Jesus is not done with us. While He ascended to heaven and is reigning and ruling, He has been preparing a place for us, and that place is a city that is so large that it defies physics. It is described as a cube of 1500 miles in each direction, including vertical. Due to the curvature of the Earth, this is an impossibility on Earth. So clearly, the new earth is going to be operating under a different set of physics, or at least a very different type of planet. But not all are going to be there.
Every person is going to face God on Judgment Day. I recently wrote about the resurrection and how everyone is going to have resurrected bodies that will not perish. But there, everyone will give an account for their lives. Every one of us is going to give an account for our time, our choices, our actions, etc. Jesus is going to step up and proclaim to the Father who are His and who He died for. Those whom Jesus defends will be saved from the judgment, and those whom He does not will be cast into Hell.
We have a severe problem in our day and time because we think Jesus is going to cover for everything. The issue of “free grace” and that it doesn’t matter what we do, Jesus died for it all, is not exactly true. It is true, but it’s not the whole picture. Jesus’ death covered our sins; however, Jesus did not die for us to live our own lives. And many people will call upon the name of Jesus, and Jesus is going to say, “I don’t know them.” I am disturbed by the many I hear speak about their salvation with such great confidence, and yet what I hear come out of their mouths is so antithetical to Christian thinking that I really do have to wonder if they have ever heard the Gospel. I am not talking about perfection here; I am talking about direction. I do not believe you are saved if you consistently and regularly put Scripture into question and promote the academics of the world, who are in opposition to God instead. Jesus is not just going to cover for people just because they proclaimed faith in Him. We need to get that through our heads.
Jesus is going to defend those who have His “seed” in them. The Bible speaks of marriage, the most intimate relationship between two people, as our relationship to Christ. Jesus is going to turn away those whom He did not “know.” To “know” is the euphemism of sexual intimacy. I have been trying to figure out a way to describe this discretely, but those who are saved are those in whom Jesus’ “seed” has been planted and which bears fruit. Read all of Jesus’ warnings and parables. If we are the Bride of Christ, we have the “womb” to bear the Seed of Christ, which is supposed to nurture and bear fruit and life. But the problem we have due to modern evangelical methods is that we think we can do the salvation thing without that intimacy, because we are just playing intellectual games, and our religion is just what we intellectually choose to believe. But where is Christ in it?
Do not hear what I am not saying. I am not saying we have to have all our ducks in a row doctrinally, though we cannot ignore them. I am also saying we can’t just claim the name of Jesus and do our own thing. Read Isaiah 4. I heard about it from David Wilkerson, who pointed out that of seven virgins taking hold of one man to have his name to take away their reproach, but he has no obligation to take care of them, and they’ll do their own thing. That is what is happening today. Many are taking the name of Jesus so they can deal with their sin, but it is all on their own terms and doing their own thing. That is not Christianity.
Jesus is not just going to save people because we say His name, do good deeds, or proclaim great doctrine. Jesus is going to save people with whom He has had an intimate relationship AND seed that bears fruit. That’s the other half of it. Having the seed of Christ is not enough; it has to grow and bear fruit. The Parable of the Sower shows that only good soil is going to bear fruit. And pay attention: of the four soils, only one of them was worked and prepared by the farmer for good fruit. The rocky soil and weedy soil were left unattended. And in John 15, Jesus speaks about branches that don’t bear fruit to be cut off and burned. Now, many people will argue back and forth about free will vs predestination, and I’m like, “I see both doctrines running side by side here.” We need to understand that the vine that bears fruit is the one that Jesus works on, prunes, trims, and waters. And if we are a branch that is going to be a hindrance, we will be cut off. Now, Jesus still works despite our flaws and with our flaws already in mind, but we need to take this seriously.
Is Jesus working in your life? Are you being made closer to Him? How do you know? Here are some clues. Are you longing more and more to be like Christ? Are you desiring the world’s pleasure less and less? Are you seeking to be right with God more than you are seeking to be in alignment with the world? What direction are you heading? Do you believe what you profess to believe, or is it actually someone else’s beliefs you are riding? Jesus is going to save those whom He knows and who do His will. And those are the ones in whom we will see the work of Christ being made manifest. But not everyone is going to show this. There are unsaved people in every congregation, just according to statistics, and some of them are the most dedicated, most doctrinally sound, and moral people you know. But are they actually saved? Are you saved? Am I saved? Just before I came to write for Worldview Warriors in 2014, I went through a thorough self-examination, and I had to truly evaluate if I was saved or not, and I praise God that He confirmed I was. Because before them, I honestly don’t know if I could say if I was saved or not, even though I made my first profession of faith when I was seven. For 23 years, I lived riding someone else’s faith. It really did not become mine until I was about 30. I cannot say that I was truly saved prior to this. I may have been, but I don’t know. And I thank God that He did not let me continue that way. It is one thing to say you know Jesus. The real question is: Does Jesus know you?
This concludes my series on Snapshots of Jesus. For December, I have a very different message and direction God is leading me towards, and I’ll share about that then.
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The last thing Jesus did on this earth was to leave it. After He rose, He did not die again like every other person who was brought back to life. They merely had their life restored to them, and then they died again by whatever means they died of. However, Jesus resurrected, and this body would never be able to test death. Jesus had beaten death; He had conquered sin; He perfectly fulfilled the Law, endured the full wrath of God upon sin, and now had the final victory over all things. There was one last thing to do after giving His disciples one final command: to rise to heaven and claim the Throne.
There is a problem in the Church today. Because evil is ever increasing (as Jesus said), we seem to think that Jesus is not reigning and that Satan seems to have this power that is warring and is equal to God. That is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible does not teach a Messiah who would come and then eventually overcome the devil after an intense battle. No, it teaches that Jesus is reigning NOW. Jesus took the throne 2000 years ago. Yes, He was God before, and He is still God now, but in His humanity, He is the King of all Kings, and He is ruling now. What does that mean and entail?
Nothing happens outside God’s sovereign will. Yes, He has allowed the enemy to run wild a bit, but never without a leash. The real enemy is not Satan anymore, and even then, it never was him. He is just a dog on a leash with limits to what he can do. He is just an imp that had no actual power or authority. Our real enemy is ourselves, our own sin, and our own desire to have a say on reality. If we truly believed that Jesus is the King of Kings, we would not be fearing or panicking over what is going on politically or economically. But more so, we would not be trying to advise Jesus on how to reign or to have a say on what we should be doing in our lives.
Is Jesus truly the center of what we believe and the center of what we do? Many want Jesus as Savior but not Lord. You don’t get one without the other. And if Jesus is Lord, that means He is the boss and He says what is allowed and what is not allowed. “Well, what about all the mass shootings and assassinations and crime?” What about them? God has never been under any obligation to prevent crime. Do you want to be under Minority Report? 1984? Brave New World? Because that is what is being asked for. God being sovereign does not mean preventing evil from taking place. It means dealing with evil when it is done, and God will indeed do that. All the evil that is done is going to be dealt with. Just because that justice is not done in our timing or our means of it being done does not make God negligent. He has the record. And the day is coming when judgment is coming. But Jesus is waiting to save whoever can be saved before that happens.
Jesus has a body: the Church. That is through whom He acts to deal with the things of this world and to get the message of salvation to others. A severe problem we have is that we think the problem lies anywhere except ourselves. Why is all this evil taking place? Very simple: because WE (that means YOU and me too) have let it happen. And we expect God to do the dirty work for us. No, WE are the agent by which God has chosen to act, so if we don’t do it, then it doesn’t get done. And then God will move through someone else. But Jesus is reigning now, and when people finally surrender themselves and truly let Him reign, they do absolute wonders. Read Christian biographies. The things I have personally seen are even beyond the miracles recorded in the Bible. If people ask, “Where is the evidence?” or say, “I wish God would actually do something,” He is and He does. But we have to pay attention.
The one thing I keep bringing up that many really don’t like to hear – and those willing have a hard time practicing, myself included – is that if Jesus is Lord, then you are not. We live in a time of many false religions and false Christs. How can I say that? Because so many “Christians” out there believe in a god who is omnipotent but not sovereign. They have a god who can create, save, and give joy and happiness, but it is on the self’s terms. Paul Washer was once asked to come do a teaching on the attributes of God, and he warned the pastor that if he did that and began speaking on the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and the sovereignty of God, his most loyal congregants would rise up and say, “That’s not MY god!” And that’s the problem: most people’s “god” is really themselves.
Jesus is reigning and He is ruling now, and what He says goes. We don’t get a say in the matter, and any attempt we try to offer God should be considered sin because we are trusting our own wisdom instead of the omniscient one who truly knows everything. How foolish can we be? Don’t answer that, because there will always be someone who takes that as a challenge. If we are followers of Christ, we are not followers of self. If we are following Christ, we listen to and submit to and obey Him, and we are to deny ourselves. Our life as a Christian is not our own, and we need to start living like that. Jesus will let us do our own thing if we insist, but it will not be without consequence, and in reality, we will greatly miss out. And if we are not careful, the small “miss out” may turn into a BIG “miss out.” If Jesus is not our Lord, He is not our Savior.
Jesus is sitting on the throne, and He is guiding and directing all things for His purpose and His glory. He is setting up all of world history and all the nations to come together, and He will deal with them in one fell swoop. He is pulling out whomever He can from the fires of judgment, and then He will bring it all to an end. He will return and deal with those who have done evil in His sight and rescue those who stayed loyal to Him. Let us stop treating Jesus as a soon-to-be ruler but rather as the current and active ruler now and today. And what does that mean? It means if we are obedient to God and we act in the authority He has given us, we will truly be invincible to do all we are called to do, and nothing will touch us except that which is necessary for us to prove we belong to Jesus. So what do we have to fear? The opinions of intellectuals who only think they know something? Let us take solace that Jesus reigns now and He reigns forever, and there is no better King that anyone could ask for.
Next week, I will wrap up this series by analyzing Jesus as both Savior and Condemner.
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After Jesus rose from the dead, there were two tasks He needed to do prior to ascending, besides just appearing and encouraging the believers: Peter, and then final instructions. Why Peter? Peter disowned even knowing Jesus three times. The night Jesus was betrayed, the very night Peter said he would go to prison and die for Jesus, Peter denied even knowing Jesus or being associated with Him. And Jesus was not going to sweep that under the rug.
So, during one of His appearances, Jesus gives Peter another miraculous catch of fish, mirroring the moment the two met, and then gets some one-on-one time with Peter. Three times, Jesus asks: “Do you love me?” And Peter says yes each time. Then Jesus tells Peter to take care of His sheep. Peter didn’t realize what was happening until the third time and renewed his vow to go wherever Jesus went. And Jesus then told him how he would die: by execution, and Peter would be crucified. Yet to show his love for his Savior, he asked to be crucified upside down, a more painful death, lest he not die the same way Jesus did. Then Peter looked at John and asked about him. Jesus basically said it was none of Peter’s business, and John never died a martyr’s death. But not because the Romans didn’t try. He was thrown into a pot of boiling oil and came out unscathed. That is why he was exiled to Patmos.
Then Jesus gathered His disciples to the Mount of Olives for one final set of instructions, and they were simple. First, they were to wait in Jerusalem until they were imbued with power, and then to go make disciples starting in Jerusalem and to Judea, to Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Remember, they were not indwelt by the Holy Spirit yet. Yet when this happened and the disciples were empowered to carry on Jesus’ mission by the Holy Spirit, the religious centers and forces of darkness, who were reeling from Jesus alone, now had a much bigger problem. The very power and authority Jesus had was now with the disciples.
Jesus is in the business of restoration. Peter and Judas are often compared because both betrayed Jesus. The difference is that Peter was grieved that he had betrayed his master, but Judas just felt guilty that he had done a bad thing. Judas would attempt to make semi-amends by returning the blood money he got for giving Jesus to the Pharisees, but they just laughed it off. Judas not only betrayed Jesus, but he got played in doing so. And so Judas went and hung himself, but the tree couldn’t hold his weight, and when his body fell, it burst open. Peter, however, had a spirit like David, who sinned against God, but the weight of it grieved him because he lost his relationship with his God. Peter was similar. He sinned against Jesus, not defiantly, but due to his fear of man. And keep in mind that Peter was a BIG man. He was burly and very strong, not just because of his fisherman trade. And yet he became the biggest baby, cowering before a weak slave girl.
This is what happens when men rely on their own strength. Physical prowess means nothing to the weak spirit. But despite all this, Jesus restored Peter. Now, would Jesus have restored Judas? As Jesus only did what the Father said to do and had marked Judas as a devil from the start, I wonder if Jesus would have forgiven Judas. He forgave all those who crucified Him, knowing they knew not what they did. But would He have forgiven Judas? The empathy part of me says, yes, but the analytical part of me says no. Why? If God rejected King Saul for something far less, why would He spare Judas, when Jesus even said it would be better for him not even to be born? In all cases, Judas never gave it a chance and killed himself before it could have been done.
Then, after Jesus ascended, the disciples went to Jerusalem and met in the upper room, possibly the same upper room where they had the Last Supper. They prayed for ten days, chose Matthias to replace Judas, and then Pentecost happened. Peter the coward suddenly turned into Peter the bold preacher and proclaimed the name of Jesus, showcasing how the languages being heard were the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy. When Peter told the crowd that they had crucified the very Savior they had been waiting for, the crowd spoke up and asked, “What must we do?” And Peter said, “Repent and be baptized,” and 3000 were added to their number that day.
From that time forward, the disciples became the Apostles, and the church spread like wildfire. The world was never the same again. The Sanhedrin tried to stop them, but imprisonment and the Jewish beatings only encouraged them further. The Romans really didn’t care, but then it got worse when Paul was converted, and the entire Roman Empire and the known world were completely turned upside down. The world would never be the same again. God had come to the world, and as the Church obeyed its command to make disciples, everything as previously known would cease to exist. Bars would shut down, the occult businesses would be shut down, and instead in places where there we no schools or hospitals, now these would be built. Take notice that no group in the world has ever built schools or hospitals for the general population, when Christians did not do it first. And any school and hospital that is not run with the Christian mindset or at least a Judeo-Christian ethic tends not to be the best places to be. And this was all able to happen because Jesus left us. Next week, we’ll look at the last thing Jesus did on earth: His ascension.
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After His resurrection, Jesus spent 40 days showing His resurrected body to His apostles and to other disciples. He appeared to His disciples multiple times and had this ability to show up wherever and whenever He wanted, and locked doors were no problem for Him. In one incident, Thomas was not with the other ten, and they all believed, except Thomas. Thomas needed to physically see and touch Jesus to believe it. A week later, Jesus showed up and specifically called out Thomas to touch His wounds; there, Thomas made the first declaration of Jesus as God recorded.
But before these two incidents, on the very day of Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus met two disciples walking away from Jerusalem, noting their very somber state. They were totally stunned at how Jesus was hailed a hero and executed in a span of a few days, and then Jesus, who hid His identity from them, began to explain how all these events were the fulfillment of Scripture, starting with Moses. It was the greatest Bible study of all time, and the two insisted on Jesus staying to eat with them. So He did, and the moment He broke the bread, He disappeared, and they realized it was Him.
Paul reports these sightings and then adds that at one time, 500 had seen Him at once, and at the time of the writing of 1 Corinthians, most of these 500 were still alive. What does that mean? It means Paul said to check him out if someone didn’t believe him.
Many skeptics will go out of their way to say, “Why didn’t Jesus show Himself publicly?” Answer: He did. But why didn’t the Romans take notice? The Roman Empire didn’t care about any of this. Those in Judea were only concerned about law and order. They didn’t care about any of the Jewish religion or rituals as long as they brought in tax dollars and stayed peaceful. And they certainly weren’t going to be bothered with the claims of a man coming back from the dead, except maybe those who saw Him and ended up directly involved in what Jesus was doing. I imagine the centurion who realized who Jesus was when He died would have been very intrigued when the resurrection claims started going around.
It is also worth noting that people didn’t go spreading word about Jesus until Pentecost after Jesus ascended. They all talked among each other, but there was no widespread public sharing about it for those first 50 days. Why? Several reasons. One is that they were still in shock about the whole thing. They were not waiting at the tomb for Jesus to rise as He predicted, so the mere fact that He did rise was just so stunning to them that they could only share with each other. Another reason is that just a few days before, the whole city was shouting for Jesus’ death, and just mentioning Him in public would draw the attention of those who had just gotten Jesus killed. So they weren’t about to go publicly share about this either. But then Pentecost comes and the Holy Spirit comes down, and then it was training wheels off and they went and went BIG. The way historians record the spread of the church matches precisely with how the Bible describes it.
Jesus was not about proving to everyone that He was God, but He provided enough evidence that no one honestly evaluating it could deny its validity. The resurrection of Christ is the most verifiable ancient historical account, and frankly, I would argue even more verifiable than today’s events. Jesus appeared to many different witnesses, and among them were unbelievers. What does that mean? Jesus had hostile witnesses, which means it wasn’t just people who only believed in Him who saw it. No conspiracy could be claimed because a hostile witness could easily refute what was claimed if they were there. But no one ever could stand up and give an eyewitness testimony of anything being faked. Unlike any other myth, counterfeit messiah, or false prophet, Jesus did His events publicly so there would be witnesses. There were no witnesses for Joseph Smith or Muhammad. Everyone else had a private revelation that could not be accounted for, but Jesus showed Himself publicly and went above and beyond any quorum needed for validation.
It is impossible for 500 people to have the same hallucination. It is impossible for multiple people to get the same hallucination multiple times. Jesus did not have a twin brother who pretended to be Him. The body was not stolen, and Jesus did not actually avoid death and came back resurrected at full strength if he just “swooned.” It’s also worth noting that nothing is said about any scars from the whips or even the crown of thorns, just the nails and spear. Jesus showed up in His physical body over 40 days, but He had two jobs to do before He would ascend to heaven. That’s for next week.
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Jesus had died and was buried in a borrowed tomb. We can say “borrowed” because three days later, after the Passover had come and gone, the women who did not have the time to fully bury the body came to deliver and apply the burial spices, about sixty pounds worth, only to find the tomb open and empty. Jesus was gone. The tomb was sealed lest anyone steal the body and proclaim a Resurrection, and the Roman guard would be there with no chance of sleeping on duty under penalty of death. The seal wasn’t merely cracked; the entire stone slab, which weighed several thousand pounds, wasn’t just rolled away but more tossed out of the way. The description isn’t merely to just get the door open, but to knock the door off its hinges. And Jesus was nowhere to be found, and apparently neither were the guards.
The women were baffled until a man approached Mary Magdalene and asked why she was crying. The man comforted her and then called her by her name. Suddenly, she recognized Jesus and sought to cling to Him, but Jesus refused. His glorified body was not fit for that, as He was now preparing for His ascension. So the women ran back to the disciples. Peter and John didn’t even hesitate; they ran to the tomb. Though John beat Peter in the race, John stopped, and Peter ran into the tomb directly. While an angel announced Jesus’ resurrection to the woman sitting on the stone door, here two other angels sat inside the tomb at Jesus’ head and feet, and all that was left were the grave clothes.
There are multiple times in the Bible when someone had died and was brought back to life, but most had just recently died, like the same day, and only a couple of cases had several days pass. But even then, their life was merely restored to them temporarily. Each person who died and was brought back to life would die again when it was their time. But Jesus did not have His life restored to His body; He was resurrected. The body He was born in perished, marking the death of the sin-cursed, but it was changed, transformed, and made new in its glorified form. However, Jesus still bore the five scars from His crucifixion: the holes in both hands and feet and the spear-pierced side. The scars were there, yet fully healed.
Jesus was the first resurrected person, and no one else is going to be resurrected until the time for all judgment to come. One thing that is often missed is that literally everyone is going to be resurrected. Good, bad, young, and old, every person of every point in history is going to die physically (or taken to heaven in some rapture-type thing of which I am not going to delve into), and that body will be resurrected. This is how every person is going to give an account for their lives. We all are going to receive immortal and perfect bodies, bodies that will not die. Those who are in Christ will be welcomed to paradise, but those who are not will suffer the wrath of God for eternity in a body that cannot die. That needs to scare us.
The second “death” is not annihilation or an eternal slumber where even time will forget us. No, this lake of fire is where God’s eternal, righteous, and just wrath is going to be poured out without exhaustion. Unlike man, whose wrath can be exhausted, God’s wrath is never exhausted. While His love and grace and mercy are infinite, so is His wrath, and we are going to glorify God one way or the other: in paradise or in eternal judgment. Those who lived this life in sin and crime and did not meet judgment here on earth will face it with God. And those who did experience judgment here on earth faced their crimes against humanity, not their crimes against deity. The only escape from the judgment for crime against deity is Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ death took the just punishment against sin as though He were the only one to have sinned. But in His resurrection came the defeat of sin, Hell, and the grave, so that all who are “in Christ,” those who died to themselves and submitted themselves to a new Master, will escape it. Just as Noah and his family escaped the Flood by one means of salvation, so we can escape the judgment of God through the one means of salvation: the cross.
Just as Adam and Eve were clothed, Paul uses this notion of being “in Christ” so that when Jesus died, we died, and when He rose, we will rise with Him. However, it’s more than just that. God does more than just see Jesus in our place. When Jesus died, He came back the same God as when He came. He did not change other than having His human nature. When we die in Christ and when we are resurrected in Christ, we are changed. Jesus never had a sin nature to change from; we do. When we die, the law that demands our judgment is still fulfilled. But when we are resurrected, we are raised under a new law that gives us a new master. We experience the resurrection in part in this life because we have a new heart, new mind, new motives, and new drives, but we don’t have a new body yet. That still has to die as well, and then we will receive our new bodies that will not experience the curse of sin. They will be fully functional as they would have been had we never sinned.
How it is going to look can only, at best, be described with “glorified imagination” and I don’t have the time or space, let alone the vocabulary, to describe it. But Jesus’ resurrection is what gives us the hope that we have. It is the resurrection that will enable us to endure whatever this world gives us to offer if only we would start thinking eternally again. But in that eternal thinking is the doom people have if we do not tell them how to escape it. We must see both, and I fear too many of us have fallen for the intellectual game that keeps the reality of things “out there.” Jesus did die for us. He did rise from the grave. He did defeat sin, death, and Hell. But do we live like we believe that?
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The cross is the singular most discussed topic of all of history. There is literally no other event in all of world history that remotely compares to the crucifixion of Jesus. It truly is the singular most important world-changing event. It is because of the cross that we have BC and AD for our calendar. If we did not have the cross, we would be either still counting years by ruler or like the Jews, who started from creation and counted forward. We count from the birth of Christ forward. But the reason we start with Christ’s birth is that that is when the most important person in history was born. But without the cross, Jesus’ birth doesn’t have the same weight. The cross is why Jesus came to us to begin with. All Jesus did and experienced was for this one moment of history that literally changed how everything operates.
The physical torture Jesus endured is beyond harrowing. At the time, it was the most severe form of torture known to man. The whipping was just the opening. Roman soldiers, taking their cat o’ nine tails, edged with glass, rocks, bones, or whatever would rip into flesh easily. And they made a sport out of it – who could make the most devastating blow. Scripture describes Jesus being unrecognizable, just a standing hunk of meat. Some would not survive such a beating due to the loss of blood, let alone any infection that would finish the job. The crown of thorns, the mocking, and the mob assault added to the mix. The crown of thorns not only drew blood but would cause serious head pain that would make anyone lose concentration easily. Getting beaten up and having your beard ripped out in chunks doesn’t help either. And that’s all before being driven down the streets of Jerusalem outside the city, being forced to carry the very cross that would be used to execute Him. Jesus was so weak from all this that He could not physically carry it anymore, and so they had to pull a man from the streets to finish the job. Then, finally, He was nailed to the cross and hung naked, having to rely on His very weak body to get a breath. The very setting of the cross into the hole would make most joints get dislocated.
Often, it could take 2-3 days for someone to finally die on a cross. Jesus didn’t make it for at most six hours, to include the events we know and the three hours of darkness. Jesus died of a burst heart, indicated by the water and blood flowing out of the chest wound from a soldier’s spear, meaning it was already settling out from each other. Then the earthquake happened, and even the centurion on site acknowledged that Jesus was the Son of God.
Jesus’ death on the cross was unlike any other death or self-sacrifice. While it has been echoed in Narina and Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter, Jesus was the root of it. The notion of a sacrifice preceded Jesus, going all the way back to Genesis. What is unique in the Bible and in Jesus is the key component that the sacrifice must be pure and innocent, and a substitute for others. Absolutely perfect. While other myths would have the concept of a pure maiden giving her life, none of them have a sacrificial element. Only Aslan in Narnia, who is hard to deny was meant to BE Jesus, gets close. But these are all snapshots, pictures, and shadows of the one reality that Jesus did.
Jesus did not die merely sacrificially; He died as a substitute. We had sinned, and we deserved the full wrath of Almighty God. Throughout history, man has sought to downplay the severity of our crime against deity or to increase the value of humanity. We love trying to make our own sins not very significant, and we also love making ourselves victims deserving of being rescued. So we’ll call our sins “mistakes” or “imperfections,” but we’ll say that we are so valuable in God’s eyes that He couldn’t live without us. That’s heresy. Jesus didn’t die to show us how valuable we are to Him. He died because of how heinous our sin is. And we need to remind ourselves every day of the severity of our sin, developing a hatred for it so that we would put it to death. It is such a slap in the face of Jesus to proclaim His death and resurrection and our salvation just to live however we want.
The thing about the cross that we have missed is that we, too, must die. Jesus didn’t merely die as our substitute, representing us. We have to be “in Christ,” which means we must die, too. We won’t face the wrath of God as Jesus did, but our old sinful selves must be put to death so that we may be raised in new life. We love citing John 3:16, but we recoil at Luke 9:23. If we are in Christ, we have a new master, and it’s not sin and it’s not self.
Jesus didn’t die to free us from the hands of the devil; Jesus died to free us from ourselves. Satan is just a deceiver, but he would be completely powerless if we simply didn’t listen to him. All he can actually do is just dangle carrots in front of us, and because we are our own problem, we lunge at those carrots and get ourselves in trouble. And if Satan didn’t do that, we’d still find our own trouble. That’s why Satan simply leaves most people alone because they are so good at their own sin. Jesus died to save us from that. He died to save us from ourselves, so we need to put self on that cross daily so that we live not the very lives that cost Jesus His life to begin with, but that we might live a resurrected life in Christ, which we will cover next week.
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Jesus was arrested and taken straight to trial by the Sanhedrin. They were ready for Him. This shows very easily that the whole thing was a setup. They needed enough of the seventy members to make a quorum, and clearly, they did not call ALL the members for this quorum, but the ones who were opposed to Jesus, not the ones who supported Him. At the seat of judgment, leading this trial, was Caiphas, the High Priest. Caiphas was very political and hated Rome with a passion, but he did everything to keep the peace with Rome, knowing that to trigger Rome would steal their power and would lead to their destruction. Rome was actually beneficial to the Sadducees because Rome kept them in power. And here came Jesus, a very clear threat to the system, and just a few days ago, he made a huge scene with the cleansing of the temple and even evading the tax question. They wanted Jesus dead, but now they had to find a reason to do so.
So they tried to get witnesses to lie about him, but they needed at least two to agree. Despite a multitude of witnesses, none of them could actually agree on it. This trial was a setup, but it was also a rush job. We have an example of another setup back in 1 Kings 21, when Jezebel got two scoundrels to testify together against Naboth and had him executed on false charges so Ahab could take Naboth’s vineyard. Yet here, the quorum could not get any two witnesses to agree until two finally stepped up and relied on Jesus’ claim to destroy the temple and bring it back in three days. And Jesus kept silent until Jesus was forced under oath to say if he was the Son of God. Then Jesus simply said, “You said it,” and then added that He wasn’t merely a human, but the Son of Man referenced in Daniel. They knew precisely what Jesus was saying: He wasn’t just claiming to be the Messiah but to be God Himself. The Sanhedrin found Jesus guilty of death; however, they only had the legal right to execute anyone on Temple grounds. So they went to their next step: appealing to the Romans.
Jesus was sent to Pilate because Pilate had to order the crucifixion. He was expected to just comply with the Jews on their sentences, but Pilate had his own political issues. He was under pressure from the Capitol for carrying out too many executions, and the political pressure with the Passover feast, where over a million people had gathered, equating the population of Rome itself. In the center of it was Jesus: the now-famed miracle-worker who had just raised Lazarus from the dead and created a scene in the Temple. Pilate wanted nothing to do with this and then sent Jesus to Herod, who played the role of a king, but knew more of Jewish custom. Both Herod and Pilate could find nothing wrong with Jesus, who did nothing to defend Himself.
Finally, Pilate got Him back and sought to set Jesus free, baffled that Jesus would not defend Himself. He wondered if Jesus was even taking this seriously enough that Pilate could have Him executed, but Jesus basically said, “You don’t have any authority over Me except what My Father lets you have.” There was nothing Pilate could find. But he had to deal with the Jews. So he offered a notorious criminal, Barabbas, thinking they’d actually choose to have the criminal executed, but they chose Jesus. So Pilate took a bowl of water, washed his hands, and declared he was not going to be held responsible for this. And with that, Pilate signaled for Jesus to be crucified.
The amazing thing in all this is Jesus’ silence. Jesus would not defend Himself. Yes, we know He had to fulfill Scripture and be silent as a lamb before shearers, but Jesus endured all sorts of slander, mockery, and insults and did not raise a finger to defend Himself. Before, He stood when Pharisees tried to stone Him and asked, “For what do you stone Me?” Not this time. Jesus remained silent, demonstrating one of His key teachings: turning the other cheek. This is echoed throughout Scripture: Repay evil with good. Scripture tells us to suffer well, even when people lie and slander about us, and live so that no accusation can be proved. This is no easy task.
There is a place to defend ourselves. Paul did to avoid another farce trial in Jerusalem while under Roman protection, and he appealed to Caesar when it showed he wasn’t going to be able to be released without facing the Jews in Jerusalem. But part of this was knowing that he was to go to Rome. Paul knew his journey wasn’t over. Jesus knew His earthly journey was over. This was to be His death, and it had to be a death in which He gave His life. It could not be taken from Him.
We have a SEVERE problem in our culture, and we don’t have a “doctrine of suffering” because we in the U.S. have not suffered. Sure, we have been mocked and ridiculed, but we haven’t experienced actual suffering for our faith. Yes, I am aware of MLK Jr., and yes, Charlie Kirk is still fresh on our minds, but those were more politically motivated as opposed to Gospel related. They weren’t killed simply because they were Christians and preaching a Christian message. They were killed because their political views, which came out of their faith, had greatly disturbed the status quo.
But we are now at the verge of facing true persecution. With AI and Deep Fakes being very easy to manipulate and perform, it is vital that we learn how to keep our mouths shut – except at the proclamation of the Gospel. We need to learn when to properly defend ourselves and when not to, and at any cost, don’t give the enemy reason to question our character because they’ll see weakness and then seek to get us to say something to incriminate ourselves. We must be watchful.
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Jesus was a man of prayer, and He would make a purpose to sneak out and slip away to be with His Father. Here, Jesus is about to face the very moment for which He came to earth and became a man, and He needed His Father more than ever before. He was about to face the wrath of God and bear the sins of mankind. The one who knew no sin and never experienced the Father’s anger was about to, at the fullest force. Jesus knew of God’s wrath by seeing it in action and the judgment upon mankind throughout the ages; none was a greater judgment than the Flood of Noah’s day. But what Jesus was about to endure was more severe than anything this world has ever known. In His humanity, Jesus needed help more than ever before. So He went to the Garden of Gethsemane to go do battle in prayer before His big showdown.
Jesus had eight of His disciples stand guard because Judas had already left to run his “errand,” and He took Peter, James, and John with Him into the interior. Jesus wanted companions but also knew these three could not go with Him all the way, so He had them stand, watch, and pray while He went further in. Jesus went in with great sorrow. I find myself often skimming over such emotional descriptions because the words simply don’t give the reality of the emotion such justice. To truly describe the grief Jesus was facing at this moment would take pages because we simply don’t have the language for it in just a phrase or word. The grief of a miscarriage or the betrayal of a parent/mentor, as severe as those are and no marginalization whatsoever of that type of pain, doesn’t compare to what Jesus was going through at this moment. Jesus was under such distress and dread of facing the full wrath of the eternal, holy, righteous, and just God that His body began to sweat literal blood. The physical stress caused by these emotions was so great that His heart was about to burst, and His blood vessels couldn’t take it.
Jesus had a simple prayer: “If it may be, take this cup from Me. But not My will but Your will be done.” Jesus was begging His Father to find any other route to save mankind without Him going to the cross. This was a temptation Jesus frequently faced. Why go through the suffering of the cross if He could have been given the world easily by the enemy? Even Peter rebuked Jesus for even thinking of dying. But Jesus knew His mission, and He knew His calling. This was Jesus’ humanity pleading before God for one last attempt at mercy from having to go this route. But as He had done His whole life, Jesus submitted His will to the will of the Father. He was not about to turn back now at the moment of decision.
Jesus went back and found His disciples sleeping. He understood and knew they didn’t have what it took to stand guard. They were emotionally exhausted from the Last Supper meal in which Jesus gave one of the hardest messages He had to give: that He was leaving His friends. It wasn’t just hard on Jesus; it was harder on the Apostles. They didn’t have the Holy Spirit yet, and the very Messiah who had poured His life into them was leaving them. Not without hope, but leaving physically. And Peter was wrestling with the fact that Jesus told him he would betray Him that night. We tend to think they were just tired from the day, but this was an excessively exhausting day mentally and emotionally. As a teacher, I feel fine physically after the day, but I am exhausted mentally. This was an emotional exhaustion, and there was a spiritual pressure here that was even above and beyond that. When I think about this, it is no wonder they fell asleep.
So Jesus went back and prayed again and then found the disciples sleeping again. And Jesus prayed a third time, this time sealing the deal and fully committing Himself one last time to go through with what He was about to face. He knew His mission, He knew the calling, and He had the strength He needed; it was now time to go face it. He got up, and His disciples followed Him straight towards a crowd that was led by none other than their own Judas.
Jesus stood His ground. He was not going to be captured. He was going to surrender. Just in identifying Himself, the group and mob fell backwards. Peter, in such a confused mess, drew his sword and, with bad aim, ended up cutting off Malchus’s ear. Jesus healed him and then surrendered Himself on the premise that they let His disciples go, and they scattered quickly.
One thing needs to be made clear, that I am going to re-emphasize. Jesus was never conquered; He was never beaten. He surrendered. He allowed Himself to be captured for this moment. Every single thing He did in ministry and every word He said was designed to lead up to this moment. Each of Jesus’ miracles was not merely to get the attention of people or to be compassionate to the people, but to prove to the system that He was the Messiah. Each of Jesus’ teachings wasn’t merely to instruct people how to live, but to set the stakes so high that it made Him a threat to the system. And then His rebukes to the system only enraged them all the more, but each step, each miracle, and each word spoken built itself to this moment. Jesus forced the Pharisees’ hands to take action and, in their desperation and in the sovereignty of God, their reaction to Jesus perfectly set up this moment so they would beg for Jesus’ death and do exactly what God intended all along.
I love how God uses His own enemies to fulfill His purposes and give Him glory, and here we are seeing that in action. If the enemies of Christ actually knew what they were doing, they would not have crucified Him. But Jesus directed all these events towards this moment in accordance with the will of the Father, and now it was time to finish the job.
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Last week, I emphasized Jesus’ final teachings from what’s known as the Upper Room discourse, and today, I’ll finish that by emphasizing John 16-17, which is a final teaching on the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ great prayer, the longest recorded single prayer in Scripture.
Jesus spoke of all these things so His disciples would not stumble. The world would come after them because they were associated with Jesus. The authorities would arrest them, beat them, slander them, and seek to do all they could to destroy them. And understand this: the authorities and the church were synonymous in those days. If applied today, the government would be arresting us, but some of the very people we think we should trust are those who will turn us in. The biggest enemies of the Church have been the counterfeits in the Church.
But Jesus said we are not to fear these things, but to know that when they happen, do not be surprised. When Peter and John were arrested in Acts 4 for preaching the name of Jesus after healing a lame man, they sang for joy because they were counted worthy to suffer for Christ. But this joy can only come from the Holy Spirit. It will never come from the flesh. It also must be practiced and prepared before you can actually do this. Richard Wurmbrand told people in the West that we need to practice suffering. One way he would do that was to go through an American grocery store and say, “I can go without that.” And would end up leaving and getting nothing. Yes, he would get food to eat, but 14 years of prison in Communist Romania teaches you to cherish what you have, but also not to indulge in things even when you can. Jesus told us we would suffer, and the US church is the only one so far to not have gone through actual persecution in the way the rest of the world has. Even when the Church had moments of peace from Roman emperors, it was short-lived. So if Jesus says we will suffer, guess what, if we are living the Christian life, we will suffer, and people won’t like us. We need to get used to that.
However, in this promise is another promise of help: the Holy Spirit. The reason why the world is going to hate us so much is not merely because of Christ in us. They will hate us because the Holy Spirit has a primary job of convicting the world of sin, and you don’t even have to say anything for this to happen. Why? Because the Holy Spirit will convict you of sin and warn you against sin, and when you don’t engage in sin when the world seeks to, that action will tell them, “Oh, you are one of those Christians.” Understand that these reactions are actually a cover for their FEAR of God because they know that God is real and that judgment is coming. They don’t just want you to know that this is what is going on. But when this happens, the Holy Spirit will guide us to all truth and even what to say and what not to say.
Then Jesus warns of His death and resurrection again. There will be great sorrow within 24 hours, but great rejoicing just a couple of days later. And when that happens, the disciples won’t need to question what God is saying due to a lack of understanding, because when they ask what they need, they’ll get what they need in prayer. Yet tribulation is imminent.
From there, Jesus goes to His epic prayer of John 17, first praying for Himself, then praying for His disciples, and then for all believers. Jesus prays for Himself for the moment He was about to go through, and that He would be glorified in receiving the judgment of God for the sin of the world. He prays for His disciples that they would be able to endure the trials to come and to be kept and protected. He prays for the rest of the believers for endurance and protection during the times of persecution that they may be good witnesses. And Jesus ended it with the knowledge of God and that the love of God would be on full display among the church.
With this, Jesus finished teaching His disciples and headed for the Garden of Gethsemane, where He would have the battle for His life: the internal battle about whether He would go to the Cross or seek another way.
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John 13-17 contains the final teachings of Jesus’ life before His crucifixion. It was a very difficult time for Jesus because from that point on, Jesus’ disciples would effectively be on their own… except they would not be left on their own. For three years, Jesus had trained His disciples to be teachers and preachers of a new message and to lead a new Kingdom, but none of them got it. None of them would understand what Jesus had been saying all along for another fifty days, and this was the hardest message for them. Because Jesus was leaving and they were going to suffer greatly. In this post, I’ll cover His teachings in John 13-15.
After washing His disciples’ feet, Jesus told everyone that He was about to be betrayed. Then Jesus immediately identified Judas by giving him the dipped bread and told him to do what he was about to do. Once Judas left, no one suspected him. Judas had the money box and suspected Jesus was sent to get something. With that, Jesus announced that He was leaving, and where He was going, they could not come. This was a total heartbreak for the disciples. They knew Jesus was their Messiah, their Savior, and they loved Him and knew He had everything they could ever need and had nowhere else to go. Peter said he would go anywhere, including dying for Jesus, and Jesus simply sighed and told Peter he would deny Him three times that very night.
But Jesus then began to comfort the disciples by telling them what He was going to do while away: prepare a place for them and then come back for them, and they would know where and how to meet Him. Thomas and Philip tried to get clarification on this and never understood that Jesus was not merely the Messiah, but was one with God; by knowing Jesus, they knew the Father. But then Jesus said He would not leave them alone but would give them something far better than His physical presence: the Holy Spirit. And it would be the Holy Spirit who would do more than just comfort them.
The Holy Spirit is called “the Helper,” the “parakletos,” and is so much more than the “helper” that Eve was to Adam. The Holy Spirit is the very engine that makes the car called mankind operate as intended. It is the Holy Spirit who teaches us how to love one another. It is the Holy Spirit who teaches how to obey the Lord. It is the Holy Spirit who overcomes the world and enables us to rise above our culture and live the supernatural life.
I want to dwell on this for a moment because we have a severe problem in our time today. We have a massive movement of making a huge emphasis on the Holy Spirit that attributes practically anything and everything to Him, no matter how ridiculous it is. And we have a reaction to that movement that practically denies anything to do with Him. The Charismatics very well acknowledge the action of the supernatural, but they rarely check what they say or think against Scripture to know what is actually Him or not. But the Reformed cessationists, while doing an excellent job at checking this movement, all but practically deny the actual nature of the supernatural in the process. Many truly think that the nature of spiritual warfare is ONLY regarding teachings, and they miss the mark on that one. What they end up with if they are not careful is a very well-constructed theology, but one that is dead. Both sides have a severe problem: no real power.
The world does not give them the time of day. The world has always had to respect the true Church when she has had power, often to the point of taking it very seriously to try to shut it down. But with only a few exceptions, the government has been very subtle in its opposition to the church. They go after Creationists because that is where a severe threat to worldly ideals lies, but they aren’t going after the church as a whole. Not openly. Just gradually setting things up so that the Church will not raise her head above an accepted level. And I am asking: Why has the church allowed this? And I have to ask myself, why have I been part of “keeping the status quo”? We are to live supernatural lives, and we are satisfied with pure academic lives. That’s not what Jesus intended. Jesus intended for us to be a force that no one could stop, and the source of that force is the Holy Spirit.
After that, Jesus emphasizes making sure our source is Him. We must be attached to the vine and get our source of life from the vine; otherwise, we are merely dead branches, and dead wood is only good for the fire. And worse are branches that don’t produce fruit and are just wasting the vine’s energy. So those will be pruned. It’s a severe warning that those who are supposed to be Christians can’t just get a free ride. But those who engage in the Father’s mission will have a joy beyond anything that we can describe. The mission we are sent to do cannot be done without our power source: the Holy Spirit.
Jesus repeatedly emphasizes to the disciples to love one another. He says this many times in this final teaching. Jesus calls them “friends,” and for God to call you a friend is something special. Never forget, He is still the King, and we are still His servants. We see throughout Acts and the Epistles that the Apostles never lost sight of this. They never forget that Jesus was King and they were but His servants, yet Jesus called them His friends. And that is a severe problem with the world, because the world hates Jesus.
The world has been in rebellion against God from the very start. The world does not want God to rule, and the ultimate reason is that Jesus points out that they are sinners who deserve judgment. The world hates us because we are no longer of them, of their same likeness. We are representatives of God, and they hate God. So why would we want to curry their favor? Now, understand this. They don’t hate God because of ignorance of Him. They hate God because they DO know Him. They DO know that God exists, and they hate Him; they hate God without a cause. But when we have the Holy Spirit, we need to not fear them or their silly arguments or their attempts to weaponize the law against us. Let them try. We go preach Jesus because that is what a Holy Spirit-filled person will do.
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During the Last Supper, Jesus carried out His most humiliating and final act of servitude in His human life: the washing of the disciples’ feet. After this night, Jesus would go face-to-face with His enemies and surrender His life to them. Then, upon His resurrection, Jesus was no longer the “passive servant” that some had made Him out to be, but the royal King making His final rounds before ascending. Yes, He would serve a couple of meals, but after the Resurrection, Jesus was no longer the lamb. He was now the lion. Here at the Last Supper, Jesus gave the final example of what true leadership looks like: taking the lowest spot and doing the things that were often reserved for the lowest menial labor. It is this moment, along with Philippians 2:5-11, that gives rise to the phrase, the Servant King. That title is nowhere found in Scripture directly, but there is truth to it. Jesus was and is the King, and He is a king who did serve. But understand that Jesus looked down on no one, and while He served and supported, He absolutely did not bow to anyone’s command.
Multiple ministers and missionaries I have encountered knew precisely what to do with anyone who wanted to come serve with them. When they asked if they could preach or evangelize, they would hand over the toilet brush. Because if they were not willing to do the work behind the spotlight, they were undeserving of the spotlight. Too many people think ministry in the Kingdom is a glorious spotlight of fame and TV/YouTube spots. But it’s not. It’s often a dirty job. The pastoral position is like being the father of a family. It gets messy when you deal with people day in and day out. The people who don’t want to do that only see the speaking part, the celebrity part, and the “get taken out for lunch” part, and then they can leave and leave the dirty work for someone else. Jesus never promoted any such notion.
Jesus’ final act of service was to wash His disciples’ feet, including those of Judas, whom Jesus knew would betray Him within a few hours. Peter realized what Jesus was doing, and good old foot-in-the-mouth Peter insisted that Jesus should not bring Himself down to such a position. He would rather do it himself. Then, when Jesus corrected him, Peter asked for a whole-body washing. Oh, how many of us sound just like Peter, if not more bone-headed?
One thing Jesus made clear was that His kingdom was not of this world. It works completely backwards from how mankind would plot it or plan it. All the Jews and even the disciples thought Jesus was going to rescue them from Rome and be who they thought David would be. But David was just a picture of defeating physical enemies, and Jesus would defeat far more powerful enemies. The Jews wanted to rule with force, but Jesus would rule with love and authority. The kingdom of God would spread by preaching and loving each other. When Pilate questioned Jesus, he was afraid of a Jewish revolt – not that it would succeed, but that it would be a headache for him to deal with. But Jesus said His kingdom was not of this world, and Jesus’ final act of service was just that – an action that is not of this world.
Jesus’ model for ministry was to genuinely help people and to lift them up, at first with ONE round of physical needs, and then with spiritual needs. He was the antithesis of the “social justice” movement that has usurped His name. The social justice movement has never been about actually helping people, but a Marxist ideology to remove individual wealth and distribute it “among the poor.” The pretense is to help the poor, but the actual agenda is to keep the poor poor and make the middle class subject to the state, so the state controls the resources. It’s Communism pretending to be generous to the poor. That’s not what Jesus was about. Jesus was about the individuals helping the poor as they saw need and as they had ability. If Jesus saw a wagon that was broken down, He’d get under it and fix it. He didn’t just say “go the extra mile” to carry a Roman soldier’s gear, but would actually do it. Jesus was about going above and beyond helping true needs, but Jesus also had limits. Jesus fed the 5000, but when they came to get seconds and treat Jesus as a welfare system, Jesus didn’t give them another bite. Jesus was a servant, the servant king, the King who served, but He was going to be nobody’s call boy.
Jesus is not a genie. He does not serve upon command. He serves by choice, and He will draw a line at what He does. He never demanded that anyone follow Him with any threats or even bribes, but He certainly warned and called out those who deliberately refused to even consider Him. He wept at those who loved their sin too much to let it go, but He held nothing back at those who would hold back His sheep from the truth and from Him. Yet Jesus treats His sheep with tender love and care, and sometimes that means taking them through some brutal areas so that they can graze and eat their fill and rest by very good waters. This model is how we are to handle others. We are not to be doormats, but we are to serve those whom we can, and sometimes that includes our enemies. We are not to lord anything over others. This is part of why I don’t like apologists who have to boast their credentials as though they mean much. I especially have no respect for those who think their credentials make them deserve some kind of respect or attention. That’s what the Pharisees did. We don’t need to show our credentials; that’s worldly thinking. Our credentials are our love for each other and our love for others as we deal with their actual needs, physical and spiritual.
Let us take Jesus’ example and serve one another, even doing the menial tasks without complaint, even if it means taking a step back in our professional career, and build up those who are around us. Yes, even those pagan administrators and managers who don’t know a thing about the real world or what we actually have to do. Because if God told Israel to support Babylon because they would be blessed if they blessed Babylon, so will we. If we make our bosses, our managers, and our leaders proper, so shall we. We serve a higher authority, and if we serve Him, He will honor us.
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The final 24 hours of Jesus’ life on earth before His crucifixion had arrived, and it was so critical to John that he dedicated chapters 13 through 19 (about 1/3 of his book) to this night alone. The other Gospel authors give a lengthy chapter on these events, but none go into detail like John does. The only part John skimps on is the Passover Meal itself because John instead focuses on the teaching that took place during the meal. So I will focus on Matthew’s take on this meal. But this meal was crucial; only one meal ever served compared in significance: the original Passover Meal on the night before Israel left Egypt.
Jesus longed to eat this meal because this would trigger the final sequence of events that His earthly life was designed for. The Jews had been celebrating this meal for 1500 years as the marker for their God being their God of salvation. To the Jew, every time they thought of their salvation and deliverance, they all looked back to this one moment of history when they ate the meal in which the death of the firstborn would pass them over, and then God brought them out of Egypt. In the morning after that meal, every one of them would be packing up and staging to leave Egypt for good. This Passover meal was to be a perpetual reminder that the judgment that was due to all and to be placed on all would be passed over by the blood of the lamb, and in that passing by, the deliverance and freedom from slavery would take place. Israel would never serve as slaves again as a nation. This was the marker moment, and throughout the Bible, God would identify Himself as, “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt.” This Passover meal was the moment in which Israel ceased being a family and became a nation. This was the moment that Israel became Israel.
But all of it was for a much greater purpose. The Passover and the Exodus were a physical picture of the ultimate reality that would come this very night as Jesus sat down with His disciples. It was a private setting in an upper room in Jerusalem where Jesus would give His final teachings and carry out His final act of service before locking in and facing the greatest trial any man could ever face. This was the meal of meals that we honor and celebrate today.
I am not going to go into the details of the ritual, but the meal was marked by several dishes that each had their own symbolic meaning, including remembering the times of slavery, and several cups that had their own meaning, too. But it was during this meal that Jesus changed it up. No longer would people be remembering the exodus from Egypt and slavery, which was only a memorial for Jews. Instead, Jesus made this a memorial for the exodus from sin itself, and it would be something that people from all over the world would be able to experience.
Jesus identified two things: the bread and the cup. The bread would be the body, broken for us, and the cup would be the blood shed for us. As I am writing this, my pastor has been preaching quite a bit on the Lord’s Supper, and there is good reason to believe, like with Israel in Jesus’ time, that we’ve lost sight of what this meal really is. Too many of us take it way too lightly, and I have been guilty of that myself. Jesus said we must eat His flesh and drink His blood, and most understood precisely what He was saying. Jesus is to be our sustenance – our source, our food, the very thing that we rely on for our life.
Now, some will say that the bread and the wine become the literal body and blood of Christ, and others will say that they are just symbols of the body and blood. I believe both are wrong. Christ is not still on the cross, but at the same time, to merely treat the bread and wine as symbols takes away the sacredness of this meal. It is worth noting that the demonic, the witches, etc., will take the bread and cups from Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, but not from most Reformed churches. Why not? Because the spiritual side of darkness knows that the power in the Lord’s Supper is hardly present in most Reformed circles. And no, I am not supporting those churches here, but I’m addressing a concern in doctrinally sound churches.
One thing I am learning is that the Lord’s Supper is so much more than a mere remembrance of what Jesus did. When we partake in it, it is also a declaration of war against Satan and his minions and against sin. Yet so many of us will sin all week long, all day long, then go to church and take the Lord’s Supper and act like sin never happened. There have been times I have wondered if I should partake due to what had been going on in my head that morning, and it’s a battle that I keep losing. The taking of the Lord’s Supper is to remind us of the victory over sin, that we are not to live that way anymore, and not be a cover for our sins. People have been sick and literally died because they were taking the Lord’s Supper unworthily and put a curse upon themselves.
The Lord’s Supper is for believers who have professed the faith and begun to live according to those principles. It is not for anyone who lives an open life of sin. John Calvin denied a group of immoral men from partaking because they were living lives of sexual fornication. They came in one service, demanding to be served, and Calvin barred the way. They drew swords, and Calvin did not budge. They left, and Calvin protected the sanctity of this precious ordinance of the church.
There is power in the Lord’s Supper that we simply don’t recognize in our Protestant, Reformed circles anymore. And it’s time we get a grip that we are to live supernatural lives, battling against supernatural foes, and living for the supernatural God. And yes, there is rationality behind it, but not according to human wisdom. Jesus established the Lord’s Supper as one of the two ordinances that mark and identify the Christian as being separated from the world, as being delivered from sin, as being the people of God and not of this world, and on the journey toward holiness in the process of sanctification. Let us return to what this meal is truly about and not lose its true meaning.
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Jesus concludes His teaching about the end times with three parables in Matthew 25 that warn about what will take place in the final days: the separation of the genuine from the counterfeit. For all of church history, the two are going to be mixed, and the Parable of the Sower gives a clear indication of this. Now, this may baffle people, but there is no place in Scripture that says we cannot know who is saved and who is not. It actually says the opposite; we can know. Every person gives indications of where they truly stand and where they don’t. Some will be obvious, and some will be harder to tell. And I am not suggesting we go hunting to mark everyone. But in Jesus’ parables, we get clues of character and behavior that mark a born-again believer and those who are not. The three parables in Matthew 25 give some of these indicators.
First, we have the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. Again, both groups are professing believers. In the context of a Jewish wedding, five of these took their job seriously and came ready for the long haul, with extra oil in the event of a delay. The other five were rather nonchalant about it and came expecting the arrival to be instant. Since the bridegroom was delayed, everyone fell asleep while waiting. Then, when he arrived, the wise ones were prepared and could get in position immediately. The foolish ones could not, rushed to get oil for their lamps, and missed the event. There are way too many of us who take church too casually and treat God as a mere concept instead of an actual person.
Then we have the Parable of the Talents. Three servants are trained and equipped to do what they need to do, and each is given the resources in accordance with their abilities. Two servants did what they were supposed to do, but the third did nothing with his. The believer is supposed to engage in the work he is called to do, but many only use these gifts for self or not at all. In America, we have this total consumer mindset where a church is only about me and what it can provide for us. Because churches are built around that mindset, offering a service for consumption instead of a message to give, the talents God has given many are going to waste and rot. But the faithful servants who still have the Kingdom mindset are going to use those talents to bring in more income, fruit, and spiritual goods to God’s “storeroom.”
Then we have the Parable of the Separation of Sheep from Goats. Throughout the whole church age, the true believers and false believers are going to be intermixed. Now, take notice that in no parable or teaching I can think of does Scripture actually say that we never can know who is going and who isn’t going to heaven. What these parables actually showcase are the traits of those who are going and those who are not going. The Parable of the Wheat and Tares is very much like this one because both are identified early but not actually separated until the end. The sheep and goats look alike, but it doesn’t take long being with both to start noticing the difference. Jesus points out that the sheep are those who looked after His people, and the goats are those who only looked after themselves and were only concerned about serving those they thought were royalty. They never understood that Jesus’ heart was for the lowly, the downtrodden, and the outcast. While He also cared for the rich, big names, and societal leaders, if they thought they were just fine on their own, Jesus left them alone, except to berate them for oppressing His people.
In all three of these parables, Jesus gives characteristics of the believer ready for Jesus’ return. They are ready for Jesus’ imminent return, prepared for that “any moment” arrival. They are found to be actively using their skills and talents in doing the work of the King. They are looking after those who are in down times. I don’t remember who this is attributed to, but one preacher from many years past was asked if Jesus were to return that day, what would he do differently. His answer was, “I would keep doing what I am doing.” Jesus is not going to give us time to suddenly get ready. We have to be ready already, and while we are waiting for the call, we are to work in such a way that Jesus could come and see us doing our duty and say, “Well done!” If we look at all the saints of the past, those who died often terrible deaths awaiting the promises, they went out still believing.
The sad reality, though, is that the extreme majority of those who profess to be Christians today are not ready. They don’t want Jesus to come back yet because they still have sin they want to enjoy before “getting their life back in order.” I have never understood why anyone who professed to be a Christian would even think that. Even in my days when I took my faith too casually and just rode my parents’ faith, I never thought like that. And now, as I am writing this, I am in the process of starting a new chapter in my life; that includes getting my overall health and routines back into a better shape and better order, and getting even more Kingdom-focused than I have been before. I want Jesus to be able to say I am doing what I am supposed to be doing when He returns, and I want to move away from my academic focus on the faith and make it more real and practical than it has been. The “temple” of the American church is about to get cleansed, and I want to do my part to clean up before that fully happens. That requires being a “wise virgin,” a user of the talents given to me, and to care for those whom God has His heart upon. It’s easy to talk about the theory, but we need to be practitioners of this, too.
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After lashing out His final words against the Pharisees and the religious system that enslaved the people instead of setting them free, Jesus went out to the Mount of Olives, where He gave His disciples a glimpse of how things would end. Jesus really wasn’t giving a revelation of the final days of the earth, but rather of the church age. I can picture them looking down upon Jerusalem (from on top of the mountain) at this time, with Jesus knowing that the difficulty they have had with Rome up to this point would be nothing compared to what was coming for them. The disciples were intrigued by Jesus’ statement about the end of the religious system there and sought more details.
Jesus emphasized two things: the end of all things would be imminent, so live as though He would be returning today. The other is that you will see signs, but the end is not there just yet, so prepare for a long marathon. Remember that Abraham was given promises that weren’t fulfilled for 2000 years. It has been 2000 years since Christ was here on earth. That doesn’t mean there won’t be another 2000 years or whatnot. I can say that every generation has thought Jesus would return in their lifetimes, and it definitely looks closer today than it has ever been before. And in reality, it is closer today than ever before, but it still may be a while off. I will also say that whatever happens in or to the US might be completely irrelevant to end-times prophecy. Many believers in Europe may have thought the same thing about their nations as Christianity gave way to Communism or now to Islam and left-wing liberalism. So, what did Jesus actually say about the end times?
Jesus spoke about natural disasters. There would be earthquakes and disasters on the increase. Earthquakes have been going on ever since the Flood, but it hasn’t been until the last 150 years that we’ve kept track of them worldwide. So far, there have been five recorded 9.0 quakes or stronger. One in Chile, one in Russia, and one in Alaska in the 1950s and 60s. But the other two have happened since the 20th century: one in Indonesia in 2004 and the one in Japan in 2010. These quakes would increase in frequency and in intensity, and earthquakes are a common natural phenomenon during the Seal, Trumpet, and Bowl judgements of Revelation. But earthquakes aren’t the only natural disaster accounted for here, and as I am writing this, Texas was recently hit by severe flooding. All these things should remind us that the day of Jesus’ return is coming soon.
Jesus spoke about wars and rumors of wars. The 20th and 21st centuries have seen more wars than all over centuries combined. And the wars have gotten uglier and uglier as our weaponry has improved and our morals have gone down. While a proper declaration of war really hasn’t taken place since WWII, military operations have been at an all-time high, and instead, we have this spy game type thing of operation after operation, but no formal war has actually been declared. But violence has spiked, and it hasn’t capped yet. The US was the safest nation for 200 years, but now it is hard to find towns where you can actually leave your doors unlocked without worries.
Jesus also gave a warning about false Christs. These would come in droves. And Jesus was not talking about anyone who claimed to be the Messiah. I’ve seen and encountered a few such people, and they are either on drugs or demonically influenced. But that’s just the big scale. There have been many false Christs and false Jesuses, and the most frequently seen one is the Jesus that is a figment of one’s imagination – a “Jesus” that contorts and fits any mold we make for him and does what we like, hates what we hate, and looks a lot like us. And just as the Golden Calf was called “Jehovah,” there are a lot of false gods that are given the name of the True God out there. These are gods whom people deem to be powerful, but do not have sovereignty. Therefore, they cannot be a god if they are subject to human will. We must be diligent and vigilant, always on guard, because the deception is only getting stronger and stronger.
But after all these things, the second coming will be swift and sudden. After a long time of doing normal routines, Jesus will come with such speed that there will be no time to get things ready. It will be like a thief in the night. He doesn’t come unless he knows your guard is down. Jesus is not going to come when anyone thinks He is going to come. If some guy tries to put a date on things, don’t believe him. If another says Jesus is a long way coming, don’t believe him. There is urgency in this message, and if there were no urgency in Christ’s return, evangelism would not happen, and Christians would be sitting around, just being comfortable while the world burns. But there is urgency, and “today” is the day for salvation because there may not be another. At the same time, there is a delay in His coming. Jesus is waiting for all those who could be saved to be saved before closing the door.
The status of Jesus’ coming is going to be like Noah’s Flood. People will be going about their regular lives with no care or regard for God, when it will suddenly hit. Now, in Noah’s time, some finally listened and realized that Noah might be right, but they would have sought to save themselves in their own way. They perished, too. But the majority will not have a clue until the time of, and then it will be too late. Only this time, there is no physical ark to bang on the door. When Jesus comes, judgment day will come, the believers will be gathered together, and the unbelievers will be scattered. We’ll address that next week as Jesus gives three parables that illustrate what waiting for Him and believing Him looks like and what not believing Him also looks like.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
