Author: kezha1

We find Jesus in the Upper Room with His disciples as He ministers His selfless love…illustrated in this moving scene of Him performing the most menial of tasks…washing their feet. It was an object lesson, breaking all social norms, as Jesus willingly took on the role…modeling lowliness, meekness, and a life of surrender…of which they were obligated to follow. For Peter though, with all his impulsiveness, he objected vigorously, but Jesus reminds him in John 13:6-10 that bathing of the whole body symbolizes justification…a work accomplished by God for the Believer once and for all. While the washing of feet symbolized sanctification…an ongoing and ever increasing work of God performed for the Believer daily…a Spiritual cleansing & renewal of the heart to remain in fellowship with God.

This account is in all four Gospels with a few different details… but essentially the same premise. Jesus is at a home reclining at the table and eating dinner when a woman slips in, breaks a flask of nard, and pours it on Him. Those in the dining room with Jesus were shocked & dismayed at her reckless behavior of a year’s worth of salary. But Jesus commends her for her great sacrificial love and a giving up of everything…just as Jesus Himself would be doing in the next few days…His body broken & poured out for mankind as the ultimate sacrifice of love.

Here Jesus is teaching in the Temple courts days before He will be crucified by the same crowds that will demand His execution. The people couldn’t put their finger on it, but there was something definitely different about the way Jesus taught. It wasn’t anything like the Scribes who were supposed to be skilled in explaining the Law and interpreting God’s Word for them. Rather, Jesus spoke as an expert in the Doctrine… teaching them in a manner that that clearly felt like He had been commissioned with the dominion, power, and right to speak of such things. His authoritative & authentic teaching even caught the Temple Officers off guard when they can back empty-handed and proclaimed in John 7:45-46, “No one ever spoke like this man!”

To the people in the Court of Gentiles, Jesus was some crazed man overturning tables and claiming that the Temple was somehow His. To the merchants and money-changers, He was destroying their very profitable commerce of conveniently offering sacrificial animals & and acceptable currency to worshippers who had travelled from a distance. Most only saw Him as a nuisance and annoyance…not connecting what He was saying to Old Testament prophecy. Jesus was in fact carefully fulfilling prophecy from Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Malachi in rebuking those who had turned the Temple into a market…using it for everything other than what it was meant to be.

As Jesus rode slowly into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday He was fulfilling both the Old Testament prophecy of His triumphal entry and His forthcoming Messianic reign. But as the crowds gathered, they were looking for short-term results…not even realizing that what Jesus was accomplishing had long-term & eternal consequences. The people wanted freedom from Roman rule…but Jesus was offering freedom from sin & death. (Luke 4:18) As we see by one of His first public appearances where Jesus read from Isaiah 61 to proclaim freedom to the captives. The crowds were envisioning victory by a powerful warrior King riding in on a white stallion, & taking His rightful throne by force. But Jesus entered Jerusalem that day on a donkey, meek and lowly…His victory coming in the triumph over sin & death, in turn, giving us eternal victory. (I Corinthians 15:57) Finally, the crowds were all crying out… Hosanna! Save us!… imploring Jesus to save them from Roman oppression & injustice. But the saving Jesus had come to earth to do encompassed all of mankind’s Salvation… by way of the Cross…and would be found in no one else but in Him. (Acts 4:12)

When the cares & worries of the world are seemly dragging you backwards, remember this…an arrow can only be shot by pulling it backwards. Right now it may seem like life is one step forward followed by two steps back…and waiting on the Lord is the last thing you want to do. But God promises fulfillment of His Word, so we can’t look at our waiting as failure, but rather as a time of equipping & endurance. For just like that arrow, God may be preparing you to be launched forward into something great.

Many times throughout our life we’ll be thrown into difficult situations, with the path ahead unclear and difficult to understand. That’s when we need to trust in the Lord and rely on His faithfulness. We may not be able to comprehend & grasp the story… but even so, we can trust the Author who wrote it. Hebrews 12:2 tells us that Jesus is the author and perfector of our faith. He is the creator, sustainer, and finisher of the faith in the hearts of all God’s people. So even when we don’t understand the story, we can be assured that Jesus goes before us as the founder and completer of it.

For many, they’re quite proud of their self-sufficiency & self-reliance…with their mantra being, “You only need two tools in life…WD-40 & Duct Tape.” These people “MacGyver” their way through life, boasting about their independence and that they don’t need help from anyone…but for them, life is exceedingly hard…and it doesn’t need to be that way. As it tells us here in Psalms, the ultimate source of our well-being rests in God and there is no need to “take over” when things aren’t moving (WD-40) as quickly as we want, or when life seems to be falling apart. (Duct Tape). For if you think about it, we are nothing, with no real power and of no real weight in the grand scheme of eternity…or as Galatians 6:3 says, “If anyone thinks he is something (or someone) when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”

As unbelievers, we are all measured against exactly the same list of moral behaviors, and in the end, each one of us will receive precisely what we deserve. Or as Ezekiel 18:20 tells us, “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” But our human nature wants to “fix” people so this doesn’t happen to them…but only God can accomplish this as He pursues, soften hearts, and removes scales from eyes and plugs from ears. What we can do though is to faithfully continue to pray for them that God’s Divine Will will be done.

And it was Lazarus’s sister, Martha, that put flesh onto the two words, “I believe” when she said, ” Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, Who was to come into the world.” (John 11:27) For many of us, especially those raised in Church, we grew up with a general knowledge and confidence in Jesus and His Godly Mission…but it took a marked & emphatic moment in our life when our faith was thrust out of neutral, and our trust in Christ Jesus became real…with those two words forever changing us. “I believe.”