Friday, April 18, 2025

Day 107 Maundy Thursday

This may contain: two hands touching each other over a bowl

4/17/2025

 

As you know I have been following the series The Chosen as it provides plausible evidence of the life of Christ, or in my childlike acceptance, a believable glimpse of the character of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, based on my personal relationship with Jesus. Jonathan Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus in this series, puts great pain into his portrayal of the Son of God, God in the flesh, which is a huge undertaking requiring much close communion with Abba Father. His life has been transformed, as he has shared with so many people across the world. Reasonably I could say that the cast and their roles as the disciples give a more credible understanding of the challenges Jesus' followers experienced. They were what Jesus called those who followed Him, "the least," in the eyes of the religious leaders and world. When His ministry became public, Jesus identified Himself  as Messiah with the words from Isaiah 61:1-3:

  “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”

In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus used these words as a fulfillment of this prophecy:

 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;                                                                                                     To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

This did not bode well for Jesus with the Pharisees or with some of His friends in Nazareth. They knew He was identifying Himself as the Son of Man, the Son of David, The Messiah, God Himself, the fulfillment of the words of the prophets who foretold of His coming.

Today, on what is called Maundy Thursday, we remember the new covenant Jesus gives us by introducing The Lord's Supper, or as Christians call it, Communion. On this Passover meeting, Jesus demonstrates what it means to serve others in humility and love, as he washes the feet of the disciples, even those of the one who would betray Him. He shared the Passover Meal and explained the new covenant He was making with the people. He said that His body would be broken for others, His blood shed for remission of sins. Jesus the sinless Lamb being sacrificed for the salvation of the Jewish nation, but not just for them, for all who believed His message of eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Salvation comes first to the lost sheep of Israel, then to the Gentiles.

After eating He and the disciples go to the Garden of Gethsemane, because Jesus wants to pray. Gethsemane means olive or oil press in Hebrew, and the crushing process of extracting the oil from the olive, reminded Jesus of what laid ahead. In the garden He prayed for the cup to be removed, and the disciples whom He asked to stay awake and watch and pray - James, John, and Peter - were asleep each of the three times He came back to check on them. Finally, He said the time is at hand, and His betrayer had come. All of this mentioned in the scriptures by the prophets.

This morning Pastor Jack Hibbs shared with us the scripture found in 1 Thessalonians 5:9-11: "For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing."

Paul is explaining to the church that Jesus suffered and died and took the wrath of God off of us. He made the way for us to approach the throne of grace. The wrath it speaks of us suffering comes from the fallen nature of those in the world, and we see this in the murders and atrocious things that are happening, especially to believers all over this world. Jesus came so that in the fullness of time, He will return and take His Bride, the body of Christ, to live forever with God. So, as I ended my blog yesterday, I remind each of us once again, to occupy until He comes...again!

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