Tuesday Morning Epistles

Tuesday Morning Epistles

Welcome to "Tuesday Morning"—a great read on any day of the week, and especially this week.

This is Holy Week around the world. The events of Holy Week have been well chronicled and have remained basically unchanged for two thousand years. Jesus had come to Jerusalem with his disciples to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Jesus knew what lay ahead for him, and he tried to prepare his men for his death, but they were not ready to hear of it. All four gospels tell the story--each one highlighting the events that were most memorable to the writer. You remember the sequence of events leading up to Friday. Five days after his arrival in the city, he was dead. On Sunday, his tomb was empty. He was alive, forever.

The Apostle Peter later wrote about Jesus, “He did not retaliate when he was insulted. When he suffered, he did not threaten to get even. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly. He personally carried away our sins in his own body on the cross so we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. You have been healed by his wounds” (1 Peter 2:24 NLT). I like these words from Oswald Chambers:

“The Cross of Jesus is the revelation of God’s judgment on sin. Never tolerate the idea of martyrdom about the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross was a superb triumph in which the foundations of hell were shaken. There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross: He switched the whole of the human race back into a right relationship with God. He made Redemption the basis of human life; that is, He made a way for every son of man to get into communion with God. The Cross did not happen to Jesus: He came on purpose for it.” (My Utmost for His Highest, p. 70)

The theme of this week's "TM" is "The Cross: Two Words that Changed the World." It is attached below. Read on when you are ready, and then let God's Spirit lead you through these days of wonder and grace. Remember: The Cross was not the end, but the Beginning.

Tom Barnard

A Senior Encourager

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The Cross

Tom Barnard

he Cross! Two words that changed the world. Actually, One word that changed the world, plus a three-letter adjective that sets that Cross apart from all other crosses. Criminals died every day at Golgotha, the hill of execution near Jerusalem. It wasn’t just the name—The Place of the Skull—that drew spectators and the curious to Golgotha. There may have been a dozen more deaths there on that day. And it wasn’t three crosses that plunged that hill into infamy. It was One Cross. All crosses were rugged; all were stained with blood. Only one cross carried the DNA of God!

Golgotha was an ugly, barren place—a rocky hill outside the city. Executing criminals inside the city walls would have been a direct affront to the Jews. So, Golgotha was the place where executions took place. It was visible to all who passed by on their way to wherever. Rome made executions public as a warning to Jews and Greeks alike that they must obey Roman law and authority—or face the consequences. If grass had once grown there, by now it had been beaten down by soldiers and spectators that followed the death parades there. Holes were dug, used, and then were re-used for other executions that occurred that week. The place reeked with the odor of blood and other body fluids.

Books and motion pictures tend to romanticize Calvary. The movie, The Robe, focused on the garment worn by Jesus and on the Centurion who couldn’t escape its touch. The Passion of Christ—hardly a romantic piece—made the memory of Calvary graphic in every way.

But Golgotha was not a romantic place. It was a place where cruelty was administered daily from dawn to dusk. Roman punishment included the use of ropes to secure victims to their crosses. Spikes were driven through their wrists and often their feet—not to hold the bodies there, but to speed their deaths. Most criminals were stripped naked in order to publicly shame them and embarrass their families. Soldiers who were assigned to executions were a motley crew. They were not being rewarded for bravery when they were sent out there. Their only benefits—if one could call them that—were the personal items removed from the guilty before they died. Games of chance determined which items would go to which solider.

Everything Jesus owned he wore. His robe, bloodied by the scourging he suffered early that morning, was all the soldiers could salvage from him. They didn’t gamble for the crown of thorns that other soldiers had shaped and shoved down upon his brow. What happened to his sandals? No one knows; maybe they were torn from his feet before the crucifixion began and sold for a few pennies. Thirty would have been ironic.

It was a gruesome sight. Innocence died on Calvary, but holiness triumphed. Was Christ’s death a historical accident? Hardly. Prophets saw it coming centuries before it happened. Here is what Isaiah saw:

“He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we did not care. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! But he was wounded and crushed for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped, and we were healed! All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.”

(Isaiah 53:3-5 NLT)

The Apostle John taught that whatever Jesus transformed, he transformed completely and abundantly. Do you remember the water Jesus turned into wine at Cana? He transformed it completely—abundantly. The Cross? It was an instrument of death. Jesus transformed completely—abundantly. The Cross! Two words that changed the world—forever. Before you celebrate Easter Sunday, remember Friday. Celebrate that!

“Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.”