Pastor Bell's Words To Live By

Now as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!” (Matthew 20:17-19).

As we have been concentrating on gifts and seeds let us take a look at life from the perspective of those who are secure in the hope that they possess. From our passage we recognise that Jesus knew what his purpose was and he knew he had to fulfil it. However, it must have been a daunting task, knowing that within a week or so the very people who were hailing you as their king would be baying for your blood and shouting obscenities at you. Jesus knew and understood the fickleness of the human spirit. One minute they are with you and the next they are against you. As we read further in the passage we see that even in the midst of such a daunting situation of facing the gruesome death by asphyxiation, many people were still only thinking about themselves. So we read in v.20 that the mother of James and John came to Jesus to ask if her sons could get a prime place in the hereafter! I don’t know about you but have you ever been in a situation when you are alerting someone about some important facts and all they do is keep focusing on their own personal agenda.

Well I once went on a Job with trainee engineer trying to teach him how to upgrade a server for a hotel group our company were working with. We had to be as efficient as possible to minimise their down time. Whilst going through the upgrade procedure and expecting the trainee to be taking notes and avidly watching what I was doing, I heard to my disbelief him exclaiming about the beauty of the birds he was watching through the windows. He had totally missed the point. Needless to say that he seldom came with me again. Like the mother of James and John, they had the hope that Jesus would rise again from death, but were oblivious about the trauma he was facing. Without hope it is impossible to continue with life. Jesus had the hope and the faith that he would be raised from the dead, therefore the cross was not his final epitaph. We must also develop the sort of hope that does not result in us being selfish in the way we operate.

Today when you have the tendency to be down, start to sing or recite out loud a Psalm, this has the impact of lifting your spirit and giving you the hope to know that your future will be greater than your past. Jesus looked to the cross knowing that the God who brought him to the cross with see him through it. Similarly we must believe that the same God who is taking you to your trial will see you through it.

Read Matthew 21:1-11; Matthew 26:47-56.