Life of Christ 84
Jesus is at the point in
His ministry in which He has clearly turned away from offering Himself to Israel
as her king and into the pathway that would lead Him instead straight to the
cross. The Apostles, who gave up everything to follow Israel's Messiah, were
not expecting this. They shared the traditional Jewish understanding of the day
that the Messiah would sit on David's throne, and be the king of Israel. So
Jesus takes great care, beginning with the hinge pivot point in Matthew 12, of
explaining and emphasizing to His Apostles that He will soon die.
Just after Peter's great
confession of faith and the founding of the Church on that confession, He does
it yet again. 'From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how
that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief
priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day' (Matthew
16.21). Peter's reaction, voiced as the mouthpiece of what the rest of the
gathered Apostles thought and felt, was completely contrary. 'Be it far from
thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee' (Matthew 16.22).
Why did Peter voice such
opposition to the idea of Jesus' death? Because the Apostles wanted to see the
prophecies regarding the triumphant, reigning Messiah come to pass. They didn't
want to see the prophecies regarding the suffering Messiah come to pass. Both
sets of prophecies are in the Old Testament, and they point, as we understand
it now, to the same Messiah but in two different advents. The first time He
came to suffer and die. The second time He comes to rule and reign. But this
dichotomy produced puzzlement and confusion in interpretation, and the
Apostles, with their hopes, dreams, and very lives invested in Jesus' claim to
the messiahship chose to cling to the optimistic side, even when He was plainly
telling them otherwise.
In this I see an
interesting truth: all too often we see in the Bible only what we want to see.
To me, one of the marks
of maturity in a believer, is when he begins to seek in the Bible for what God
says, period – regardless of whether that makes him feel badly, regardless of
whether it calls for him to do more, regardless of whether it asks him to give
something up, regardless of whether it seems to be, for the moment, bad news,
and regardless of whether it is hard to do or to understand. He has grown to
the place where he just wants to know what God says. He seeks, as much as
possible, to lay aside his own desires and wants in order to discover God's
desires and wants.
Joseph Prince |
Scripture is clear about
such wolves in sheep's clothing: 'Men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the
truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself' (I Timothy
6.5), yet their ministries are exploding in popularity in Asia, South America,
North America, and Africa. Why? Because those tens of thousands packed into the
New Creation Church in Singapore, and the hundreds of thousands that tune into
Prince's TV show, and the millions drawn to copycat ministries all around the
world are looking into the Bible and seeing what they want to see. They want to
see that they have the power to speak a word of blessing and chase away evil
spirits and ill health. They want to see that God has promised them money and
success. They want to see in the precious blood-stained gospel of our Saviour
an earthly prosperity that guarantees them health, wealth, and happiness, and
since that is what they want to see in the Bible it is what they find.
As a young teenager I
thought God had revealed to me, in the prophecies of Isaiah, the devotional
psalms, and the epistle of Jude, the name of the girl I was going to marry when
I grew up. Interestingly, it was the name of the girl I wanted to marry at that
moment. I saw in the Bible what I wanted to see – and I was flat out wrong.
Beloved, let us not make
the mistake the Apostles made with the prophecies regarding Jesus Christ. Let
us not make the mistake that the millions of prosperity gospel adherents around
the globe make. Let us not make the mistake I made as a young man. Instead, let
us see in the Bible what God actually put there rather than seeing what we want
to see.
No comments:
Post a Comment