Wednesday, March 13, 2019
The Festival of Unleavened Bread, which is also called Passover, was approaching. The leading priests and teachers of religious law were plotting how to kill Jesus, but they were afraid of the people’s reaction. Then Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve disciples, and he went to the leading priests and captains of the Temple guard to discuss the best way to betray Jesus to them. They were delighted, and they promised to give him money. So he agreed and began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus so they could arrest him when the crowds weren’t around. Luke 22:1-6(NLT)
Steve
Brown is a Presbyterian preacher who is fond of saying, God greases the tracks in the
direction you want to go. That
was intriguing to me the first time I heard it perhaps twenty-five years ago
and is no less a wonderment to me today.
At the risk of putting words in another preacher’s sermon, what I think
Steve means is that we all have that desire inside us to do certain things, and
that stuff eventually works its way to the surface, showing up in our actions,
conversations, and understanding of our purpose in life.
The “grease” on the track of our
lives comes from God in the sense of liberty – free-will, if you will. That slick track gives us the freedom to
choose the direction those deep-down values and desires hold, good or bad,
obedience or rebellion. In whatever ways
God uses to help us find Him, there is allowance for us to go down greased
tracks to find Him there, or not!
God is
always in favor of our earnestly exploring His universe and finding His hand,
His love, His way. But in the matter of
free will, he permits us to go the wrong way…all the time inviting and calling
us back to where He is; sometimes he uses extraordinary means.
Scripture
is replete with bad choices that had bad outcomes. King David made more than a few of these.[ii] In the case of the religious leaders of
Jesus’ day, and Judas Iscariot, God greased their track, and evil came to the
surface.
Jesus was
problematic for the religious leaders who chose to kill Jesus. This was something keepers of the Law of
Moses were well aware was evil. They
knew Genesis pictured Cain’s jealousy and eventual murder of his brother as a “track”
that was all wrong. Even if they’d
missed Cain and Abel in Sabbath School, there was a strict prohibition of
murder in Exodus. And they knew it!
Judas also
managed to ignore a clear commandment as he bore false witness against his
Master, Jesus. Betrayal, no matter how
many silver coins might be in the purse, put Judas on the greased tracks to the
gallows. And his legacy is that no
parent in his or her right mind names his child after Judas.
All this
season of Lent we spend time examining our actions, attitudes, and
motives. If we are serious about this
process, and diligent to dig deeply in these weeks it reveals the direction in
which our tracks are greased and calls us to examine that direction.
For You Today
If your
greased tracks are not headed Heavenward, you don’t have to stay on that train!
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