Help! What Should We Pay the Pastor? – Part Three, The Bi-vocational Pastor

          I don’t think there is a single class of men in the world that have my respect more than bi-vocational pastors. Perhaps our soldiers fighting in combat overseas, but other than that I cannot think of a group whom I esteem more highly. They work incredibly hard. They carry the weight of great burdens with little to no rest. They sacrifice themselves selflessly to minister to the needs of people and advance the cause of Christ. Because of the size of their churches they often serve unnoticed by the brethren who operate larger ministries. They struggle to make ends meet both at home and at church. Their very lack of ministerial 'success' breeds in them a constant struggle with discouragement. Yet they just keep on going.

          Such men are rarely bi-vocational out of choice. They do so out of necessity. Most of the time their church is too small to afford to pay a complete salary package. Sometimes the pastor inherits a financial mess and the only way to get the church past it intact is for him to throw all the money available at some debt or other. Other times the church is financially lazy, used to living off the sacrifice of such men, and in thus taking advantage of their pastor they ignore their scriptural responsibilities. It is here that I wish to begin.

          I have zero patience with the position which states pastors should serve without pay. Scripture is repeatedly and emphatically clear upon the point. The plainest passage in the Word of God in this regard has to be I Corinthians 9.

7 Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?

8 Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also?

9 For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?

10 Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.

11 If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?

12 If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ.

13 Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?

14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.

          From this passage I pull several applications:

-The pastor should not have to run church ministries or bear church expenses out of his own pocket. At the very least, they should be promptly reimbursed. (v7)

-As the church grows numerically the pastor ought to reap the financial fruits of this growth. (v7)

-This was not just Paul's self-serving opinion. The principle was established in the Torah. (v8)

-It is normal that a pastor who gives his life to feed the flock spiritually should, in turn, find his physical/financial needs met by that flock. Indeed, the church should take as conscientious an approach to their responsibility in this as they expect the pastor to take in his sermon preparation, his counseling, his discipleship, and his spiritual oversight of their souls. …and I dearly think some of you reading this need to stop a moment and ponder the implications of that last sentence. (v11)

-In turn, the pastor must never forget his responsibility to be willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary financially in order to help the church. (v12)

-God's design does not include a pastor permanently being bi-vocational. He is

supposed to live of the things of the temple. God has ordained this. It is often temporarily necessary to be bi-vocational for a variety of reasons – starting a new church from scratch, ministering in a rural area with little population where growth is slower, accepting the pastorate of a declining work, picking up the pieces after a split, etc. – but the operative word here is temporary. A pastor that does not understand this threatens the spiritual and emotional health of his family as well as the spiritual health of his church. At some point his willingness to sacrifice produces a welfare type of mentality in the church. Such churches never develop the internal strength to stand on their own two feet because they are always walking on crutches. Not only that, but he will be a better pastor when his mind and time and energy are freed up and devoted entirely to the church. The goal must be eventually to wean him from the necessity of working other jobs. He needs to know that. His family needs to know that. His church needs to know that. (v13-14)

          From these applications then I would offer the following practical suggestions:

1) The pastor should always be paid something. When I realized the financial mess my little church was in a few weeks after I became the pastor I cut my salary by 75% but I kept something. The principle of this was more helpful to the church in the long run than the extra $200 they could have applied to some current need.

2) The pastor should teach the people that he needs to be completely supported when the church is healthy enough to afford it. I will speak more to this later, but entirely too many pastors are loathe to frankly discuss their own pay package with their church. For the sake of the church, for the sake of his family, and for the sake of his own long term ministry the pastor must get beyond this. I have known more than a few men who greatly desired to become full time in the ministry but they shrank from telling their church. Consequently, the church got used to not paying the pastor much. As the church grew they found, as churches always will, some other good use for that money. When the church got big enough to support the pastor these men faced great resistance because they had not gradually and carefully laid the groundwork for their request to be paid.

3) The church should be ruthless about starting ministries that soak up money until the pastor's needs are amply provided. Perhaps ruthless is too strong of a word but it does get my point across. Ministries should not be started simply because there is a need. There is always a need. That need is always greater than what the church can afford. Ministries should be started, maintained, and extended because the church needs to do ministry in order to be like Jesus. The difference between those two approaches is that sometimes one need takes precedence over another. And what a young or small church needs most is a pastor.

          When I accepted the pastorate of those eleven people in the summer of 1997 I inherited a church that supported eight missionaries at a cost of about five hundred dollars a month. The intentions behind such decisions were awesome. In practical terms, it was killing us. We could not pay our rent. The few remaining people were nervous. We were inches away from closing. I realized that while supporting missionaries was a good thing the best thing was a stable, healthy church. It was the best thing for our community while simultaneously being the best thing for our missionaries. I asked our church to rework its missions support. We did not cancel any of our eight missionaries. Instead we decided to stop subsidizing the insultingly low Faith Promise missions giving from the pitifully empty general fund. We decided instead to take whatever came in through Faith Promise, divide it up eight ways, and send it out.

          As a young pastor with great dreams I found this singularly embarrassing. The first year we sent checks of two and three dollars a month to these dear people. But I wrote them all, explained the situation, and told them that the best thing I could do for them was to grow a healthy church. To a man, they wrote back with nothing but kind and understanding words. Over time, as our church got healthier, our missions giving grew accordingly. Before I left we had even grown past the initially disastrous starting point and added some additional missionaries. But I do not think it would have happened that way if we had not made the hard decision to dramatically decrease in the short term a wonderful and wonderfully expensive ministry.

4) The pastor should not permanently stay in a situation in which he is forced to remain bi-vocational. I think, of everything I have said in this post, this will produce the most disagreement but it is honestly what I both believe and feel. I believe it because the Scripture teaches it but I feel it because of life experience.

In my own case I can remember assembling the men of my little Pennsylvania church relatively early on and informing them that I would not stay there forever as a bi-vocational pastor. Let me hasten to add that this was NOT the reason I left but it would have been if things had not improved over time as they did.

I am not alone in my marriage in growing up in a poverty stricken preacher's home. My wife did as well. Her father was an assistant pastor when she was born and then started a church in the same area when she was just a little girl. It never got big enough to support their family and this forced her father to work a variety of side jobs constantly. Ministry drains a person, beloved. When there is not sufficient time or mental space for recuperation that drain eventually sucks the life out of a man. It breaks my heart to say it, but after years of this my wife's father walked away from his own pulpit and his own family all in the same day. Twenty five years later he has not been back to either. Certainly there were other contributing factors but only an idiot would insist that the strain of being bi-vocational for years without an end in sight played no part in this.

Additionally, having been bi-vocational for five years myself and now for thirteen years being full time in the ministry I know the difference between the two. By this I mean the difference in my own life and mind. It is so incredibly freeing, mentally, to have your ministry be your sole focus. My preaching immediately got better. My study, over time, got exponentially better. This in turn only continued the improvement in my preaching. I do not mean that arrogantly; I mean that I know I am a better preacher when I am free to be just the pastor. There is a direct correlation between the two. And since this is my main task (I Peter 5.2) it is a great blessing to the church itself when the pastor is free to just be the pastor.

5) A struggling church should be creative in supporting their pastor. If they do not have the sheer dollars with which to do so they should look for some other way to provide. Perhaps they could team up with another struggling church and together share a pastor. One could have a service Sunday morning and the other Sunday night. One could have a mid-week service on Wednesday and the other on Thursday. In pioneer days this worked for the Methodist circuit riders and I am not quite sure why we do not do much of it now. Perhaps the families in the church could take turns being responsible for hosting the pastor and his family for dinner three nights a week. This fellowship would grow the pastor-people relationship as well as decrease a grocery bill. If there is a mechanic in the church he might offer to work on the pastor's car at no charge. If there is a stylist in the church perhaps she might offer to care for her pastor's wife's hair. If there is an accountant in the church perhaps he might offer to do the taxes at no charge. Each person might give a little of what they are and do. In the long term a pastor ought to be able to afford to buy his own groceries and pay for his own car repairs but in the short to medium term this would be a blessing to both sides.

In conclusion, let me say that I do not believe that I alone have the only valid opinion in this area. I do believe my experience gives me an understanding of such a situation but I do not claim to be the only person worth hearing on the matter. If you are a bi-vocational pastor or a member of a church with a bi-vocational pastor I am perfectly glad to hear your own thoughts even if they disagree with mine.

And let me say again, for I cannot say it too forcefully or too often, such men have my greatest respect. Many an earthly story of Christ likeness displayed to us only in Heaven will involve the story of a dedicated, selfless, diligent, persevering, patient bi-vocational pastor and his sacrificial family. May God bless them. May He bless them richly.   

Help! What Should We Pay the Pastor? - Part Two, My Story

          We, each of us, have a story. This story combines the facets of our past into a crystalline structure that lends our now form and substance. Perhaps I should write more simply – our history informs our present. Much of the way we look at the world, our individual perspective, is colored by the emotions, circumstances, events, and places of our past. This is true in a myriad of aspects including the one under discussion at the moment. What I believe about how a church and her pastor relate to one another, financially speaking, is rooted in my own past. This is my story.

          I was born in the early 1970's. Two months before my birth my father accepted the pastorate of an average size IFB church in a small Midwestern town. He was in his early thirties and fresh out of Bible college. The church was healthy numerically and financially. We lived in a parsonage about a block from the church for the following eighteen years.

   

The old black and white generics filled our pantry

       Every child thinks their own childhood is normal. Later, at some point, they come to grasp the uniqueness of their situation, and to examine its strengths and weaknesses. My situation had some absolutely tremendous strengths – stability, a quiet town, godly parents, etc. But unfortunately my situation also had some weaknesses and one of those was that my Dad pastored a stingy church. Twenty years later, in a rare moment of expressed frustration, he showed me a chart. It listed his pay from his first year at that church until his last year at that church. In inflation adjusted dollars he actually was paid less at the end than he was at the beginning, and the beginning was not much at all either. The church did experience one bad split to toward the end of my father's time as pastor but the penury of our existence was not a result or consequence of that split. The church had no debt. It had money in the bank. It was in a prosperous if small community. It was relatively full of hard working union members who worked the local steel mills. They just believed in paying the pastor next to nothing. Their philosophy might as well have been the notorious statement 'we will let God keep him humble while we keep him poor.'

          That stingy attitude had a direct negative consequence on our family of eight. For instance, my mother went fifteen years without a new dress. At the age of nine I took a paper route and kept it for the next eight years. One of the reasons I kept it was that I needed it. For many years I bought my own clothes and shoes and paid my own way to camps and youth activities. Dental care was paid for out of my own pocket. I remember at the age of fourteen needing a root canal and crown and paying it off slowly with my paper route money over the next year. I hated my smile all of my life until finally fixing it at the age of forty. But I could not afford to fix it as a young man and I never told my parents about how I felt for I knew they could not afford to do anything about it. We ate together as a family at a sit down restaurant where you order from an actual menu one time in my entire childhood that I recall, and that was because my grandmother took us. The church charged my father for the long distance calls he made in his own office on church grounds while on church business. I could furnish many such similar examples.

          But beyond those small illustrations I vividly remember something worse. Every time a large expense came up my father would have to go, hat in hand, to the deacons and in some manner hint that something must be done. Our car fell apart gradually. It became a running (sometimes) joke in our church until the deacon chairman looked down from his throne in pity and deigned to patronize our family with a used station wagon of his own choice. Appliances broke beyond the ability to repair and we had to hope someone in the church would take pity on us and purchase us a new one. Often they did and their individual generosity and care for us warms my heart to this day. The bags of groceries, the tuition payments, the cars lent all spoke of the genuine Christian affection of good people. But on the whole we lived a life of almost penury filled with a long series of petty financial insults and aggravations. It was embarrassing. It was humbling. It was insulting. It was emasculating. It was limiting in a thousand ways I do not have the space to detail.

          Reading back over what I have just written it almost smacks of bitterness. I was not bitter then and I am not now. In fact, just six years after I left home as a high school senior I became the pastor of a tiny IFB church in western Pennsylvania. My first Sunday eleven people greeted me. I did such a bang-up job that a year later, on my anniversary, seven people greeted me. It took five years of blood, toil, sweat, and tears to get that church to the place where it could support a pastor full time and even that was tenuous.

My first budget plan hand
scrawled two weeks after becoming a pastor

          I took over from a good man who had given his life for ten years and had little to show for it. The building where we met was not purchased but rented and, unbeknownst to me at the time, we were behind on the rent. The church had no membership list, no Sunday School classes, no telephone, no address, and no money. When I accepted the call to be their pastor they offered me $800 a month in salary. Within two weeks I figured out they could not afford it. I reworked the budget and decreased my salary down to $200 per month. I personally moved into the church building we rented. It did not have an apartment but it did have an office. I put a cot and a heater and a chair in that office and lived there for a year. I took a special offering from the people for two months in order to scrape up a few hundred dollars to have a flimsy shower installed on wooden blocks in the furnace room. My bathroom was 120 steps away. I stashed my clothes in a third-hand dresser hidden behind the baptistery.

          Within a year and a half we had purchased an inexpensive unfinished church building in a neighboring town. I repeated the same scenario except this time the office was bigger, the furnace room with the rickety shower was closer, and the bathroom actually had heat. For another two years I lived in that office including about six months with a very gracious and patient young wife. I routinely had a nightmare that I had slept in on Sunday morning and people were knocking at the front door of the church while I stumbled out in my bathrobe to see what was going on.

          During the five years it took to get that tiny church off the ground I distinctly remember rejoicing in a good offering. And I always knew when the offering was going to be good. It was going to be good when I tithed. I taught school. I sold cars. I rented cars. I sold insurance. I sold cemetery property. I sold credit cards over the phone. I fought and clawed and scratched with very little outside support to firmly establish that church. And it worked. The month after we burned our mortgage the congregation voted to transition us to full time support. Two years later, through tears, we left those people we loved so much and came to Chicago where for these eleven years we have labored in a more established situation.

          Here in Chicago I followed an older pastor whose financial model was low pay with occasional extravagant gifts from the church. I sought to transition it to a higher base of pay and benefits with fewer and less extravagant gifts. Presently our church pays me a healthy salary, furnishes me a retirement package through vested interest in the parsonage, provides me a place to live, pays my utilities, purchases health and life insurance for our family, reimburses me for medical expenses, helps me with continuing education, makes a mission trip or conference available to me each year, and gives me several weeks of vacation. Once a year, as well, they set a Sunday aside for pastor appreciation and give me a small gift on that occasion. Depending on our church's financial health I may or may not use all of these in a given year.

          Paul, from a jail cell, said But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again; wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. (Philippians 4.10-12) I grew up broke in the ministry. I began broke in the ministry. I continued broke in the ministry. Now for the past few years I have enjoyed a period of relative comfort. Before it is all said and done the Lord may want me broke again. It is His choice. I am a worker in His vineyard.

          This is my story. It colors who I am and how I approach the personal financial aspect of pastoring. And I thought if I was going to write about what I think churches and pastors ought to do that I should tell you where I am coming from.
          I would love to hear your story if you care to tell it. Comment publicly or message me privately. And may the Lord use it in some small way to produce pastors that are wise, contented, and sacrificial and churches that are financially educated and generous. And together, no matter what our state, let us serve the Lord with joy.

              

Help! What Should We Pay the Pastor? – Part One, The Pastor's Mindset

         One of my favorite explanatory phrases is the elephant in the living room. It conveys such a wonderful visual image and thus a clear point. Amongst all of the pretty decorations, Queen Anne chairs, picture frames, and dainty teacups sits an enormous elephant. But no one discusses the elephant. They just all pretend it is not there. Someone, though, must needs take the first step to bring up the elephant in the living room. It is both too important and too big to continue to ignore. So here we go…

          In absolutely practical terms I do not know of a subject that is thought about more and talked about less in public by the typical pastor and his family then the pastor's salary. Perhaps there are some saintly men of God whose minds dwell only upon faith, hope, charity, and the lost souls of the Nigerian people but I do not know any men like that. The men I know – and I know rather well more than a hundred IFB pastors – live in the same real world that everyone else does.

          Some may say in response that such subjects are private and that very few people openly discuss their own needs and salary. While this is true there is one tremendous difference: the pastor's salary is not private. It is public knowledge arrived at in the most public of ways. I do not know of a single layman (and please do not hang me for that term; I do not mean it in any way disrespectfully but simply as a differentiation) who would be comfortable with an entire church full of people knowing the intimate details of his salary. Nor would he be comfortable with that salary and benefits package being determined in a public manner by a large number of his closest friends and acquaintances. But the pastor accepts this situation. He must make the best of it and one of the ways he makes the best of it is simply not to discuss it nor to allow his wife and children to discuss it. So the elephant just sits there while everyone politely pretends it doesn't exist.

          For the next few weeks on this blog I am going to discuss this elephant. I will do so primarily from an independent, fundamental Baptist (IFB) perspective. Not only is this my only real area of expertise but it is also where the biggest need for an educational increase lies. I will try to be balanced though that probably just means I will offend all kinds of people from every angle of the spectrum. I plan to discuss such topics as the pastor's necessary mindset (today's post), the bivocational pastor, the causes for an unacceptable salary, the victims of that situation, what an appropriate pay package ought to include, and how to arrive at those specific numbers. Along the way I will be fairly transparent telling much of my own personal history and situation. I wholeheartedly invite you to enter into this discussion with me either via the comments on this blog or on my own facebook page. I am very interested in hearing the perspective of God's people - pastors, staff, and lay people. If nothing else gets accomplished perhaps we can at least agree to stop ignoring the elephant in the living room.

          Let me say unequivocally at the outset that I am not aiming at my own church. In fact, I am not aiming at any particular church let alone my own. For the past eleven years God has allowed me to pastor the Maplewood Bible Baptist Church of Chicago. At first they were weak in this area but over a number of years their understanding deepened as I sought to gradually and gently teach them their responsibility. I can honestly write that I do not personally know of a similar size IFB church that takes better care of their pastor than Maplewood does of me. I have no ax to grind. They count my position worthy of double honor.

          In fact, I do not want to begin with the church at all. I want to begin with the pastor. There are two absolutely essential monetary mindsets that a pastor must constantly cultivate in the Lord's work. The first is contentment and the second is a willingness to sacrifice. Without these, whether the church fulfills her responsibility well or not, he will inevitably fail.

          Contentment is stressed from one end of the Bible to the other. The Ten Commandments includes Thou shalt not covet. (Exodus 20.17) Covetousness is, at its root, a lack of contentment in the circumstance into which God has placed you. I am not content with my house; I want my neighbor's house. I am not content with my wife; I want my neighbor's wife. Paul, in an epistle aimed directly at pastors, would later mention contentment more specifically in a financial context. But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. (I Timothy 6.6-8)

          Practically speaking, this means I am satisfied with my salary regardless of how measly it is. It means that I am happy in my parsonage regardless of the crumbling state of its maintenance. It means I am comfortable with my retirement package even if it doesn't exist. Contentment does not rule out a desire or effort to better my financial situation but it does rule in a heart peace with the material circumstances of my life. I do not cast my eye across town to the senior pastor of the more established church who enjoys a veritable plethora of benefits. Nor do I roam further afield and behold with envy my Southern Baptist brethren and the amazing health plan they enjoy. Instead, as often as necessary, I take my concern, fear, and unease to the Lord. I ask Him to settle my heart and to let me be at peace with what He has seen fit to provide.

          This is such a necessary element for a pastor especially because discontentment will not remain isolated to the financial arena. Soon I will want a larger ministry. Soon I will covet some other church building. Soon I will find that ambition, pride, and a striving for mastery rule in a heart that once wanted nothing more than to be spent in God's work however He might choose. I realize the ditch of fatalism and cynicism exist on this side of the road. But I cannot, however, justify an envious, unhappy, discontented spirit with the excuse that I am simply maintaining a passionate desire to advance the cause of Christ.

          I will speak more of this later but I began the ministry by living in a room that was five feet wide and seven feet long in a building that had neither shower nor bathtub. In His grace He has allowed me to enjoy a four bedroom, three bath house for the last eleven years but if He wanted me to remain in those cramped conditions that is His right. I am a servant in His vineyard. If he wants to pay me a penny a day for eleven hours of work or a penny a day for one hour of work it is completely His prerogative.

          Contentment is not just resignation either. It is an active faith that says I believe the Lord will meet my needs. My father was a pastor for thirty-eight years. Upon entering the ministry he opted out of Social Security. Along the way he never developed a plan to replace it. We could and should discuss the merits of the wisdom of that approach but I know him exceedingly well. His heart was simply to serve the Lord. When the time came a few years ago for him to retire he expressed a child-like trust in the Lord's provision. Guess what? The Lord has and is providing. Whether your church grasps the necessity of its financial responsibility in the area of you and your family or not you can and should cultivate contentment.

        The second vital attitude that a pastor must cultivate in ministry is a willingness to sacrifice. Twenty-six years ago at a youth meeting I attended Jack Hyles asked us to sign our name to a card indicating our willingness to enter full time Christian service. We could debate the merits of that but we cannot debate the merits of what he said next. He asked us to flip it over and write one word on the back – sacrifice. I still have that card. A pastor – a word literally meaning shepherd – must be willing to give up anything to help the flock. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. (John 10.11) This attitude of sacrifice is to continue for the entirety of our lives. We are to be a living sacrifice. (Romans 12.1) This sacrifice is not to be undertaken with pessimism or endured as torture but to be combined with a spirit of joy. Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all. (Philippians 2.17)

          It is not unusual to find such a spirit of sacrifice in young men freshly entered upon ministry. It is more unusual to find it in the mature pastor, in the seasoned servant of the Lord. Often, with that transition from young to old comes the accompanying idea that our time of sacrifice is over. There is only one problem with that – God never implied such, let alone stated it, and we have no right to infer it. Certainly a church should strive to make such financial sacrifice unnecessary in the life of a pastor but just as certainly he must be always willing to undertake it.

          An applied corollary of sacrifice is the foundational principle that I must not damage the church. Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God. (I Corinthians 10.32) The church has a responsibility to provide generously for my financial needs but that does not mean I have the right to demand that generous compensation. Especially if in so demanding I hurt the church.

          I am thinking at the moment of two specific gospel preaching churches that used to be located within a mile of our church here in Chicago. They no longer exist. In the first case the pastor inherited a large, crumbling building with a congregation of only thirty. He led them to sell the building and the parsonage. I saw the wisdom in that. But what he did next was not wise; it was predatory. He pushed them to buy him a condo, a "summer parsonage" in Michigan, and jack his pay up to over $100,000 a year. Meanwhile his church drifted down from thirty to less than ten. For about five years he milked the situation until the money ran out and then he rode off into the sunset. I full well understand the high cost of living in the inner city and while I do not make $100,000 a year it does not bother me if a pastor does. Unless in so doing he hurts the church. Which is precisely what he did. In the second case a man of great experience (which means he was getting old) refused to relinquish the pastorate even as he entered his declining years. He had been there for thirty years and, like my father, had made no provision for retirement. Unlike my father, however, he hung on like grim death. As his health, energy, and mental faculties declined he presided over a corresponding decline in his church. An IFB church that once ran 150 in Sunday School could muster only a dozen or so at the end. Finally, unable to pay the bills, the congregation voted to sell the building, close the church, and give the proceeds to the pastor to live off of in retirement. I applaud that aspect of the church's approach but the hard truth is the church should never have been placed in that position. The pastor's selfishness and fear – hard words, I know, but true – murdered a church in order to ensure his own financial security.

          Sacrifice says, 'If the damage must come to either the church or myself let me be the one to suffer loss.' A pastor who is unwilling or unable to believe that in his heart and practice it with his life is unworthy of the position.

          In this series I will make no bones about what a church ought to do financially in relation to a pastor but if that pastor allows discontentment to breed in his heart a sufficient paycheck will not solve the problem. And though a pastor should not have to undergo serious financial damage in order to ensure the stability and future of his church he must always be willing to do so. Always. 

A Short Leave of Absence

In the past year, between this blog, a book, and my normal preaching schedule, I have written over 435,000 words. I shall now take a bit of a break from this blog for a month or two. When I return in the spring of next year the format will involve something along the lines of a post a week rather than every day. For those of you that have been with me on this journey through the life of Christ this year I express my appreciation. The only thing that writers like more than writing is being read, and I hope you found your time profitable.

Stay tuned...

Whom God Hath Raised Up

Life of Christ 173

  

        For 173 blog posts we have followed the earthly career of Jesus Christ. We have seen in His birth the fulfillment of prophecy. We have seen in His youth the acceptance of His mission. We have seen in His maturity His moral perfection. We have seen in Him the most powerful preaching ever delivered. We have seen His deep knowledge of the Scriptures. We have seen His life of prayer. We have seen His miracles testify of His credentials. We have seen His leadership, His compassion, His purity, His faith, and His obedience.

We have also seen the response to all of these. We have seen doubt and fear and greed and anger and malice. We have seen insult and attack. We have seen lies and rebellion. With awful finality we have seen violence, conspiracy, betrayal and murder.

          The Sanhedrin, secure in their ritual cleanliness, goes home to their Passover meal. Caiaphas and Annas have triumphed again. The Pharisees will feast and sleep well tonight. The Sadducees will remain in their leadership positions. The Herodians are content that a great threat to Rome has been removed. And the demons of hell run riot through the streets of Jerusalem howling with glee.

But the greatest travesty of justice ever produced from the foul heart of hell will not, cannot stand. Peter explained it well fifty days later in his great sermon at Pentecost.

Acts 2.22-27

22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:

23 Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:

24 Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.

25 For David speaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved:

26 Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope:

27 Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

Up from the grave He arose. And Christianity was furnished with its great proof. And Christianity was furnished with its great peace. And Christianity was furnished with its great power.

The same Jesus that walked the hills of Judea and the towns of Galilee two thousand years ago is still alive today. And He is coming back. Someday, I shall go to Him, and ask Him to walk with me to the mount where He delivered the greatest sermon ever preached. I shall ask Him to show me where He started the first church in the mountains above Caesarea Philippi. I shall ask Him to walk with me and share His life again with me. But most of all, I will ask Him to walk with me to Calvary so that I may fall at His feet and thank Him for coming, and living, and dying, and rising again for me.

The Murder of the King

Life of Christ 172

          It is 9 AM on Wednesday. Tonight at sundown Passover begins. Pilate, hands still dripping wet from his attempt to wash the responsibility for this crime off of them, stands before the howling bloodthirsty mob of Israel's religious leadership and he gives sentence that is should be as they required.

          Immediately, Roman soldiers reach for Him. They tear the simple robe off his back. Lifting His arms they tie his hands to a post above His head and they send for the scourger.

         Jesus is already weary in body and spirit. He has been awake for over 24 hours. In the past 12 hours He has endured incredible emotional distress as evidenced by bleeding during prayer in Gethsamane. One of His own has betrayed Him. One of His own has denied Him. All the rest have fled. He has been formally rejected by His own people. He has been beaten up by the Sanhedrin, twice. He has walked 2.5 miles back and forth through the streets of Jerusalem. And the horror has barely begun.

          A Roman soldier lifted the whip above his head and swung with all his force until it struck the back of Jesus Christ. At the end of the whip were several leather thongs in which iron balls and sheep bones had been set. As the iron balls struck they caused deep contusions and the bones cut into the skin and the underlying muscle. As the flogging continued the lacerations widened and deepened. Soon ribbons of flesh hung from his back, and blood first trickled and then ran down His body to drip onto the stone flagged floor of the Praetorium. Thirty-nine times the whip rose and thirty-nine times the whip fell.

          Untying his arms from the post the rough soldiers decided on a little sport. During Herod's brief examination an hour earlier he had clothed Jesus in a rich purple robe in mockery of His claim to be the King of Israel. It had been discarded in Pilate's judgment hall but now someone grabs it, throws it round the huddled bloody mess on the floor, and hauls Him to His feet. Someone else places a staff into His hand in place of a scepter and another, having plaited a circlet out of material from a bramble bush in the courtyard, places it on His head. Jeering, they act out a little pantomime of bowing before Him.

          Soon, though, the jeers turn to blows. Someone grabs the stick out of His hand and pounds Him about the head, driving the crown of thorns down around His scalp. A blindfold is tied around His eyes and one at a time they take turns punching Him in the face and stomach and demanding that He prophetically pronounce the name of the one who had so struck Him. Some yanked chunks of hair out of His head as He sank to the ground, weak from blood loss and repeated beatings. Gathering around the pitiful figure still garbed in blood spattered purple one by one they take turns, in contempt, spitting on this man who thought He could be the King of the Jews.

          A quaternion of four soldiers is assigned to Him; they are not allowed to leave His side until He has been pronounced as dead. Together with two other quaternions and prisoners He is marched through the streets of the city. Going ahead of the sad little procession was a man carrying a sign on which was written the crime of the guilty party. The sign, penned in mockery of Christ and of the Sanhedrin, reads THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS. In moments it would be nailed to the top of the post from which He would hang.

          That post was already fixed in the ground on Golgotha but the crossbeam was not. Just prior to leaving the Praetorium the soldiers stretched out Jesus' arms and tied the crossbeam to them. Somewhere along the route through the city Jesus stumbled and fell beneath the hundred pound weight of that crossbeam. The soldiers forced Him to His feet but He fell again, weakened by repeated beatings and a terrible scourging. In haste, they snatch a random man from the rapidly growing crowd, and compel him, Simon was his name, to carry the crossbeam for Christ.

          Three days ago He and His Apostles had marched into the city surrounded by throngs of cheering, shouting, singing Jews. Now the King of Israel, betrayed, abandoned, unjustly sentenced, scourged, beaten, and mocked, stumbles through the same streets on the way to Golgotha.

          Those streets are largely silent; the crowds looking on hushed. From somewhere up ahead a group of women begin to lament loudly. As Jesus draws even with them He lifts His thorn shadowed brow to look at them. Not unkindly, He tells them to save their lamentation for their children – the children that thirty years would perish by the hundreds of thousands in the Roman siege of a rebellious Jerusalem.

          At the site of the execution Roman law allowed a liquid narcotic to be given to the condemned man so that some of his pain would be eased. Jesus refused this, choosing to remain in full possession of His faculties but also choosing thus to experience greater pain.

          Upon arrival He was thrown on His back and the crossbar that Simon had carried for Him placed under His outstretched arms. Taking a six inch iron spike a Roman soldier knelt over Him and placed it with great precision at the base of His hand where the wrist begins. There the radius and the ulna of the arm join together at the hand and with the carpals form a small opening of bone through which the median nerve runs. Another soldier steps up and swinging a sledgehammer drives it through His body and into the wood of the crossbeam. The process is then repeated with the other arm.

          Raised back to His feet, Jesus was lifted into the waiting hands of Roman soldiers standing above Him on ladders. Hoisted into the air from above and pushed from beneath His body hung, swaying, suspended in mid-air by those two iron spikes. The crossbeam with its now three hundred pound weight was then dropped onto the embedded post. Quickly, the Roman soldiers grab His feet and holding them together place yet another iron spike through them into the wood of the embedded post.

          In this way, suspended between earth and Heaven, the crucified man would torturously die by inches over the next several days. He would die of exhaustion, of thirst, of asphyxiation, and of blood loss from the constantly re-opened wounds on his back.

          Looking on the assembled Sanhedrin smiled with glee. Looking on, the imps of hell howled in silent triumph. Looking on, His mother wept and recalled Simeon's prophecy of long ago pronounced in that very city over her precious infant child. Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also. (Luke 2.34-35)

     For six hours He hung thus suspended between earth and Heaven. For six hours the wounds in His back wept blood down the embedded post until it pooled at the foot of the cross. For six hours the median nerve in His wrists sent fire into His brain. For six hours the iron spike through His feet by turns supported and tormented Him. For six hours the assembled soldiers and Sanhedrin mocked Him unceasingly.

Along the way He kept His head. He won the thief beside Him to Himself. He took care of His earthly responsibilities – His mother. Stunningly, He forgave the assembled Romans and Jews who were murdering Him. And the darkness stole into His soul as He contemplated being rejected and abandoned - not just by His people, not just by His Apostles, but by God Himself.

          He who had known perfect fellowship for eternity was now taking upon Himself the noxious stench of the monstrous pile of humanity's sins against God.  And as the Father turned His back on the Son the true pain of the cross was shown.

My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

          Just over the city walls in the Temple Jewish priests gathered by the thousands and Jewish men gathered by the tens of thousands. One by one, hundreds of thousands of lambs were slaughtered in representation of that long ago night in Egypt when only the blood protected the people from the death angel. And hanging on the cross the Lamb of God, with His life's blood streaming from His body, shouted a single Greek word – tetelestai – which being interpreted is It is finished.

          In moments, He dismissed His spirit and died. And the Roman centurion looked up in awe and said, Truly, this man was the son of God.

Isaiah 53:3 He is despised and rejected of men; A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: And we hid as it were our faces from him; He was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, And carried our sorrows: Yet we did esteem him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted.

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: The chastisement of our peace was upon him; And with his stripes we are healed.

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned every one to his own way; And the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, Yet he opened not his mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, So he openeth not his mouth.

8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: And who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living: For the transgression of my people was he stricken.

9 And he made his grave with the wicked, And with the rich in his death; Because he had done no violence, Neither was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; For he shall bear their iniquities.

There is only one proper response to this. It is to say, from the bottom of our hearts, 'thank you.' For mercy at no charge and the price it cost Him to furnish it.

And Pilate Gave Sentence

Life of Christ 171

          It is Wednesday morning. Caiaphas and his bunch have finished their illegal trials. They have convicted Jesus of blasphemy and sentenced Him to death. But they have no actual authority to put a man to death; only the Roman Empire does. Thus it is that Jesus just after sunrise is ushered into presence of Judea's Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.

          As the Sanhedrin delivers their prisoner to Pilate he asks them what indictment they bring against Him. (John 18.29) Their initial response is laughable. They simply said that He was a bad man as if their word alone was enough to crucify a man. (John 18.30) Pilate, perceiving that the Sanhedrin had no valid political or criminal case against the prisoner, assumed all they had was a religious case. (He was correct about this, of course.) He tells them that religion is their jurisdiction and their problem. (John 18.31)

          The Sanhedrin then moves on to Plan B. They inform Pilate that the indictment is indeed political, and that Jesus was guilty of sedition and treason. (Luke 23.2) Pilate has been standing outside of the Praetorium, his judgment hall, discussing this with the Sanhedrin. (They refused to enter on the grounds that entering a Gentile dwelling would make them unclean and thus unfit to observe Passover in just a few hours. Curious, isn't it, how they were so concerned about being ritually clean while committing murder?)

Pilate turns and goes back inside to question the prisoner. Pilate asks Him if He does indeed claim to be the king of the Jews. (John 18.33) Jesus' response is that yes, He does claim to be the king of the Jews, but it is not a worldly kingdom. It is a spiritual kingdom. The proof is the evident fact that His followers are not seeking to break Him out of jail, so to speak. (John 18.36) Accepting this as sensible, and mindful of his first inclination that this was a religious question after all, Pilate returns to the Sanhedrin and formally pronounced Jesus innocent. (John 18.38).

Pilate wants out from under this situation. He is being pressured to sentence a man to capital punishment that he thinks is innocent. But at the same time the last thing he needs is to make the Sanhedrin and thus the Jews mad at him. To Caesar, a governor's job was well done when his province was quiet, peaceful, paying taxes, and producing wealth for the Empire. Pilate, who had as his unhappy lot the province of the troublesome Jews, was already on thin ice with Caesar in this respect.

Despite the Jews well known abhorrence of graven images, respected by his predecessors, Pilate upon initial acceptance of his charge had a cohort of Roman soldiers take possession of the Temple Mount and Fortress Antonia with banners flying. These banners were emblazoned with Caesar's image. The resulting near riot lasted six days, and only ended when the Jewish leaders willingly submitted to threatened death. Pilate had to recant and take down the banners.

Some time later, Pilate, sensing the need for more and better water in Jerusalem, proposed a new aqueduct. So far, so good. But he proposed paying for it with Temple money. Not good. Pilate, anticipating resistance, had plain clothes men mingle with the Jewish group who came to argue with him about it. At a nod from him they fell upon the crowd with clubs, perhaps with more energy than he intended, and many died from the beatings and the resulting crowd stampede.

Additionally, only recently, Pilate had instructed his soldiers to kill a number of rebellious Jews on the grounds of the Temple itself, and the resulting butchery mingled the blood of the Jews with the blood of the sacrifices.

The current Caesar ,Tiberius, was a paranoid, suspicious, sick, and increasingly bloodthirsty man. Think Josef Stalin here. The last thing Pilate needed was for the Sanhedrin to lead the Jews in a fuss which would draw the negative attention of Rome's ailing emperor. The Sanhedrin understand the political calculations going through Pilate's mind all too well. Remorselessly, they press home their attack, demanding that Pilate execute Jesus, asserting that He had spread sedition from Galilee to Judea. (Luke 23.5)

The word 'Galilee' is like a straw tossed to a drowning man. Pilate has jurisdiction only of Judea. If the prisoner is from Galilee this is Herod's problem, not his. Herod is in town for Passover and Pilate promptly ships Jesus to Herod. He hopes thus to get out from underneath the maddening situation. (Luke 23.6-7)

Herod had long wanted to meet Jesus, not out of any spiritual desire, but because he had heard that Jesus was a miracle worker. Jesus completely ignores Herod (Luke 23.6-12) and refuses to dignify his foolishness with any response whatsoever. Herod quickly gets bored with the whole thing, and ships Jesus back to Pilate.

While Jesus had been with Herod Pilate's wife came to him and begged him to let Jesus go. (Matthew 27.19) He already thought Jesus was innocent and this only adds to his desire to get out of what the Sanhedrin wants him to do. Sending Jesus to Herod did not work so he tries something else. Perhaps a little shed blood, via a scourging, will suffice to please them. (Luke 23.13-16) No, that is also unacceptable. Undeterred, Pilate tries something else. It was his custom to pardon one Jew every Passover. He decides to frame the opportunity this time as a choice between a clearly innocent man and a clearly guilty one. (Mark 15.7-9) After all, who wants a murderer released back into the general population? The Sanhedrin, though, quickly quashes the idea and whips the people to an emotional fervor demanding, of all things, that Barabbas be released. (Mark 15.11)

Pilate, still resisting but running out of ideas, begins to transition from trying to get out sentencing Jesus to death to finding a way to make himself look good while doing it. To that end, he gets the people to verbalize their blood-thirsty intent thus supposedly getting him off the hook. (Mark 15.12-14) They oblige him by issuing a full throated demand for Jesus' death.

In this whole scene we see two contrasting desires - Pilate to let Jesus go and the Sanhedrin to kill Him. Pilate pushes back saying it is a religious question. The Sanhedrin pushes back saying it is a political question. Pilate pushes back with a legal declaration of innocence. The Sanhedrin pushes back saying Jesus is fomenting rebellion in Galilee. Pilate pushes back by sending Jesus to Herod. Herod pushes back by sending Jesus back to Pilate. Pilate pushes back by offering instead to scourge Jesus. The Sanhedrin refuses and insists on capital punishment. Pilate pushes back by framing the traditional release to be between Jesus and Barabbas. The Sanhedrin pushes back by asking for Barabbas. Pilate pushes back by asking them to specifically verbalize their intent for the record. The Sanhedrin pushes back by whipping the crowd into a fever and demanding crucifixion.

Like a skilled boxer, the Sanhedrin has Pilate up against the ropes. Now they deliver the knockout blow. If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar. (John 19.12) Pilate is deathly afraid of the autocratic paranoid Tiberius. Pilate knows full well he governs an unruly people. He has repeatedly antagonized those unruly people. He does not need brought to the negative attention of Tiberius and the Jews are promising him that he will be if he does not issue the ruling they demand. Like a deflated balloon, he collapses to the mat. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. (Luke 23.24)

Pitifully attempting to robe himself in the tattered remains of his conscience and his dignity he calls for a bowl of water. He proceeds to symbolically wash his hands clean from the blood of a prisoner he knows is completely innocent. The demonically inspired blood lust of the crowd throws this back in his face with spine chilling cry, His blood be on us, and on our children. (Matthew 27.25)

         

 With this cry Judaism was, in the person of its representatives, guilty of denial of God, of blasphemy, of apostasy. It committed suicide; and, ever since, has its dead body been carried in show from land to land, and from century to century: to be dead, and to remain dead, till He come a second time, Who is the Resurrection and the Life!

- Edersheim

          No greater travesty of justice ever occurred. No greater consequences ever grew for those involved in an injustice. And no greater blessing ever flowed from such an injustice. 

Tried by the Sanhedrin

Life of Christ 169

          It is well after midnight. Jesus has poured out His soul to His Father in Gethsamane and received the strength He needs to face Calvary. He wakens the Apostles from sleep and then calmly awaits the advent of the end. And He doesn't wait long. And immediately, while he yet spake, cometh Judas, one of the twelve, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. (Mark 14.41-43)

          Judas Iscariot, after leaving the Last Supper in the Upper Room, must have gone immediately to the Sanhedrin. He proceeded to inform them that Jesus was in the city after dark and that He could thus be arrested quietly. The Romans would not allow the Sanhedrin much in the way of an armed force. They appealed to Pilate in order borrow some of the Roman cohort that was stationed at Fortress Antonia adjacent to the Temple, and Pilate consented. Taking to the streets with Judas Iscariot they marched to the Upper Room and found it empty. Bethinking himself of other places to which Jesus was wont to go at night the Iscariot led them next to the Garden of Gethsamane.

          It would be easy to get confused in the dark and so the conspirators had previously agreed on a necessary signal for identification. Thus it is that Judas Iscariot comes to place the infamous traitor's kiss upon the brow of our Saviour. Once having been so marked, the Roman soldiers ask for verbal confirmation. Jesus gives it, and then asks them to spare His Apostles (John 18.8) most of whom are rapidly departing the scene. Peter puts up a bit of a fuss, wildly swinging his short ceremonial Passover sword to a not quite so deadly effect before he is calmed down. Jesus' hands are bound and He is led through the sleeping streets of Jerusalem to the high priest's palace. (John 18.12-13)

Jesus Before the Sanhedrin,
William Brassey Hole, 1900

          The position of high priest had long ago devolved into a corrupt family business. The Romans sold the position to Annas' family, and they maintained a hold on it using differing relatives over a period of several decades. The Bazaars of Annas were infamous in the day, and the corrupt monopoly they held over Temple transactions had twice moved Jesus to visible displays of wrath. Annas' son-in-law, Caiaphas, nominally held the position of high priest at the moment but it is to the power behind the throne that Jesus is first brought for examination.

          Annas seeks first to establish the extent of Jesus' teaching and of His followship. (John 18.19). Jesus retorts that this information was readily known for His ministry was nothing if not public. (John 18.20-21) This response, viewed as impudent, was met with the harshness of blows from Annas' lackeys. (John 18.22) This terminates the interview, and a frustrated Annas turns Jesus over to his son-in-law, Caiaphas, and a hastily assembled Sanhedrin. (Mark 14.53-65)

          Technically, this was a pre-trial examination. Realistically, it was a kangaroo court. How do you convict a man of a capital crime who has never done a single thing wrong in His entire life? That was the conundrum facing the Sanhedrin. At first they sought to get around that gigantic obstacle by paying witnesses to lie. That did not work for their testimony, being hastily made up, did not agree and so this angle had to be abandoned. Next they tried to question Jesus and get Him to make some kind of incriminating silence. But he held his peace and answered nothing. After all, why talk when your prosecutors are doing a swell job of making their indictment look foolish? Finally, Caiaphas asked Jesus directly if He was the Messiah, and if He claimed to be God. This Jesus, in good conscience, could not and was not willing to deny. He confidently asserted that He was and that the day would come when He would sit in judgment on those who were now sitting in judgment on Him. This answer, which included a claim to be divine, was tantamount to blasphemy. Finally, the Sanhedrin had stumbled upon a capital offense. Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death.

          What followed was a demonic orgy of hate. These venerable doctors of the Law gathered around Jesus and began to spit on Him. Others struck him with open hands and even fists. The religious leadership of the nation of Israel had lain down with Judas Iscariot and woken up in Satan's bed. For the next twelve hours their actions would be marked by an increasing bloodthirstiness that is only explainable when we accept it was birthed in the pit of hell.

          Finally, the sun rose to see the worst day in the history of humanity. Once dawn had come the Sanhedrin was legally allowed to assemble. Hurriedly they formally poll the assembled quorum and a sentence of death results.

       Beyond the spiritual disaster we see unfolding it is worth noting that the Sanhedrin committed numerous illegalities in their examinations of Jesus. This was true via both common law and common sense, but it was also true via the known Jewish canon law of the day. The arrest was illegal - it was entered into on the word of Judas and he had been bribed. The examination before Annas was illegal – he was naught but a private citizen. The indictment was illegal – the Sanhedrin was not permitted to originate charges against a person only to investigate them. The trial before sunrise was illegal – examination of capital cases was limited to daylight hours because of the seriousness of the offense and the necessity for a careful, thorough, deliberate examination. The length of the trial was illegal – the Mishnah only allowed for one day trials if they resulted in acquittal; this was in order to leave sufficient time for the defense to find witnesses. Jesus' sentence of death was illegally pronounced – it was done at Caiaphas' palace and the Talmud states that capital sentences can only be pronounced in the legally specified courtroom; in this case that was the Hall of Hewn Stone within the boundaries of the Temple; to this even Maimonides agrees. Jesus' sentence was illegal – He was judged by those who had a long and deeply held animosity against Him. Jesus' conviction was illegal – the stated cause of guilt before the Sanhedrin (blasphemy) was completely changed when presented later to the Romans (sedition).

          No matter how you slice it, legally or morally or spiritually, the Sanhedrin's actions were nothing short of appalling. But hell had loosed the dogs of war on Jesus Christ. They had plenty of rebellion and hatred and jealousy and evil with which to work, and their work would not cease until the blood pooled at the foot of the cross.

          …and what precious blood that is! The imps of hell and the wicked doctors of the Law together unknowingly combined to produce the greatest of victories.  Without shedding of blood is no remission. (Hebrews 9.22) But it was shed, and there is glorious remission.

The Great Lesson of Gethsamane

Life of Christ 168

          It is after midnight on Wednesday morning. These are the last few moments of freedom Jesus has prior to His arrest in just a little while. He must prepare Himself for all that is coming. So much of this last day He has spent preparing the Apostles but now He must see to His own spiritual needs. So He comes, as He often did, to the lovely glade of Gethsamane to pour out His soul in prayer.

          After arriving He first separates the Apostles into two groups, one of Peter, James, and John, and the other with the rest. He lays out before these three Apostles the burden of His heart and begs them to pray for Him. (Matthew 26.37-38) He then leaves them in order to find a quiet spot of His own in which to pray. (Matthew 26.39) He prays for a while, and then returns to check back with Peter, James, and John. When He finds them asleep He responds with the burden of a great sorrow (Matthew 26.40) and asks them, once again, to pray for Him in His time of need. (Matthew 26.41) Leaving again, He makes His way back to a quiet corner and opens up His heart to His Heavenly Father. (Matthew 26.42) Returning to Peter, James, and John unbelievably He finds them asleep again. In weariness of soul, spirit, and body He turns without waking them and goes back to His quiet corner to pray for the third time. (Matthew 26.43-44) And for the second time on this, the longest day that any human being has ever lived, the Heavenly Father tenderly strengthens the Son for what He is about to face. (Luke 22.43) Finally, having prayed through, so to speak, and accessed the grace and strength He needs to face the horror of Calvary He returns to the Apostles. He wakes them, informs them His hour has come, and the quiet lovely little glade is overwhelmed with booted tramp of a cohort of Roman soldiers. (Matthew 26.45-46)

 

Gethsamane, Adam Abram, 2008

         This is a sacred scene to all who love the Lord. He is overcome with a burdensome sorrow and those closest to Him completely fail to minister to Him. He wrestles alone with the Lord in great agony of spirit, repeatedly, and obtains the strength He needs to face the cross. There are lessons here about friendship. There are lessons here about patience. There are lessons here about failure. There are lessons here about faith. There are lessons here about prayer. There are lessons here about all kinds of things but one particular facet of Christ's character shone brightly in that midnight hour – obedience to the will of His Heavenly Father.

          Many years ago when I first began studying the life of Christ I came across a statement in Edersheim's massive tome. He said that the outstanding characteristic of the life of Christ was His obedience to His Heavenly Father. At first, in my simplicity, I disagreed with him. Surely it must have been His miracles. After all, no other human being on the planet had ever walked on water, fed thousands with one lunch, cleansed lepers, healed the blind, cast out devils, and repeatedly raised the dead. Or perhaps it was His holiness. After all, no other human being had ever lived a completely sinless life. Or perhaps it was that He began the world's largest, best, and most enduring religion. Or perhaps it was His atoning death. After all, no one can pay for their own sins let alone the entirety of humanity's. Choosing something amazing about the life of Christ is like going to an exceptional buffet – it is all amazing. Yet as time passed I found myself gradually growing into agreement.

Saying that the most outstanding characteristic of His life is His obedience to the Father does not take away from anything Jesus did in any area. What it does do, however, is bring His life in some small way down to our level. Beloved, you and I are not going to walk on water. Well, I can occasionally if it is frozen but even then it is difficult. We are not going to raise the dead or lead lives of moral perfection. We will not atone for anyone's sins. But we should and can live lives of obedience to the will of our Heavenly Father. In this He set His greatest example.

Jesus said His meat was to do the will of His Father. (John 4.34). He said that He did not seek His own will in anything. (John 5.30) He said He did not come to do His own will but to do the Father's will. (John 6.38) He said, I do always those things that please the him. (John 8.29) And thus it is that we find Him in lovely Gethsamane gazing full on into the bitter cup of Calvary – and yielding to His Father's will on the matter.

Mat 26.39 And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

Matthew 26.42 He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.    

         

          The great question that faced Jesus in the Garden is the great question that faces you and me today. Will we do what we want to do or will we do what God wants us to do?

          I know how Jesus answered that question His whole life long.

          How will we answer it?