Son of Man, would have to die as the perfect sacrifice for sin, to reconcile humanity with God.

We are often caught between worshipping Jesus Christ and bowing in supplication to those the world sees as being important, or even those the Church would put on pedestals, whether bishops or big conference speakers.  But, like Jesus, we need to keep our eyes focused on the job in hand, on worshipping only God – even if others lash out at us and don’t recognise what we’re doing.

What is God saying?

I believe that God is saying: 

Get right back to basics – worship and enjoy God’s presence

I’m taking a break to concentrate on a couple of speaking commitments – but plan to be blogging again at the start of November.

[Day 195]

John 16.5-7

“But now I am going away to Him who sent Me, and not one of you asks Me, ‘Where are you going?’  Yet, because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.  Nevertheless, I am telling you the truth.  It is for your benefit that I go away, because if I don’t go away the Counsellor will not come to you…”

Sometimes when Sarah or I leave the room, Annabella gets very upset.  More often than not, it’s because we’ve gone to get something to make her life easier, or to satisfy her thirst, hunger or to get something to entertain her. 

All she can focus on, however, is not that something good is about to come, but that we have left.

So it is with Jesus’ disciples.  They are deeply saddened and upset that Jesus is about to go.  But because they are focused on His departure, they fail to ask the question, ‘Where are you going?’

If they could have grasped Jesus’ destination, then they would have realised that the Holy Spirit had been promised to them.  Once Jesus has gone, then the Holy Spirit can come.

And the Holy Spirit brings conviction of sin, righteousness and judgement, as Jesus goes on to explain.  All these things offer us fallen human beings a chance to repent and turn back to the Lord.

Because Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, we are welcomed into His presence, not because of who we are, but because of who He is. 

Yes, it was tragically sad for the disciples to lose their closest friend and teacher, a young man, killed unjustly and prematurely.  And yet, it is only through Jesus’ death and resurrection that we are welcomed into heaven itself.

What is God saying?

I believe that God is saying: 

Remember that we are made righteous only through Jesus Christ – but we are indeed made righteous

[Day 194]

John 14.23;31

Jesus answered, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word.  My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him… I am going away so that the world may know that I love the Father.  Just as the Father commanded Me, so I do.

What a contrast between the world and God’s kingdom.  Jesus tells His disciples that He is about to leave them.  But He tells them not to be upset or distressed because He will remain with them through the Holy Spirit. 

Moreover, He wants them to know in advance so that when it happens, they will believe.

The warning is that ‘the ruler of the world is coming’ (verse 30).  But rather than be worried, Jesus goes on to say, “He has no power over Me.”

When the world believed that Jesus was dead, Jesus’ disciples could have recalled these sentences.  If they had, they would have found His words staggering and wonderful. 

Everything that Satan had, he threw at Jesus – even death itself.  But that had no power over Jesus.  He went to the cross in full obedience to His Heavenly Father so that the world could see that He loved His Heavenly Father.  What an extraordinary love.

And we as Jesus’ followers are called to love Him with all that we have and all that we are.  I hope that as the world sees how much we love Him, that it will see and believe.

We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by loving God.  Nothing that Satan can throw at us can ultimately have any power over us.  And as we love God, then He comes and dwells in us through the Holy Spirit.  Let’s rejoice in that!

What is God saying?

I believe that God is saying: 

Love God and rejoice that He wants to dwell inside you!

[Day 193]

John 13.3-5

Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into His hands, that He had come from God and that He was going back to God.  So He got up from supper, laid aside His robe, took a towel and tied it around Himself.  Next, He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel tied around Him

Jesus knows that He has set aside heaven itself to come to earth.  He knows that He is about to go back to heaven.  He knows that everything was created through and by and for Him. 

So what does He do on His last night on earth as a human being?  He ties a towel around His waist and washes His disciples’ feet.  The Son of God doing the job of the least.

Simon Peter has a problem with Jesus washing his feet.  And so he should!  Peter is in a bit of a sulk.  The table would have been in the shape of a horse shoe, or like a big U.  The head of the table on the right hand side, second in from the end.  The chief guest on the head’s right hand side.  The next important person on the head’s left hand side.  So, on the right hand side of the U, from the top sits John, then Jesus, then Judas, the treasurer. 

Peter isn’t anywhere near Jesus.  In fact, he is right at the lowliest place – on the left side of the U, opposite John.  (Does this make a bit more sense of Peter leaning forward to talk to John, or of Jesus dipping His bread and giving it to Judas – or even of Jesus sitting at God’s right hand?)

It was Peter’s job to wash everyone else’s feet – and he has clearly failed to do so.  Instead, he has been boasting about how he would never leave Jesus’ side, that he would never deny Him and so on. 

If we want to be great followers of Jesus, then we need to follow our Master’s very example and be willing to humble ourselves to the position of the lowliest of servants.  And when we find ourselves down there, we don’t sulk and wish we were somewhere else, but rather we glorify God in the serving of others and of God Himself.

What is God saying?

I believe that God is saying: 

Humble yourself so that you are fit for service

[Day 192]

John 13.31-32

When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in Him.  If God is glorified, God will also glorify Him in Himself and will glorify Him at once”

Even before His death, Jesus speaks about Himself being glorified.  Judas has gone out to betray Him for the infamous 30 pieces of silver, and Jesus addresses His disciples.

Already, now, this very moment, He tells them, He is glorified.  Not when He is on the cross, not three days later when He rises from the dead, but now, as Judas betrays Him to the Chief Priests.

But there is a connection between Jesus, the Son of Man, being glorified and God being glorified.  Jesus, the Son of Man, is glorified because He is being perfectly obedient to His Heavenly Father’s will. 

And as He is glorified, so too God is glorified.  And more than that – as God is glorified God Himself glorifies Jesus the Son of Man in Himself and with immediate effect.

The implication is that as Jesus is whipped and beaten, as He is nailed to the cross and dies in agony, He is being glorified and God is being glorified, and Jesus is being glorified in God.  The answer to the question, ‘Where is God when Jesus died?’ is that He is being glorified.

The whole purpose to the Gospel and to our faith, as someone once said, is not about salvation, but about God being glorified. 

The purpose of our suffering may seem intelligible to us as we suffer – but the reality is that it is all for the glorification of God.

What is God saying?

I believe that God is saying: 

Give God glory

[Day 191]

John 12.27-28

“Now My soul is troubled.  What should I say – Father, save Me from this hour?  But that is why I came to this hour.  Father, glorify Your name!”  Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again!”

This story begins with these words, “Now some Greeks were among those who went up to worship at the festival.  So they came to Philip who was from Bethsaida in Galilee and requested of him, ‘Sir, we want to see Jesus.’ “

The story then moves on and this verse seems to be almost irrelevant to the whole passage.  Except, I don’t think it is at all irrelevant, but rather crucial to the passage.

These people are Greeks, not Jews.  Yet they have come to Jerusalem to worship God during the Passover Festival.  They have come to see Jesus.  They know who Jesus is and they have come to worship Him.

Jesus, meanwhile, is well aware of His impending death.  He tells His disciples that unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself.  He then goes on to say that His servants must follow Him – even to eternal life.

Jesus speaks out that His soul is troubled.  But at the same time recognises that His death is necessary – and asks that God’s name is glorified.  And immediately God replies that His name has been glorified and that He will glorify it again.  He speaks of both the glory of the past and the glory of the future.

Like the Greeks at the start of this story, we come from all over the world to worship the Lord, seeking and desiring to see Jesus.  And we know that as His servants, we are called to serve Him both now, but also into eternity.

And despite the suffering that we will face in this world, we know that both in the past and in the future, God will always be glorified.

What is God saying?

I believe that God is saying:

Put your present sufferings to one side for now and rejoice in that the Lord has been glorified and will be glorified into eternity

[Day 190]

Luke 21.26-28

“People will faint from fear and expectation of the things that are coming on the world, because the celestial powers will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.  But when these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is near!”

There should always be a marked distinction between the reactions of the world and the reactions of the followers of Jesus.

Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in these verses.  Here Jesus is talking about the end times.  Jesus foretells, literally, apocalyptic days before He returns at the second coming.

 How will people of the world react?  They will faint from fear – not just about the things that are happening, but the expectation of things that will happen.

Expectation can certainly drive fear – the expectation of the pain of giving birth, expectation of the dentist’s drill, expectation of the bad news.

But while the world reacts with fear to these signs of the end times, Jesus tells His followers to behave in the opposite way.  They are to stand up and lift their heads up.  Their expectation isn’t driven by fear, but is driven by hope.  And the reality that their redemption has arrived in and through Christ Jesus Himself coming in glory and power.

The question is: how are we going to react?  Will we faint through fear, or will we rejoice that the Lord’s kingdom is here for good?

What is God saying?

I believe that God is saying: 

Don’t think like the world does – think as God leads you

[Day 189]

Luke 21.1-3

He looked up and saw the rich dropping their offerings into the temple treasury.  He also saw a poor widow dropping in two tiny coins.  “I tell you the truth,” He said.   “This poor widow has put in more than all of them.  For all these people have put in gifts out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

It was recently reported that the American billionaire investor Warren Buffet had given away a staggering £1.05bn to the charitable foundation set up by the Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates.  In all Mr Buffett has pledged to give away 99% of his wealth.

We might think that what we give to charity is peanuts compared to that.  But the whole point of this passage is that the quantity that we give away is not the important thing.  The important thing is the willingness to give away all of what we have for the building of God’s Kingdom.  The widow in this story didn’t give away 99% of her wealth, she gave away 100%.

In a similar way, giving 10% of our incomes, or tithing, can be a useful guide to help us think about our giving.  But where we start giving 10% religiously, because we think that by doing that we’ve done our part, we begin to miss the point.

The point is that everything we have is from the Lord.  We need to be willing to give it all away, not just 10%, not even 99%.  Like the widow with her two small coins, we need to be willing to give away all that we have – however great or small the amount.

We need to be aware of a few things when it comes to giving.  First, that we need to draw so close to the Lord that we are clear when He tells us to give and how much He tells us to give.  Second, that there will be times when the giving is sacrificial.  Third, that God doesn’t need our money, but He rejoices when we are willing to give all that we have and all that we are for Him.  And finally, our Heavenly Father always knows our needs and promises to clothe us as He clothes the birds of the air and the lilies in the fields.

What is God saying?

I believe that God is saying: 

Tell God that you are willing to give Him all of yourself, including all your resources, for His kingdom