1st June 2011

John 19:28:37 – The death of Jesus.

• “All is revealed”
• The Jews realized that some of the laws God had given them made absolutely no sense at all.
• Yet, they had this deep down faith that He must have given them for a reason.
• He is a loving God, they thought, so His rules must be based in love.
• A pretty good angle to approach God’s Word – better than only basing our approach on our own rational thinking.
• They even invented a name for these peculiar rules: “hukim”.
• This passage helps us understand that god places things into our lives for a reason. And those reasons may only become apparent much later.
• One of the “hukim,” was that the command to refrain from breaking the bones of the Passover Lamb.
• This had been adhered to “blindly” for centuries.
• Only now does it make sense. Jesus is crucified but unlike most victims of this particular torture . . . His bones are not broken as the traditional way of finally killing a crucified man, He is already dead.
• A ritual commanded given many years previously suddenly gave significance to Jesus’ death. The whole weight of years and years of ritual behavior was now a sign once, hidden now disclosed.
• Suddenly things they knew made sense - Psalm 34:19-20 – “A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all; he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.”
• It leaves us the question: what hukim has God put in my life?
• What commands has He given me that make no sense now but could unlock a future mystery?
• What commands has He given me now that will help me identify His direction in the future?
• What irrational commands has He given you and are your obeying them because you know He loves you or have you dismissed them?
• What makes the difference?
• The way we enter the Bible.
• Enter it with the view to find the obvious life principles and we will miss Him.
• Enter it with the filter that everything God asks us to do is driven by love and we will eventually see Him in it.