When the Cross Gets Heavy

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his Kingdom:  Preach the word of God.  Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not.  Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching.  For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.  They will reject the truth and chase after myths.  But you should keep a clear mind in every situation.  Don’t be afraid of suffering for the Lord.  Work at telling others the Good News, and fully carry out the ministry God has given you.  2 Timothy 4:1-5

What the apostle wrote to young pastor Timothy was not an easy read.  Paul knew something about the “Bell Curve” of church life.  People get excited about second chances, grace, love, and God’s blessings.  But there is more than consumer-friendliness to the Gospel; there are also hard truths for anyone who wants to follow Jesus.  And those truths are not optional-equipment – they are not up for discussion.  Jesus said so, very plainly:

Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me.  Luke 9:23

Paul warned Timothy that he would encounter those who prefer an easy life much more than God’s truth.  The earthly life of Jesus displayed that truth clearly.  By the time the Galilean finished his ministry, the crowds had not only dwindled, but turned against Jesus.  In the end it was an apostle and two women who stood at the foot of the cross.  The five thousand Jesus fed were out looking for someone else to fill their bellies

A church I once served as pastor was on that decline-curve; aging-out was on the near horizon.  At homecoming that year I preached a message about open and closed doors, and how it was our responsibility to pay attention; we should not become the lukewarm church[1].  After the service an older woman, who always sat on the seat furthest from the pulpit with a scowl that would blister titanium, said to me on the way out the door:  You should preach what these people came to hear…we want to hear good stuff, happy stuff…not about churches being closed.  I told her I agreed…I also wanted to hear good stuff…about the church being on fire with love for God, and how they were telling their neighbors about Jesus – but what I wanted came in a distant third to what I was called to preach, which was the truth.  Churches are dying for lack of preachers and members who are more concerned with telling the Gospel, than just living in their happy zone.

If that seems harsh, it isn’t any wonder…it is blunt, and a heavy cross to carry.  But so was the cross Jesus carried to Golgotha…the same cross he said anyone who wanted to be His disciple must carry.

For You Today 

So, what do you do when the cross gets heavy?  Get in the yoke with Jesus.  He has promised to take the heavier side of the work.  Your calling as a disciple of Christ is (as Paul told Timothy) to preach the Word no matter whether people think it’s in-season or out-of-season.  If the Gospel is offensive in today’s culture, preach the Word of the Gospel anyway; the response of the people is in their hands, not yours!  And only God is the judge of all of it!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. 

Title Image:  Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.  

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©  

 

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[1] Read Revelation 3:14-22

 

Anatomy of a Journey

Friday, August 11, 2023

All this happened so they would follow his decrees and obey his instructions.  Praise the Lord!  Psalm 105:45

The Psalmist traces the steps of Joseph, beloved son of the patriarch, Jacob.  His brothers sold Jacob like a piece of cloth to a band of nomadic traders headed for Egypt.^[1]  There are enough plot twists and sub-themes in this rags-to-riches success story, to make any Hollywood screen writer drool!  However, the message isn’t just about Joseph’s perseverance through hard times, and prevailing through the unjustness of power structures.  The story of Joseph is a version in miniature of how God does what humans do not understand (particularly those who don’t know God).  It’s a microcosm of spiritual warfare, in which God’s power, often working behind the scenes, is worked-out despite whatever the forces of evil can manage against it.  And it all happens to the glory of God.

Have you ever dreamed of something that is (in your limited understanding) incredibly unreachable?  A dream job?  A home with a thousand acres?  A body that doesn’t sag here and there?  Deep breath without pain?  World peace?  Your version of that story has you in the middle of it; and that is what is so wrong with most versions of Eden…the perfect place, with everything just right.  That dream hardly starts with a group of Ishmaelite traders taking a load of gum, balm, and aromatic resin from Gilead down to Egypt.^[2]  Most dreams like that have the end result as starting point.  We picture ourselves in the lap of luxury, white sandy beach, palm trees, gentle breezes, and a coconut pina colada in a hammock. 

In truth, life may start out gently, a calm, favored child status; Andy and Opie in Mayberry.  But life is hardly tame.  Life’s journey has its twists and mountains, times of up, down, and blindly-sideways.  Some stuff is mundane and predictable, like what to eat for breakfast, or getting that bill in the mail or inbox.  But the kind of day that starts off with:

·       …there was a mistake on your account…or

·       …the test result may have been incorrect…or

·       …I wanted to help you, but…and the all-inclusive promise of doom: 

·       …I’ve decided you aren’t….

These are the excruciating days…resume’ of Joseph kind of stuff.  You get set-up by kin or friend, let-down in a pit, sold-out to the highest bidder, and assassinated by behind-the-back gossip.  It’s easy to draw the cynical conclusion that Mayberry was a conspiracy-theory in reverse; it was Alice in Wonderland’s dream, and you are the Mad Hatter…off to a very important date with your own demise.

It must have seemed that to the disciples when the Healer of Galilee was condemned to die.  He’d preached the Good News of God’s blessing, land of milk and honey, and all the tears wiped-away.  He had told them of life-eternal, and all your dreams come true.  Then he was betrayed, belittled, beaten, and nailed-naked to crossbeams on the town garbage dump.  There wasn’t even enough left in the purse Judas had emptied to buy him a grave…it was a borrowed tomb.

Now, this kind of post-mortem is hardly an advertisement for that thing you get told as a kid:  You are beautiful, you can do anything, or it will all work out in the end.  By the world’s standards, your beauty will fade, you’ll find out some things are way beyond your skills, and how it all works out is way beyond your pay grade.

For You Today 

If you’re tracking with me, and I haven’t lost you yet in gloom, despair and agony-on-me, go just one step further than Friday’s darkness-laden cross and tomb; go all the way to Sunday’s bright revelation; He is risen!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. 

Title Image:   Pixabay.com

Images without citation are in public domain.   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©  

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[1] Joseph’s complete story is found in Genesis 37-50. 

[2] Genesis 37:25

God is Good

 

Wednesday, May 3, 2023

“What sorrow awaits the leaders of my people—the shepherds of my sheep—for they have destroyed and scattered the very ones they were expected to care for,” says the Lord.  Therefore, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says to these shepherds:  “Instead of caring for my flock and leading them to safety, you have deserted them and driven them to destruction.  Now I will pour out judgment on you for the evil you have done to them.  But I will gather together the remnant of my flock from the countries where I have driven them.  I will bring them back to their own sheepfold, and they will be fruitful and increase in number.  Then I will appoint responsible shepherds who will care for them, and they will never be afraid again.  Not a single one will be lost or missing.  I, the Lord, have spoken!  “For the time is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will raise up a righteous descendant from King David’s line.  He will be a King who rules with wisdom.  He will do what is just and right throughout the land.  And this will be his name:  ‘The Lord Is Our Righteousness.’  In that day Judah will be saved, and Israel will live in safety.  Jeremiah 23:1-6

For the Lord is good.  His unfailing love continues forever, and his faithfulness continues to each generation.  Psalm 100:5

From a human perspective it seems a reckless thing to say God is good.  Amid the terror and tragedy with which we live every day, murder, mayhem, darkness, and loss, how can one possibly think a benevolent God would allow such?  Another log on that fire is something I hear from time to time:  If God is good, why would He even think about crucifying His own son?

The goodness of God is seen in both of those questions, the one about God allowing harmful stuff, and the other one about God causing harmful stuff.  The questions are more about us…individually…we know ourselves to be so much lower than God, and the evil of which we are all capable.  Reframe (more accurately) the questions and they become:  Why do WE do such awful stuff, and How can WE do all that to ourselves?  The answer to both questions is found in nailing Christ to the cross.  It isn’t God who crucified Jesus, it was each of us who was pounding those nails.

Jeremiah recounted what God said about man’s sinful misleading of others.  Instead of walking with God, humankind has always walked in selfishness, and we lead others to do so as well.  That’s what led to the cross.  And as for why God would “participate” in the evil of the cross…how else would God identify with us, love us enough to take our place on that cross, but to willingly give Himself, a sacrifice for our sins?

The bottom line to those age-old questions is that God IS indeed good!  He displayed that for all to see just how much He loved us in all that goodness.  Such are the words penned by Isaac Watts:

See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?[1]

For You Today 

It’s easy to blame God for what happens to us, or the darkness and pain of this world’s evil.  It’s easy, but not right.  Nail scars and a thorn-pierced brow make that point…always, and eternally.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   Flat Tire Worship  and  Regaining Perspective   

Title Image:  via Wikimedia Commons   Images without citation are in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Isaac Watts, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, 1707

It Is Finished

 

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they divided his clothes among the four of them.  They also took his robe, but it was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.  So they said, “Rather than tearing it apart, let’s throw dice for it.”  This fulfilled the Scripture that says, “They divided my garments among themselves and threw dice for my clothing.”  So that is what they did.  Standing near the cross were Jesus’ mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary (the wife of Clopas), and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Dear woman, here is your son.”  And he said to this disciple, “Here is your mother.”  And from then on this disciple took her into his home.  Jesus knew that his mission was now finished, and to fulfill Scripture he said, “I am thirsty.”  A jar of sour wine was sitting there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put it on a hyssop branch, and held it up to his lips.  When Jesus had tasted it, he said, “It is finished!”   

Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.  John 19:23-30

Sometimes preachers study a Bible text with the wrong lens (guilty as charged).  We dryly pick-apart the words, tenses, context, and usage.  But language without pathos, and intelligence without feeling, will always claim correctness – and there is an accuracy of linguistics to be claimed – but that dry toast analysis, correct as it might be, will miss the humanity and grit of what is most important. 

Jesus didn’t die in a vacuum; this cross is not a picture to be painted, or a jewelry piece to be worn.  The passion of the Christ is blood, and it is the Word of God made flesh, pierced because of our sins.  It is pain, born of forgiveness.

Contemplating what happened on the cross always brings me to the point of tears, because this is my place which the Son of God willingly took. 

There are technical words, like substitutionary atonement (and many more) used all the time in seminaries where ethereal-minded discussions take place to define the events and meaning of Christ’s sacrifice.  But none of it captures the pathos of excruciating pain, both physical and metaphysical, both flesh and spirit.  Only God, speaking from the cross gave the full understanding:  It is finished!

Scripture declares Jesus was the sacrificial Lamb of God.  That plan was known and inevitable from before the foundation of the world. [1] God had always known this, and chose to do this, to become our sacrifice, even before Adam had taken his first breath.  And the words:  It is finished mean the grisly reality that every part of God’s plan to make our redemption a reality was accomplished. 

It is finished is only one word in the Greek text:  Tetelestai.  Its meaning here is anything but dry theological mumbo-jumbo.  It means paid-in-full.  It was the word written across debt notices when those debts were paid-off. 

When Jesus uttered that final word before groaningly commending His spirit to the Father’s keeping, he took every bit of the agony he had suffered and gave it all for the release of the penalty for our sin.  Jesus paid it all!

That was what He finished…completed…and signed in blood on the cross. 

But, while his High Priestly work here on earth was finished, there was something else that was just getting started…the gift of eternal life which he had promised would be ours when we deny self and sin, take-up His cross, and follow Him.

On Good Friday we take the Savior down from Calvary’s tree and put him in Arimithea’s tomb, sealed and guarded by the soldiers.

We are in darkness until the promise of resurrection is filled.

All we have left to ponder is the cross, the blood, the pain, and emptiness of a broken body…quietness and the cold question:  WHAT NOW?

And we wait…AND we will KNOW the cross wasn’t the last time Jesus finished His promised work.  The culmination of God’s plan of redeeming our sin-sick souls will be celebrated in time yet to come; we will hear and know the final finishing word:

And he also said, “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End.  To all who are thirsty I will give freely from the springs of the water of life.  Revelation 21:16

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, let the church be quiet…and wait for the savior who paid it all.

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[1] Everyone on earth will worship the beast, if they do not have their names in the book of life. The book of life belongs to the Lamb who was killed. That was God's plan since the world was made.  Revelation 13:8                      

Blessed

Monday, February 27, 2023

God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory.  And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation.  So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father.  That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters.  For he said to God, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters.  I will praise you among your assembled people.”  He also said, “I will put my trust in him,” that is, “I and the children God has given me.”  Hebrews 2:10-13

There are many internal and external needs we humans must have to survive.  Internally, our organs and blood supply must do their thing, pumping, moving, cooperating with all things bio-physiological.  Externally, we need air, water, and food (some of us would have listed coffee as a necessity…but I digress). 

Those are the basics; then there’s safety from our environment, both in the natural realm (earthquakes, floods, wild animals...), and the most dangerous of all, other human beings.  From Cain’s relationship to his brother, Abel, down to today’s Wild West, East, North, and South, human anger is a killer of extraordinary proportions. 

God, says the writer to the Hebrews, is the creator of everything, and it all was made for Him, as well.  Created beings, like you, like me, were not only made by God, we were made for God.  That does not imply we were like dolls purchased at the store, meant to be played with, then put away for another day.  It strongly informs us that we were made for relationship (fellowship) with God.  Stated categorically:  God desired us!  He wants us.  He would (and did) die for us!

The writer of Hebrews[1] tells us that Jesus, the Son of God, Who died for us, is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters[2].  Paul also tells us that it goes beyond a simple unashamed status…we are loved so greatly God adopted all who trust in Christ, and has deemed us His heirs:

And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;                 Romans 8:17a

Now, savor that lovely thought, the security of Heaven’s favor for those who believe in Christ, and have entrusted past, present, and future to His care.  But let’s also remember we are now fully-engaged in Lent…40 days of somber preparation for the brutality of Jesus being scourged with a whip made of iron tips and broken glass shards, mocked by crowds and religious leaders, and enduring the sin-taking pain of death on the cross. 

That’s quite a juxtaposition…contemplating familial love and adoptive grace, at the price of unimaginable suffering and blood.  Yet, that is exactly how Jesus asked us to always remember this cherished family relationship…the bread of His body, and the cup of His blood…those grace-filled symbols of the cost of His love, and God’s adoption.  We are truly blessed.

For You Today 

In your Lenten moments it is important to remember Jesus’ suffering and death for us…how else would we treasure so precious a gift?  But keep in mind that suffering is never to be repeated…the adoption has been made final.  So rejoice in it, loved and blessed one…Your adopted Father said so!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

            Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

When the Candle Dies  and  A Little Lower Than the Angels      

Images:  Title Pixabay.com   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Many theologians consider the writer to be Apostle Paul

[2] I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters.  I will praise you among your assembled people.  Psalm 22:22

Crown-Wearing

 

Thursday, April 28, 2022

Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.   Philippians 2:9-11

Yesterday’s post[1] about Cross-bearing, and today’s topic of Crown-wearing are so connected we can see a syllogism that makes an eternity statement:

You will be crowned by Christ in Heaven

To the same degree you have crowned Him here on Earth.

Don't forget that the spiritual far outweighs the material or natural.  In the spiritual realm, things are always reversed from the way they were in the natural.  That which was high will be made low; the first shall be last. 

Following that sunbeam thought back to the source, we can also say that those who appear to be less than worthy of wearing a crown (here on earth) will be the very ones wearing them in Heaven.  Who are they?  They are all who have truly allowed their lives to be firmly rooted in Christ.  They are the disciples who only bow to the crucified, risen King of Glory, Jesus.  These are they, for whom nothing took higher priority than Christ-likeness.  They were, as Paul expressed, not conformed to the image of this world, but transformed in mind and thought by Christ to serve what pleases God, not self.[2]

If friends, or a family, church, or even a nation would be honored, in heaven, then Christ-likeness must be the goal, our target for life.  Hear the testimony of Scripture on the matter:

James, Jesus’ brother:

God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.  James 1:12

John, the beloved disciple:

…the twenty-four elders fall down and worship the one sitting on the throne (the one who lives forever and ever).  And they lay their crowns before the throne and say, “You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power.  For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased.”  Revelation 4:10-11

Jesus, laying out the indisputable measuring stick: 

Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me.  Luke 9:23

Cross-Bearing and Crown-Wearing!

For You Today

Taking up the cross daily has a reward in Heaven.  Anticipating the crown, followers of Jesus will not be disappointed.  And neither will those who (sadly) choose to walk away from the cross to follow their own path.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image: Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] April 27, 2022, Cross-Bearing

[2] Romans 12:2