Today’s ecumenical blog post is brought to you by one of my old college friends – Brandon the Baptist minister. He texted the following to our mutual friend Dan the Methodist minister and me. (We’re simultaneously the start of a joke and three old friends who’ve known each other since Freshman year at Bama.) He gave me permission to expand upon his thoughts, so here goes, with his original text/post in italics and my thoughts below.
On Wednesday of Passion Week, Satan led Judas to betray Jesus.
Judas heard all of Jesus’s sermons. Judas had the best small group Bible study leader ever. (HT, Matt Smehurst, Jean Larroux) The other disciples thought Judas was a nice guy. They assumed he was going to buy food for the poor when he was actually about to betray the Son of God who offered His life as a ransom for many. Judas fooled a lot of people. Judas had a lot of privileges. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. (1 Cor. 10:12)
Satan is still trying to tempt the people of God today. He wants us distracted. He wants us to focus on ourselves. He wants our disagreements to become bigger than they are. He wants our differences to lead us to petty division. He wants our fellowship to be a point of contention, cliques, and self-righteousness. He wants to steal our joy, kill our witness, and destroy our lives.
Satan will not stop trying to tempt God’s people. It’s what he does, even though he knows he’s defeated. One of my favorite ways to explain Satan’s modus operandi is to quote Alfred the Butler from The Dark Knight: “Some men aren’t looking for anything logical like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”[1] Satan will take any form of chaos or division that presents itself. Selfishness, division, pettiness? Great, in his mind. How about bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice? All those things Paul tells us to put away (or put off) in Ephesians 4:31? Satan wants you to put those on. And what better time (in Satan’s mind) to put those vile clothes on than now, Passion Week, a week when we celebrate Christ’s triumph through suffering? Satan would rather see pointless suffering and self-inflicted squabbling. Beware.
But Jesus has a better way. He came to give us life in abundance. He came to unite his church. He came to seek and save the lost. He gives us the way to stand against temptation through His Word. Today, commit to focus on Jesus and not the temptations Satan will use to divide us. Pursue Jesus, not the shiny pieces of silver.
Earlier, I quoted I Cor. 10:12, which urges us to take heed and be watchful against our own arrogance and overconfidence, so that our pride doesn’t precipitate a Humpty Dumpty moment. The very next verse is alluded to above. I Cor. 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” We don’t have to succumb to the pettiness and the division. We can look to Jesus instead, the One who loved me and gave Himself for me, the One who lovingly rules over His church, the One who pursues us like the Hound of Heaven[2], the One who is still working in works-in-progress like us, the One at whose right hand there are pleasures forevermore.
Make it a Good Friday. For every look at yourself, take 10 looks at Christ.[3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIYkhb2NjfE
[2] “The Hound of Heaven” is John Stott’s famous paraphrase of Psalm 23:6: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” The Hebrew for “follow” is a bit more intense and often translated as “pursue.” From the NET Bible’s translator notes: “The word ‘pursue’ is used outside of its normal context in an ironic manner and creates a unique, but pleasant word picture of God’s favor (or a kind God) ‘chasing down’ the one whom he loves.”
[3] Robert Murray McCheyne.