Jesus

It is part of God’s process of maturing us to bring us into situations where we must either trust Him or abandon Him. None could deny that Abraham was forced into such a crisis when God told him to sacrifice his only son – the son of promise. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham reasoned in his heart that God must keep his first promise and therefore must raise him from the dead (Heb 11:17-19).

It was a prolonged period of running for his life which was the young David’s long protracted crisis in which he was brought daily and perhaps moment by moment to trust in God his deliverer.

It was Daniel the prophet hearing the king’s proclamation that none could pray to any but the king or suffer the lion’s den who resolutely opened his windows towards Jerusalem and prayed to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – who then endured the terror of being thrown into a den full of lions and the thrill of God’s merciful deliverance.

Whether Jacob, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Noah, or you – the Crisis of faith is defined best by that word: Crisis.

These memories are written for our instruction and for the building up of our faith. Since there is not one of us here this morning that has not experienced some Crisis of our faith, or who will at least be certain to face such a crisis in the future; would it comfort you to witness another and to see its resolution from God’s perspective?

This week as we come back to Luke – we arrive just in time to witness a crisis of faith in the person most of us would consider the least likely to suffer such a setback: John, the cousin of Jesus, called, “the Baptist”. Please read with me from the Gospel of Luke 7:17-23.

It was night in the garden. Judas had gone – songs had been sung, and Jesus had preached to his disciples about his coming death. He had promised them presence of God's Spirit with them and Jesus urged his disciples to pray with Him saying, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” (Lk 22.40) He left them alone and kept on walking until overcome with the burden being placed upon Him he fell to his knees and began to pray and sweat and bleed. He knelt and prayed with great wrestling agonizing prayers until he came to the point of surrender. “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me...” Became, “yet not My will, but Yours be done.” (Lk 22:42). As he knelt there surrendering upon his knees and probably upon his face -Luke informs us that an angel came and ministered to him (Luke 22:42) and no doubt the angel said “get up, my Lord.” And Jesus rose from that spot of prayer.

He came to his disciples and found them sleeping and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? GET UP and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”(Luke 22:46.)

Again he went away and he prayed the same prayer (Mark 14:39) Yet again he walked away from them until falling to his knees he began to pray and sweat and bleed. He knelt and prayed with great wrestling agonizing prayers until he came to the point of surrender. “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me...” Became, “yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Perhaps yet again the same angel came to strengthen him and say, “Get up, my Lord.”

There is much of what Jesus did and said that earned him the dislike of the Religious Elite in Jerusalem. But the three most condemning words that Jesus spoke were these: “Lazarus, come forth!”
Beginning in the John's gospel the 11th chapter, John introduces us to three episodes in Jesus' life that are closely tied together in Jesus' journey to the cross. These three events are not exclusive but they stand together as the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak. Normally I'm drawn to a much closer view of the scripture verse by verse but this morning I want to step backwards and take more of a birds eye view of these three events.
And by parallel I think we can see for our own sake three corresponding events in our own life which a godless culture hates but which we who know and love Jesus Christ ought to love and of course pursue. But just a the events form the trigger mechanism which leads to Jesus' death – they will also set us up to suffer with Christ.