Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, and descended into hell (compare Romans 10:7; Ephesians 4:9).
Imagine Christ’s descent into hell: demons in an ecstasy of glee—strutting and parading, gloating and cackling as they celebrate the death and demise of the Son of God. Then Satan arrives amidst thunderous applause. There’s backslapping and high-fives; congratulations for finally winning what they believed to be the ultimate victory.
Read More Satan, cross, triumphBy the time Christ reached the cross, local authorities despised him. His friends had deserted him. Previously adoring crowds rejected him. Soldiers played dress-up with him, brutalized him, then knelt at his feet in mock worship. Even the louts hanging on the neighbouring crosses ridiculed him. As if that weren’t enough, Mark notes that, “People walking by insulted him (v 29).” That last bit brings me to a full stop.
Read More cross, persecution, walking by, stop
I love receiving gifts. Giving gifts is a gesture that people have used for centuries to express love, peace and forgiveness.
In this case, the gift offering that Abigail brought David changed the destiny for thousands of people in the city of Carmel. However it wasn’t the gift that brought the change to Abigail’s people – it was that the gift offering was received as acceptable to David.
Read More gift, peace, crossI was sitting on the floor in a meditative church service. The worship leader had been talking about brokenness. How sometimes we can feel lost, but that Jesus wants to reach out to everyone and bring them to a saving, light-filled, restoring relationship with him. Then he read chapter 11 of John’s Gospel, about the death of Lazarus.
Read More Unity, cross, scattered people“When that time comes, . . .” (v 1). Most translations use the phrase “In that day. . .” We are right to fear That Day: the day God comes. We didn’t see him coming.
Yet in the in-between, he is with us. He walks with us, if we listen carefully, like Adam in the cool of the afternoon. And we need not hide. We have plenty to shame us, but with God with us, we are clothed, not in fig-leaves of our own making, but of his making: his Son.
Read More cross, that day, God savesSpiritual blindness and deafness are self-inflicted conditions. God’s people suffer with both. They are blind to the glory of God, and they refuse to hear and obey his voice. God says that it is in this condition that he “gave them up” to the looter and plunderer. This is why they find themselves in exile. Even though God’s people were “set on fire all around,” they “did not understand,” or “take it to heart.”
Read More restoration, deafness, blindness, cross
Read Reflect After reading yesterday’s passage of hope and joy, we have one lingering fear. How do we know it won’t happen all over again and that history won’t repeat itself after Israel has returned to the Promised Land? With prophetic insight Jeremiah answers this question. This is the only place in the Old Testament […]
Read More communion, faithfulness, cross, new covenant
The 19th Century preacher C.H. Spurgeon noted that, “When the gospel was preached, instead of being accepted and admired, one universal hiss went up to heaven; men could not bear it; its first preacher they dragged to the brow of the hill… nailed him to the cross…”
Read More reproach, insult, cross, shame