Jesus’ Truth Revealed Through Unbelief

The response of the religious leaders after Jesus’ death reveals a curious phenomenon that takes place in those who do not believe what Jesus said. The day following Jesus’ death and after he was buried, the religious leaders went to Pilate requesting that the tomb be guarded and sealed. Their reason? They remembered that Jesus had earlier said that he would rise from the dead after three days. Although they didn’t believe Jesus’ words, they understood them and remembered them, so that they took action. They feared the disciples would come and steal Jesus’ body in order to make it look like Jesus had risen from the dead. The leaders also feared that the disciples then would go and preach his resurrection to the people to deceive them. The religious leaders took action in order to prevent this from happening.

The irony is that those who didn’t believe Jesus took to heart his words and took action, while those who did believe in Jesus completely forgot the words that Jesus had given them, to give them hope, and instead wallowed in despair and unbelief. What turned out, in spite of all the religious leaders’ precautions, was that Jesus did rise from the dead; he changed the disciples’ despair and mourning into joy. Then they went out and preached Jesus’ resurrection and turned the Roman world upside down. For the first time to that point in history, the powerless in the world’s eyes prevailed and transformed the powerful. Even today those who advocate for the rights of minorities and powerless groups reveal that they have been influenced by Jesus’ message, even though they may deny believing him. Up until Jesus, no religion or society advocated for women, children or minority groups. After Jesus, those cultures impacted by his message have seen some people in power advocating for the weak, rather than abusing them.

What this story reveals is that opposition to God’s kingdom cannot stop it any more than the religious leaders’ efforts to guard the tomb could prevent Jesus’ resurrection. On the other hand, unbelief in believers does not stop the advance of the kingdom either. However, when believers do take to heart what Jesus said, they are spared great despair and are empowered to encourage others while they see God’s kingdom expand.

The Degradation of Humanity

Jesus’ crucifixion reveals the sad and surprising degradation of man. Pilate realized Jesus was innocent, yet yielded to the jealousy of the leaders and perverted justice. Thinking to preserve his own position, he revealed how unworthy he was of it. In so doing, Pilate reveals the addictive power of an exalted position. Once attained a leader may do unwise, foolish and even evil things in order to preserve that position. The soldiers took advantage of an innocent individual because they didn’t believe or understand who he was. They perverted their power and used it to cause suffering on a person in a weaker position simply for their own entertainment. They reveal the common human tendency to use humor at the expense of another person. Often a person, who is not in a position to respond or clarify, but forced to laugh, while swallowing down the hurt. The religious leaders of the day, used their power and position in order to destroy a person whom they perceived to be a threat to them. They allowed their jealousy and anger to rule. Even today, we see people in positions of power attacking others seeking to destroy the reputation of those with whom they disagree, using ridicule and spinning the facts in order to discredit their opponents. As the common man ridiculed Jesus as they passed by, we need not look very far in today’s world to see people ridiculing others with whom they disagree. The people despised Jesus because they perceived weakness in his being crucified. When their own hopes for Jesus were not fulfilled they turned on him. They reveal to us the all too common response when people become disillusioned; they turn against what they thought would help them. The one thief crucified with Jesus poured upon Jesus his insults out of the bitterness of his own suffering. Only one individual, a thief dying with Jesus revealed a hope for humanity. As he died with all hope lost for this world, he placed his hope and trust in Jesus. While in one scene, we observe all the defects of humanity in the reactions of the people toward Jesus, we also see the one hope for humanity in the response of a dying man who had lived a misguided life. All those who should have believed in Jesus abandoned him, but one who should never have believed did. In him we also observe the mystery of God’s working in, through and with humanity. Even in the darkest moments there is hope! Even when the majority seems to have lost their collective mind, one small voice will continue to speak the truth. For that we can rejoice and be thankful.

The Renewing of Our Mind

On my last post, I concluded with a question: how do we live out Jesus’ instruction to pray this day for our daily bread? As I mentioned, Jesus’ instruction to pray for our daily bread completely transforms the reason for which we work. While God may use our work to provide for our daily needs, our reason for working is different. We work to expand God’s kingdom, according to what Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” Recently I was driving to work on a Monday morning and feeling blue, I pondered why I was feeling blue. If work was to be an opportunity to expand God’s kingdom, then why should I feel blue on a Monday morning or any workday morning for that matter? It occurred to me how far I still needed to go to change my own perspective of work. I realized that my view of work was still quite similar to that of the world. Back in the 1960’s a new restaurant started on the east coast, by the mid 1970’s it was also on the west coast. In college I worked at Sears, in the same shopping center where I worked this restaurant opened. It’s name? TGI Friday’s, meaning “Thank God it’s Friday”. That is an interesting name. Why wasn’t it called “TGI Monday’s”? Well, there is a good reason; probably no one would go to a restaurant with that name. Friday represents the last day of the traditional work week when people go out to eat and drink to celebrate the beginning of the weekend, when they don’t have to work. Monday is typically not a day of celebration. The celebration of the end of the work week has a very Old Testament view, related to man eating his bread by the sweat of his brow according to the curse on the land in Genesis 3. The TGI Friday mentality considers work to be burdensome, rather than invigorating, as Jesus transformed work to be. It occurred to me on that Monday morning driving to work, that the battle is not outside of me, but inside of me. This is why the apostle Paul instructs us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds and not be conformed to this world. (Romans 12:1-2) What I need is to be transformed in my thinking each day that I go to work. I need to rethink the way I consider work, and not just how I think about it, but in how I feel about it; it is an opportunity, not a burden. So how do we live according to what Jesus taught? One aspect of that is to take stock of how we think about our work and how we live out each day. Are we living in the present, focusing on the needs of that day or are we letting cares for tomorrow enter in? Jesus instructs us to stay focused on each day, because it has enough for us to think about. When we reach that point we can live, TGI Today.

I invite you on this journey with me being transformed by the renewing of the mind.

Our Daily Bread

When we consider what has become known as the “Lord’s Prayer” or in some circles “Our Father”, we discover that Jesus is giving us the freedom to issue commands in prayer. We are not asking God to do these things, but actually commanding him, because all the verbs are commands, not requests. That is amazing! Furthermore, what is curious about Jesus commanding us to command God for our daily bread is that it is to be timely. Give us this day our daily bread. He could have said simply, give us our daily bread, but he added “this day”. We are to receive our bread on the day it is needed. This reminds us of the method God used to distribute the manna to the Israelites in the wilderness. He didn’t give a week’s worth, but each day he distributed the manna, except on Friday, when he gave two day’s worth to cover what was needed on Saturday, the Sabbath. This method of distribution is much like how God gives light. He gives us light for each day, when the sun comes up. He doesn’t give us any light ahead of time. As we depend on God giving light, we should also depend upon him for sustaining our life, physically and spiritually.

Jesus is addressing something much more than physical bread when we consider this command for our daily bread. When Jesus was tempted to turn stones to bread, he responded that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the Father. While bread is needed for part of our sustenance, we need more. We need revelation from God our Father to survive and thrive throughout life. Jesus’ command regarding bread also undoes the curse to Adam in Genesis 3, when God informed Adam that he would eat bread by the sweat of his face. Mankind has needed to toil to earn his bread to eat, but Jesus says here that we are to receive it from our heavenly Father. In making this command in prayer, Jesus changed the purpose for our work. It is not primarily for earning a living, but what Jesus would say later in Matthew 6. We are to seek God’s kingdom and everything we need will be added to us.

Through prayer, Jesus leads us to living a completely different lifestyle, that frees us from the toil and worry of seeking to sustain ourselves through our own efforts. The remaining question is how are we to apply what Jesus instructed?

Our Inner Life

When Jesus instructed his followers from the mountain, he instructed them on their inner life. Merely religious people tend to practice their religion before others to be admired by them for their righteousness. However, Jesus’ followers cultivate an inner righteousness by following Jesus when no is there to see them, because they understand that true righteousness is developed in a relationship with Jesus and their heavenly Father. In this way righteous living flows out of them, because they they think righteous thoughts, producing naturally righteous speech and behavior. We might say that they become fluent in righteousness, much like we become fluent in a second or third language. When we learn another language we have to practice it. When we are first beginning we tend to equate the new language with the one we know, but as time goes by, we discover that we begin to think in that new language so that we begin to speak fluently. Following Jesus, learning to think like he thinks will over time and practice naturally produces speech and behavior that imitates Jesus so that whether we are in public or alone, our thoughts and actions are consistent.

To this end, Jesus instructed his followers to practice their acts of mercy out of the public eye and to retreat to a quiet spot alone with God to converse with their heavenly Father. While Jesus addressed behaviors in his mountain-top lesson, the apostle Paul addressed the inner aspects of what we do in private when he instructed the Corinthians to bring every one of their thoughts in alignment with Jesus’ thoughts. If we fail to practice Paul’s lesson, we will be conflicted as we work to apply what Jesus taught. In agreement with Paul, Jesus said that our speech flows from what is already in our heart. So to change our speech and behavior we must address the condition of our heart. To address the condition of our heart, we must be in relationship with Jesus and our heavenly Father through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Disappointment with God

During Jesus’ testing in the wilderness, Satan took him to the pinnacle of the temple and stated that since Jesus was the Son of God, he should throw himself down so that God would send angels to save him. Jesus saw the devil’s second temptation as testing the Lord God, which we are commanded not to do. Why would the devil tempt Jesus in this area? We tend to test things that we do not trust; so Satan was testing Jesus in the area of trusting God; would God save him? He was using an implied question; do you trust God to protect you?

I think of this in relation to the passage in Malachi that speaks of testing God in reference to tithing. The prophet said this because the people failed to trust God to provide for them. It was not a compliment, but a mild rebuke. Seeing it this way reveals how odd it is that we sometimes use it to motivate people to give today. The real issue is not giving, but our lack of trust in God’s care for us, which results in a failure to be generous. We fail to believe that he will take care of us. This strikes at the issue of our disappointment with God, which comes from not having our expectations met. However, if our expectations are not in alignment with God’s, our expectations likely will not be met and we may become disappointed in God. Rather, like Jesus, we need to align ourselves, our thoughts and emotions with God, so that when we face difficulties we do not become disappointed, but rather we deepen our relationship with Him. This is what Jesus did throughout his life. He had many opportunities to become disappointed with God, but he didn’t because his expectations always aligned with God. For example, in the garden of Gethsemane, he would say, not my will but your will be done. After making that declaration, Jesus was arrested, tried unjustly, beaten and crucified. Even as he was being forsaken by God, he didn’t fail to trust Him, because he released his spirit to Him. We are instructed to live in a like manner to Jesus, to behave as he did, to think the way that he did. When we proceed in becoming like Jesus our lives are radically transformed and we reflect who Jesus is to those watching us.

Our Foundation of Freedom

When Jesus cried out from the cross asking why God had forsaken him, the word he used to describe what had happened has particular significance. While Jesus was forsaken on the cross, after Jesus’ resurrection Peter declared quoting David from the Psalm 16:8-11 that the Messiah would not be abandoned (forsaken) to Sheol. Here Peter quoted David using the same word. He explained that David’s words could not have referred to David himself, because David had died and they all knew where his tomb was. Rather, David, as a prophet, spoke of what would take place to one of his descendants, the Messiah. In other words, even though Jesus was forsaken on the cross, he would not be forsaken to death; he would rise from the dead. Later, in the New Testament we are promised in Hebrews 13:5, that we will never be forsaken, therefore we should never live in fear of what man could do. What Jesus experienced on the cross, is something that we will never experience.

Jesus’ death and victory over death gives us the foundation to live lives of freedom without fear of what may or may not happen. Anytime that we experience fear, we should examine what is provoking our fear and address the lie that we have believed that is feeding our fear, so that we may enjoy the peace that Jesus promised us. That peace is not like what the world offers, which comes and goes depending upon our external circumstances, but a peace that is forever with us and cannot be taken away from us. Part of our journey with Jesus is discovering those areas in our life in which we are afraid, then bringing the corresponding lie to light after which we can enjoy the freedom we receive from dealing with the lie and living in truth.

The Irony of Unbelief

As Jesus hung on the cross, the majority of those who saw him mocked him, but unknowingly their mocking was filled with irony. Some mocked Jesus because he had earlier claimed that if they tore down “this temple”, he would raise it back up in three days. They believed Jesus had referred to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, but in actuality Jesus referred to his own body. They called on Jesus to come down from the cross so that they would believe. Obviously, Jesus did not come down because he would fulfill what he had said and raise his body in three days. Interestingly, both the temple and Jesus’ body would be destroyed by the Romans. Jesus rose from the dead in three days, but when the temple was destroyed by the Roman general, Titus, it has not been restored even until this day. Jesus would accomplish what the mockers said he would, but not in the way that they thought.

Even the leaders mocked Jesus, because Jesus had saved others, so they called on him to save himself and come down from the cross so that they would believe in him. Actually, Jesus would do something even greater, he would rise from the dead, but they still would not believe in Jesus. Rather they would try to intimidate the disciples who announced Jesus’ resurrection.

The ironic unbelief of those who observed Jesus’ crucifixion reveals that sometimes we can observe an event and believe we completely understand what is going on and form conclusions from those observations, only to discover later that what we concluded couldn’t be further from the truth. To his disciples Jesus had earlier said that when the Holy Spirit comes, he would teach them and lead them into all truth. Jesus’ words indicate that it is only in relationship with God the Father and with Jesus that we have access to truth, because it is only through the understanding and perspective of the Holy Spirit that we can correctly interpret and understand what we are seeing and experiencing.

The Destructive Power of Fear

The account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate makes no logical sense, until you figure in the emotion that was present. Just days before, the crowd had praised Jesus as he entered into Jerusalem, declaring him to be the son of David. The religious leaders should have followed Jesus and rejoiced at his coming, because they knew the Old Testament and that Jesus fulfilled all that the Scriptures had said about their Messiah. Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent and not a threat to the Roman government. His wife had even warned him about who Jesus was. Yet Jesus was still crucified and we must ask the question “why”? Actually, it is an example of what happens when fear rules the day. The chief priests were afraid of Jesus’ popularity which could have caused the Romans to take away their position of influence, so they contradicted their own law and plotted to kill Jesus. The people were afraid of the leaders excommunicating them, because they had threatened to put anyone out of the synagogue who followed Jesus. Being excommunicated in that society meant that they would be shunned from society would not be able to function within their own community. Pilate was afraid that the crowd might riot, which would put his position in jeopardy, because he was not able to keep the peace. So in the end the fear of the religious leaders manipulated both Pilate and the crowd into sacrificing Jesus. The irony of Jesus’ death is that everything that each one feared came to pass. Pilate was removed from his position after a few years. Jewish revolutionaries became more powerful and brought the wrath of Rome down on Jerusalem and destroyed the temple and the city. The religious leaders lost their position and the people lost everything.

Anytime fear is driving our decision-making, we make poor decisions based not on reality or truth, but out of our perception of self-preservation. Driven by fear, our leaders make poor decisions, driven to maintain their position of leadership. Finally, because of the poor decisions, the people suffer and the real underlying issue is not addressed. We often conclude that people making decisions we don’t like or agree with are the problem. When leaders, whether we agree with them or not, make decisions based on fear, they are not the fundamental problem, but they do reflect and illustrate the problem. It is the fear that is driving their and our decision-making that needs to be addressed.

Being Attentive

While the chief priest and scribes plotted to kill Jesus after the Passover, Jesus was at the home of Simon the Leper, when a woman, unnamed in Mark, but identified as Mary the sister of Lazarus in John, brought a flask of perfume with which she anointed Jesus’ head. However, there were some there who rebuked her, unnamed again in Mark, but identified as Judas Iscariot in John who rebuked her because the perfume could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. John commented in his account, that Judas had no concern for the poor, but criticized Mary because he was the treasurer and a thief who stole from the money box. Jesus reminded them that she had done a good thing and anointed his body for burial, but they would always have the poor with them whom they could assist. On the other hand they would not always have Jesus present with them to anoint and honor. Then Jesus added that what she had done would be remembered wherever the gospel was preached.

This account reveals some implications, that there are particular seasons in which we can honor Jesus. This was one of them. Jesus was only present on earth for a time; Mary took advantage of that time. She understood and was sensitive to the time in which she lived and took the opportunity to honor Jesus. Because of what she did, she would always be remembered whenever the good news of Jesus is proclaimed. It is interesting that this account took place right after Jesus instructed his disciples to be attentive and watch for his coming. Immediately in Mark 14, Mark gave the account of Mary anointing Jesus. The connection of the two passages indicates that Mary was an illustration of someone who was being attentive, which was to be an example of how Jesus’ disciples were and are to live. We are to be attentive to what is going on around us; what is happening in our generation. As Mary was, we are to be prepared and take advantage of our opportunities to honor Jesus with the time that we have.