Good Friday

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

      All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. -- Isaiah 53:3-6

I read Isaiah 53, and I wonder that I ever so much as doubted Jesus of Nazareth is the Anointed One of God.  

Good Friday has come.  Long ago, on a day like this, the Man was crucified.  He died that day, not for His iniquity, for He had none.  The accuser could find no fault in Him.  Instead He died for me, for my sins, for the corruption that is in my soul. 

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil (John 3:19).  That’s the message of Good Friday.  Darkness falls upon the earth as the Lord is rejected and put to death, and we are glad for the darkness for we do not want to see ourselves.  We cover the mirror.  We hide our faces and turn away. 

Yet even in the pain and ugliness of Friday, there is a glimmer of something.  We dare not call it hope, but it is something.  The Man went willingly.  He offered Himself.  The prophet tells us that he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter … (v.7).   

It looks bad on Friday, but today is not the end:  Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.   Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors (vv. 11-12).

When we wake up, in the morning, on the first day of the week, the Son will rise. 

My Heart Is Awake

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. – Romans 1:19-20

That God can be seen in everything does not diminish the more perfect revelation in Christ.  An impersonal and uncaring God could have created some kind of universe.  Some argue that all the pain, suffering, death and waste present in life are evidence against a personal and loving God.  We know, though, that the artist is not the picture, and that the sculpture may be evidence of the sculptor’s vision and genius but it is not the sculptor himself. 

In order to bring the cosmos into existence, God had to make something that was not Him.  His word brought light out of darkness, but He also had to create darkness – that absence or space that allows for manifestation.  I cannot attribute the emergence of evil to God, but I can vaguely grasp the idea that, for good to be seen, there had to be a kind of freedom that would allow the possibility of the not-good. 

Our failure as Adam’s race is that we so often choose the not-good over the good and prefer the shadows to the light.  Life exists to rule over matter and spirit over life with love over all.  We can understand something of the power and magnificence of the Creator from the mountains and the seas, from the storm, the solitude of the desert, the vastness and frightening beauty of space.  We can understand something of the Divine life from the seed that grows and the circle of animal existence.  We can catch a glimpse of the mind of God in every mind endowed with reason. 

Yet, in the end, it is only in Christ that we may understand, as much as is humanly possible, the love of God.  The Incarnation shows us not only that God is but that He is our Father who watches, responds, and cares.  The heart of the Gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus shows us that God’s love is greater than death and conquers the grave.  If we will turn to Him, His love will transcend and transform all of our sin, our suffering, our failures, our fears, taking it all into the abyss and bring us out as new creations filled with the light and life of Christ. 

Playing With Fire

Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his own firepan, put fire in it, placed incense on it, and presented unauthorized fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them to do. Then flames leaped from the LORD’s presence and burned them to death before the LORD. – Leviticus 10:1-2

This is one of those Old Testament stories many of us find disturbing and perhaps a little bizarre. What does “unauthorized fire” involve? Some translations use profane instead of unauthorized. The firepan held coals or embers. They were supposed to take coals from off the altar of burnt offering, then sprinkle incense over them to create an aromatic smoke, representing prayer offered to turn away the Lord’s judgment upon sin. Instead, the priests took coals, perhaps from a cooking fire or some other source on which to offer the incense. No big deal, right? Apparently it was a very big deal. Additionally, I have been told, the phrase “which He had not commanded them to do” is somewhat idiomatic and the meaning is closer to “which He had strictly forbidden them to do”.

If their punishment seems a little harsh, it should be kept in mind that these were the priests who entered into the sanctuary before the Lord – a position of both high privilege and high responsibility, and not something to be taken lightly. Reading further in Leviticus 10 we find a suggestion that Nadab and Abihu may have been drunk and acted recklessly, perhaps even attempting to enter the Holy of Holies counter to the Lord’s command. In any case, God required that His symbols not be treated lightly, without respect and understanding.

Like the wayward priests, many of us give little thought to the foundation of prayer. Under the prior covenants, the basis of prayer was the altar, the place of sacrifice where man acknowledged that the flesh was dead and nothing more than fuel for the fire. The old nature is symbolically consumed in the fire of the Spirit, and prayers rise as smoke from that fire. In fact I suspect that if I am indwelt by the Spirit of God, I can no more refrain from praying than fire can fail to produce smoke. The more of my old life I am feeding to the flames, the more intense will be my prayers.

The basis of prayer today is not a temple altar on which dead animals are offered, but the Cross. Christ’s offering of Himself produces, we might say, the coals that burn in our hearts, on which our prayers are offered before the Lord.

As Nadab and Abihu learned, prayers offered apart from the life-giving Spirit are dead and worthless. Yet there is no need to offer “strange fire” to God. When Jesus instructed us on prayer, He cautioned: don’t be like the hypocrites, praying to be seen or to impress others. Instead we should pray in private, recognizing the presence of our Father and relying on Him alone. We are not to babble like the idolaters. We’re not flattering some weak, fickle human monarch. Our heavenly Father cares for us. He permeates our lives by His Spirit. He is aware of our needs and waits only for us to express our dependence upon Him and our willingness to be shaped by and in His will.

When Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal, he said, “The god who answers by fire, let Him be God.” Yes, it is a dangerous proposition. It’s playing with fire.