Matthew 23:37 [also Luke 13:34]
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!
How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
38 See, your house is left to you desolate. 39 For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame…
Hebrews 12:1b-2a
Jesus had walked… for three years (by comparison to eternity, a blink of an eye).
Having been handed the baton of faith after more forty years of my race on the wrong path, I have walked with the Lord toward the cross a mere twenty years. Though I have endured the hardship of the race (a sprint in terms of time), a marathon of pain and suffering have not yet brought me in view of the finish line.
By our certain faith we must press on toward the crown given by Christ Jesus our Lord until our time is come to pass on the baton of faith.
Jesus has his face set toward Jerusalem. The crowds have followed. Many have fallen away. Some have been saved. Some have endured.
Yet as in the life of the faithful widow; as in the life of the resurrected (Lazarus and others); as in the life of the weary Disciples and worn-down flesh of our Savior, the race is not finished.
The race is not finished for Jesus as He looks upon Jerusalem. His race is not finished until the Cross.
Neither has our race reached the finish line of faith until we, too, have drug the Cross of Christ to the sanctuary of the Holy Place of our rest.
Luke 9:23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
As we approach the HOLY WEEK of our Christian faith, I invite you to take sanctuary in our Lord Christ Jesus.
Take a fresh look at the GOSPEL, the Good News of our Salvation in the Cross by the Sacrifice of the Blood of our Lord.
READ once more the entire story of JESUS, through the witness of the Apostles John and Matthew; or the early witnesses of the church after Jesus’ resurrection: Luke and Mark.
It may be helpful to some of you if I share a portion of my own witness, although your personal time in the Gospel is a better witness.
We have begun the penitent season of Lent with a call to the church and a personal rebuke to many of us to get right with Christ Jesus in our relationships with others.
I would be remiss to neglect my own history of sinfulness by contrast to the great grace, love and righteousness of our Lord in leading me into the path of His eternal blessings.
Those who know me from the first two decades of my life have witnessed how I was raised in the church family. We all worshiped faithfully with Mom and Dad every Sunday. Then, like in most teens, rebellion. Like in most families, brokenness of relationship with each other followed. Most of us were isolated from God, set on our own paths.
Those who know me from my twenties know that I participated in ‘church’ every Sunday, while I sinned greatly. I was married, as many once did in our twenties. (I did the right thing, though most do not bother with such commitment any more.) The wife of my youth broke her vow and ran back to her daddy. I thank the Lord that she became a Christian later and pray that she has remained faithful to the Lord and to her husband.
Those who know me from my thirties know that the Lord led me to a faithful wife, a virgin, a Roman Catholic in belief, faith and practice. We married. She lived as a saint worthy of note in all her witness, while I attended church with her and all-to-frequently became enticed by several sins of the world. She remained faithful also to me, as I would never have been unfaithful to my wife in any desire for anyone else.
By the continued grace of God, we had our only child, now a grown young woman of faith much like her mother (and also like her yet unmarried at just twenty-one).
I will share the story of my salvation with you, God willing, during Holy Week on Good Friday.
Viewing the race nearer the present: after the death of my wife I remarried a woman introduced to me by mutual friends. Though she claimed to be a Baptist, she had no relationship with Christ and with other Christians. (It should have been a warning sign, but I did not heed it.) She divorced me. I continued to hold onto the Lord.
The Lord then led me a long way (from Florida to Pennsylvania) to my present Blessing, my wife Lissette. Lissette was a practicing Christian, member of a local mega-church. (We later moved, at my urging, to worship at a different church. As I said, the church is the people worshiping the Lord together in a place.)
My wife stood beside me and raised her hands in praise to Jesus (something I only rarely did in my upbringing of ‘traditional, worship). She owned Bibles (English and Spanish). She had women’s devotional books. Lissette is a Christian… as I was a christian before I was born again in the Lord in my mid-forties.
One more thing (about my wife): while we were dating (long distance) she discovered that she had cancer.
I immediately prayed to the Lord, “WHY ME?” ( a most selfish question, for it was Lissette who had the cancer). The Lord had taken my beloved wife Becky from me after just twenty-three years. I loved Lissette. “Why me,” I asked the Lord… and the Lord’s answer was immediate and clear answer to my prayer:
“Who better?”
As God is my witness, I had prayed unceasingly on the bed of my grief in February, 1999. I had asked the Lord “Why?’ I had asked the Lord for proof of the continuing life of the soul of my beloved wife.
I contended with the Lord. I wrestled with the Lord until He would give me proof of her resurrection. The Lord gave me clear and immediate signs and assurances three times.
Finally, after three days, I let go of her soul; torn from me by the interruption of the death of one body, made one with mine.
Life is a great mystery, death even more mysterious. Marriage is a great mystery, love even more mysterious.
Praise the Lord, for healing my wife, Lissette, of her cancer!
The indwelling of another soul with ours is incomprehensible to this finite mind of flesh. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit of God into the soul of the redeemed sinner is a mystery too wonderful and a love so amazing!
I love my wife, Lissette. I love the Lord.
Jesus Christ and my wife Lissette Harned are one with me. I cannot explain it.
Divorce cannot separate us (though it is a good illustration of our unfaithfulness to God).
As a grand ceremony in a place of worship or an authorized signature on a marriage license do NOT make a marriage; as a claim of a lawyer and signature of a magistrate do NOT make a divorce; a baptism, a catechism, a confirmation, an attendance star, a claim, a communion, a contribution, and MANY other things do NOT make a Christian.
No work or law or righteousness will guarantee that a christian will receive the crown of glory at the concluding celebration of Christ Jesus.
Only the Lord can save you.
Will YOU ask Jesus, once more, to fill you with HIS LOVE?
Only Christ Jesus can keep you… can keep my wife (and your beloved spouse)… can keep our children, our beloved family and beloved friends…; ONLY Jesus can save our loved ones; only Christ Jesus can save you for the joy and blessings of His love.
Please pray for me, my wife, and our three beloved children (all young adults).
As Jesus Christ approaches, the time and the place of the Cross are near.
Which way will you turn?
To whom will you look for the finish line of your faith?
Fifteen years ago I became a widower. (We had been married more than two decades.) I know personally the loss of the widow (& widower).
Jesus spoke of three widows:
Jesus’ illustrations were not so much about what Christ followers must do for widows.
Jesus uses these widows to demonstrate faith to us.
Jesus’ rebuke here is how God used a faithful widow who was NOT part of the family of God (Israel). He spoke to the people of his own hometown, Nazareth, were Jesus was rejected.
Let the church remember our widows and widowers, that Christ might not need to site the faith of an unbeliever to christians.
Luke 4:25 But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, 26 and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.
English Standard Version (ESV)
8 Then the word of the Lord came to him, 9 “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10 So he arose and went to Zarephath.
And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks.
Suppose you could only gather sticks to cook some food (what little they had) during a drought. Enter the Prophet of God, Elijah.
And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.”
The widow humbly obeys, as she would her deceased husband or any man of authority.
11 And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.”
Now this destitute woman challenges the bold request of this strange man.
12 And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.”
13 And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said…
(‘Good. I’ll be done with this bothersome stranger,’ she must have thought, ‘and return to my misery.’)
The widow’s son is obviously unable to gather firewood, perhaps because he is only a boy in need of everything (as children must depend on father and mother for everything).
Yet the man of God continues:
… But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son.
14 For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’”
For thus says the Lord…
A command to be obeyed (only IF the man is a true Prophet of the Lord God of Israel).
15 And she went and did as Elijah said.
Time passes, but the provision of God does not.
And she and he and her household ate for many days. 16 The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.
More time passes.
17 After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill. And his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. 18 And she said to Elijah, “What have you against me, O man of God?
Once more the woman is bold because God has taken the life of her son.
She continues:
You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!”
How inexplicable had been the death of his father to the widow’s young son.
How great the loss of a mother or father to a young child.
Yet with the help of the Prophet, she has raised her son through her grief; and before her grief is ended her son also dies.
19 And he said to her, “Give me your son.”
And he took him from her arms and carried him up into the upper chamber where he lodged, and laid him on his own bed. 20 And he cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?”
Elijah is crying out to the Lord in prayer. The Man of God is pleading for the life of this son even as his mother has plead to the Man of God in her bold faith.
21 Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.”
22 And the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah. And the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. 23 And Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper chamber into the house and delivered him to his mother.
And Elijah said, “See, your son lives.”
24 And the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth.”
RESURRECTION! Bodily resurrection and the resurrection of the soul: both are possible! Both have been witnessed. Both require great faith, as the widow has shown.
The widow of Zarephath had said of Elijah: “Now I know that you are a man of God;” however before she knew it, she had great faith.
Along comes Jesus to His neighbors in Nazareth and it seems that (like many of us) that they have very little faith.
IF a man came to you and asked for your last morsel of bread, would you give it even to Jesus?
35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…
42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me,
naked and you did not clothe me,
sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’
45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal.
Have you remembered the widows?
The widowers?
Those dejected by the trials of this earthly life?
Perhaps you are gathering your last sticks for the hopeless situation of your family and along comes one asking you for your last morsel of bread.
How will you answer?
Will you have faith?